Video Demo Update: Hot Products tool

Using the Hot Products tool, find groups of products that share keywords in common and have a high success rate. Dig down to the category of your choice to personalize your research.

Silver Age Iron Man Comics Get a Boost from Film Release

As the big budget film Iron Man hits theatres this week, demand for Silver age Iron Man comics has soared as well.
According to results found using Terapeak’s Hot Categories research tool, Iron man comics from between 1956 and 1969 are super hot on eBay this week.

This trend chart shows the last two years of activity in category #32735:

As you can see, listings and sales are both way up. Last week over 600 listings were posted in this category, generating $27K in sales.
That’s impressive activity for 40-50 year old collectibles.

Notable listings this month:
IRON MAN & SUB-MARINER # 1 (1968) sold for $4650.00, making it the highest priced listing in this category in April.

The INVINCIBLE IRON MAN Complete Collection DVD ROM was the most frequently listed title in April. Digital formats for comic books are a growing industry.

Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, opens in theatres across North America on May 2nd, 2008.

Terapeak 5.0 – Now Available at a Computer Near You!

Hello! Welcome to a new era of Terapeak research!

This week we launched Terapeak 5.0, the next generation of our existing site that incorporates not only a fresh new look and feel (and oh yeah, it’s faster too) but also some unique new features.

Those of you familiar with the site will notice that Terapeak now includes actual seller ID’s in all reporting (no more hashed number reports) and numerical totals in the category trending (previously it was percentage of total value). For example:

We can see that the week ending March 09, 2008, $429.88 K of sales occurred in the
Consumer Electronics > Televisions > LCD Flat-Panel TVs > 40-49 inch LCD TVs
category.

We’ve also taken our user’s feedback to heart and developed new tools that answer a question we hear everyday, “what can I sell on eBay?” Our new Hot Research tools make finding hot products and discovering new niches easier by providing you with information on what eBay shoppers are actively searching for, and what items are topping the sales within sub categories. The following is a report on the Hot Products within the Clothing, Shoes & Accessories > Men’s Clothing > Shirts > Casual category:

The Terapeak team is very proud of the 5.0 site, and we all hope that you’ll check out our new features, and our new interface! For more information, drop us a line here or at support@terapeak.com

-denise

MAC Eyeshadow BIG on eBay this Spring

One of this month’s hot categories on eBay is Health & Beauty>Makeup>Eye Shadow>MAC.

Mac is one of the leading producers of cosmetics, health and beauty products, with flashy ad campaigns featuring celebrities like Missy Elliot, Fergie, and Dita Von Tees.
MAC makeup accounted for over 30,000 listings on eBay last month, with an average price of $19.75 and an impressive sell through rate of $71.73%.
Some of the listings sold for as much as $1000.00!
Take a look at a two year trend in sales and success rate for MAC Eye Shadow from Terapeak Marketplace Research:

This is a very seasonal category, showing sales peaks in the spring of each year. This year’s peak is the highest yet.

This category has also enjoyed a very steady success rate since last fall.

Maybe its time to add some “Glam” to your eBay listings this spring!

Die Cutting Machines: A fun scrapbooking tool and a hot product on eBay!

With an 80% sell through rate and the 9th highest sales revenue on the site, category #71228 (Crafts > Scrapbooking > Die Cutting Machines) is our feature hot category on eBay this week.

Die cutting machines create designs by pressing a shape or die into paper, cutting it into precise shapes or letters. Die cutting machines are popular with scrapbookers, but can be very useful to anyone looking to embellish photo albums, paper crafts, and artwork. Die cutting machines tend to be very simple to use, and much less hassle than tracing and cutting by hand.

The average price for products in this category is around $65.00, but machines can climb up to $800-1000 per unit.

Here is a 2 year sale trend for category #71228

As you can see, sales revenue has been climbing steadily in this category over the last two years.

More and more art supply stores are catering to scrapbooking and embossing interests these days, and as the products become available to a wider audience, the market for tools like die cutting machines is sure to keep growing.

(Results were found using Terapeak’s marketplace research tools.)

Vintage Cameras a Hot Item on eBay through February

Let’s take a look at an interesting result from Terapeak‘s Hot Category List from the last 30 days: Category # 11721: Vintage TLR Cameras.

Sporting a very unique look compared to modern cameras, TLR cameras were very popular in the 1950’s and 60’s. TLR stands for Twin Lens Reflex, meaning the camera has two lenses of equal focal length (one lens for the viewfinder and one lens to capture the image.) The advantage of the TLR over modern SLR (single lens reflex) cameras is that the viewfinder is not obscured during exposure, and maintains a constant view of the subject. However, unlike SLR cameras, many TLR models present challenges when judging depth of field, or taking close range photography.

There were 3,432 TLR camera and accessory listings on eBay in the last 90 days, with an overall success rate of 63%. Prices ranging from the affordable (an average price of $115.00) to the extravagant (a rare Rolleiflex Tele-Xenar model sold for $3500.00).

And as you can see from the trend, sales for TLR (twin lens reflex) cameras recently hit a two year peak.

Now that digital cameras have become so common, it’s great to see buyers still taking an interest in film based cameras, especially these vintage models.

GI Joe sales steady as film project moves forward

GI Joe figures are a hot product category on eBay, and it’s only going to get hotter as a live action movie based on the popular toy and cartoon series has recently gone into production.

Director Stephen Sommers (the Mummy) is attached to the project and actors Marlon Wayans, Sienna Miller, and Christopher Eccleston have joined the cast.

Nearly 40,000 GI Joe listings ended in the last 30 days on eBay.com, 66% of which ended in sale, and worth over $690,000.
The 3 3/4 inch GI Joe action figure category showed up in this month’s Terapeak Hot Category list, due to a high success rate, and growing demand.
Here’s a trend of that category:

 The listings in this category have enjoyed above a 60% sell-through rate for the last years. This means that 60% of all listings sell, and that’s a steady category!

Hasbro’s other line of toys, Transformers, was also adapted into a film franchise that grossed over 300 million in the US box office. Demand for Transformers toys peaked at the time of the movie’s release last summer, and demand for GI Joe listings will likely follow the same pattern.