Q4 Improvements to the Price Guide

Over the past year, we’ve been working very hard on improving the price guide. As of this morning, there are now 44,723 Funko products in our database, that is not including the 6,714 Autographed Funko Pops and the 2,726 Funko-based Customs. Our goal is to continue to be as complete as possible when it comes to the entire Funko catalog.

When it comes to the Price Guide, the good news is that since there are so many new sales platforms, we no longer have to just depend on eBay for calculating the most accurate estimated values. However, we have noticed that are many more (and sad to say, better) fakes out there – either newly produced and sold for the first time or that are now on their second rotation with a collector – knowingly or unknowingly – selling it on.  We’ve also noticed that many of the Pop!s are what we like to call “aging”, where they don’t necessarily have any recent sales of mint items any longer. We’re defining guidelines around the age of a Pop! and if it makes sense to include some age-related acceptable damage if that is the only recent price point available. All of this makes the work of our Squad ever more important.

With the Funko app changing its pricing away from our Price Guide to some price feed from eBay (we have not seen an explanation of how they get generated), we have an even bigger responsibility to maintain the most accurate, non-biased Price Guide.  There is a lot of unhappiness about the Funko App in the comments on Android and Apple stores and we know this will not change  –

We are sharing our plans for the remainder of 2024 so that you know and, if you have opinions on what we should do, you can share them below.

eBay

Although eBay has become only one of our price sources, we are still committed to ensuring we are as up-to-date as possible when adding these price points. We’ve started going back through Pop!s that have not had a new Price Point added for a few months to then add recent price points (and if we cannot find any on eBay, we then search Mercari and then StockX). We also had a specific method to enter Best Offers (and sometimes Multiply Quantity sales).

Just this week we added the ability to add Comments on new Price Points or Price Points that were flagged. This helps to explain our Price Point Exceptions directly on the Price Point.  It also helps with the ever-more complex world of eCommerce.  For example, some sellers have decided to add the word “Damaged” to all of their eBay titles as it helps them to deal with often unjustified buyer complaints (if it says “New” every return – even if the item has been photographed in every detail, has to be accepted, if it says “Damaged” it is a totally different experience).

This vendor is a good example, she or he lists 4,500+ POP!s with the word Damaged Box, including a number of grails, almost all of which are in near mint or better condition, so they would be a legitimate Price Point that we would and should add to the guide.

We also plan to show removed eBay Price Points and the reasons for their removal as there are often discussions about these.

Mercari

We are looking into ways to add Mercari Price Points easier for our volunteers through a number of tools that we are working on. We also plan to add the Buyer’s Premium of 10% to the reported Price Points.

Whatnot 

We have initially started with 2 Sellers  –

1. Toycabal (but they recently stopped selling on the platform)
2. Savage_pops is still by far the largest vendor for Funko POPs on Whatnot.

We are looking at adding new Vendors, but while there are many other channels, most of them are small to very small.  The format of video in a stream with all its giveaways and bundles does not lend itself to informed decision-making and encourages volume with low prices.  This is a problem as Estimated Values should indicate what a well-informed buyer is willing to buy from a well-informed seller.

We are continuing to experiment here and will build in some rules, for example, defining an acceptable traffic number (currently around 100 viewers per show not during give-aways).  We will continue to monitor traffic and also plan a study of the difference between pricing on Whatnot and on other channels.

StockX

Sells only a few Funko items, but is perfect for Price Points due to StockX’ guarantee that items are Mint (think of the Buyer’s Intent and Assurances – “I know I get it Mint and if not I can return it and it costs the Seller money”).

Shopify

We are getting closer to releasing our Shopify app that will allow sellers to show their listings in the PPG database but also automatically assign Near Mint or better Price Points to the database (similar to how we handle hobbyDB).

Member Estimates

Squad Members and Premium Members can now add Member Estimates.  Those show if an item has no market-based Price Point such as an eBay, Mercari or StockX Price Point.  It can however have a Retail Price (as those are not indicate of an item’s value in the secondary market).

$25,000 for this Cyndi Lauper POP?  Imagine somebody asked you the value of the Golden Ticket when we had it valued at $15,000 (there was only one reported transaction) and just before somebody paid $100,000 for it?  Estimating values for rare items is hard and an informed crowd is better at it than individuals.  Maybe this one is worth that much and that Member might have the best insights(remember that Golden Ticket later for $210,000!).  To help explain somebody’s rationale Member Estimates can now also include comments to explain one’s thinking.

If there is more than one Estimated Value we calculate it using the PPG algorithm.  Here is the Estimate Value for Cyndi with those 7 Member Estimates   –

Questions?  Feedback?  Want to get Involved?

We’re excited to embark on this journey and if you’re interested in helping us continue to be the best Funko price guide out there, we’d love to hear from you.

Have some feedback on our plan? Just tell us what you think in the Comment below.