We Tested 100 eBay Sold-Comp Searches. 37.9% of Rows Were Filtered Out
A raw sold-listings search is not automatically a usable comp set. Search for a phone and you may also get cases, chargers, broken screens, empty boxes, and nearby models. Search for a camera lens and you may get caps, adapters, or a different focal length. If those rows go directly into a median, the result can describe the search noise instead of the product. I wanted a larger measurement than a single convenient example, so I ran a fixed 100-product study through CompSniper, the sold-price API I own. The goal was not to prove that an automated classifier is always correct. The goal was narrower: Measure what the production relevance cleaner removed and how the product-level median changed on one predeclared sample. The protocol I selected the products before making the first request: 20 smartphones and tablets 20 gaming and computing products 20 cameras and lenses 20 audio and music products 20 collectibles and luxury products Every search used the same settings: Marketplace: ebay.com Sold window: 2026-06-02 through 2026-08-31 Page: 1 Requested rows: 240 Sort: ended recently Condition: any Relevance cleaning: enabled Each relevance-enabled response contained the raw sample count and raw median captured before classification, followed by the cleaned rows and deterministic price summary from the same fetched page. That meant one production request per product, not separate raw and cleaned fetches. All 100 requests succeeded with unique request IDs. The headline results Across the study: 19,220 priced raw rows were parsed 11,942 priced rows remained after cleaning 7,278 rows were classified out The weighted removal rate was 37.87% 34 of 100 product medians changed by at least 10% 15 of 100 changed by at least 25% 11 of 100 changed by at least 50% The direction was not always upward: 73 medians increased 21 medians decreased 6 medians stayed unchanged That is important. The cleaner is not instructed to raise prices. It tries to retain listings for the requested produ