Why averaging sold listings gives you the wrong price
The average drags junk and grails into one meaningless number. Here's why the mean fails for resale pricing and what to use instead.
Price-lookup tools love the average because it's easy to compute, not because it's right. Two reasons it fails resellers.
It's pulled by every extreme
One $500 outlier in a field of $40 sales lifts the average to something no buyer will pay. You list high, sit unsold for months, and blame the market.
It ignores condition entirely
The average treats a graded gem and a water-damaged copy as the same data point. The number it returns describes an item that doesn't exist.
The fix is the median by condition with outliers removed. It answers the only question that matters: what does an item like mine actually sell for?