The eBay finder is for one question: where could I buy this for less? It shows what is listed on eBay right now, and beside it what the same thing has actually sold for on Whatnot.
The listings
The finder opens on eBay's newest listings in your categories. Your categories are the ones your lots are in, most first; if your shelf is empty, it starts with trading card games, sports cards and toys. The rest are under More.
The listings are eBay's, in eBay's own order -- newest first unless you choose another. Aucta does not rank them, mark any as a good deal, or reorder them. If eBay will not sort a category the way you asked, the tag says eBay's Best Match instead.
Sort and filters
Above the listings are eBay's own controls: sort (Best Match, price low to high, price high to low, newest, ending soonest), a price range, condition, buy it now or auction, and free postage only. Each one is a setting eBay offers, passed straight to eBay. The page's address carries them, so you can share a view or go back to it.
Each price is what the seller is asking, with their postage. Click a listing to open it on eBay. If you buy through it, Aucta may earn a small commission from eBay; the price you pay is the same.
The four words
Every price here carries one tag. ASKING is a live listing's price: somebody wants it, nobody has paid it. SOLD is a sale. ESTIMATE is the Aucta comp, our figure from those sales. EXACT is a figure we hold exactly. "How Comps weighs evidence" has the detail.
One listing: the drawer
Press "Whatnot comps" under a listing and a drawer opens on the right of the listings (on a phone, it covers the screen). At the top is the listing itself: its picture, its title, its price tagged ASKING and its condition, then "Open on eBay" and "Open product". "Read as" shows how Aucta read the title, when that differs from the title.
Below it, "Sold on Whatnot" shows what the product has sold for, without spending credits. "Full comp" runs the full search there, for the credits it names, and only when you press it; "Open in Comps" takes the result to Comps. Close the drawer and you are back where you were in the listings.
One product: two columns
Search for a product in the box at the top and the page shows two columns.
Sold on Whatnot is ours: your own sales of the product, the pooled figure from other Aucta sellers once at least three of them have sold it, and the Aucta comp. It is read without spending credits -- the paid sources answer only from what Aucta already has, and the product is read by rules rather than AI. A full comp is Comps' job, or the drawer's. Early on this column will often be empty; that is honest -- nobody on Aucta has sold it yet.
Asking on eBay is eBay's: current listings for the product, with postage, in eBay's box, in eBay's Best Match order and the product's eBay category. When Aucta has a comp for the product, only listings between a quarter and four times that comp are asked for -- the tag "Within the Aucta comp's range" says so. That is Aucta's number narrowing eBay's search; eBay's prices never change Aucta's.
If that search comes back empty while eBay has listings for the same words, the box says "eBay has listings, but none match the filters" instead of "None listed". Widen to all of eBay asks again without the product's eBay category -- the usual reason, since a product filed in the wrong category finds nothing there. It counts as one more eBay search in the hour, and spends no credits.
Why there is no margin column
The finder never takes an eBay price away from a Whatnot price, and never sorts by the difference. eBay's terms let Aucta show its listings, but not use them to work out prices, and a "you would make" figure built on an eBay asking price would be exactly that. So the two columns sit side by side and you read them.
When you have found something worth buying, use Plan a Show with the price you would actually pay. That is Aucta's arithmetic on your number, with Whatnot's real fees.
How fresh it is
eBay's answers are kept for up to six hours and then asked again, so every figure says when it was fetched. Each business can ask eBay 60 times an hour; answers Aucta already has do not count. If you reach that, the box says to try again in a while.
The product page
"Open product", from the drawer or from Comps, opens the product's own page: the latest Aucta comp, tagged ESTIMATE, and its line over time; eBay's listings for it, tagged ASKING; and your own lots of it. Opening it never spends credits. "Run comp" runs a fresh comp for a few credits. "The product page" has the detail.