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posted by CoolHand on Sunday August 09 2015, @11:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the whats-old-is-new-again dept.

http://www.itworld.com/article/2956675/hardware/a-new-tool-for-pricing-used-it-

An electronics recycler has created an IT products database representing 9,000 manufacturers and 11 million equipment models. The products range from consumer to business equipment, such as network storage devices, routers, switches, as well as servers, PCs and office machines.

The database, called the Sage BlueBook, was launched this week in beta and will remain free to use. It will give prices based on condition, including non-working. It is but the latest option available to people and businesses trying to maximize the value of used electronics.

Houghton said the system scrapes data from a variety of wholesale and retail sources, including eBay and Amazon Trade-In. The "real magic," however, comes in cleaning the data to get valid model information that can be matched with transaction activity and product condition, he said. "The BlueBook tells you if the offer price is good or not," Houghton said.

Houghton sees a connection between sustainability and old electronics. "The real dream here is to eliminate the throw-away mentality for the used stuff. There is value in most used electronics," he said. Good pricing data, he reasoned, helps keep equipment in circulation.

"The transparency issue over the cost has always been a sore point for CIOs," Daoud said. There is "very little trust" in the secondary market for used electronics.

One of the problems with electronics is the velocity of price changes. For instance, an asset may have a certain value just up until the time that a new OS is released that changes hardware requirements. What will be difficult is tracking prices over time, Daoud said.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by zafiro17 on Monday August 10 2015, @06:32AM

    by zafiro17 (234) on Monday August 10 2015, @06:32AM (#220567) Homepage

    This is useful, and who cares if it is HTTP only? Anybody who wants to snoop on which used gadgets I'm pricing isn't that big a deal to me, except for the principal of it all.

    This is useful - I know tons of non-mechanically minded people who simply use the Blue Book to sell their cars: look it up, use that price, that's the end of it. But that said, eBay is already a pretty good indicator of pricing, as it gives a sense of what people are actually paying for used gadgets. And in the end of it, that's kind of the most important gauge.

    --
    Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
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