eBay sell-through rate
Whether it sells matters more than what it sells for.
Sell-through rate is the fraction of listings for an item that actually sold over some window: sold divided by listed. A high number means demand eats the supply; a low one means your money will sit on a shelf wearing a price tag. It's the best sourcing signal eBay gives you, and eBay has been making it steadily harder to see.
How to check it by hand
Search the item, note the number of active listings. Then filter to sold items and note that count. Sold divided by the two added together, over the window the sold filter covers, is your sell-through rate. Do it before you buy, not after — the whole point is finding out how crowded the exit is while you're still outside.
The catch, and it's recent: eBay now requires you to be signed in to see sold and completed listings. The sold filter redirects to a login page for anyone signed out. The data still exists, and your own signed-in browser can see it — but the days of quickly checking sold comps from a logged-out search, or from a tool that isn't operating inside your session, are over.
That's part of why we're building a browser extension that reads sold comps and sell-through inside your own eBay session, where the data is still visible. If you sell on eBay and want to try it early, mail hello@listmargin.com.
How to use it once you have it
Sell-through tells you velocity; it says nothing about whether the sale earns anything. An item can sell within hours and still lose money once fees and shipping land. So pair the two checks: sell-through for "will it move," and the profit calculator for "is it worth moving." Sourcing decisions get easy when an item needs to pass both, and the discipline of requiring both is what keeps a dollar bin from becoming a storage unit.
One more honest note: sell-through comparisons are only as good as the search behind them. A generic query mixes conditions, bundles and parts listings into both counts. Tighten the search until the active and sold sets describe the same item, or the ratio is theater.