How RC Data Vault estimates RC market values

Sold comps are the primary signal. We build estimates from completed sales on eBay and other marketplaces — what buyers actually paid, not what sellers were asking. Active listings are used for market context and to surface potential deals; they do not silently replace sold comps as a fair-market estimate.

Parts and accessories are excluded. When a listing is detected as a body shell, electronics module, tires, parts lot, or accessory rather than a complete vehicle, it is excluded from vehicle valuation.

Contaminated listings are filtered or downgraded. Wrong trim or sub-model, scale mismatches, multi-vehicle bundles, rollers and sliders, parts lots described as “truck,” and ambiguous titles are filtered before they reach a valuation, or have their weight reduced when ambiguity remains.

Confidence reflects evidence, not certainty. Three things shape the confidence tier shown next to a value:

• Sample size — how many clean sold comps support the estimate
• Freshness — how recent the latest qualifying sold comp is
• Spread — how tightly recent sale prices cluster around the median

A model with many recent, tightly-clustered comps earns a higher confidence tier. Wider spreads, older comps, or thin samples bring confidence down. As sold comps age, their weight decreases — an older market is a weaker market signal, and the tier label reflects that.

No sold-comp data means no fabricated price. If we don't have qualifying sold comps for a variant, RC Data Vault does not invent a number. The interface will indicate that evidence is insufficient rather than display a falsely precise estimate.

Prices and fees.Prices shown are the listed sale price as posted on the marketplace. Shipping is tracked separately and is not added to the estimate. Marketplace seller fees are paid by the seller out of their proceeds and don't change what the buyer paid, so they don't affect our estimates.

We want to be upfront: sold-comp ingestion via the eBay Finding API is currently externally paused due to a persistent eBay RateLimiter error (error code 10001). This is a vendor-side limitation we are working around, not a choice to withhold data.

What that means in practice:

• Existing valuations rely on the latest qualifying sold comps we had already collected before the pause.
• Freshness indicators and confidence tiers are used to prevent stale data from looking more certain than it is. If recent comps are missing or aging, the displayed tier reflects that.
• Active listings may still power deal-surface and supply context on market pages, but they do not silently stand in for sold comps as a fair-market estimate.
• When ingestion resumes, refreshed sold comps will flow back into the estimates and confidence tiers automatically.

Our position: it is better to show an older estimate with an honest freshness label than to fabricate a current one. If evidence is insufficient, we say so.

If a value looks wrong, if you spot a listing that shouldn't be in a comp set (wrong trim, parts lot, scale mismatch, bundle), or if you have context we're missing on a specific model, tell us. Reader feedback is one of the most reliable ways we catch contamination.

Email support@rcdatavault.com. Include the variant page URL and, where possible, a link to the comp you're flagging.