Where the number comes from

ListToGo estimates what a used item could sell for. It does that by working out what the item is, then looking for evidence of what items like it have actually sold for. When the evidence is good, you get a tight range. When it is thin, you get a wider one. When there is not enough to be useful, ListToGo says so rather than inventing a figure.

From a scan to a value range

Four steps, in this order. None of them can be skipped.

1. Identify the item: Pricing starts with identity, because “a camera” has no resale value — a specific camera model does. ListToGo works from what it can actually see and read: the object, a product label, a model number, a part number or a barcode. The more specific the identity, the more useful everything downstream.
2. Decide whether identity is strong enough to price: If ListToGo only knows the category, it stops here and tells you what is missing. A number built on “some kind of drill” would look like an answer without being one.
3. Look for market evidence: ListToGo searches for real listings and sales of that item. Every price it uses has to come from a page that exists and has a price on it. If a price cannot be traced back to a source, it is discarded before it can affect anything.
4. Compute the range: The range is arithmetic over the evidence that survived. No part of ListToGo is asked to guess a number — a language model helps judge whether a listing is genuinely the same item, which is a reading task, but the figure itself is calculated.

Market research runs in the background. You do not wait on it: you can keep scanning, and values fill in as they arrive.

What evidence moves the estimate

Not all prices mean the same thing, and treating them as if they did is the fastest way to a wrong number. ListToGo sorts every price it finds into one of four kinds.

Sold: Someone actually paid this. Direct evidence of a completed transaction.
Asking: Someone wants this. Asking prices sit systematically above what things sell for, because unsold items stay listed.
Retail: What a shop charges for a new one. Interesting context, but not what a used item is worth.
Reference: A price guide’s opinion. One source’s view, not a record of a sale.

ListToGo uses the strongest kind available, on its own. If there are sold prices, the range is built from sold prices only. Weaker evidence is kept as context but does not pull the number around. This matters: if the four kinds were averaged together, three optimistic asking prices could outvote one real sale, and you would price your item where it will not sell. ListToGo also drops prices that cannot be describing the same thing. A search for one monitor turns up the monitor, a stand for it, and a pallet of twelve. Prices far from the middle of the set get removed, and if what is left is still spread too wide to be one product, no range is produced at all.

Why the value is a range

Because a single number would be a claim ListToGo cannot support.

Used items do not have one price. The same model sells for different amounts depending on condition, timing, who is buying and where. A range describes that honestly. A precise figure — $247 — would imply a confidence no market evidence supports.

The range’s width is meaningful. Lots of consistent sold prices produce a narrow range. Few prices, or prices that disagree, produce a wide one. The range widens when the evidence is thin, rather than narrowing regardless. Two data points cannot support the precision of twenty, and pretending otherwise is false confidence expressed as a number.

ListToGo does not assume condition. When condition is unknown, the estimate carries more uncertainty and may be wider. New or factory-sealed condition is never assumed — treating “we do not know” as “sealed in the box” would be the most expensive possible guess dressed up as a default, and a camera cannot see a seal it has not been shown.

What limited evidence means

It means ListToGo found real prices, but not many, or not directly comparable ones.

You will see a value marked as preliminary or low-confidence, with a wider range. That label is doing real work: it is the difference between “this is roughly what the market says” and “this is what the market says”. Both are useful. They are not the same, and ListToGo will not present one as the other.

A preliminary estimate is still built on prices that exist. It is thin, not invented.

What happens when we cannot price something reliably

ListToGo returns an honest state instead of a figure. There are a few different ones, and the differences matter.

We have not looked yet: Research has not run for this item.
We are still checking: Research is in progress.
We need one more detail: Identity is not specific enough yet, and ListToGo tells you what would fix it.
We looked, but could not find enough evidence: We searched, and could not find enough reliable, consistent market evidence to support a useful range. That can happen because there was nothing to find, because what we found was too weak to build on, or because the prices disagreed too much to describe one product. It is a real answer, not a failure — and it is not a judgement about your item.
We could not check right now: A problem on our side, not a statement about your item. This is deliberately kept separate from the one above, because reporting an outage as “we found nothing” would claim research nobody did.

An item with no estimate is never shown as $0. Zero is a price — it means worthless. “We do not know yet” is not a price at all, and collapsing the two would understate what you own and would quietly drag down any total.

Why another photo can improve the result

Because pricing accuracy is mostly an identity problem.

Most items that cannot be priced are not unsellable — they are unidentified. A second photo of a product label, a model number, a part number or a barcode often moves an item from “we know roughly what this is” to “we know exactly what this is”. Exact identity means the search finds the right listings, and the right listings produce a tighter range.

The same is true for condition. Telling ListToGo what condition something is in narrows the estimate, because it no longer has to carry that uncertainty.

If one more photo would help, ListToGo asks for it and says what it is looking for.

What ListToGo does not claim

Stated plainly, because these are the limits of the whole approach.

Estimates are not offers: Nobody has agreed to pay anything.
Estimates are not guarantees: What your item sells for depends on condition, timing, platform and buyers.
Estimates are not appraisals: A qualified appraiser can assess authenticity, provenance and materials. ListToGo reads market evidence. For anything valuable, rare or possibly counterfeit, get it appraised.
ListToGo does not invent market data: Every figure traces to a source with a price on it.
ListToGo does not price from memory: What something sold for is a question about a market, and the only honest answer without evidence is that we do not know yet.
Some items will have no reliable estimate: That is a real result rather than a bug.

Questions

Is the estimate what I will get for it?

No. It is what comparable items have sold for. Your result depends on condition, where you list it, how you photograph it, and how patient you are.

Why is one item’s range so much wider than another’s?

Width reflects evidence. A common phone with hundreds of recent sales gets a narrow range; an unusual item with three sales over two years gets a wide one. The width is information, not indecision.

Why does an item show no value at all?

Either research has not run yet, identity is not specific enough, or ListToGo searched and could not find enough reliable evidence. It will tell you which.

Does ListToGo use retail price when there are no sold prices?

Only as context, clearly labelled. What a shop charges for a new one is not what a used one is worth.

Can I improve an estimate?

Usually, yes — add a photo of the product label or model number, and say what condition it is in.

BE THERE FOR THE FIRST SCAN.

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