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PriceCharting
Data + marketplace · Collectibles · Denver, USA · since 2007
👤 JJ Hendricks (Sold retro games online first, so he had the raw sales data and the collector's itch before he and his brother built the guide.)🌐 siteLinkedIn

Two brothers turned 'what's this old game worth?' into the default price for a whole collectibles economy — free.

Will it work? · our read
Own the number. The price data is an unfakeable, compounding moat. But the audience and the numbers both flow through eBay — the day that pipe narrows or its fees vanish, the wedge dulls.
01How the money moves
Watch every eBay completed sale; auto-grade and filter it into one clean price
Give it away: a free price guide plus a 0%-fee marketplace, for millions of collectors
Dealers pay for API + daily bulk CSV data; free-marketplace links earn affiliate
02The numbers
3.5M+
monthly users
PRNewswire
454%
3-yr growth
Inc. 2025
$2-5M
est. yearly rev
Inc/ZoomInfo
Exact revenue is undisclosed; the range is a public floor (Inc. 5000) plus a third-party estimate. Inc. profile
About $2-5M/yr, bootstrapped, no VC — inferred from Inc. 5000 2025 plus estimates.
03Weight class — CENTStap an axis
ControlEntryNeedTimeScale
Control Mid
Both the data feed and the affiliate income run through eBay; if eBay throttles the API or cuts fees, the model bends.
04The key move
Don't tax trades
eBay skims every sale. PriceCharting runs its marketplace at 0% fees — the free market is bait that feeds the price data, and the data is what dealers actually pay for through the API and daily bulk downloads.
our read
The counter-intuitive move
Plainer read: a niche marketplace was never going to out-liquidity eBay, so seller fees were never realistic — licensing the data was always the actual business.
our read
05Where the moat is
Why a scraper can't just clone it:
18 years of completed-sale historyThe default price everyone quotesPrices from real sales, unfakeable0% marketplace fees vs eBay's cut
06How it diesmedium confidence
It dies if eBay walls off sold-listing data or kills affiliates: the price engine loses its fuel and the money loses its rails at once. The slower version: a funded rival buys the standard in one category. our read
Show evidence · counter
Evidence: PriceCharting's own docs say prices are computed from eBay completed sales, and its 2016 interview names eBay/Amazon affiliate as the revenue base.
Counter: 18 years of stored history keeps working even if eBay cuts the live feed, and spreading across cards, comics, coins and LEGO dilutes any single-category attack.
07Against rivals
PriceChartingFree + paid API
eBay sold listingsFree, unfiltered
GoCollectCards, paid sub
GameValueNowAds, games only
eBay owns the raw sales but no clean number; niche rivals cover one category. PriceCharting is the cross-collectible default. our read
08Who uses it
Retro game collectorsCard & comic dealersAuction housesResellers & flippersRetail buy-back shops
Would it work for you?
Is there a fragmented niche where nobody owns the canonical price — and a real-sales feed you could aggregate into it?
The moat is years of real-sale data, not code. Got a transaction feed rivals can't copy? We don't score you — you answer.
🚀Use it as a launchpada prompt for your own AI
Copy → paste into your AI → then develop it freely in the conversation.
You are a sharp, honest startup strategist. Use the proven case below as a launchpad for MY idea — help me find my own angle, not copy it. <my_profile> Domain I know: [your domain] My unfair advantage (access/audience): [your edge] Interests: [your interests] Resources & goal: [your resources] · [your goal] </my_profile> <case name="PriceCharting" model="data"> What it does: A free collectibles price guide + 0%-fee marketplace, built from every completed eBay sale. Why it won (moat): 18 years of unfakeable completed-sale history = the price everyone quotes. Weakest axis (CENTS): Data and affiliate income both ride eBay's pipe. How it could die: eBay walls off sold-sale data or ends affiliates; the engine and the money lose their fuel at once. </case> <task> Be a skeptical operator, not a cheerleader. No generic startup platitudes. If my angle is weak, say so plainly. First, a reality check: markets like this mostly fail. State the honest base rate (how crowded/hard is this?) and the ONE specific thing that would have to be true for ME to be the exception — grounded in my profile above. Then a compact table: - Fit — does this pattern suit my edge, or fight my gap? - Angle — my sharpest differentiation vs PriceCharting (concrete, not "better UX") - Distribution — exactly where my first 100 users come from (this is the hardest part — be specific, not "content marketing") - Risk — its "how it dies" (above) in MY situation Finish with one line: "The single thing to do next." Use only the facts above; if data is thin, say so — never invent numbers. Then stay with me and go deeper on whatever I ask — tech stack, rough cost & time, the smallest MVP to test, pricing, or timing. </task>
✓ Copied — paste into your AI
👤Placeholders like [your domain] auto-fill from your profile — example values for now.Set up profile →
Sourcesupdated · daily
Revenue is not disclosed. The $2-5M/yr range is inferred: PriceCharting is a 2025 Inc. 5000 honoree, so 2024 revenue cleared Inc's published minimum (about $2M), while third-party estimates (ZoomInfo) put it under $5M; Inc. Regionals reports 454% 3-year growth. Bootstrapped by brothers JJ and Michael Hendricks since 2007 — no VC on record. Monetization (0%-fee marketplace, eBay/Amazon affiliate, paid API + daily CSV, premium tiers) is confirmed on PriceCharting's own pages; the 'both the data and the money depend on eBay' read is ours [our read]. We never score you.