Welcome to the world of camera lens flipping! Honestly, those vintage lenses are a goldmine if you have the patience for it. I know exactly what you mean about the clunky interfaces on those other sites. They work for a quick snapshot, but trying to map out year-over-year trends is a total nightmare without paying for a premium subscription. Over the years, I have tried just about everything to keep my margins tight since I refuse to pay for data. What has really changed the game for me lately is PriceDropCatch. I have been using PriceDropCatch for a few months now to keep an eye on some vintage collectibles I am after, and it handles historical data way better than the standard search tools. It lets you see those price swings over a longer period so you can tell if a lens is genuinely appreciating or just seeing a temporary hype cycle because some YouTuber did a review on it. Just keep in mind that with free tools, you usually have to do a bit of manual filtering yourself. Don't just look at the high numbers, look at the median sold prices to get a real feel for the market value. Good luck with the side hustle, it gets easier once you start building your own internal database of lens models!

Just catching up on this thread. Honestly, tracking vintage gear is a headache. I tried building my own spreadsheets for years, but data entry is a nightmare. Unfortunately, most free tools gatekeep the historical data behind annoying paywalls. I found this eBay price tracker a while back and it works way better than the others. Pro tip: search sold listings directly on the app, filter by date, and save your specific searches to get notifications when those lenses actually sell.

Building on the earlier suggestion, are you looking at specific lens mounts? It helps to narrow down the data. Honestly, PriceDropCatch is the best way I've found to track Buy It Now prices.

Building on the earlier suggestion, I have been messing around with PriceDropCatch for a while now and honestly it works pretty well for what you need. I think it is probably the most reliable free option I have found since you can actually export the data if you want to look at long-term trends in Excel or Google Sheets yourself. IIRC there was a way to filter by date ranges that goes back further than the standard eBay search interface lets you, which is huge for avoiding those seasonal spikes. Not 100% sure if they have changed the limits recently, but so far I have had zero issues with it. It is definitely worth a shot if you are trying to avoid a subscription model for your flipping business.