Update on Pricing Index WRITTEN BY Jonathan Medina

Hello PucaTraders!

Today I want to sit down with you and recap some the challenges that we’ve had with our pricing index and what we’ve been doing to address these challenges. Some of you have reported issues with card prices; specifically, prices not being updated or prices being slow to respond to spiking. It’s taken us some time to analyze these problems implement solutions, and now that we’ve got a handle on things, I want to bring you up to speed. Below I’ll expand on the issues that we’ve experienced, talk about the solutions that we’ve implemented and our way forward.

One thing to realize about pricing is that there are a lot of moving parts. Our pricing script draws data from pricing sources and then sets the price based on the sources using an algorithm. I won't go into details about finer functions of the script but the problems below will give you a better idea of how the script works and a glimpse at the complexities of it. Let’s dive in.

Set Mapping Issues

The first problem that we started to experience was that our pricing sources would make changes to their set structure. Things like changing set names, or moving cards into different sets (this primarily happens with promotion cards), will break the connection between the pricing source and our database. During this time period, cards in the affected sets were not receiving timely pricing updates.

We fixed this issue by coding our sets to match the new structure. We also built in some error handling to our script that gives us a list of cards that are not being updated in the future. This error handling has shown us that there’s still a handful of sets that have broken links. These prices are being monitored while we work to resolve the issue. For a full list of the sets click here.

Unreliable Data Sources

We’ve also experienced issues with the availability of one of our pricing sources and this lead to unreliable pricing. Because we of our multiple source set-up, it was hard to put our finger on this issue. Some prices were trying to update with the unreliable source, while other were being updated by the reliable sources. It wasn’t until some deeper troubleshooting that we uncovered the issue.

We have since removed this pricing source from the script, which has made our price sourcing much cleaner. We’re also looking into some other pricing sources to provide a more robust pricing model.

Script Errors and Features

There was an issue that was reported back in April and it has since been resolved but since we’re talking about index pricing I’ll mention it here. The issue was that a handful of cards (three that I’m aware of) had spiked over 10,000 points when that happened the pricing script set them to 103 points instead. It happened to about three cards and it was spotted quickly. After some reworking of the script, the issue was resolved.

On this topic, there’s actually a built-in fail-safe in the script that freezes pricing updates on a card that spikes by a multiple of four. There was a time where such an occurrence was unheard of but with the reserved list spikes that have happened recently, It’s actually lead to some triggering of this feature and a freezing of prices that legitimately spiked. We’ve worked through these (unfroze them) manually and we’re monitoring for future spikes.

Improvement of Backend Tools

As I alluded to above, we have tools in the backend to help manage pricing. The cool thing is that I have had a chance to work with Chris on refining some of these backend tools. There have been significant improvements made to these tools, particularly the pricing flag management system. It’s now much more efficient to manage the pricing flags and once I work through the 300 or so that are pending now, you can expect a much quicker response to pricing flags.

Conclusion

Overall our index is in pretty good shape. The only outstanding issue is the sets that are being manually monitored and we’re working on getting those automated in the background. If there’s one thing that I hope you take away from this post is that the PucaTrade pricing index is in good hands. It’s true we have limited resources, and that sometimes our system experiences issues, but we have dedicated people who are looking after things. As always we appreciate you as a community and your patience with us over the last six months! I will talk to you very soon with an update on the Promotion Fee Restructure and what we learned from the survey in my last article. Until then, give and let give.



