2026-05-05
How PartSnipe's Deal Score Works (And Why Most 'Bargains' Aren't)
A look under the hood at how PartSnipe scores every used PC part listing across eBay UK, CeX and Gumtree against real market value — and why 'reduced price' tags lie.
If you've ever bought a "reduced" GPU on eBay and then noticed identical cards selling cheaper a week later, this post is for you. Here's how PartSnipe figures out whether a listing is actually a deal — and why the marketplaces themselves are bad at telling you.
The problem with "RRP £499, now £299"
Sellers anchor to launch RRP. RRP is the price the GPU sold for on launch day 4 years ago, when it was the newest card on the market. It has almost nothing to do with what the card is worth used today.
A 2020 RTX 3080 launched at £649. Its real used UK market price in 2026 is around £320. A seller listing it at "£449, was £649, save £200!" is asking £130 above market while pretending to discount. Buyers see the strikethrough and bid.
What PartSnipe scores instead
We ignore RRP entirely. The only thing that matters is what identical listings actually sell for, this week, in the UK.
For every part we track:
- We pull every active listing for the exact model across eBay UK, CeX and Gumtree
- We compute a rolling 30-day median sale price — that's the market average
- We compare every new listing's
price + shippingto that average - We give it a delta percentage (negative = below market = good)
- Listings below certain thresholds get a flag:
| Delta vs market | Flag | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| < -20% | Steal | Stop reading this and buy it |
| -10% to -20% | Great | Strong deal, worth pursuing |
| -10% to +5% | Fair | Reasonable but not exciting |
| > +5% | (no flag) | Overpriced, skip |
Why the rolling 30-day window matters
Used GPU prices move fast. An RTX 3070 was £280 in April and £220 in May 2026 because RTX 5070 supply ramped. A static "fair price" database would have left you overpaying by £60.
The 30-day rolling window means the score automatically adapts. When the market drops, the threshold for a "Steal" drops with it. You're always benchmarked against now, not against some price list scraped a year ago.
What we exclude (this matters)
Not every listing is a real signal:
- Listings with zero feedback sellers and no photos. These are usually scams or duplicate listings.
- Listings priced below 30% of market average. Almost always a scam ("I'll ship after you pay").
- Listings ending in
BINwith a 7-day duration. These tend to be testing-the-water sellers, not real prices.
Filtering these out makes the median price reflect what builders actually pay, not what scammers post.
Why this beats refreshing eBay manually
If you've been hunting for a Ryzen 7 7800X3D under £300, you know the drill: open eBay, sort by "ending soonest", refresh every few minutes, miss the £270 listing because you went to make coffee.
PartSnipe inverts that. We watch every marketplace simultaneously, score every listing in real-time, and ping you the moment a "Steal" hits. You spend zero time refreshing and zero time wondering if you're overpaying.
See it in action
- Browse the live scored feed — every listing across all three marketplaces, ranked by delta vs market
- Pick any part from the tracked components directory to see its specific market average and live listings
- Set an alert on the parts you actually want and let us do the watching
The whole product is built around one belief: price relative to current market is the only number that matters. RRP is a marketing decoration.