Ebay Game Sales Increase 30% in December

Like most retailers, eBay sees a big increase in traffic and sales during the holiday season, which traditionally starts after Thanksgiving. How many more items does eBay sell though? We used our price data for video games on eBay to find out for sure.

Number of Sales on eBay per Day Before and After Thanksgiving

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The chart above shows the number of completed video games transactions on eBay from November 8th to December 14th 2009. The red line in the middle is Thanksgiving Day.

Before Thanksgiving, the number of transactions follows a weekday trend with busy Sundays and slow Fridays but the average is fairly steady.

Sales quickly jump after November 26th and consistently stay above the pre-holiday average.

eBay Sales Chart With Average Lines
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This chart is the same as the top chart but adds two lines showing the average number of games sold on eBay before and after Thanksgiving.

Before Thanksgiving, an average of 11,400 games sold every day. Afterwards, there were an average of 14,900 games sold per day. 30% more games sell every day on eBay after Thanksgiving than before.

Note: Due to a server outage on December 3rd we didn't collect price data on every transaction that day so the actual number of sales that day is higher than the 9,000 we show in the charts.