WorthPoint Corp. announced Thursday that it has signed a seven-year partnership agreement with Terapeak, the industry leader in eBay research and education.

Victoria, British Columbia-based Terapeak, a subsidiary of Advanced E-commerce Research Systems Inc. (AERS), lets sellers know what’s in demand by supplying two years of tracking data. It provides a 90-day guide on specific items—sell-through rates, pricing trends, the best keywords and categories to use for maximum exposure.

Under the terms of the agreement, AERS will provide WorthPoint with eBay’s entire daily sales of antique and collectible, which will be added to WorthPoint’s database. In addition, Terapeak will resell WorthPoint’s knowledge-based products. These include expertise provided by Worthologists (WorthPoint’s art, antiques and collectibles experts), WorthPoint employees and related professionals, who have more than 2,000 years of combined domain experience.

Easy-access information

“Our partnership with AERS and Terapeak will make WorthPoint the world’s most comprehensive source of information on art, antiques and collectibles,” said Will Seippel, CEO of WorthPoint. “We will be adding more than one billion items to our database over the course of this agreement and will make information accessible in an easy-to-use format so that people can learn more about the value of their collectibles. In these difficult economic times, people need help finding additional sources of income, and WorthPoint is the resource to help them do that.”

Seippel added that the partnership with Terapeak is a major element in a significant WorthPoint product rollout slated for late January.

Commenting on the partnership, Fred Speckeen, CEO of AERS, said, “Terapeak and WorthPoint aim to develop the ultimate resource for collectors and sellers. Comprehensive new products will be created with the vision of serving the breadth of the market, from small collectibles to high-end works of art. We are excited to work with the experts at WorthPoint to offer services that answer the questions most collectibles enthusiasts and sellers ask, ‘What is this worth? Where can I buy or sell this? Which of these items are valuable?’ The combination of education, market research data and analytics will provide pinpoint responses to these concerns and more.”

WorthPoint and Terapeak partnering is great news for the art, antiques and collectibles world. After all, to paraphrase Sir Francis Bacon, knowledge is buying-and-selling power.

For more information on the two companies, click here.

WorthPoint—Get the Most from Your Antiques & Collectibles

Data—millions and millions of items of data—is what WorthPoint and Terapeak, a subsidiary of Advanced E-commerce Research Systems Inc., are offering WorthPoint members.

WorthPoint has signed a seven-year contract with Terapeak, the company that provides eBay users with trending data. That’s how savvy eBay sellers know how to price an item and smart buyers know what to pay for it.

Easy access in one place to the most prices

Under the new partnership, WorthPoint will be able to offer its members more historical prices than anyone in the world—more than 100 million historical prices by the end of 2009 and more than one billion items over the course of the contract.

Will Seippel, WorthPoint’s CEO, promises to make this data accessible in an easy-to-use format. And he is a man of his word! To me, accessibility means whether I am at an antiques store, a show or shopping online, I have access to this information when I need it most. I want to know whether the price I am willing to pay is reasonable and that I am not about to get fleeced.

Almost as good as shopping with an expert

In my perfect world, I’d head into an antique store with the ranks of Worthologists right behind me. If I wanted to buy a clock, I’d whisper to Mark Peer, WorthPoint’s clock expert, “What do you think, Mark? Is that a good deal?” Or if I found a Mary Alice Hadley platter, I’d want our pottery expert, Audra Blevins, with me. And if I were considering buying a Shaker rocker, I’d definitely want to confide in Fred Taylor, our American furniture Worthologist. In the real world, however, Mark, Audra and Fred live east of the Mississippi, and I live in Colorado.

Get info from computers or cell phones

With this new partnership, I can access millions of historical prices with a few keystrokes on my computer. And as WorthPoint also owns PriceMiner, I can also get this data on my iPhone or any other cell phone with Internet access. That means I can have millions of historical price records with me whenever I shop, wherever I shop. I can find out what other people have recently paid for the item I want to buy while I’m right there in the store! I can also access the collective wisdom of these buyers and experts before I make my offer.

Access to data—through WorthPoint and Terapeak’s partnership—will allow me to buy and sell as though I have an expert whispering average prices in my ear. It’s not as good as taking a squad of Worthologists with me, but it is the next best thing!

This is why data is my new best friend.

For more information, see WorthPoint Signs Partnership Agreement with eBay Research and Education Firm Terapeak. For more information about PriceMiner, click here.