A sample of over 500,000 part sales over six months reveals some interesting patterns – Sunday afternoons are when the highest proportion of part sales are made. This pattern appears to be present globally.
All Bricklink transactions are recorded in Universal Coordinated Time, or UTC, also sometimes called Greenwich Mean Time. The global chart above shows the times of the sample broken down by day and beginning of the hour – the row labeled 12:00 is for the hours between noon and 1:00 pm, for example.
For Europe, which is the largest market region for Bricklink, the UTC times are very close to buyers’ local time, as much of the region is at UTC or one or two hours ahead.
In the US, the Eastern Standard time zone is UTC-5, or five hours behind UTC. Oceania and Asia are several hours ahead of UTC, with eastern Australia at UTC+10.
When we segment the part sales by region, the pattern appears to be global.
To estimate the equivalent time in your local timezone, determine how many hours behind or ahead of UTC you are and apply that to the time shown in the chart for your region. If you are in the eastern US time zone, for example, at UTC-5, the Americas region chart shows a darker section between 20:00 and 22:00 on Sundays. Subtracting five hours to adjust, that shows a busy period between 15:00 and 17:00 in the eastern time zone – between 3pm and 5pm local time.
The largest market in the Oceania/Asia regions is Australia, where most of the population is in the UTC+10 timezone along the eastern coast. The pattern for this region is not as well defined, as it spans several time zones, however there is a busy period early Monday mornings UTC between 1:00 and 3:00. This corresponds to 15:00 to 17:00 in the UTC+10 timezone, which is 3pm to 5pm Sundays local time in eastern Australia. There is also a busy time early Sunday mornings, which translates to Saturday evening for much of the region.