My Top 10 Wish List for the 2012 Standard Catalog

[toppcat]

I was going to post this in the other Standard Catalog thread but it became long-ish.

I wish F+W would:

1) Use realistic grade points for pre-war pricing. F, VG and EX would make much more sense than what's in my '09 book, especially for the cards issued prior to World War 1. Each set could have a "kicker" shown for NM etc cards instead.

2) Offer a pre-1981 version with larger print and expanded writeups, etc. I would pay the same for this or possibly even more if issued along with #10 below.

3) Make some deference to graded cards in the pricing. Not sure this is do-able in terms of pricing the cards individually but most top graded older cards are more likely in slabs than not these days. If you have, say a true NM T206 common, their NM price is not accurate and is off by a considerable factor.

4) Perhaps condition rarities could be identified better.

5) More illustrations of certain key variations would be great. Also, all sets should have at least a picture of the card front in the book.

6) Add pack or at least wrapper pricing for the R card sets like Playball, Goudey, Topps.

7) Add more oddball listings; a number of well known ones are missing.

8) Offer a free download of the catalog with purchase.

9) Bring the minor league listings to the front of the book again and alphabetize them with all the other pre-1981 listings. Pre war collectors do not seem to differentiate as much as modern collectors when it comes to minor league issues IMO.

10) Issue a companion guide, or include in a pre-1981 package, of alphabetical (at least for major sets and players) and team (major sets) checklists. That would reflect how many people collect older cards, i.e. not by set but rather by player or team. Preferably every player would be identified by team eventually.

I get a big book every other year but it is definitely due for an overhaul. Maybe that process will start this year; not sure if any of the above were incorporated last year or will be this year.

Have at it!

[rp12367]

I agree esp to #1 give prices for real grades, I'm always guessing and trying to figure out what percent to plus/minus for all the other grades.

[joeadcock]

Agree with #1,4,5 and 7.
Not sure it is finanically feasible for production of a pre 1981 guide, but that would be much better(at least in my opinion).
Some more text on variations would also be helpful.
Current guide is just too large in terms of pages.

Frank

[FrankWakefield]

MAYBE, the thing for them to do would be brint 2 volumes, a pre 1980 and a 1980 and afterwords; bundle them together in shrink wrap, and include in there a coupon with a code for downloading pdf's of the two...

That way they don't have to include a disk. It would still be The Standard Catalog, I'd think shrink wrapping 2 volumes together wouldn't diminish sales.

For the pre 1980 volume I'd be happy to see all issues, minor and major, alphabetically organized, with that great chronological index. And a few more issues and illustrations, wrapper info, that would be welcome.

[bcbgcbrcb]

Corrections to set/issue dates that have been proven to be inaccurate by fellow Net 54 members. Hopefully, then the grading companies will follow suit.

[toppcat]

Corrections to set/issue dates that have been proven to be inaccurate by fellow Net 54 members. Hopefully, then the grading companies will follow suit.

I think a number of these will be incorporated in the 2011 big book; believe I saw that in a thread here not too long ago, likely posted by Bob Lemke.

[bcbgcbrcb]

That's great news, thanks, Dave!

[ethicsprof]

great list!!!
Put me down as DITTO.

best,
barry

[Bridwell]

Dave,

Excellent list! Very well thought out. I agree with all!!!

Ron

[steve B]

How about adding the complete checklist for mixed sport sets?

Or fixing the few sets that show a price for a common, but don't list any commons?

Steve B

[Rich Klein]

I figured I'd add a few points here:

I was going to post this in the other Standard Catalog thread but it became long-ish.

I wish F+W would:

1) Use realistic grade points for pre-war pricing. F, VG and EX would make much more sense than what's in my '09 book, especially for the cards issued prior to World War 1. Each set could have a "kicker" shown for NM etc cards instead.

Answer from RK: I agree totally; however; I don't know how easy or hard that is with the F&W data base. I know at Beckett, we always wanted to do that but the man hours and the programming costs versus the reward never worked. There is no doubt that "we" all want to do that -- if this could be done easily and manually I'd saw go for it otherwise, we'll have to wait for a "global" change. Sets such as the Tom Barker cards which came in games are found in better shape then caramel cards.

2) Offer a pre-1981 version with larger print and expanded writeups, etc. I would pay the same for this or possibly even more if issued along with #10 below.

I love the idea -- but I don't know how many copies outside of board members here would actually sell. I will tell you, that one year we had a slight mess up with 1993 Topps in the Almanac and I swear we got at least one call a day about that -- if I had messed up Ramly's -- I might get 2 responses in a year.

3) Make some deference to graded cards in the pricing. Not sure this is do-able in terms of pricing the cards individually but most top graded older cards are more likely in slabs than not these days. If you have, say a true NM T206 common, their NM price is not accurate and is off by a considerable factor.

I know we were doing that at Beckett, and I would assume Bob is doing something very similar

4) Perhaps condition rarities could be identified better.

This could be noted in the set blurbs and many times the individual card prices reflect that as well

5) More illustrations of certain key variations would be great. Also, all sets should have at least a picture of the card front in the book.

I agree -- sometimes we never had one; and had to go on faith from our submitters. I suspect the way the book is set up; you can or should have only one photo for each set. If you could do more, great! And sometimes I would get a set listing from a long ago price list and have no more information that that,

6) Add pack or at least wrapper pricing for the R card sets like Playball, Goudey, Topps.

We did in the Almanac -- I agree with you here

7) Add more oddball listings; a number of well known ones are missing.

Please provide Bob a specific listing. I'm sure if the well known one is missing Bob would add that specific set

8) Offer a free download of the catalog with purchase.

That is up to F&W management

9) Bring the minor league listings to the front of the book again and alphabetize them with all the other pre-1981 listings. Pre war collectors do not seem to differentiate as much as modern collectors when it comes to minor league issues IMO.

I'll disagree with you here -- however; I do understand that many pre-war collectors treat zeenuts as just as important. I like leaving the Minors as minors

10) Issue a companion guide, or include in a pre-1981 package, of alphabetical (at least for major sets and players) and team (major sets) checklists. That would reflect how many people collect older cards, i.e. not by set but rather by player or team. Preferably every player would be identified by team eventually.

Alphabetical Lists used to be heavily needed at Beckett; now with the OPG, not as much there. I think that's up to F&W

I get a big book every other year but it is definitely due for an overhaul. Maybe that process will start this year; not sure if any of the above were incorporated last year or will be this year.

Have at it!

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Last edited by toppcat; Yesterday at 02:56 PM.

[Bob Lemke]

I don't see anything here that hasn't been discussed nearly every year in recent history.

It all comes down . . . wait for it . . . to dollars and cents.

F+W ownership is no longer the hobby-oriented bunch that ran the company from 1952 through the mid-1990s. Each book has to meet certain revenue and profit expectations or it is history.

I'm guessing that in this hobby/economic era that bottom line has gotten awful thin. Nothing that does not jump out at management asimmediately adding sales is extremely unlikely to get the green light if it requires additional payroll or programming resources.

I can tell you that, while it is not explicitly stated, the retail value of graded cards is factored into pricing to a much greater extent than used to be the case.

I also know that the data base that holds the vintage card data does have many more grade heads available than the currently published NM, EX and VG, but there is no expeditious way to fill in those blanks, and the print program is currently structured to print only those three grades. This is the "fix" I would most like to see implemented.

[Rich Klein]

Bob and I agree on all the pts; and the fact that neither Beckett nor F&W is owned by "hobby" people anymore -- also makes a difference.

And as we both said; we'd love to do that condition change; but the $$$ to do that versus tjhe question of would you sell any more copies is not going to work. Period, end of sentence.

Rich