VCP - Worth It?
 

Is VCP worth the monthly expense? Are the prices accurate enough to save enough money to warrant the expense?

I'd say yes. You can probably root around on Ebay and on the internet and piece it all together, but it's a lot faster when, for example, you are at the National and trying to decide whether to pull the trigger on something. Relatively complete info but not perfect.

Depends on how much buying you do. I just do their $4 for 24 hours of access every few months and that's enough for me.

CardTarget
 

The revamped CardTarget has been pretty good - and it's free. Not perfect, none of them are, but gives a nice perspective of prices and cards over time. Took me a while to get used to it, but since it's been fairly easy to navigate. I also use the eBay "sold" view which shows last "x" amount of sales over the last .. what is it .. 3, 4 months? Recent snapshot, but again it's helpful, easy and free.

I think VCP is well worth the nominal monthly nut, especially if you are buying relatively high-priced and/or pre-war and 1950's stuff. It is by no means perfect, and does not catch everything, but as mentioned, it catches most and is much easier and quicker than piecing it all together off eBay and Internet searches. For me, the best part is that it breaks everything down by both grader and grade and almost always has pictures of the cards (front and back, which is especially important on t206 and very vintage cards). Plus, you can go back almost 10 years. End of the day, not much risk at $10/month, and well worth it IMO

Yes VCP is worth the monthly expense.

The site provides data. You need to interpret that data. The data it shows you is accurate when you see an eBay or auction house sale. It will give you access to see comparable images and pricing of any particular card in your desired grade.

VCP comes with my highest recommendation. Bobby and team are great.

if you believe all reported sales are legit, yes it's worth it.

It depends. If you're working on a set or two, it doesn't take long to get familiar with prices on your own. If you're collecting a variety of sets, it's well worth it. But the main thing to know is that you can cancel at any time. I use it intermittently, but I never go to a big show without a subscription.

Don't get too caught up in it though. When the site first came out I was pretty new at collecting and I used it as the bible for every card I bought. I always paid less than VCP. It took me a bit to realize that while I had paid below average for all of my cards, my cards were also below average condition wise for their grade.

This. I have an active subscription, but am actively buying and selling cards and find the data useful. If you're not making purchases often enough to justify the expense than the $4 option would be enough when needed.

Invaluable if you do any amount of buying and selling. As to accuracy, it is only a messenger. It still requires looking through the presented sales data to make up your own mind as to value but it is so convenient to have the data in one place.

Yes, as long as you're doing enough buying and/or selling.

Saves a bundle of time vs scraping together the same info across eBay and Google, and contains more data than just the last 90 days of eBay sales (10+ years, in fact).

Also, don't cheap out and go for the full gold membership pre-paid for 1 year. The pics are worth it, and tell you much more than what a slab number and price do. I initially did silver for a while and regretted it.

Me too.

I canceled my subscription. The service is fine but I don't actively buy or sell graded mainstream cards, so it really didn't offer value for me.

+1 there.

Best wishes,

Larry

VCP is still worth it, but I've noticed a lot more inaccurate prices. Always click on the links to see what it really sold for. And I've noticed fewer auction houses sales are being captured. Anyone know what's up with that?

I was recently looking at signing up for VCP, but wanted to revive Kyle's question now in 2023 before I do.
Is VCP still worth it to you guys, and do the comments in this thread still apply now 6 years later?
Do they capture REA, LOTG, etc auctions? Or just Goldin/PWCC/Heritage that the website lists?

They track these auction houses:

I use it and think it is worth it.

I use it for far more than the value of cards. As Ryan (and perhaps others) said, you can get good images of cards and oftentimes better than what you're getting from the seller. I probably use that portion of it far more than the actual value of the card although I do use both.

While it's not a big thing in cards, understanding the provenance of cards does matter to me to an extent. You get that with VCP.

For value, it's $18/month with the monthly subscription. Seems to be worth it for what all it does.

+1

it is worth it but remember it is a tool/guide it is not exact. Some "graded" cards look better than others, the private market differs from Auctions, the rarity of the card etc.

I use it, it’s probably the best resource in a very imperfect market.
I wish they would they would capture all auction houses. They don’t, so there are are a lot of sales missing that a serious collector would deem relevant.

Great tool even for small fish like myself.

Card Ladder and other tools are good too but don’t have the history or breadth of coverage.

If you’re spending a few grand a year on pre-war stuff, it’s almost a must have in my opinion.


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VCP is great

I am also firm believer it’s absolutely worth it.

Query:

How timely is the data these days? For example, if an auction closed yesterday, will the data be there today? Or is there a small lag? A week? A month? Hopefully not more.

Highly recommend using VCP. They have been very quick to fix any inaccuracies that I come across.

I used to subscribe when I was buying more. As I moved from set collecting to just buying a few higher dollar stars or rookies, it became less useful and like others, I used the 24 hour subscription as needed. Since PSA started tracking prices of cards they grade, I haven't used VCP. If you buy a lot of SGC cards, I can see where it could be worth it.

To answer your question

Ebay Chinese auctions post within the same day of ending. Fixed Bin's and BO's post once the time set by the seller expires. Out of our control an API issue

Other auction houses usually post a day or two after ending when we run a final script.

We try our best to get everyone that sells..we always ask for permission to add the sales via an API connection. Some AH's have refused us, why I do not know and makes no sense. Since we are the only site that carries auctions live so it sends emails to our members that match their Want List.

Thank you. That is unfortunate. Can any AH just supply their data? or is there some sort of a charge or technology expense?

I also use the $4 dollar option when needed. Current price at VCP is 17.99 a month or 179.99 a year. I don't check prices enough to justify the cost. Alt is another option that I like to use. It is free, but takes some getting used to. There really is no perfect way to comp cards.

I too just get the 24 hour option. I have most recently used it to price cards to sell. It gave me competitive prices. I got a couple offers "will you take x% less?" but ultimately someone paid my initial asking price. So it was worth it from that stand point.

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I would not say any...most are now using Simple software so they now how to turn on the API feed. And if not Simple then any other should be able to create an API. Pretty standard

One good feature by searching past auctions for a specific cert number you can usually track past ownership to avoid some of those bad actors...

Would be cool if you could search past auction by cert numbers...

Thanks everyone for their recommendations, and Bobby for the good inside info. I signed up yesterday.

Absolutely, 10+ year subscriber. You learn a lot.

Non Sports pricing
 

I like VCP for sports, but to me it seems way light on the pricing. Only have PSA priced out, but for SGC it only has maybe for 1 random grade. But I love it for baseball.

Now my question, what could I use for non sports? I like the more vintage cards. I have a nother favorite, 1910 American Caramel Co Navy Caramels (Battleships). Would love to find a good, inexpensive pricing for these.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Brian

Thank you. What about direct fees to VCP? Are there any from the AH?
I've always assumed the business model is to charge the end-user and then scour the Earth to find the best data.

Vcp
 

I do think it is worth it .. great source of pulling info and you can inventory there or get notifications..as already mentioned the prices are "directionally" right but not exact ... again a valuable resource ..
Darrell

I've bought something in March off of Goldin that still doesn't show with last sale in 2019. Would guess it depends on how it's listed too if they are scraping the data.