Posted By:
will watsonthere has been a lot of negativity towards the SMR and how offbase some of the pricing is. and i agree with a lot of the complaints. although it's only a guide, sometimes it seems like PSA is clueless, or completely out of touch with the vintage market. but has anyone actually read the "Note About Pricing" page in the magazine? it seems to answer a lot of complaints:
PRICE SWINGS-
"one price realized, whether the swing is up or down, will usually not cause a change in SMR. many times, a card at auction may surge to an astronomical price due to two bidders battling for it when the card usually sells for much less. there are many cases where the exact opposite occurs. a card may get overlooked duting a sale and someone walks away with a bargain. at SMR, we try to use our experience and not let one or two sales of a card, strong or weak, dictate the SMR price. we look for patterns. of course, there are situations wehre a super rare card may sell and we alter the price due to rarity. for example, if the famous PSA 8 t206 Wagner sells for a certain price, we will adjust the SMR price to directly reflect that sale because we know that this PSA example is the only one in existence of that quality."
CARDS NOT YET GRADED OR FEW KNOWN-
"in cases where a card has not yet been graded or in cases where a card is extremely scarce and rarely comes up for sale, we do our best to give conservative estimates for those cards. we try to compare that card to other comparable rarities in order to come up with a price but our stance at SMR is that a card is worth what someone is willing to pay for it."