The problem with BINs is that some serious price manipulation is possible.
I haven't seen it with normal cards, but I believe it was done with or maybe to Etopps. When I was following that stuff regularly there was a seller who would put up lots of 50-100 of one card at .01 - But also open only to preapproved bidders. Many of his sales were completed at very low price levels, so I asked to be approved. Surprise, I never heard back. And those very low sales drastically changed the average price for those cards. I've long suspected they were buying through another account at the lower prices expecting to do well once they stopped the manipulation.
How many sales of a prewar card at a "low" price would it take to skew the average? If some people don't look at the raw data they could assume the average to be lower than the actual average. Someone with decent inventory could in theory depress the market for a short period while buying.
Steve Birmingham
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