Quote:
Originally Posted by fkw
..........the average collector ............... will have to use a price guide to see the different scarcity tiers, .................
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I have the 2011 SCD. After about a 10 year hiatus from card collecting, I jumped back in 2 years ago and started collecting pre-war. It took me a while to realize that there are very few hard and fast rules and mostly card prices are set by the current market.
I bought the 2011 SCD hoping it would be a good price guide, but I've quickly evolved to using it for relative scarcity as Frank mentioned, a checklist, as some others have mentioned, and to gain some education on some sets I'm not familiar with. Still love the book and I refer to it fairly regularly. I personally do use it as a price guide - but mostly to set limits/starting points for myself.
If I target a particular card for example, I start with the limit I have set for myself based on the 2011 SCD. When I repeatedly come up short trying to buy a card for that price, It's pretty easy to determine the current real value of the card (the level of card I chase anyway). Then I get to decide if I want to up my personal limit. By the same token, If I set my sights on a card, start watching for it, and it rarely comes up for sale, then I know when it does come up, I may need to stretch my limit a little if I really want it.
t207 is a good example - I started watching that set and collecting a certain subset within the set maybe 5 or 6 months ago. 2011 SCD listed maybe 60 cards from my subset priced at $70 in vg. I set myself a limit and bought about half of them pretty quickly. The other half? I bet I've seen half of those come up, but they always fly past my limit. The remaining quarter? I may not have seen them at all in the 5 or 6 months I've been watching. The half I have already purchased? I probably could have bought them all again 2 or 3 times at the price I paid. Not sure what the moral is there, other than.......You just have to watch and develop your own price guide using SCD,VCP, ebay history, net54 BST, etc as guides.