Posted By:
Scott Mt. JoyYou are right on that Adam, I just dont think I was making my point very clear. I do believe sales are down and values down overall just not enough to explain the dropoff VCP is showing. Looking at the numbers Bobby posted he mentioned that transaction volume (ie the number of graded cards sold has stayed the same) but that overall revenue brought in from those sales is down.
His Numbers-
Jan 08-$4M.....Jan 09-$3M ( 25% drop in revenue)
Feb 08-$4.6M...Fed 09-$3.2M ( 30% drop in revenue)
Mar 08-$4.6M...Mar 09-$3.3M ( 28% drop in revenue)
I just dont think you can explain those numbers by simply saying the market and prices are down, I have tracked my graded collection of 1000 cards on VCP for almost 2 years now and my values using ave or last sale are up overall (almost 25% in 2 years) and while I have had a couple group values that went down in that time frame (1921 exhibits, 1928 exhibits, etc), I have a couple that went thru the roof (Clemente master set, 1947-66 Exhibits, etc). I just cant believe that I am preforming that much better than the market, doesnt make sense to me.
I do think that a lot of lower value cards are being graded and that is bringing the value per card of what is sold down. High value cards are still being sold on ebay but much less so (large houses are taking a lot of that business). Two years ago I only had my ruth/cobb/matty/mantle/clemente exhibits graded since then I have subbed over 600 with the majority of them common cards whos sales value are under $20. Maybe thats just me but I sure see a lot more low end exhibits/m101-4/5/etc graded than I did 2 years ago.