Quote:
Originally Posted by Leon
So you are saying you want them to be seen more?  I also think they get more eyes than most because most of the rest, except for some sellers, don't offer the kind of things they do in straight auctions. Some of their realized prices on '14 Cracker Jacks (and others) looked very strong (without me doing research on it). I should say I am at least a little biased as they are the largest advertiser on our board currently and have been for 2-3 yrs running. I appreciate that. Of course I appreciate all of our advertisers and hope they get a good bang for their buck here. |
Ok, so here's my two cents on PWCC. I think they are losing their way. I say this based on a recent transaction on a large, fairly expensive lot of 49 Bowman PSA cards that I bought.
They do get a lot of bidders and a lot of attention to their eBay auctions. Congratulations to them. I am primarily a buyer. I have bought many single cards in the past from their eBay auctions and while I don't typically get a "deal" in the sense that the price is below market.
The recent lot I bought was this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-90-1949...72.m2749.l2649
Note that the title says "...ALL PSA6 EXMT (PWCC)".
I am working on a 49 Bowman PSA registry set, and it looked like I needed at least half of them, so I calculated a reasonable price based on all PSA 6's, considered a "volume" or common card lot discount, and I bid on the lot, thinking I could sell the rest.
After winning the lot, I found that 20 of the cards were not PSA 6. There were cards as lowly graded as PSA 4 and about 20 of the 90 were PSA 5 / 6/ 7 OC's, which most in the collecting world know get fewer bids and go for a value about 2 grades below a card graded with no qualifier.
So I went about calculating what the value difference is between what the title said, and what I got. I calculated the difference in value to be about $400 - $500, based on auction prices realized as well as SMR. I sent PWCC a message about it on eBay and their response was "sorry, there's nothing we can do other than cancel the purchase." The problem is that I did need about half of the cards for my set, so I didn't want to cancel the transaction - I wanted most of the cards. I just feel I got cheated by PWCC's error in the title of their listing. They could have agreed to do a number of things that would have made me more satisfied, like auction the OC's and ones that were less than PSA 6 for no fee, to give a credit, to pay shipping, something. Their response leaves me with an impression that they are becoming "too big for their britches", and no longer collector and customer focused. They seem to think they are now a grading company, a bank, a mutual fund index, or any number of things other than hobby / collector focused.
In the "about us" portion of their website they state:
Trading on trust: We believe trust is the bedrock of the trading card marketplace, and we handle every trade with the highest level of integrity and care. For 20 years, PWCC has worked tirelessly to provide collectors and investors the marketplace they deserve, where integrity and transparency are to be taken for granted, and investment-focused decision making can instead own the moment
I don't trust them anymore.
Tony Stinsa