[hcv123]

1st I want to say that I found your card quite easily using the Terapeak research tool on Ebay sorted by date ended. It did not come up for me with a completed item search for the same (not sure why - has the transaction been completed?).

You make a statement that your Mays sold for "$75 under fair value". VCP is not a measure of "fair value". VCP is a listing of historic sales (as is Ebay sold listings). VCP average I would argue would have the potential to be skewed low in a rising market and skewed high in a softening one unless all of the sales used to calculate the average are ultra recent. Add to that qualitative differences in cards leading to quantitative differences in sold prices.

Many would define "fair value" as the price where a willing buyer and a willing seller agree - $204.10 in the case of your card. Problem with that is while you were a willing seller in this case (you listed the card at no reserve and arguably were "willing" to sell the card at any price - the same "risk" is in play at any auction venue without a reserve ( a whole other topic of conversation)), not all willing buyers placed bids on the card because not all willing buyers happened to see it! A consequence of a VERY imperfect marketplace.

VCP or any other pricing history also misses every single private sale which in my case I can say are sometimes higher than public sales and sometimes lower.

Determining "fair value", while incorporating prior sales as a tool and part of the equation, is not simple. In my experience, it is always imperfect and a combination of art, science and experience.


I'll further illustrate with a real life example from the recent Chantilly show. A collector came up and was looking to sell a 1958 Willie Mays PSA 7. I looked up VCP. VCP average is $1614.39. The last sale on March 15 on Ebay in an auction format was for $3541. 3 prior sales were: $1140 - 2/2 Clean Sweep, $1440 - 1/27 Heritage, $1300. 12/13 - Ebay. What is current "fair value"? In this case near impossible to pin until there is another public sale either supporting or showing as an outlier the last $3541 sale. We understandably couldn't make a deal as he was looking squarely at the last sale and while I could get above VCP average, couldn't get close to a single sale (the last one).