VCP price change

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Posted By: Matt

Perhaps a more accurate and relevant statement would be "the vast majority of VCP users do not spend $10,000 per year on cards."

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Posted By: Dave F

Bruce-

I would say the average price spent may be 2k. While there are obviously many big spenders, I would say there are many many more guys that are on VCP looking up 1984 topps and 1989 upper deck cards that are pennies on the dollar.


Also Bruce-

Why "applaud" Bobby for the increase? Bobby has decided he wants to make more money. Thats find and dandy, people may or may not contribute to his desire. As Shawn pointed out above, I equally find it hard to believe Bobby needs the percentage increase he is after to maintain his profit with his added features. If he needs that big of a percentage increase then I'm not sure how VCP has not been operating in the red for the last few months. Bruce, if your insurance carrier decided that this year they needed to increase your rate upon your renewal at 80% would you applaud that? Just seems weird.

My opinion the correct way to have handled this would have been to put a straight across increase across the board of more respectable portions. I wouldn't have had any issue if Bobby would have come on saying due to this and that and the other we regret to inform that prices will increase from 9.99 to 12.99 or something but we'll continue to provide the same great coverage as always.

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Posted By: nolemmings

the avg. or mean is of limited relevance here--the median or mode is a more valuable measure. If nine collectors spend $3000/yr and the 10th spends $73,000, the avg will meet Bruce's 10K hypothetical yet I would imagine the 9 smaller guys could easily walk away from their memberships. In that event, since memberships are fixed in price, revenue drops dramatically.

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Posted By: Brian

<<Why "applaud" Bobby for the increase?>>

Because he's a troll?

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Posted By: Shawn

I have an idea... Lets all pick some arbitrary number out of a hat and base a point off that number like Bruce.

If the average VCP Gold Member spends 6800.00 a year on his maid, VCP is certainly sure to save said member 2% and thus pay
for itself.

Shawn

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

I got a limo in NYC, it was a bit over $400, and was great...

We flew into LaGuardia, the driver was waiting with the sign, wife, kids, mom and I got in, he drove us down through Brooklyn, across B Bridge, stopped at ground zero, went through the curch there, then a ride over to a pier for a good look at the Statue of Liberty... up along Broadway, got a look at the Empire State building, Macy's, Time Square, up toward the top of 7th avenue to our hotel, we checked bags and rode on to the Met, where he left us... There were 5 of us, and I think cabs frown on 5. It was great!! Well worth it, glad I spent that.

I actually like Bruce. Sold him an unusual, seldom seen card, once. I agree with some of his thoughts, but not all. Some of his stuff is exactly contrary to how I think. When I saw he posted after me I knew that he'd feel differently, which actually made me feel better about my post. I read a Twain quote that reminded me of Bruce a few days ago...

A.Word.A.Day Wordsmith.org
with Anu Garg

royal we

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin nos (we). The practice of using "we" to refer to oneself is called nosism.

MEANING:
noun: The first-person plural pronoun used by a king or queen to refer to himself or herself, for example, "We are not amused," a line attributed to Queen Victoria.

As it's often used by newspaper editors, the term is also known as the "editorial we". Mark Twain once said, "Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we'."

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Posted By: Shawn

Bruce,

Can you spare several thousand? I am well behind the average collector right now...

Thank you in advance.

Shawn

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

Dave F.,

Yes you can extend your membership 1 year, 2 years up to 5 maximum.

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Posted By: Shawn

Ok, Ok, Ok,

Explain to me, if times are tough and costs of operation have gone up so drastically how can you then offer every subscriber at this point an option to renew at the current price for five years? What will be your costs five years from now? Also, are you telling me that after every two years I can expect a subscription fee increase of over 50%? Folks... I am not talking money. The word is "principle"

Shawn

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Posted By: Peter_Spaeth

Bruce's use of the "royal we" is to my mind no worse an idiosyncracy than "signing" every post "regards" or "be well" or whatever.

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Posted By: B D

Re: VCP price change
July 28 2008, 6:41 PM

I used to be a member of VCP and found it very useful but I then cancelled after I found myself not utilizing it that much. I now have joined
cardpricer.com and it is half the price for the same thing.

Josh-did you get prompted to write this?
Sadly, you would be in a super minority of people using Cardpricer
if in fact you do. What's your log in info? can we check? lOL

BcD

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

There's been more hand wringing here over a $100 yearly increase than there is discussion about auction fraud which costs collectors exponentially more money.

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Posted By: jay wolt

Bobby - I added a year to my membership to take advantage
of the upcoming the price hike and after doing so, a message came up that
my next billing cycle would be 7/28/09
Shouldn't the year be added to my existing time that's been paid for
instead of just adding a year from today?

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Posted By: Misunderestimated (Brian H.)

Jeff-
That's because the price increase directly impacts many of us... The rampant fraud is worse (of course) and what's going on Sudan (among other places) is exponentially worse than internet baseball card fraud ....

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Posted By: Bottom of the Ninth

I use the site and will pay the increase. I pay that much for the privilege to submit and it cost me about that much to get a tank of premium gas each week.

Lovingly, all my best, fondly, warm regards, respectfully yours,
Greg

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

Jay,

Since you are joined before we added the automated billing system I adjusted your end date which is 12/26/09. Any one that joined after 6/2007 will be updated normally.

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Posted By: jay wolt

Bobby - Appreciate it...jay

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Posted By: Jerry

Bobby, This may have already been answered but how long do we have to decide if we want to take advantage of the 1-5 Yr. special.

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

Until we make the rate changes on the website which will be in a week or two.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Brian, unlike in Sudan, with VCP if you don't like what is going on you can just press a button on your computer to cancel your membership. I wonder if there is as much discussion in the Save Darfur board as there is here over $100.

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Posted By: Joe D.

Bobby,

I do not see the button to 'add a year' or 5 to lock in the rate.

I go to My Account.... just don't see the button.

Please advise.

Thanks,
Joe

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Joe, Bobby had you once he added the golf cards, right?

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Posted By: JK

I for one do not use 90% of the new features on your site - like others I am only interested in pre-war baseball. I doubt very seriously that I will pay 17.99 to keep the level of service I have or even 12.99 to get even less.

Bobby, perhaps the better plan would have been to charge ala carte - sort of like the cable companies. For 9.99 you get one sport (such as pre-war baseball) plus some of the extras (such as the ability to catalog your collection, etc). For each additional sport, you pay more.

I'd be much more inclined to keep my membership if I could just pay for what I want. I'm certainly not going to lay out $500 in advance to pay for five years of service that I may or may not have a need for.

Finally, you mention that you are going to put the average price on the grid - how will that average price be calculated? If you plan to use all of the sales tracked back to 2005/2006, Im not sure how accurate that will be. If its going to be the average price over the past 6-12 months, then I think that would be a more helpful addition.

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

Here is the plan on the new grid averaging prices.

All auctions values will be within the calendar year. 5 Auction results toss the high and low and average the 3. 10 auctions toss the 2 high and lows and average the 6.

Less then 5 and you average all..

And we only average the last 10 sales.

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Posted By: leon

Price increases are what they are.....however, prices without scans are kind of dicey as seen when I posted the M116 Matty's recently. Also, I sold a green T206 Cobby recently for more than the last 5 sales as it was much nicer.....had there been no scans I wouldn't have been able to know the information I needed.....the lower the grade the more relativity there is with the cards....Good luck

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Posted By: PAS

As I see it Bobby is only providing data, not vouching that it should control any given transaction.

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Posted By: Bob C

$9.99 to $17.99...an 80% increase...wow. I used to say folks were feeling poorer but what with stocks in a bear market, the real estate debacle and a hundy to fill up my gas tank when I didn't even have enough time to bitch about it going up to fify, and its spillover effect on the price of food - and, well, everything else - has left familys with less money to spend. That's why over half of Americans are reconsidering taking vacation this summer to save money. Well, now I am now saying folks ARE poorer.
To be sure there is value added for your service & I wish you guys well, but that addional eight bucks a month buys me almost two gallons of gas which is where it is likely to go since I don't do Starbucks...well maybe a Frappuccino now and again...

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Posted By: Tony Andrea

Bobby -
I am a current VCP member and Leon brings up a really good point that is also the most troubling to me as well. The new $12.99 monthly Silver membership option is of no use if one can't view pics of the cards their looking up. IMO that option should be included with the Silver membership price.
Seeing prices of cards without a scan is worthless anymore making the Silver membership option not worth a dime. By keeping that option included with the new $12.99 monthly fee your requesting I think alot of the pushback your receiving would be removed.

Regards, Tony

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Posted By: leon

A very painfully obvious and astute observation you have made (insert smiley). Of course Bobby doesn't control a transaction price BUT those listed transactions give an idea of where the market is AND is what is used to base a sales price on many times. Without scans it will be difficult to know what kind of deal I am getting or giving.....that's all I was saying. I too don't really care about all of the other stuff...Giving me pre-war card prices and scans and skipping the rest, would be great for a lot of us.... regards

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Posted By: barrysloate

Hi Bobby- I just went to my account and renewed my subscription for an additional year at the old rates. But I have a question:

Last year I was renewed automatically, something I was not aware would happen. I see by your contract that I will continue to be renewed yearly unless I request otherwise at least 7 days before the membership expires.

I have enough things crammed into my head and will clearly not remember when my membership is about to expire. In fact, I don't even know right now what that date is. Any suggestions? I was planning to renew last year but wasn't happy it was done without my approval.

I also found an email in my account that you sent me a year ago that I was not aware of, and just read for the first time today. Sorry I did not do what you requested but I didn't even know emails were being sent to me.

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Posted By: JK

Barry,

My recommendation is that you simply provide your notice of your intent not to renew now - as its more than 7 days before your renewal date.

You can always sign up for the service again once your subscription ends (should you want to) and since you only renewed at the lower rate for a year, it would be at the new price either way.

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

Tony,

I realize that the images are a very important factor and we started grabbing them in January. By doing this has also created a big cost to us and the reason why we needed 2 more servers. As well we now have one person that has to go into an image section of or site in the backend and select the image that will be stored. Most sellers put more then one image up on eBay and this is a very timely process.

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

Barry,

When all members sign up to VCP there is a button you need to select stating "I understand that I will be automatically charged $99.99 on a yearly basis" or Monthly which ever applies. You can not go forward without selecting this button. So the charge was completed with your approval once you clicked that button and never canceled your membership.

As far as the mail goes there are a lot of features to the website that people are not aware of or do not use very often.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Bobby- did you just feel the earthquake? I was talking to my sister-in-law and she suddenly said "oh my god, we're having an earthquake." She was a mess. It was a 5.8.

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Posted By: Joe D.

Barry - tell your sister that was no earthquake.

Bobby just dropped his wallet on the floor.





edit: I couldn't help the chance at some humor.... in all seriousness... I hope everyone is okay. I am sure an earthquake is a scary thing.

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

Like it Joe and I do have a sense of humor.

Yes Barry it was a good one rocked the place for a good 30 seconds.

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Posted By: PAS

You gotta read the fine print lol.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Peter- did you see how long that thing is? I don't have the attention span to read it.

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

One VCP thread is OT and selfserving... I can live with it.

2 threads is wrong. I think Leon should lock the one with the date.


One thread is too many, but tolerable. Two threads is wrong.