www.vintagecardprices.com is now live.....

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Posted By: Bobby

I just wanted to announce with the permission and blessing from Leon that we are now live and ready.

The site address is www.vintagecardprices.com

Go to the site and see for yourself...and take your time and find out what it is all about. It is different then anything out there and we believe it will be a great addition to the card collector as well as dealers.

You can sign up for free as a Limited Member and be able to use our search features and read and post comments on cards.

Or you can be a paying VIP Member and have access to all of the card prices and be able to add your collection and watch it like a stock portfolio.

We hope you like what we have worked on for the past 10 months and put 1000's of hours in time to build. We look forward to your participation and comments on how we can make this the ultimate web site for the card collecting community.

Regards,

Bobby

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Posted By: Jimmy Z.

Do you have a trial period available? I would like to try your services, but I (and many others) aren't going to fork over $10 a month not having a clue what the quality of your services actually are.

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Posted By: Bobby

Here is a deal any body who signs up as a Paying VIP member and checks it out and does not like what we offer I will delete the credit card information or refund your money. You have a 24 hour period to try out the site.

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Posted By: Zach Rice

Well i'm not sure how much i'll be using it, but the site looks very well made. I'll have fun navigating through it later tonight.

Edited to add that I am having the same problem Peter is.

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Posted By: Peter Thomas

I tried to sign up for limited membership to post some comments on T204's and could not get my password accepted. Are there rules that are not stated? or am I missing something?

Peter Thomas

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Posted By: oldbb

Zach, no need for you to use it ... you are an authority on everything related to cards.

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Posted By: Jimmy Z.

Any chance of adding paypal as a payment option?

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Posted By: Bobby

We are looking into the Limited member sign up problem and will have fixed shortly. Paypal is a possibily but only for a yearly membership as well we will accept checks for yearlies. The reason for credit cards is we can set up that you get billed the monthly fee charged to your card automatically. We can not do this through paypal.

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Posted By: leon

Anymore jabs and you better stick your full name by your post, per the board rules. This is not the first time I have noticed you in a controversial thread on the board. Please stick to the other threads and leave anonymous opinions out....Or better yet post your name and jab away if that's what you want to do.....Nothing personal.....mod dude...

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Posted By: jackgoodman

Wouldn't take my password either. Are there password "requirements?"

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Posted By: oldbb

If this works more than SmartCollector.com I will sign up due to the personalization features. Can you view your own cards if scanned to the site?

Seems great. Open it up for a few days for all to use free of charge.

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Posted By: Bobby

The limited Member issue has been fixed...

And as stated earlier in this thread I will give a 24 hour money back gaurantee...if you do not like it then you will get a refund. But I know you will like what we are offering.

As far as scans of your own cards if we don't have an image we would like you to send it to us and we will post it on that cards profile.

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Posted By: martindl

Nicely put together but i'm with oldbb, i think you'd attract more interest if you opened up the site for while so that people can get a sense of it and check out all the features.

I'm an opt-in guy, not an opt-out, especially where my credit card is concerned.

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Posted By: Cobby33

Open it up for a week or so without requiring payment. Seems like a great site, but personally, I won't pay for it before seeing its capabilities (i.e. auction information).

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Posted By: Bobby

Is'nt my 24 hour gaurantee good enough...I have been posting on this board for almost 2 years now and my ebay ID is bresdo with over 804 feedback. Plus if you wanted to you can always dispute the charge with your credit card service if you choose not to want the service and I did not refund your money. I don't see the problem can't make it any easier then that for you to see the site. We are going to be at the National Booth #1394 you can visit us there and we can show you everything as well.

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Posted By: Cobby33

Well- you can make it easier, but have chosen not to. No biggie. Was merely making a suggestion to possibly broaden your user/client base.

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Posted By: Joann

Bobby,

I don't think anyone was saying your word wasn't good or doubting your integrity. For myself, I just don't think 24 hrs is long enough. Being busy makes it hard to dedicate enough time, all at one shot, and within that first 24 hours, to really see everything and decide.

I'm not trying to speak for others b/c I don't know. But my impression was more that people thought if they had a little more time they could bump around the site awhile, come back the next day and check out some other things, or even have it long enough to stumble across some needs that they hadn't thought of the first day.

I don't think anyone intended to question integrity or your honesty.

Joann

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Posted By: Cobby33

What she said.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

It seems reasonable to me to pay $10. for a one month look/see. But I have to agree that 24 hours really doesn't provide enough opportunity to judge the value, unless you are doing essentially nothing else other than assessing the package. However, I am certain that I will get $10. worth of value, given an entire month.

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Posted By: Bobby

Joann,

Okay so there still is some doubt...here is the next deal. Since this board is a tight knit community Joann and you have been active on this board for awhile now or however wants to pick 5 board members that have signed up as Limited members and post them here with their VCP username and I will upgrade them to VIP status for a week. Then they all can report back to the VIN54 baord on the service we are providing.

Bobby

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Posted By: jackgoodman

I'll second what everyone has said about honesty and integrity, etc. And that is not in question.

But because of your hesitancy to provide a somewhat more (but limited) time to review the capabilities of the site, I'm guessing you assured your investors that you would have "x" number of sign-ups immediately. And now you're worried. Otherwise, I just don't see a reason for hesitating to provide what seems to be a fairly straightforward and rational request.

But as Dennis Miller says, "I could be wrong." Just my 2cents.

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Posted By: Bobby

Jack there are no investors on this site just myself and my web guys so that is not the problem, no quotas to make for investor reasons. We have been working on building this site for almost a year now and thought it would be a good tool and service to the card collecting community.

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Posted By: jackgoodman

Bobby,

Thanks for responding. It sounds like you've created a great tool for collectors and I'm among those that would be happy to be a user. But all people are asking for is a limited time "look-see" to see if it meets their needs. If 30 days is too much in your opinion, how about 10? I agree with the others that 24 hours is really not enough time to get a feel for it, if, like me, you have to work to support this habit. Don't take this the wrong way, I think everyone is in your corner.

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Posted By: Russ Bright

First off, I would like to say that the site looks beautiful. Your web designers should be very proud. Secondly, This is a great resource and I'm sure that it is a welcome addition to the trading community.

I will join, eventually. Money is tight now, and I can't afford even 10 dollars to look around.

everyone has a quarter and noone even wants 2 cents. We trust you, lots of people have, noone is trying to sabotage you or say anything bad. They're just suggestions, i would feel better if there was a longer trial period as well, but I'll wait until I have the money and if I'm sure then I'l spend the yearly fee.

again, it's a welcome addition and I hope it's everything that you wanted and more!

Congrats on your opening day!

R

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Posted By: BlackSoxFan

Bobby/Robert -
I'm glad to see you guys up and running. I wish you guys the best of luck. We too will be at the National, so maybe we'll be able to put a little face-to-face together. While we are busy preparing for our own site launch, I am available to you should you ever want to talk or need direction.

Cheers,
Ted & the gang.

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Posted By: Mike S

Jeesh!! Pay the $10 and try it out for 30 days. Then decide whether you wnat to go from month to month or do the whole year.

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Posted By: Bobby

I really appreeciate all the kind words and have talked to my tech people and to make the site free for everyone is a daunting task. So what I can do now is offer everyone that signs up as a VIP a one week gaurantee..so if you don't like it you will get a refund and 7 days should be long enough for you to take time out of your busy schedule to build your "Collections" on the site as well as check out all that we have to offer. So for everybody that signs up today and through this Friday will get that 7 day gaurantee.

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Posted By: Bobby

You know to me it is pretty funny that you all want to have free looks and meanwhile people are paying $1000.00's for common T206's. But I jsut posted the deal and please take advantage of the offer.

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Posted By: cmoking

If bought wisely, a $1000 common still has about $1000 in value. For the smart buyers, it could have more value than the $1000. With your service, it is a consumption. That $10 goes away to zero. It's like getting a $10 meal. It may be worth it, and it may be a great tasting meal, but the $10 is lost forever. That is why people are not so eager to pony up.

Good luck with your service. I think it could be very useful. I don't mean for my comments above to seem otherwise. If I am less active in the hobby tracking prices myself, maybe I will sign up too.

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Posted By: Bobby

One of the purposes of this site is so that you don't have to spend so much time of your own tracking prices we do it for you. You probable spend at least 10 hours of your time a month going through every auction and watching them to find the final value of the card. Is $10.00 a month worth free up all that time to spend on better things?

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Posted By: Bobby

Everybody that has already signed up as a limited member and want to upgrade to VIP to take advantage of the offer needs to do this:

Sign in as your Limited member and then click on the "Upgrade to Vip" link. Otherwise if you try to sign up as a VIP and use a different username it won't allow you because the system does not allow duplicate email addresses.

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Posted By: Rick

Well done, easy to navigate!

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Posted By: T206Collector

<<One of the purposes of this site is so that you don't have to spend so much time of your own tracking prices we do it for you.>>

You make it sound like a chore, but that is part of the hobby. Indeed, if you are an active buyer of vintage baseball cards, a developed understanding of the market for vintage baseball cards is inevitable. If you are active enough to want to sign up for a yearly membership, you already likely have a pretty good handle on what the vintage baseball card market is. Couple that with a couple of free services like ebay and smartcollector.com, and you will have a hesitancy for people to want to purchase a service they can probably get mostly for free.

I really do not want to discourage the effort, which appears quite impressive. But I would also recommend luring prospective customers with free service, get them used to using it and then start to charge them for the service once they've made it part of their collecting routine.

It is a lot easier to convince someone they need something after they've been using it for free than by charging them $10 for the privilege.

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Posted By: Bobby

T206,

Don't know how much easier I can make it for people by giving them a free week trail gaurantee. So far we have plenty of people signing up and some have posted about how nice or easy the site is to navigate.

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Posted By: leon

The site is very nice and easy to use. Can you tell how much pricing history will be there? I know the value of a T206 Red Cobby.....but I need to know other things that didn't seem to be there yet and don't come up so often....I think you mentioned a certain time period for history before. Once you have the data will you keep it on file indefinitely so there can be better data?....regards

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Posted By: Jimmy Z.

It's not that we don't believe it's a great website. You are asking people to pay you $10 (and give you their CC number) to see what's behind a curtain. That's not going to work. I definitely am interested in your services if you truly have all of the data that you should, but I'm very hesitant to just give out my credit card number on blind faith.

Please give us a trial period. And take paypal. =)

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Posted By: Bobby

Leon,

We started collecting final price results for cards (1949 and earlier) in November 2005. After the site became functional along with our auction watching feature, we added the 50's cards back in May 2006. Since we are eBay partners, we track the auctions through our site via eBay auction number. Our system communicates with their server every 15 minutes. So when an auction ends we will have the results in our system within minutes. For major auction houses, we post the results within 24 hours of close of auction including the auction fee to the total of each card.

We upload prices for cards that have been graded by only the three big grading companies, PSA, SGC and GAI. Reasons being that they have outstanding reputations and all other grading companies have serious doubts as to whether or not there are potential problems such as being trimmed, colored or otherwise doctored. In the case of PSA we do not accept cards with qualifiers. Our system will hold the 25 most recent prices realized for every grade of card for all 3 companies, meaning there will be a maximum of 1175 possible sales records for every card listed in our database. For example once there has been 25 sales for a T206 Ty Cobb red portrait card in SGC 30 grade, every new sale added thereafter results in the oldest sale being kicked off the system. By doing this we can keep an up-to-date record on the latest prices for every type of grade. On each cards profile page, there is a grid of each grade. Within each grade box, the values represent the latest sale price of that card in that grade. We only use real prices and do not set a price estimator formula so if there are no recorded sales, a "N/A" will show in that box. We acquire data by tracking eBay the same way a snipe program does and the results post to the site within 15 minutes of the end of the auction as long as it meets certain criteria, at least one bid and reserve is reached if there is one. Major auction houses prices are added to the system with in 24 hours of the auction ending and include the extra buyer percentage. We verify every listing by visually seeing the complete card in its holder for every auction. We do not have a search engine that looks for the information you are requesting because it would give false data because of so many misleading auction titles and mistakes by the listing seller and grading companies. We take into account people with low feedback and potential false sellers and do not include them in our data.
Rules for acceptance are the cards have to be a single graded card lot sold in a auction format, reserves must be met and there has to be at least one bid. "Buy it Now" auctions are not ever included. This means we have staff checking every auction to verify that the information is correct that feeds the data to our system for you to use. The system we created to properly add the cards is amazing and at Card shows we will gladly show you how this works, it is virtually error free.

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Posted By: andy becker

kudos bobby, i have not yet checked out the site....but i am quite sure it will be worth the fees.

i do think you are making a smart decision regarding the "week peak". you have already made a smart "pr" move in listening to the board for their feedback. i'm sure every new business that is launched would like good feedback from the community that it is tageting. especially when the community is a passionate as ours.

i will sign up tonight or tomorrow.

i also have to add that by giving us a week look in, you are mirroring what most e companies do.....get us hooked and then we will wonder....how did we ever get along without it?? that's why i love the opening week of baseball, the cable company gives me the whole major league package for a week....for free. gosh i love that.

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Posted By: Bobby

Jimmy Z.,

Email me bresdo@verizon.net and we will work something out. And anybody who is not secure in giving a credit card we can do something via PAYPAl. But understand this our site has a secure certificate and your CC info is safe to process.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I imagine a problem with giving free access is that, if there is value information on the site right now, people may just download the info they want then not pay for the service. Kind of like a movie watcher asking a DVD rental if he could borrow the movie for 2 hours before deciding whether or not to rent it.

If the site is filled with essential data, I would understand if Bobby did not offer free trials.

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Posted By: Rob

vintagecardprices.com may succeed, but it won't be from people & their mindset on this thread as:

1, People want something free, but won't subscribe at $10 month.
2. Ebay past history sales and smartcollector.com appar too provide much the same information. Also, the auction houses often have past results and further information can be gleaned from Search engines.
3. The hobbyist looks at past history not as work, but as entertainment.

A PSA 6 vintage card can easily be undergraded or possibly undergraded, accounting a large variability on prices. A rare PSA 2 can look cool, or crappy, accounting for even larger price variation. 2 "Gotta have bidders could be going after the same card in 1 auction, but not other times. Well disguised shilling can skew numbers. These are only a few things off the top of my head that shows pricing vintage cards is an art, not something lends itself to a computer data collection or creating a "stock" portfolio.

This website MAY be of value to the ebayer who finds a low priced vintage card(s) not properly described in the title, in the wrong category ect. That's a rather tall order with vintage cards. It may serve the dealer of cards produced post WWII.

BTW, I may sign up for a week trial, hey, I like something free too.

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Posted By: Su

I usually just watch and read to learn about this hobby that I partake with my 12 year old son because his father is not here.

We signed up for vintagecardprices.com on the free offer and wanted to report back to this site. Being a web designer myself I must say that this site is the most impressive Baseball card website I have ever seen. And my hat goes off to the people their for the work they put into the site. It is very easy to use and my son and I last night had a great time putting his Collection together on the site. We have mostly T206's and T205's and it let us create groups and in the collection we added what we paid for each card, and it gave us current values for each card as well as group values and entire collection values. I was most impressed it was the best time my son and I have had in a long time doing this together.

I am going to stay on as a member because for the value of what the service provides is well worth the $10.00 per month. Matter of fact we are going to let this month run out and join as a year member to save a few extra dollars.

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Posted By: nbrazil

"This website MAY be of value to the ebayer who finds a low priced vintage card(s) not properly described in the title, in the wrong category ect. That's a rather tall order with vintage cards. It may serve the dealer of cards produced post WWII."

The service is also good for novice collectors who do not have a feel of how the market is like. There is always the live and learn philosophy...but, when the live and learn costs you a lot of money (i.e. overpaying for a card), it's better to have as much information at your disposal beforehand. This service is great for individuals who are simply trying to gain an understanding of how prices are using real time data (as oppossed to, say, the SMR whose prices are notoriously understated for pre war cards).

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Posted By: Keith O'Leary

For anyone that doesn't wanna spend a lot of time searching for what somethings worth.....the membership pays for itself.

 

Very well done and easy to navigate.

 

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Posted By: Jim Loewke

I can't believe some of you "vintage" collectors are whining (yes, whining!) about $10/month. What is that, a couple of starbucks coffee? Shipping and handling on 2 lots from ebay? You must be collecting really beat up vintage cards if you can't find $10/month more in your hobby wallet. As for safety, when you go out for dinner and pay using credit card, do you grill the minimum wage waiter about credit card security? Trying it for a month costs 10 bucks. If you don't like it, cancel it. Pretty difficult for some of you. The guys who put this program together are trying to run a business and have put a lot of hard work into it. Honestly, some of you people are a joke complaining about the cost. You would probably complain about the taxes if you won the lottery. These people are trying something new, difficult and time consuming; wonder how many of you whiners can say the same thing. I used to think this was such a professional group of collectors; how wrong I was.
NO, I am not on their payroll.
YES, I am signing up for the program.

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Posted By: Bottom of the Ninth

Bobby,

The site looks great. Nice job. I will be subscribing and will recommend it to everyone I do business with. Since you are an ebay partner is there a chance that you will be able to get pricing going back earlier than 11/05?

Take care and good luck!

Greg

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Posted By: jay behrens

Well excuse me for colelcting pre-WW2 cards and not have 6 figure salary to do it. Not everyone on this board is a lawyer or doctor pulling down a huge salary every year. To some of us, like myself, an extra $10/month is a huge change to an already tight budget.

And rich people wonder why those with less get pissed off at them.

Jay

Growing old is not optional, growing up is.

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Posted By: Jim Loewke

No excuse for childish behavior like yours behrens. Never seen anyone so hell-bent on repeatedly embarassing themself like you do.

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Posted By: Brian Weisner

Hi Jay,
I'm not a Doctor or a Lawyer, and have no clue whether the site is worth the ten dollars a month, but what's wrong with offering a service for a price? Most of us belong to sniping serives who charge similiar amounts, so I don't think the price is out of line for those who need the information.

You and I have been around the industry for quite sometime, and probably don't need that much help, but there are plenty of lurkers and contributors who would probably find a lot of value in the service.
I'm not going to touch the Poor vs Rich argument, because it's a Vintage Card Board and I don't want to get off of the topic, but most of the wealthy people I know earned there money, they didn't take it from the poor.

Be well Brian

PS Jay I don't consider most people in this country poor, because I have been to the third world and have seen true poverty at it's worst. Spend a few days in Haiti and you'll think that government housing is the Hilton.

I'm sorry for rambling, If you want the service buy it,if not keep on keeping on.

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Posted By: Russ Bright

Wow, i do take that personally. I DO collect really beat up cards, because that's all I can afford. Sometimes i can pay more and sometimes I can't, my problem with recurring payments (even as little as 10 dollars) is that if it comes out of my account every month I may not have budgeted the money, and i might overdraw. Because i don't always have more than 10 dollars IN my account. Like I said in my last post, this thread is way more hostile than it should be. I'm trying to complete a T205 set on a shoestring budget, there have been a couple cards I got for close to 100 dollars, but most of the set i'm picking up for around 10 a card. low quality, and i love them...

I just read that the only cards they're keeping prices on (at vintageprices.com) are PSA, Sgc and Gai. That really does no good for me, i try to collect raw cards, and if I DO find the money for a graded card, it's an AUT or a 1.

i'll get around to it eventually, the site still looks awesome, but it's just not practical for me right now...