VCP rant

[t206hound]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

Let me get this straight..VCP wants your info, and they want you to pay $100 so they can have that info? That seems odd to me.

+1

[Jacklitsch]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide
Let me get this straight..VCP wants your info, and they want you to pay $100 so they can have that info? That seems odd to me.

T206Hound

+1

With all due respect Erick and Dan please read the posts. This statment is totally inaccurate.

[steve B]

Did everyone else miss the part about Ebay changing how outside programs from licensed businesses interact with Ebay?
And that they did that without telling any of those licensed businesses.


That's why the auctions got missed, not that BINs aren't tracked.

Rewriting the software so that it then interacts properly isn't a simple task, and a couple months is a pretty short time for a software fix that requires rewriting stuff.


Leons Software guy wanting $100 to turn on a feature - a fairly quick task, maybe a few minutes if you don't know how - seems a bit expensive.
Unless there's some technical issue between the auction software and VCPs software.

Loyalty to vendors, and unwillingness to pay odd fees are very familiar things to me. My time doing Industrial work and lots of purchasing for a small company taught me a lot about that. I had some vendors I was very loyal to, and wouldn't switch to someone else. I also had a few I wouldn't deal with, to the point where I had 3-4 major corporations that wouldn't complain when I went outside a territory to buy their products because the local distributor was so difficult.

Steve Birmingham

[Abravefan11]

Originally Posted by Jacklitsch

With all due respect Erick and Dan please read the posts. This statment is totally inaccurate.

Agreed Steve. Putting the $100 fee on Bobby is misrepresenting this situation entirely. As many have already stated it looks bad for all involved that a reasonable resolution couldn't have been reached for $100 to the benefit of customers and consignors.

[Leon]

After a high level meeting this morning we have decided to continue the service. It certainly had nothing to do with the $100 in our decision. It was more principle of being asked to do something we had never done AND We didn't know it was our s/w provider that was asking for the fee as mentioned above. We will talk to Bobby about it going forward. If it helps our bidders and/or consignors then we want to do it.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by Bosox Blair

BTW sport, don't get all agitated when people don't agree that your four little BIN transactions somehow make a valuable business into "a joke".

Sport? My four little BINs? Don't insult me, douchebag. VCP is in the business is capturing eBay sales - BINs or auction formats.

****************************************

Leon,

If this a-hole wants to continue this arguement, he should put his full name in his post.

[slidekellyslide]

I should have read the whole thread before responding...Seth wants the $100 to do something that will take minutes for an experienced programmer to do and both VCP and B&L will benefit from it. Perhaps VCP and B&L should split this fee then.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

Sport? My four little BINs? Don't insult me, douchebag. VCP is in the business is capturing eBay sales - BINs or auction formats.

****************************************

Leon,

If this a-hole wants to continue this arguement, he should put his full name in his post.

It is a board rule that if you are going to argue with someone or say anything derogatory about a company or person then your name does need to be out here. You are arguing with B.lair C.urtis.

[3-2-count]

Originally Posted by Bosox Blair

Most people with any sense disregard BINs entirely. Sorry if you don't get that.

Blair with all do respect I do pay attention to BIN's on the Bay and know of a few key sellers in the market who are actually board members here who have their product priced very fair. I have also bought many a card at a BIN price which was priced accurately. If these are sales made I definitely want to know about them. Agreed that many if not most Ebay sellers display their product at ridiculous prices, but for the ones who do not it is unfair to group them with those high priced sellers you speak of. My two cents!!

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by 3-2-count

Blair with all do respect I do pay attention to BIN's on the Bay and know of a few key sellers in the market who are actually board members here who have their product priced very fair. I have also bought many a card at a BIN price which was priced accurately. If these are sales made I definitely want to know about them. Agreed that many if not most Ebay sellers display their product at ridiculous prices, but for the ones who do not it is unfair to group them with those high priced sellers you speak of. My two cents!!

Agreed. I understand people say that BINs are easy to manipulate and should not be included, but so are auctions (shill bidding). Where do you draw the line? VCP’s business is to capture all eBay sales – auction or BIN – and the user can take that information and make their own buying/selling decisions.

On the card in question, I paid $750 and I felt good about the purchase. Did I overpay? Perhaps some might thinks so. If so, it wasn’t by much. I thought it was fair considering that 6 of the 10 sales that VCP recorded sold for what I paid or more (SGC 50 and PSA 4 combined). Either way, the sale should have been captured.

[barrysloate]

One problem I see with VCP using BIN's is in a situation where a seller has a card priced far above current market, and for whatever reason a collector chooses to buy it. Since VCP is supposed to reflect the market, is that BIN necessarily reflective of it? It's possible that that transaction was double what any similar card might sell for, and would therefore not be useful information. I'm not actually sure myself about this, just think it's a fair point.

[jp1216]

I'm all for VCP showing BIN prices, but only using actual auctions to determine averages.

[vintagecpa]

I've subscribed to VCP off and on for several years. Although they aren't perfect in terms of capturing every sale, they run a very nice business. I don't think anyone makes a purchasing decision based simply on VCP average. There is often one BIN or other auction sale that can greatly skew the average, especially with cards that don't have many sales. When I am thinking of purchasing a card, I do appreciate seeing the wide range a card might sell for. You will especially see this when looking at the PSA 1 cards.

[rhettyeakley]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

One problem I see with VCP using BIN's is in a situation where a seller has a card priced far above current market, and for whatever reason a collector chooses to buy it. Since VCP is supposed to reflect the market, is that BIN necessarily reflective of it? It's possible that that transaction was double what any similar card might sell for, and would therefore not be useful information. I'm not actually sure myself about this, just think it's a fair point.

Barry, I think the counterpoint would be that with an auction if you have two buyers who place a "top all" high max bid and the item then goes for way more than it is "really worth". There is never going to be asolution that works for everyone nor one that even works for most, but VCP is what it is and if there is value to the customer in that then that is all there needs to be, I suppose.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

One problem I see with VCP using BIN's is in a situation where a seller has a card priced far above current market, and for whatever reason a collector chooses to buy it. Since VCP is supposed to reflect the market, is that BIN necessarily reflective of it? It's possible that that transaction was double what any similar card might sell for, and would therefore not be useful information. I'm not actually sure myself about this, just think it's a fair point.

Barry,

Indeed it is a fair point. However, if it was a legitimate sale, shouldn't it still be captured no matter the price?

Let's turn your scenario around. Let's say there is a 1967 Topps PSA 10 common with a pop of only 3 and two set registry guys get in a bidding war over it on ebay and the cards sells for $500. However, the last two only sold for $100. Should that sale be counted? In other words, just becasue two idiots drive up the price of a card significantly over fair market value, do you not count it?

Edited to say: Although worded differently, Rhett beat me to the same point.

[barrysloate]

I agree David with your example. In your case, the BIN's you bought were within a reasonable market range, and reflect what you were willing to pay for the cards. I guess in the end it's Bobby's decision how he wants to gather and use the data.

Edited to add I see Rhett's point too. Bobby has to set the rules for his site, and it's fair to ask him why he doesn't use the BIN's.

[terjung]

Data is data. It should be up to the person using the data to interpret and to filter what is important to them. Categorically removing (or not including) valid sales such as BINs biases the data.

[barrysloate]

Maybe at the end of the day VCP should record every transaction, both auction and BIN, and leave it up to the reader to determine what represents a typical transaction, and what might be the result of a pair of snipes, or an overpriced BIN. It's not VCP's job to interpret prices, but just to post them. The job of making sense out of them falls on the shoulders of the subscribers. Like any data, they need to be analyzed.

[3-2-count]

Originally Posted by terjung

Data is data. It should be up to the person using the data to interpret and to filter what is important to them. Categorically removing (or not including) valid sales such as BINs biases the data.

Exactly!!!! Well said..........

[barrysloate]

Brian and I said exactly the same thing a minute apart.

[vintagetoppsguy]

I think there is a litte confusion. VCP DOES capture BINs in their data.

My complaint was that for some reason, several of my BINs were missed in the month of February. Bobby's explanation (on page 2) was "At the beginning of the year eBay decided to change their API system and of course as we all know about them they failed to tell their licensees about it so there was a time period we where not pulling all the data. Since then we were finally able to implement a workaround in March and the reports of missing transaction dropped dramatically."

I can understand that. Things happen. My beef is the fact that I pointed it out to him and his response was basically, "Tough crap, it's too late."

[Rich Klein]

from B&L, and correct me if I'm wrong -- but the software designer is making decisions on what to do with the data from the B&L auction.

If so, on a global level that brings into issue, who really "owns" the data from a B&L auction, is it the auction house or is it the software provider.

I'm just curious as to your opinion on that part of this puzzle.

Rich

I missed Leon's response, and I agree with what he did.

[19cbb]

Originally Posted by Rich Klein

from B&L, and correct me if I'm wrong -- but the software designer is making decisions on what to do with the data from the B&L auction.

If so, on a global level that brings into issue, who really "owns" the data from a B&L auction, is it the auction house or is it the software provider.

I'm just curious as to your opinion on that part of this puzzle.

Rich

Excellent question Rich.

Wonder how many B&L bidders know/care who's the software provider...

I couldn't care less.

[glchen]

IMO, the auction house owns the data, but the software company is charging to execute the feed (or install the API code) from the auction house to VCP.

[bobfreedman]

The auction company owns the data however, it is on the internet therefore public domain information at that point (I am not sure if I am using the correct legal term). Prior to us (SimpleAuction) giving the feed to VCP, we always ask the auction company if they want THEIR information sourced to VCP.

As for charging for this information, I can understand the desire to do so (everyone is looking to add more streams of revenue) because there is ongoing maintenance and someone has to be paid for doing the initial development work. We choose not to because we have worked out an agreement with VCP.

[Bosox Blair]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

Sport? My four little BINs? Don't insult me, douchebag. VCP is in the business is capturing eBay sales - BINs or auction formats.

****************************************

Leon,

If this a-hole wants to continue this arguement, he should put his full name in his post.

You have shown yourself to be exactly what you are. I don't stoop to namecalling.

You would never do this to my face - believe me.

Happy collecting, David James.


Blair Curtis

[Bosox Blair]

Originally Posted by 3-2-count

Blair with all do respect I do pay attention to BIN's on the Bay and know of a few key sellers in the market who are actually board members here who have their product priced very fair. I have also bought many a card at a BIN price which was priced accurately. If these are sales made I definitely want to know about them. Agreed that many if not most Ebay sellers display their product at ridiculous prices, but for the ones who do not it is unfair to group them with those high priced sellers you speak of. My two cents!!

Hi Tony,

As you know, my friend, I have the greatest of respect for you. You are one of the good guys. Hope all is well with you!

The other side of the BIN problem is the seller who doesn't know the market and lists his card for far less than the real market value. The card will likely be bought in under an hour. So what? Can I get another one for that price? No. Will anyone lower their price if I tell them one guy listed that card cheap last week and it sold to the first guy who saw it? No.

To say that a service that fails to tell me about a few of these transactions is "a joke" is...well...a joke (that is directed to the OP, not you).

Cheers,

Blair

[3-2-count]

Hi Blair,
Hope all is well. Constructive conversation is healthy even if we disagree my friend. That being said the name calling you've received in this thread by the other N54 member is totally uncalled for and unacceptable. I don't go for that crap either. Happy Collecting!!

Very Best, Tony

[BobbyVCP]

We worked with both Simple and Create in supplying both of them with the format in order to supply VCP with the feed from the auction houses. We did this in order for the auction houses to take advantage of our large membership Want lists. We can just as easily create a code to go and grab the information from the auction houses after the auction has ended and post to VCP. We feel it is a slap in our face that one of them choose to charge us for something we provided them to use to benefit their customers and provide to future ones as well as a selling tool.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by Bosox Blair

You have shown yourself to be exactly what you are. I don't stoop to namecalling.

You would never do this to my face - believe me.

Happy collecting, David James.


Blair Curtis

No, you didn't stoop to namecalling, you stooped to insults. So, I guess it's okay to insult, but not to call names? Whatever! And who says I wouldn't do it to your face? Why don't you PM me and maybe we can make arrangments to meet and see whether or not I would do it to your face.

Edited to add the following:

Originally Posted by 3-2-count

That being said the name calling you've received in this thread by the other N54 member is totally uncalled for and unacceptable. I don't go for that crap either.

Tony, I have had pleasant dealings with you in the past and I certainly repsect you, but come on. Are you telling me that it's acceptable for him to hurl inuslts at me, but it's unacceptable for me to call him names? Seriously?

[Sterling Sports Auctions]

Originally Posted by terjung

Data is data. It should be up to the person using the data to interpret and to filter what is important to them. Categorically removing (or not including) valid sales such as BINs biases the data.

+1, these are actual sales and they should be recorded the people receiving the data should get all the relevant information and if you choose not to use some yourself that is up to each individual.

By the Way, David James, why have you not learned that name calling is for children, once again you show your true colors, stick to the subject.

Lee

[smtjoy]

Not to get too technical but the initial 4 cards you have listed, look hard at how they were listed and how VCP parses them. From what I have seen in the past with auctions of mine that dont make it into VCP, a lot of times I had issues with my title.

I can see on your E90 Lajoie its condition is listed as SGC 3, I would bet this might have been kicked out because the program does not know if its really a 40 or a 30?. Also it does not list a E90-1, E90-2 or E90-3 so it didnt know the proper set. On the T206 McGraw you purchased the variation is listed as "CAP PORTRAIT"- PSA list them as - "Portrait No Cap" or "Portrait With Cap" no way to tell from your description which it is so I bet the software rightly rejected because of this. It looks like the T-206 Keeler was listed as BATTING and the listing needed to be "With Bat".

These might seem like little things but they are big issues for a program trying to understand a data feed. I am sure Bobby can tell you more of how this is handled but I would bet a large number of the auctions missing have these issues. Just look at how many auctions sometimes list the card as an SGC 50/ PSA 4 to try and market to those who collect both even thou the card is only an SGC 50.

I also think that some kind of time limit on relisted them is fair and should happen as someone could in theory photoshop the paypal printout and say what they want for price and email it in when they want to sell and accept what you are saying as fact. VCP can no longer look it up in ebay to verify it.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by bowlingshoegiverouterguy

By the Way, David James, why have you not learned that name calling is for children, once again you show your true colors, stick to the subject.

Lee, you're probably right. Name calling is for children. Then again, isn't hurling insults? Perhaps you should go re-read the thread and you'll see he hurled insults before I called names. Not to say that two wrongs make a right, but I'm just curious why you're calling me out for the name calling, but not calling him out for the inuslts? Well?

[Cy2009]

I don't understand why people don't want BINs on VCP. This service is not just for buyers. Sellers would also like to know what all of the prices are. Let me throw out two examples.

1) What if an auction was set up with a price where only one person bid on the card. That is just as good/bad as a BIN. But the BIN would not be recorded whereas the pseudo BIN is recorded.

2) What if you wanted to sell a card at a certain grade and, say, in the past 5 years there have been three auctions with an average price of $200 per card. And there have been three BINs with an average of $350 per card. Are these BINs not relevant since the same number of people bought this card?

Sellers also should know if there are people out there willing to pay a higher price to make sure that they get the card that they want at the grade. This would help a seller not having to settle on a lower price when statistics show that people are buying this card at his grade.

Finally, someone pointed out that he didn't want BINs because they don't reflect the market. This is confusing. If a card is sold at any venue, isn't that part of the market? There are many cards that have four sales or less in a particular grade over the past five years. Any sale would be significant for those statistics. So all data is relevant.

Cy

[GoldenAge50s]

I, too, feel that BIN's are just as relevant as an auction for VCP data. Either one can be market high or market low---it all averages out!

It is up to the USER of the data to figure out what pertains to his situation at the time, but to not have in ALL sales renders the data INCOMPLETE!

[E93]

Originally Posted by Leon

[B][U]At the end of the day it's less data on your site though. I do use VCP I just wish there were more recorded sales, for whatever reason. regards

For $100 you can have more recorded sales and referrals to your auction for 3500+ wantlists. It only takes one extra bid to pay for that $100 service. And the more info there, the better for the hobby (Some dealers may disagree.). Leon, you are a great hobby friend. I'm just sayin'...
JimB

[Leon]

Originally Posted by E93

For $100 you can have more recorded sales and referrals to your auction for 3500+ wantlists. It only takes one extra bid to pay for that $100 service. And the more info there, the better for the hobby (Some dealers may disagree.). Leon, you are a great hobby friend. I'm just sayin'...
JimB

Jim- yes you are a good friend. Is there some part of "agreed...we will continue the service....." that you need help understanding?....just sayin'...

[Jacklitsch]

"...agreed...we will continue the service....."

Sorry, but I interpreted this as continuing Seth's service. Maybe Jim did too.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Jacklitsch

"...agreed...we will continue the service....."

Sorry, but I interpreted this as continuing Seth's service. Maybe Jim did too.

Maybe so and if that is the case then my mistake....however the rest of the message said this-

"After a high level meeting this morning we have decided to continue the service. It certainly had nothing to do with the $100 in our decision. It was more principle of being asked to do something we had never done AND We didn't know it was our s/w provider that was asking for the fee as mentioned above. We will talk to Bobby about it going forward. If it helps our bidders and/or consignors then we want to do it."



I guess I should add that I had already said we weren't changing s/w vendors for our auction. Maybe I am not communicating well again though?

[steve B]

The problem with BINs is that some serious price manipulation is possible.

I haven't seen it with normal cards, but I believe it was done with or maybe to Etopps. When I was following that stuff regularly there was a seller who would put up lots of 50-100 of one card at .01 - But also open only to preapproved bidders. Many of his sales were completed at very low price levels, so I asked to be approved. Surprise, I never heard back. And those very low sales drastically changed the average price for those cards. I've long suspected they were buying through another account at the lower prices expecting to do well once they stopped the manipulation.

How many sales of a prewar card at a "low" price would it take to skew the average? If some people don't look at the raw data they could assume the average to be lower than the actual average. Someone with decent inventory could in theory depress the market for a short period while buying.

Steve Birmingham

[cobblove]

Ive noticed this problem for a few years now. But has never been fixed. I dont think they can fix it. Looks like they manually put the info in so they probably dont do it every day.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by rhettyeakley

I will never understand why BIN's or Best Offers that are accepted are not included. When did the Market price become synonomous with "at auction" only. If you go buy something at Wal-mart for a set price is that not what that item is currently selling for? IMO every transacted card should be included or you are only getting part of the picture. Don't give me that it is easier to manipuate because you can shill an auction just as easy. I have never been a member of VCP and probably never will for the reason stated above.

+1

Larry

[Rich Klein]

I could have sworn that Bobby and I discussed that a few years ago and he started putting in BIN"s slightly after our chat. They are sales and for the 99 percent part, legit.

ETopps was another issue; but since Bobby was not covering ETopps, did not affect his service. The ETopps Tony Banks was especially messed up in pricing IIRC.

Rich

[glynparson]

I am also not a fan anymore. They miss way to many obscure issues and non baseball items. in my opinion.

[autograf]

No dog in the fight here.........don't subscribe to VCP but see the value in the service.....
Nothing's perfect.........

I would think people who DO pay for the service would want BIN's.......even knowing that 98.9% of BINs are WAY overpriced and 1.1% of BINs are WAY underpriced........as long as all the BINs are noted as such.....

VCP could easily do an average priced sold for AUCTIONS (w/o BINS) and for ALL Cards (w/BINS). Seems like the disparity between those two numbers would be something else that people who like to futz with numbers would be interested in as well.............

[barrysloate]

As has been suggested earlier, VCP's only responsibility is to post transactions, not to interpret them. That's up to the reader. It doesn't matter if a BIN is double the market price or half of it, let the user determine how he wants to evaluate the information. So in that respect everything possible should be posted on the site (except private transactions, which can often be exaggerated, or entirely false).

[BobbyVCP]

We try our best to post all sales and the BIN's and BO's are notated, you can even use some of the filters set up so they show or don't.