I interpret post #23 to mean that VCP does record fixed price formats. Their only problem is the data won't record the date of sale accurately. If a BIN or BO is listed for 30 days and sells on day 6 the pricing data will not transfer to VCP until the full 30 days have passed.

Tim - that's how I read it as well, though Jim, I agree it should have been worded more clearly.

Tim, Matt,

I don't disagree. The problem is the wording. He should just say "We do record ALL BIN transactions, but there is a delay, on Ebay's end, in getting us that info."


Anyone assuming that I know what a "chinese style format" is, is starting off on the wrong foot.

He said it "posts to VCP," that seemed pretty clear, no?

He said "We record everything that is set on a time schedule..." so BIN items that do not have a scheduled end date but are sold are NOT recorded, like the example below. That's how I interpreted what Bobby said. (and yes, it was kinda cryptic)

http://cgi.ebay.com/1931-New-York-Gi...item5886233210

So, all those types of sales are not included then? I'd imagine that would be quite a large quantity of sales that are not represented.

Bobby, I am a believer in your service, a subscriber, and an active user. Can you comment on whether these type of BIN sales are going to be included in your service and when? Thank you in advance for your response.

And to answer a question two of you sent via PM, VCP also includes all fixed price & auction style sales from GrandSlamBids.com as well.

Actually Bobby is the only one that can answer the question at hand here. He's chimed in briefly a couple times, but in my opinion has not answered the question clearly. In fact a couple of his responses have me reading his post more than once because I'm left scratching my head. Bobby, pop in spend a few minutes, (at least) and give us a detailed "clear breakdown" of how fixed auctions with a BIN are in fact recorded on VCP. Many of your customers are clearly needing clarification here. Thank you......

I took Bobby to mean that if an auction, (1, 3, 5, 7 or 10 day) includes a BIN and someone does the BIN and thus closes the auction early, this information is included in VCP. EBay store listings are not included, (they can continue to relist so there is no end date). This is my take, but I also admit that I do not know what the chinese style format is.

VCP has also stopped reporting some of the auction houses information. If they do not take corrective action, it will be reduced to an eBay 7-10 auction reporting.

Actually a normal eBay auction is not a normal auction. There is not an opportunity for someone who is out bid at the close to raise their bid. With the sniping, it is more like a sealed bid auction. One of the points to consider is that not all eBay user know that sniping services even exist.

It sure seems
 

with the way Ebay has changed over the last twelve months, if non-auction style BINs are not recorded in VCP, then there is a significant number of sales that are occurring but not reflected in VCPs database.

This is all the more potentially troubling, given that fixed-price [non-auction] BINs typically reflect higher sales prices than many counterparts in the auction format.

You have to excuse my untimely responses currently I am in Seoul Korea so there is a bit of a time difference.

Chinese style is any auction that is set with a time format so our system knows when the ending time is to finalize the transactions. You see this for many fixed price auctions, Best offers and Buy it now as well as for the standard type auction. When there is no end time associated with the item we have no way of knowing whether that card sold or not using the API system set up by eBay. The only way to find out if a card has sold or not with no time limit is by having a person physically view the pages and that is not very doable.

Even if eBay doesn't support it in their API, you might could write some code to parse the Completed items pages.

If we did that then we would be in violation of our agreement with eBay and can lose our licenses.

Surely, Bobby
 

Surely you can work with Ebay to find a way to capture these sales without violating some agreement. It would be in Ebay's advantage to have a complete set of data.


Just took a random sampling of the last 200 completed items with SGC in the title and priced between $50 and $150. 75 items did not sell, 93 items sold via auction and were recorded by VCP, and 32 items sold via stores and will not be picked up by VCP. That's roughly 25% of completed sales from a small window sample (SGC cards between $50-$150).

Here are some specific examples that are not recorded in VCP and speak to the need for changing the business model:

http://cgi.ebay.com/1911-T205-Charle...item334abe5027

T205 Phillippe: sale price $155
VCP Average for PSA 5: $76.50 (last sale 6/13/10)

http://cgi.ebay.com/1910-E96-Phila-C...item1e5c8bba2b

E96 Konetchy: sale price $90
VCP average: $71.67 (last sale 2007)

http://cgi.ebay.com/1921-E121-80-Car...item563c68832b

E121 Collins: sale price $275
VCP Average: $225 (last sale 2009)

http://cgi.ebay.com/1910-T206-Ty-Cob...item335a065d94

T206 Cobb Bat On: sale price $800
VCP Average: $438 (last sale 2008)

http://cgi.ebay.com/1910-E91-C-A-Car...item2c54886a72

E91 Wagner: sale price $800
VCP Average: $492.20 (last sale 2007)

http://cgi.ebay.com/1911-T205-Fred-C...item5883805f9f

T205 Clarke: sale price $140
VCP Average: $100.25 (last sale 2009)

http://cgi.ebay.com/1909-1911-T206-T...item2ead128d34

T206 Cobb Red: sale price $580
VCP Average: $457 (last sale 2009)

http://cgi.ebay.com/1934-1936-Diamon...item2ea9c1a03b

1935 Diamond Star Hornsby: sale price $225
VCP Average: $133.50 (last sale 2009)

http://cgi.ebay.com/E94-Napoleon-Laj...item4ceff1b638

E94 Lajoie: sale price $1150
VCP Average: no sale history in SGC 30 or PSA 2

I understand. Is the problem that the query you send to eBay via the webservice API call requires an ending date in order to return results?

Marc thanks so much for uploading the data above. This does prove that there is a huge amount of auctions being excluded and not represented on VCP which does in fact make the overall final value incorrect on the product which is registered on VCP. Ebay's selling format has changed greatly since VCP was originally introduced, but it now seems that VCP needs to find a way to follow suit so it picks up these auctions. With so many auctions now on Ebay listed in sellers stores with fixed BIN's in my opinion VCP is missing upwards of 30%+ of all card transactions on Ebay today. Folks that's alot when you take into consideration just how many cards are listed per day, per week, per month!!!

Tony -- all the moreso given the fact that many of the fixed BIN sales via Ebay stores transact at significantly greater prices than they might fetch via the auction format. It gives buyers a false sense of valuation, when they enter a potential transaction with the notion "I won't pay more than the latest VCP price", if that price is artificially depressed because it is missing a number of store sales that happened at higher valuations.

Perhaps VCP should be renamed VCPS (Vintage Card Pricer Sometimes).

The only thing worse than no data, is partial data...

So, if I understand correctly...

The accusation is that a significant portion of eBay BIN sales are not making it into VCP data and that these data points conceivably represent prices that are "higher than average." In so doing, VCP would be inadvertantly skewing the data downward by reporting what is likely the midrange and lower end of sales. Thus, the more people use VCP as a "top end" for what they are willing to pay, the more it would contribute a downward spiral of prices. Is that a fair summary of what is being discussed?

Obviously, people's behavior is it is not Bobby's or VCP's fault, but if incomplete data leads to inaccurate "average prices" and people are led to believe that it is accurate, then there is a bigger underlying problem.

So if ebay will not play ball and allow the non-timed sales to be captured, what is the solution? Is some data better than no data?

Even if Bobby could collect the fixed priced sales with no end time his data would still be just be a fraction of the number of sales for any given card in the market. I use his service and realize that it's not every sale of every card, but in most cases it is enough information to make the service of value to me.

Wow, you really changed my mind with this one...

However, I really don't need to know how much Levi sold his cards for :D

yes.

My thoughts exactly.

I say yes IF everyone understands it's partial.

But only with a clear, simple and complete understanding of what's included and what's missing.

People think they are getting VCP but are unknowingly getting VCPS...

But why wouldn't eBay "Play ball"?
I can understand if they wanted no information changing hands, like some auction houses.
But they allow the release of data via auctions, so really why do they care
if some lots are sold via fixed prices?

I don't think eBay will not necessairly "play ball", but it is a general part of their user agreement. Now the information I have is dated, but when I looked into setting up an automated price retrieval service off of eBay completed items (mainly for my own information before VCP or CardPricer existed) I read their user agreement. From my recollection, eBay owned the data and you were not allowed to use that data or harvest it without using their API to avoid people writing programs to get the information for free. It sounds like the API needs some updating to get all of the information. I am sure this is not a problem for only baseball cards. If VCP were my company I would be on the phone with my account manager finding out when I can access this information through the API and if I couldn't figuring out a workaround so I could do it in a licensed manner.

Is VCP still only using the past 12 months of prices to calculate their average VCP value? I know they changed over to doing it that way a couple of years ago and I always thought that was kind of a mistake.

It seemed to unjustly lower the averages on many of the very lightly traded cards (cards that sell only once a year or so).

It also really lowered the average value of the common PSA 8 and 9 type cards from the 1970's and 80's when eBay sellers started listing them for .99¢ and charging $5 or $6 for shipping ... to recoup the normal $3 to $5 they were getting before on those same cards. Although now with the trend of free shipping, I'd imagine that may be leveling out again.

I guess I just wonder if VCP's method of only using the past 12 months prices to come up with their average, during what has arguably been a year or two of dropping prices for many card issues, has in any way lead to a more drastic decrease in prices? And will it artificially slow any rebound of the market (by about a year) whenever they do start moving up in price again?

Just a thought.

Mike