I concur with your analysis.

That's the beauty of capitalism - you won't last long if your value proposition is garbage.

The only possible answer has to be that Deans is selling enough to make enough money to stay in business. Maybe a lot of the sales are going to people who aren't familiar with the market, either because they're new or because they don't really spend enough time to really evaluate whether the pricing is within a few standard deviations of market?

I suppose it's also possible that some buyers just prefer to work with a dealer that they know and trust, rather than faff about with randos online.

And maybe it's a little bit of all of the above, including the situations you listed.

This. Someone recently bought his PSA 4 1933 Goudey #149 Ruth for $40K. It's nice, but so are the other 4s I've seen that went for half the price.

Like some others I just buy rare and oddball stuff from Dean's. Mainly T210s as just finding a specific card can take some time. They usually have a decent variety to choose from. They had the same price on eBay and their site on the ones I purchased. With their website discount they where cheaper than I could find similar cards from other sellers.

I agree for the most part they are extremely overpriced. They also offer great front/back scans and some reasonably priced cards. The other big to me bonus is the only bad thing they get accused of is high prices.:)

Seriously? You guys don't like their pricing so you want to insinuate they are a front operation for some kind of illicit enterprise? The irony :rolleyes:

I got mycard today I brought form them. I am thrilled wit it. second most I have ever paid for a card in my life $880 after the website discount.
Obvious surface wear and corners but no stains/creases/paper loss/ink etc. Centering is also good and the color looks great in person.

I flipped a PSA 8, '57Brooks Robinson from Deans one time. I think I made close to a grand. The prices had gone up and they didn't catch that one...Otherwise, have bought 1-2 things from them, but have gone through their site and not ebay...
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If a Dean's Cards discount was the bellwether, now I'm convinced that the vintage apocalypse is upon us.

Yepbg discounted everything in his eBay store by 25% a little while back, and this afternoon I received eBay notifications that he had dropped items I was watching by another 10%. He's still 60 to 150% above recent auction sales on the stuff I'm watching, but the fact that he's dropped his prices is noteworthy.

Mike, you beat me to it, I was going to comment on Yepbg also. A very reputable dealer and seems to be a nice guy but his prices are astronomical. The 25% discount and additional 10% discount still make his stuff my last stop to look but he does have a lot of tough to find items so I have gulped and overpaid when I couldn't find something anywhere else.

I get the feeling that Yepbg may be tired of curating a museum, some of that stuff I've been watching for 4 years.

Me too, Phil. 4 years and longer!

I actually just bought something from yepbg yesterday and found the price to be really reasonable. He also sent be an offer which I accepted, which I would never expect Deans Cards to do.

Was it the Venezuelan Mantle? That's the only one I watched where the 33% discount brought it down to a reasonable price.

It was the 1907 Wolverine News Hughie Jennings

Interesting data point: There are currently 5 PSA 4 T205 Mathewsons on eBay with BINs. Dean's has the cheapest of the 5.

Dean has a number of regular clients. He has built a successful practice with his current model. I think he doesn't care what critics think

Which I would guess is still 2-3x what anyone would pay for it

Regular clients that get special deals?
That have addiction issues?
That are Crazy Rich Asians?

Clue us in, please.

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

I'd be happy to pay Deans premium for the scarce cards on my list.

+1

If you do buy from Deans it is best not to admit it here or you might be labeled a crazy rich Asian or an idiot 😊

I recently purchased this from Dean's. The price was in line with current market. I saw it on eBay first and thought about buying it. Then, I saw who the seller was. I visited Dean's online store and purchased it there.

Definitely better to buy directly from their website instead of through eBay. I think the listed prices on the website are usually higher than on eBay, but after the website discount is applied, they usually end up below the eBay price.

Their website list price was already lower than their eBay price. After the discount, it was even cheaper.

Even better. The few cards I have bought from Deans have all been priced as I described. Still a better deal to buy direct from their website, but not as much off as I initially was hoping for.

I have bought several cards from Deans. I am far from crazy rich but maybe more money than most Asian would work.;)

I won't say what :) but, very recently, I bought a few cards from Dean's that I felt were quite competitively priced. The more sources the better. And we all know there is almost an infinite number of places to buy cards nowadays.
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+1

Bought a couple 60's Mantle cards off the website (not Ebay). Spent hours scouring the photos to ensure they were the cards I wanted condition-wise. Was pleasantly surprised they graded out much higher than their system graded them ( assessed at Vg-Ex, came bac Ex-Mt). Although this wouldn't be the case for the majority of their cards.

Would buy from again and the customer service was very responsive (international transaction).

Deans reminds me of a local card shop, but its on-line. The staff and everyone I have dealt with are very pleasant, and I believe, honest people.

Has anyone ever sold cards to Deans? Just wondering because I would consider contacting them if I ever decided to sell my collection.

What happens to the market if a card is bought for more then most are selling for through these sellers? Does it have zero effect or does it move the needle?

Not sure I totally understand your question. Let’s use an example just for fun. Let’s say a Mays 72T in PSA 7 usually sells for $100, but there are several dealers asking $500 for their copies.

Are you asking what happens to the market if one comes to auction and someone pays $1,000 for it?

Or are you asking something else?

Yep. Does it drive the market for that card and similar cards with the same value or do you own a card that will take time for the world to catch up. Do these sellers actually influencing the market.

In general, particularly with my example, I think the answer is no, or not really.

There’s just way too many 72T Mays cards in circulation for any one dealer to have an impact on the market, at least one that lasts for very long. And a single sale at 10x the going market price is likely to be ignored by most everyone as an extreme outlier. Now if you get 5 or 10 that sell for that price, the trend might get a little more momentum. But my guess is that even then with my example, it wouldn’t last long, because owners would flood the market with similar examples, and the price would come right back down to around where it was originally.

One example not too different than this happened a year or two ago. Some guy started buying up all of the T206s that he could find on eBay for a particular player, who I think shared his same name. Price spiked for a few days until he had sated his appetite. Market flooded with a bunch of them at silly prices for a bit, in part because he was paying silly prices. And then once he stopped, the market eventually came back down once it was clear that he was done buying, and no one else was going to pay that much.

I do think the one exception is in situations where stuff is rare. Like really rare, with maybe only a handful of known examples, and where you might have to wait years or even decades for them to come onto the market. In that case, the market could be affected simply because transactions happen so infrequently, and your only option as a buyer is to either pay the asking price, or wait years or decades for another one to come on the market.

It depends on how frequently that card sells. If there are a lot of recent comps then one outlier sale generally doesn't move the market much, though technically every sale does have an effect even if small. But if that card sells very infrequently, then it can have a massive effect on what the next copy sells for.

So lets say this card is somewhat rare, has a decent number of cards on the registry, less then 20 total, and out of those only 5 are 4 or higher, 6 being the highest, and this card is the highest graded. It's a common, not a HOF player. Will it help those same player cards graded lower, and other common players in that same grade as well as higher or lower grades, along with HOFers or will the effect be ignored? It's a card that may shows up every four or five years at best, and many times longer, but until one that grades higher will be the best example registered.

I know it's somewhat subjective because each player's cards are different in total numbers, and grades. Just curious as how the market moves, and how prices tend to rise. It has to start someplace.

Thanks. I lumped your response with snowmans in my response.

It certainly could have a strong effect on the others if sales are that infrequent and pop reports are that low. But a seller of one of the other cards may need to hold out and point to that other sale in order to cash in on that effect if it's not a high demand card. Commons can have high variance in hammer prices though if they're from sets that aren't widely collected like T206 or 52 Topps.

I would argue that what you're describing is not really a market, simply because the trades are so infrequent. So I think it would be a mistake to expect it to function like your average market that trades on a regular basis, like the market for a gallon of milk or a 1987T Mark McGwire.

Instead, you really have to live with the fact that it's a very different animal. For someone who owns one, it's difficult to value. For someone who wants to buy one, it's hard to say how much you'll have to pay. We can all probably guess at a range, but until one sells, we're all just guessing. Every once in a while you'll get a tantalizing glimpse of what the value could be when one sells. But the next day, that data will be old and cold.

And as a practical matter, price for items that are that rare and difficult to find will always be a function of how much a buyer is willing to pay on that day for that copy, and whether a seller is willing to let it go for that price. If you get a really motivated seller who has to sell today to a dealer to cover their mortgage, then they're not going to get very much. Or if the owner takes it to auction, then it might sell for a relatively low price, particularly if it gets overlooked by a lot of the heavy hitters. And if you have a really motivated buyer (with cash to burn) with no one really willing to sell, then the buyer might need (in effect) to be willing to keep bidding against themselves for a while before a seller decides that they'll sell at that price.

Perfect example of this dynamic for you. I have a card that is 1 of 4 that are known to exist (apparently an uncut sheet is coming to market soon, which could make it 1 of 5). Mine happens to be the highest graded, and barring some TPG shenanigans with the uncut sheet, it should stay that way. It's a well-known issue that is a bit of a grail card, so it's not some obscure and poorly understood issue. If you wanted to try to buy one today, you would probably have to be willing to pay a lot, probably at least 50-100% over what most of us would guess as the market price, which would be a lot of dough, just to pry one out of the hands of one of the current owners. But if one came to auction tomorrow, you would still have to pay a lot for it, but probably not 50-100% over what we might guess is the current market value, unless some other bidder decided to go nuts bidding against you because they had to have it.

And if you wanted to buy mine, you would probably need to be willing to pay about 20x the current market value before I would seriously consider letting it go. Naturally, no one in their right mind would pay that much, so my copy is staying right where it belongs in my collection.

So outside of cards with current comp prices how does the market roll? In your example why would someone be crazy to get a card for 20x the market value if only 4 exist? There can't be much of a real market value on it, can there? Is there market value on complete sets along with individual players that kind of keep things in check. Obviously something drives the market up, and down. Is there really any true indicators for value on the lesser known, and collected players? Isn't it hard to set a value, and a market? So it basically boils down to how much will you sell vs how much someone will pay. Then how does the market move with that type of sale? I'm pretty sure I'm getting close to buying a card that sold for far less then I'm going to pay, but there's no comp to follow.

For the most part, nothing happens until an owner decides they’re ready to sell.

Even then, they might sell it as part of a larger lot, potentially even a complete set. So you might need to be willing to buy a much larger lot that happens to include your desired piece.

It also matters what type of format the seller wants to use. They could use an auction format, in which case the 2nd highest aspiring buyer gets to set the price.

Or the seller could list it on eBay as BIN or with a really high auction starting price. Then it’s just a question of whether anyone will pay that much. If the price is high enough, it could take years to sell, or might never sell.

If you’re on the buying side, then your only options are to try to find one at auction and hope no one outbids you, or else be willing to pay whatever it takes to pry one loose from one of the current owners.

But most of the time with an issue that rare, nothing happens and the cards just stay where they are.

About the only other element is that you might be able to use a proxy to help you to estimate price. A similar player from a similar issue with similar characteristics, assuming such a thing exists and has sold recently. But even that is just an attempt to guess at market value. And unless both a potential buyer and a potential seller agree on that being a reasonable proxy, then you’re left with just negotiating.

Edited to add:

A seller could also attempt to sell through a consignment. There are several dealers and auction houses that offer this service. Often the dealer or AH knows a lot of collectors who might be interested in such a piece, and can market it on behalf of the collector. This allows the owner to expand their marking efforts beyond the population they might reach on their own, even through listing on eBay. Naturally, this service only tends to make sense if the dealer or AH expects that they can find a buyer, and expects that the value will be sufficiently high that their commission will be worth the effort. And on the flip side, some dealers and AHs will also help buyers to find stuff, often for a fee, but also usually for stuff that meets a certain minimum dollar amount.

Like raulus said, the market price for a rare card is whatever the owner feels will be enough to make him willing to sell it. In his case, that's maybe 20x what others have sold for because it's an important part of his collection and it's not like he can easily replace it. When there's a small supply, the owner sets the market price, and if there's a buyer willing to pay that price, it will sell.