Graded Card Price Guides
 

Hey everyone. I'm another one of those collectors just getting back into the hobby (about a 10 year hiatus). My question is - what do you guys use to get a gauge for how much others have valued a particular graded card you are looking at? Based upon board lurking it seems that cardtarget and VCP are the main ones but am wondering if there's something else I haven't unearthed.

I'm referring to online auction results. I have researched it a bit and here's what I've found:

ebay - only 3 months history
cardtarget - I can find only a handful of sets (but if you were going to pick vintage sets, I think they've nailed the most popular ones)
VCP - pretty comprehensive it seems
cardpricer - haven't read much about them.
sportscarddatabase.com - signed up but I got a message saying their price history is only available to their developers or some crap like that.
zistle - does not distinguish graded

Thanks.

Hey Snooker,

I mainly use eBay completed listings and cardtarget. VCP is another source that quite a few people use. Once you become more involved and consistent with buying whatever it is you collect, it will not take long before you can use your experience as a guide too.

The hardest prices to gauge are the tough, rare, and scarce type of cards because they may not come around too often to get an accurate price on their past sales. I also use friends to lean on if I need help....that's always a good source to put in your back pocket! :)

Good luck!

Hi FH - thank you for taking the time to respond. Sounds like I've got my bases covered!

I mostly use eBay past history and CardTarget, but Google is also very good for finding prices at various auction houses that may be missed or not covered by CardTarget and fall outside the three month eBay window. That is especially helpful when you are dealing with something like postcards that are rare and don't come up for auction very often.

As a starting point, I use an old copy of the Sports Collectors Digest to get a sense of raw card pricing. My guide is a bit old, so I then cross reference it with eBay completed sales to get an accurate impression of the current market for raw and graded cards. I chase after some seldom seen cards, so it helps to have the raw price guide to get a sense of whether the 1 or 2 completed sales are anomalies or within what I consider an appropriate range.

All the above are great recommendations. Having a good base of knowledge of previous sales for price ranges will save you from someone trying to bend you over on a card.....believe me, there's WAY too many of these assholes out there slowly killing the hobby unfortunately.