Posted By:
prewarsportsI personally make a lot of mental notes when I look at things on ebay. If I have an unusual item and want to get an idea for value, I search completed items on ebay to see what things actually went for.
Ebay can be misleading though as you need 2 people to want an item to get a price for it. At a card show or persoan to person sale, you can set a price and only need one person to decide they want it.
I once sold something on ebay and got $11 for it. When the individual did not pay, I relisted it and it cleared well over $100.
The best thing to do is watch sales in all areas available to you, and when in doubt, ask questions on this forum. The collective knowledge on this website is far superior to any other source in the hobby.
The Krause book is improving though, and I know Bob Lemke is working hard with collectors to make it a more accurate guage of the market. I anticipate there will be some big imprvements in the next issue.
My biggest problem with price guides in they try to make card collecting values a formula, IE VG=30%, EX=50%. This hardly ever works, especially for older cards where VG is average condition and not NrMt, but they use the same pricing formula for 1994 cards as 1887 cards. For example on this issue, the Stevens Cabinet listed in the 2004 SCD was discovered by me and the photo in the price guide is of my cabinet (since sold). I sold it for $1000 in VG condition. So since this was added to the book based on my sale it should go in the book at $1000 in VG right? Wrong, it did go in at $1100, but in NrMt making it seem like my cabinet was worth $350 in VG.
Guides will never be perfect but like I said, the SCD is getting better and you have to credit Bob Lemke for putting forth the effort.
Rhys