Posted By:
Eric BrehmI don't know if PSA has ever tried to use their SMR price guide to try to manipulate the graded baseball card market in any fashion, but I have no doubt that they wield a considerable amount of influence with it. To some degree the market follows SMR, rather than the other way around. Many people do use it as a baseline when buying and selling.
If you look at historical price figures reported by VCP, and try to use them to estimate what something is 'worth', e.g. what you should bid or ask for it, you are doing essentially the same thing statistical analysts must be doing at PSA: trying to predict the future based on observations and intrepretations of past sales, variations and trends in the historical pattern, and so on. VCP is just raw data, and you have to figure out what to do with it yourself. Price estimates listed in SMR and other guides of that type are the result of analysis performed on data, which may or may not add value, depending on the range of data upon which the derivations are based, and on the skill of the analyst. Also, the particular data, concepts and methods that are used to produce the price guides are generally not revealed to the consumer. So, take your pick -- raw data or processed data -- or just use each for whatever purposes it best serves.
Many people have said they think that prices for baseball cards have dropped significantly in recent months, especially in certain segments of the market; if so, it will be interesting to see if SMR makes some downward adjustments across the board to reflect that.