PSA Sports Market Report

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Posted By: Ben

I have subscribed to the PSA Sports Market Report for 9-10 months now. I notice that all of the vintage card issues I am interested have not gone up or down in price according to this guide. It also seems that all of the cards are undervalued. For instance, I purchased a Ty Cobb (Bat off) T206 on ebay graded PSA 4 for around $1400.00 which I think is a good/fair price. Since I have been getting the SMR it values this card at 1000.00. I would be glad to buy all the Cobb PSA 4's I could find for a thousand dollars. Does PSA actually claim that the prices given are based on anything?

Ben

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Posted By: Scott Levy

IMO the SMR report will give you an idea of relative valuation, but other than that, it's largely a waste of paper. If you're looking for the real trends, "vintagecardprices" is the best way.

Regards,
Scott

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Posted By: B D

many PSA 7 1915 cracker jack hall of famers are listed for $750.00!

their problem is they simple go by needing to see several sell for the reality value of around 2k before they bump it! If only two are available in the market in five years for the 2k they won't change the value according to the SMR! 12 in like 2 months or one bug Mastro auction have to hit the 2k before they recognize a consistency so cost averaging is obviously not their method.




BcD

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Posted By: Ben

B D,
I see your point regarding rarer/high grade cards but a Cobb bat off shoulder graded PSA 4 probably sells several times during any given month on eBay (and you can usually find this card in several auction catalogs). I just get the feeling they don't even try to adjust the prices so they reflect actual market values.

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Posted By: Eric Brehm

I agree with Scott, SMR is good to get a feel for relative valuation between sets, and among cards within each set. As you have seen, it is often slow to react to apparent changes in the market (e.g. when certain issues or cards get 'hot'). In some cases maybe they just haven't gotten around to updating their prices yet; I have no idea what their methodology is. Nevertheless, SMR is widely used as a baseline for pricing by both buyers and sellers, and is thus a worthwhile reference.

Vintagecardprices.com provides actual sales figures for all the auctions they track, so you can do your own analysis of the data as you wish. You can throw out the unusually high or low sales, average them, try to discern a trend over time, or whatever, in arriving at what you think the 'market value' of something is. Many of their sales figures include links to images of the cards in question, so you can see what the cards that sold actually looked like (e.g. how strong they were for their assigned grade).