T205 card value estimator

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Posted By: Lentel

I know there is a link for a t206 value extimator allowing you to enter all the back variations, but is there one for t205 cards?

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Posted By: Russ Bright

Nope, and vintagecardprices.com doesn't "do" Raw cards (a mistake IMHO) . I cant afford PSA5/SGC60 of most of these cards. If I find a raw poor card for some of the rarer ones i'm lucky. This (T205) is the set i'm working on and it's very difficult getting any uniformity to these. Some people pay LOTS for rarer ones and some cards don't have much command at all.

It would be nice to have a compilation of data of T205 INCLUDING the raw card data just as a starting point. This might not be very easy. This set (and most sets) seem to be in a state of flux right now (and always) - Even knowing what soimething is "worth" doesn't help when you're willing to pay 2x book for a card to complete your set...

What you're willing to pay. I paid more than I should have for a few of the cards in my collection (T205 Johnson - Sovereign- G 200+) But i WANTED that card.

Someday it may happen, I know there are some people compiling raw data and maybe someday we'll have someplace that we can see it all... I'm doing my own research and am finding out TONS about this set and what people are willing to pay, which influences what I'm willing to pay.

Short answer, No, but I wish there were...

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Posted By: Russ Bright

are there any places out there that don't charge to find the pricing information? Or maybe this would be a better question? If i'm going to spend money to get updated pricing information (which it looks like i have to) which is the best place to go and why? If anyone wants to e-mail me offlist about this at ambrosia2@hotmail.com that would be a good thing as I don't want to hijack threads or start a flamewar (How's that for CYA, Leon?)

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Posted By: leon

We can have a friendly debate here....For the most part I don't really want advertising for other sites on our site but since both cardpricer.com and vintagecardprices.com are currently taking off I see no harm in "a" thread to discuss it/them. My guess is both will be good sites..... As an addicted collector that focuses on extremely obscure types I am not sure of my need for them but in general I am sure they can provide a good service for a lot of folks. Only time will tell if they can make it, financially. regards

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Posted By: dstudeba

I used to use smartcollector.com for old eBay information, but all of my searches come up empty these days. Does anyone know anything about it?

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Posted By: J Levine

I have been tracking t205 data (mostly back rarity) for nearly 8 years. I have not posted yet on this past year as I am still compiling some things from the national and a few auction houses. I have also been following prices for the last couple of years esp. on the rare variations, single prints, minor leaugers, and rarer backs (Cycle and harder).

Russ is correct when he states that the variance in prices is rather strange. Lately, prices really seem to have been all over the map. I.E. a T205 Wilhelm suffe ed variation (the easier variation) sold on ebay for nearly $300. Same card better condition sold at a larger auction house a month earlier for just above half the price.

Raw cards in T205 often sell for considerably less than graded (more so than T206 and other similar sets). A PSA 2 common will sell for around $30-$50 while the same common will sell raw for around 1/4 to a 1/3 of that price.

When it comes to some of the tougher backs, I use my own judgement on some of the backs. People continue to put a premium on the Polar Bear backs eventhough they are far more common that either or the Sweet Cap. backs. I saw six Broadleafs on ebay this year. All were around g-vg condition. 5 commons sold between 3x-21x book value. The one star sold for nearly 13x book. Strange that there is such a wide range? Not sure.

When it comes to Hindu and Drum, I go by what the market sustains. I would be willing to spend a small fortune (at least for a teacher) on a Drum back myself.

Not that any of this seems helpful but just observations.

Joshua

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

smartcollector.com is wonderful as long as you don't mind that it never works. A real POS. Otherwise, it's a great site.

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Posted By: Bobby

Russ,

The reason why we do not have raw cards in our database is how are we to determine the grade classification from an image on a computer screen that 99% of the time shows only a front image. Then we have to determine whether or not it is real, reprint or some how doctored or trimmed. There are to many factors in this area that could go wrong. We feel and try to provide data that is at least 99% correct and reliable information to the membership. And the only way we can do that is to let the grading companies do there job and we report it.

You can also for yourself look at the raw card and try to figure out what grade it will get and then search www.vintagecardprices.com for the card and compare the graded results. This way you are the grader and make the choice.

I hope you understand our reasons for not covering raw material.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

The reasons for not tracking raw card prices appear valid in my estimation. A user can generate his own correction factor for estimating raw values from graded examples.

There is just too much potential for inaccuracy otherwise. And that potential inaccuracy could comprimize the perceived value of the utility offered.

I think that both price utilities are doing well. However, Id like to see more emphasis on price and image data entry, and less focus on special features; at this juncture.

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Posted By: Herb Jones

i actually found this board because of a forum message on VcP. I found VCP on a website called sportscollectorsdaily.com Which i think is a great site. I am not much of a vintage collector (my favorite player is Herb Score) and i just started collecting a little while ago ... i have done the most reading on T206 which is done here. But i still don't know that much.

Here are some pro's and cons of both sites:

Pro's of VCP:
1) links to ebay auctions / it's a nice way to find stuff i'm looking for.
2) images already tied to checklists - although they don't have a ton of images most of what i looked at had a card shown.
3) the site looks like it is a place to get "vintage" prices so that works well. it is also fancy with the bling on the top bar ... nice work there. the flash animation does it well.

I have not signed up for their paid service so i don't know how good their pricing information is or is not so i cannot comment.

Con's:
1) functionality seems next to impossible for me. this may be a me thing and not an everybody thing but it takes forever to get to the information.
2) I didn't spend a lot of time checking out all the other "content" because it doesn't really work ... does that make sense... like my cards might work but it was so hard to navigate to card information i was just frustrated to try it out.
3) confused by the information - why is T206 split up into more than one set. Maybe this is confusing for me. If that's the case then do they count this as just one set in their set count or as multiple.
4) the searching is flat out broke .. it took me 20 guesses to figure out that i had to enter white borders to see 206.
5) one thing that disturbed me was that the article said that VCP had way more members than they do according to the vcp site itself.


I checked out CardPricer.com shortly after reading the post a few above by Leon. It's in beta and the forum post from the mod seems to invite commentary by people so i guess that will explain some of the stuff


Pro's-
1. In response to the post above by gilbert.... there stats are impressive. I think they seem to have a ton of data (500,000 sales entered) and a ton of checklists, players etc. That absolutely dwarfs what is listed on VCP. it seams to cover the same stuff VCP is trying to cover except for 89 upper deck. It's nice too that they appear to be in the process of providing information for everything so you don't have to sign up at 30 different places to get information that you want.
3. it's not the easiest site to figure out but it's fairly easy to get information once you get your head on straight (i don't know if that's good or bad). I guess a little bit of both.
4. Decent search - it works better than vcp but is still a little more difficult than i would like. If you type in 1952 topps you don't see anything... you have to type in topps and then find 1952. If you search by player .. the list works great but it would be nice if you were just taken to the page if you type in hank aaron. The search by year is nice too but i just feel like the message is missing. I come to the homepage and i feel like my expectations weren't quite met.
5. Massive amount of pricing - they have over 6 million transactions in their que ... so i guess those are waiting to be posted or something ... but assuming that data isn't going anywhere that's a lot of information they are sitting on.
6. 2 week trial, i'm able to get pricing for some sets because of a free trial.


Cons -
1. You can't see any individual transactions and you don't know how many counts are in their numbers. Their registration thingy alludes to this being included soon but i have not seen it. That would certainly help.
2. image access - you have to go to a whole new "site" to view their images. They apparently have a ton of them ... and i like the option of being able to see their images but you can't see them at the same time as a "checklist".
3. my collection is a bit on the clunky side. one of their news snipets on the front says they just added some features so i would suspect they are working on them. You don't have to use my collection from what i can tell so maybe that's not a big deal.
4. I didn't realize it at first, but apparantly what the "live sets" button is supposed to tell you is which sets have pricign entered. It's a bit of a problem for the whole site where you just don't have a consistent enough understanding... but if they fix that it will be a nice step up.
5. there is no way to compare cards within the sets to one and other .... like a price guide page (does that make sense).


Okay so that's kinda it for me. They're both out and i don't think either has a completely finished product. They each have their pros and cons It'll be nice to see what happens when CardPricer.com moves out of Beta and when VCP gets the site working.

Herb Jones

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Posted By: Bobby

Herb,

I like what you have said in the pro's & cons of each site and agree with you on some of it. But there is a few major points you have failed to point out. I will start by addressing your cons:

point #3: we split up the T206 set and a few other sets because the type of back on the card plays a major part in the price of the card. We can't have a Cobb with a common back that sells practically every other day in the same set as one with a UZIT back that sell for 10x's more and maybe once a year. It would throw off the "My collection" values and would get kicked from the system in a short period of time because we hold 25 of the latest auction results for every grade.

Point #4: We are in the process of adding a search function by ACC# to simplify the process. And we currently have 3 search functions, last name, set name and type card.

Point #5: The member count is not correct because we added that much later after the site launched and it really does not work properly. We are in the process of adjusting the counter to the right number but have not really put high priority on it and rather take care of other issues before we fix it.

CP pro's & cons:

Though the numbers they throw out at you do seem impressive they are not the tell all.

20,993 sets WOW but only 51 have price information according to their live stats. We have 460 sets with 95% price information. Maybe because we track eBay daily and verify every auction that goes into our database for almost a year with 80,000 recorded auctions. They get their data from eBay as well but tell me how can they decipher the information? How do they know which cards are reprints or auctions listed incorrectly with out seeing them when the auction was live. We post the results with links to the actual auction for you to verify. How are they getting there prices it is a mystery to me.

We are supplying true and verifiable data for the membership and will continue to do so in the future. I have been asked many time why we don't add prices from private sales? And my answer is if we or the members can't verify it we won't post it. It would be to easy for people to tell me they paid $5.000 for a card and in actuality paid $3,000 and we post it. Some person comes along and sees it and might buy it for the inflated price. It is an area we wont get into and never will. I expressed my opinion earlier in regards to raw cards. How they can have this in their data is beyond me with so many reprints and trimmed or doctored cards out there. Again how do the determine which is legit and which is not?

Lastly, I offered anybody on this board a free 2 week trial period just sign up as a limited member contact me which is on every page of the site and I will upgrade you to a VIP. If you like what we offer then you can start paying if not then you won't.

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Posted By: Anonymous

Bobby -
Thank you for your response but i don't quite understand all of your responses. I am a bit turned off by some of them as well.

VCP
Pt 3: You still split up the T206 set in a way that makes no sense. If someone was to split the set up the logical way to do it would be into 3 parts (the monster). Nobody would argue your point about the backs. Since your software gets screwed you should consider changing the software not the checklist.

Pt 4: Okay, fine but i was talking about the site today. You can't ignore what they will do, but you can't say your product is better because you are going to have a feature a competitor already has. CardPricer.com mentions something about their checklist browser. It's not working, so i'm not going to give them kudos for it.

pt 5: i don't know a lot about this but I find that hard to believe. Your forum says how many members you have. I looked at the list. The #s stated in the article aren't even close. You look like a liar or you make that news source look bad. I'm not saying you don't have those numbers i just think that if you are going to say something have the ability to back it up.

CP
Good point but the 51 sets account for 500,000 transactions. That's roughly 1/12 of all transactions on eBay. That's a pretty good chunk of information. Why is having more sets with less information better?

If your stats are correct, about 185 transactions/set. That seems low. If t206 accounted for 10,000 transactions, your other sets are running thin. I have browsed through most of the priced sets on cardpricer.com, most cards have information.

I can't imagine that you read every transaction on ebay.com. If you are deciphering the listings manually that is incredibly time consuming. I said you linking to eBay definitely helps. Cardpricer.com doesn't do that. Anyone know how CardPricer gets their information & how/if they verify it?

I don't think anyone would expect you to put private sales into your guide. It's hard for you to pat yourself on the back if it's something that everyone does. Do beckett and that big book that comes out every year put private sales in?

I am not sure how CardPricer.com deals with raw prices. But if you look at a scan, do you always know if it "real". The way you do it seems subjective to me. I don see anything on your site about a free trial.

Neither you or cardpricer.com has earned my money and i don't see any reason for that to change yet. I really like the idea that you guys let people value up your collection totals. I don't have that on my collection at cardpricer.com. i like how you can edit a bunch of details about your purchase there. There are so many choices for tracking your collection, i'm not sure how much i'll use either of these sites for that, But again, both products have their strengths and their weaknesses.

Herb

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Posted By: Anonymous

Why did you ban me?