How do you get your card pricing information?

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Posted By: warshawlaw 

Now that beckett's is killing its vintage mag and there are no other credible monthly pricing sources for vintage cards (the SMR is about as credible as a Hollywood press release), how do you figure the market on what you collect?

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Posted By: Dave

I'm still a novice, so I have really struggled with this issue. I have a partial T206 collection that I basically inherited. I've been trying to fill it out, still need about 75 cards, including a fair number of HOF'ers.

I've started slowly (my wife would disagree, I'm sure) and only bought minor league players, commons, and southern league.

I started with Krause, and found that less than satisfying. For the past three months, I have logged every graded card sold on ebay. I now have close to 2000 sales with various quality and prices.

I use this when I can to compare directly with cards I am considering, and I also use it to establish quality multipliers. For a given card, what is the price difference between a 3 and a 4, or a 4 and a 5. I really don't need to worry about higher grades than that; it would be inconsistent with both my existing collection and my wallet.

I need to stress that the major flaw of this is that it places prices on slabs, not on cards. When I buy, I really take a good look at the cards, not just the slabs. I only catalog it this way because I don't have the time to judge each card sold, particularly with the limited images on ebay. By using the slab grades, I probably have better consistency than if I attempted it myself.

For series that have much slower sales than the 206's, I don't know how you would establish value. I see the prices paid for some of the OJ's and really wonder how long it would take to understand pricing of those.


Dave

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Posted By: spaceops03

Just so you know, Beckett did not actually cancel production on their Beckett Vintage Price Guide, they merely changed the name. Unfortunately I can't remember what they changed it to - but ask your local card shop, they should be able to help you out. Or go directly to Beckett's home page. -Don J.

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Posted By: andy becker

book values are a joke. some are right, some are way off....and in my experience that more scarce the item...the farther off book value is. the best pricing info is derived through experience (first hand or by watching a certain sector for an extended amount of time). actual realized sales, which are not reflected in any publication that i'm aware of, are the best (and only true) barometer of values. the beckett's and scd's of the
world just don't have the time or manpower to track all cards. certainly some of us track sales for particular sets, and if you were to remove all the post 1980 cards...
makes me wonder, when will someone start publishing actual transactions (not just blurbs) and how would a publication like that be received? i would definetly be a subsciber.

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Posted By: prewarsports

I 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

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Posted By: leon

For what we collect (pre-'41) I would say that www.oldcardboard.com has about the best guide today. I know because I helped on all of the issues I know of (not that I am always correct) and other hobbyists, and the curator of the site, did lot's 'o research too. I think you will find the values much closer to reality than any book guide. The SCD is the best guide for a periodical. It just can't be as up to date as cyberspace. regards all

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Posted By: andy becker

scd is just fine for regular issued baseball cards, such as mainstream topps, t206, and plenty more. however, in instances where items are truely scarce and seldom offered, the book is just flat out wrong. even when directing completed auctions or private transactions to bob lemke, the information is chalked up to "a stich in time", or "the seller is just full of his own product". now, the later is probably true (and i'm not the seller bob referred to), but if one person(s) own a great % of a cataloged item...well then that seller's pricing should be accounted for in book guides. scd refuses time and time again to ajust their pricing on such items. i don't want to bash scd too bad, as i do feel their book is invaluable...as a checklist, and a price guide to a certain extent.

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Posted By: David Seaborn

Being dissatisfied with Krause's inaccurate numbers (no offense Bob) for all the reasons already mentioned, I have taken it upon myself to track the sale of every pre-1916 card graded by one of the big three (PSA, SGC, GAI). I only inclduded grade cards because this takes a great deal of the subjectivity out of the process. This includes eBay sales as well as all the major auction houses (buyer's premiums included). It's quite an undertaking. I've often wondered how others came up with their numbers and if this would be of value to other fellow collectors. I know there are still flaws this way, but it certainly gives better resolution than any other system of which I am aware. I've been thinking of making this available to the board somehow for quite some time.

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Posted By: botn

I do it the old fashioned way--ebay. For most issues it is the most accurate since it is both timely and the frequency of the issues appearing allow for some consistency.

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

is really subjective, why not get some experience and grade your own? Cheaper and often more accurate than PSA, SGC or GAI or, Or.

I use Lemke's guide whenever I can, but with cards which are being devowered like--chocolate bars,likes have been for the past year, guide prices won't work. Others won't work. Then the card is worth what I am willing to pay for it, and what I think I should get for it, based on my pretty modest experience. I tend to be more generous selling than buying, since i tend to sell to people I know and buy from anyone who has what I want.

At the moment, I'm selling quite a few Colgans, and going as strictly by Lemke's guide as possible.

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

The SET I thought I named as "being devowered like chocolate bars" was the N300 Mayo.

\The other night in the chatroom, someone said they'd been offered a Brouthers Mayo for 1200.00--VG. Several of us chimed in with "sounds good," and simultaneously went for our 2004 Guides. Thing lists for $800, or maybe $850, in VG. You could wait a long time...we all said it STILL sounded good.

The other experience realtes to UNPREDICTABILITY. When Mastro still had his no-juice internet auctions, someone won a T3 Keeler, ex-mint, for about $300. Winner subsequently returned it because it was " a little too small." Mastro's people measured it, and it WAS a little too small. But it looked fine. It was re-offered on Mastro's internet auction, with the above story. I was high bidder at about $300, when, just before time ran out, someone raised my bid. Etc. Etc. Etc. To make a long story short, the "too small" Keeler was won by me for $900!
It's STILL too small (hasn't grown a millimeter), and it still looks fine.

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Posted By: Tbob

Ebay can really distort prices too. I know that there are 4 or 5 bidders I have to always battle it out with on E94s and tough T207s (more T207 collectors popping up all the time)and I always wonder how skewed the auction results are compared to what these cards bring at card shows, National, etc.

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Posted By: Chuck Ross

For folks interested in vintage nonsports cards, the situation is worse as there are really no magazines or web sites to go by and the most recent price guide for 30's stuff is hopelessly out of date (published in 1992). There is really nothing to go by but eBay. I have a pretty nice type card collection of R-card nonsports from the 30's. Recently a very tough issue came up on eBay, the first time I have seen it for sale anywhere. The 1992 price guide had the card at $15. I bid $700 and lost.

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Posted By: Greg Ecklund

Lemke's guide works fine for me, as long as the set is relatively liquid like a 50's or 60's Topps set, and as long as the card isn't slabbed.

For lesser seen sets, you pretty much have to go by what you are comfortable paying - if you collect one of those sets you can generally develop your own feel. For example, I'm mostly working on BF2 right now and I can tell you that Lemke's guide is great as a checklist, but with regards to rarity of specific pennants it is no help at all. Rabbit Maranville and Red Faber are listed at the same price, logical since they are similar tier Hall of Famers, but try collecting this set and seeing how many of each you see. Nice Maranvilles show up on EBay quite often, but good luck finding a Faber. I recently paid $600 for one, simply because I didn't want to wait another three or four years for one to show up. Talking experienced and trustworthy dealers is a plus too - Terry Knouse was very helpful to me when I first started the set, letting me know which ones were especially scarce.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I find that tracking price data on ebay is the best way to find the realistic national market for a card. The fact that hard core collectors from all over slug it out for rarer cards on ebay proves its utility as a means of pricing those items. In economic terms, ebay is very close to a perfect market (where all participants have equal access to information and equal opportunity to participate in the market).

I certainly think you can find bargains at shows as compared to ebay because so many non-market factors go into pricing cards for shows. I often pick up cards at shows for well under what they bring on ebay.

As far as using real prices for references, my boxing card book (shameless plug) does precisely that. I have been a long time vocal critic of publications that find it necessary to extrapolate prices for cards that do not exist simply in order to fill out their columns.