question for the board regulars

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Posted By: J. McMurry

I've been posting in here mostly about autographs,and that is still my #1 pursuit,but I have to admit that you card guys have given me the itch to get into the cards again. My question to you is, are the top 50 ebay dealers listed on the front page all legit? Does Old Cardboard.com check them out, or just list them? would like to hear others' experiences good and bad.

Thanks,
J. McMurry

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Posted By: Jim VB

The editor of Old Cardboard is a board member, here so Lyman will probably answer those questions for you. But those listings are based on the largest number of sales for cards pre-1950. The sellers feedback % is also listed. I just looked at the list briefly. Several board members are on that list, so...

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Posted By: JimB

I am familiar with about half of them and they are all reputable.
JimB

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Posted By: Brett Hardeman

Hello,

I am Brett Hardeman from Old Cardboard Magazine, and I was alerted to this post with questions about our eBay Sellers List so I thought I would post. Before we launched the Magazine we aimed for our website to be a free, one-stop for information on old baseball cards, and we thought about publishing a list of sellers; sort of a who's who selling on eBay (it's been up for about 5 years now). It is rough and a labor-intensive collection process involving going out to eBay and looking for folks selling vintage (we classify as 50 years old and older) baseball cards and finding out who they are, inputting their eBay sales data, feedback rating, how much stuff they sell is truly vintage, if they accept CC/Paypal or not, and a link to their auction on eBay.

Just for reference the list is located at: http://www.oldcardboard.com/ref/ebay-sellers/ebay-sellers.asp

...and has been updated as of today (April 2).

Now let's here mention: since the list is labor intensive and somewhat subjective (we have to calculate how much vintage material each person sells as best we can) it should be noted that we may miss a SellerID. If you know of a seller that should possibly belong on the list and is not, please email me their SellerID so we can research and add their information. We currently track sales data for about 250 sellers, but limit the list to the top 50 just to keep it manageable and interesting to buyers.

For calculation we take a Seller's sale transactions (not total transactions) and multiply by the percentage of vintage baseball cards they sell. For instance:

Darby-s
4,724 sales transactions, (x) appx. 50% vintage cards = 2362* rating.

*This puts Darby-s at #34 on our list of 50.
We go just a little bit further and offer CC accept/info, ebay rating, and a link to stuff for sale by Darby-s on eBay.

We do not get any direct fed data from eBay so it is again important to note that we keep up the list as best we can.

Hopefully this helps explain the list a little, but if you have any questions feel free to send us an email and we'd be happy to explain a little further. If you or someone you know should be on the list, please email and let us know their eBay ID so we can add them.

Thanks,
Brett Hardeman
brett@oldcardboard.com

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Posted By: Steve Murray

But Darby-s doesn't sell graded cards so what good is that?

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Posted By: Bob

I know #40 is a helluva nice guy and solid collector/dealer

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I don't know all of the folks on the list, but many are reputable dealers and some are board regulars (including Bob, above).

Beyond asking people what they think of a popular a particular seller (which is a good idea), you can test out a seller by buying inexpensive items-- seeing the quality of the product and service. Many of the dealers who I would today purchase an expensive item from were people I originally bought a $20 item and was happy with the first purchase. At the very worst, you're only out $20 and, in the long run, some of your all time favorite cards will turn out to be the inexpensive purchases.

If you're buying a $20 or $30 card from a seller you're unfamiliar with, you're not taking much risk. Besides, for the beginning collector it's a good idea anyway to start with a variety of relatively inexpensive cards, just so you can test the waters and see what you like. It's good to see a variety of stuff in person. If an interested beginning collector was a billionaire, I'd still recommend he start buy buying an assortment of inexpensive cards so he could see what he likes and learns what cards look like in person. If he wanted to spend $2 million on cards, I'd still tell him to take his time and see what's out there before spending the big money, just so he'd spending the money on stuff he knew about and knew he liked.

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Posted By: J. McMurry

Thanks to everyone for their responses.

I guess my main question as a newbie to the vintage cards area, is, when using the top 50 list how much do I need to worry about buying a card thats a reprint,trimmed,altered, etc.?

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I don't know all the sellers on the list, so I couldn't give a blanket statement.

Two points of advise are: If you buy a card graded by PSA or SGC, you can saftely assume it is genuine. If you buy low grade cards, alterations and trimming are much less of an issue.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I don't know all the sellers on the list, so I couldn't give a blanket statement.

Two points of advise are: If you buy a card graded by PSA or SGC, you can saftely assume it is genuine. Cards in GAI and Beckett holders are more than probably authentic as well, but there will be various debates about how they grade. If you find a good eBay deal on a 1933 Goudey in a GAI holder, it's safe to assume the card is genuine. Also, If you buy low grade cards, alterations and trimming are much less of an issue. People who set out to buy only raw Mint 1952 Topps will encounter many trimmed and altered cards. A collector who sets out to buy Poor/Fair Old Judges will not have the same problem. If that well worn original T206 Ty Cobb has rounded corners four rough edges, you will be confident it wasn't put under a razor blade or paper cutter recently. There's an old card collector saying: "Obviously it hasn't been restored. It looks like crap."

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Posted By: dennis

i would say you do not have to worry at all about buying from those sellers. i believe all of them stand behind the cards they sell and offer a return policy.

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Posted By: Brett Hardeman

I might add that we have added and keep track of known sellers passing off newspaper clippings as baseball cards, trimmed cards, reprints, etc. and red flag them in our database so they are omitted from the eBay Sellers List. We thank you and appreciate your support of Old Cardboard Magazine and website and if you have any suggestions about this tool or any of our resources please do not hesitate to send us an email.

brett@oldcardboard.com or
editor@oldcardboard.com

Brett Hardeman
www.oldcardboard.com

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Posted By: davidcycleback

If you catch one of the fifty describing the below as having "light edge wear, otherwise mint" or "scarce deckle edge variation," cross him off your list.

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Posted By: J. McMurry

Thanks guys,

Brett answered the big question, which is busted dealers are pulled off the list.

I'm not gonna really be buying for investment purposes. I'll just be picking up low/medium grade cards I can afford, of sets that I really like. Will probably try to purchase some ungraded cards too.