Is the baseball card market a "perfect" market? The Demise of the "price guide"

[Rich Klein]

No, no guide can ever be perfect because we are in many cases shooting at a moving target.

In addition, especially in the thinly traded sets, one or two big sales or sales below expectiations can certainly change the perception of what something is worth.

As for VCP remember that not all "6's" are truly alike as some may be technically a six but not look as nice as cards which are 4's.

Where cataloguers and pricers have to make sure they are correct is in the checklisting of information. Because pricing can always be adjusted but bad data is much harder to fix.

For those thinly traded vintage sets my goals were thus

1) Get the checklist IN and correctly
2) Get an image for the card so we could see what said card in a set looked like
3) Get the pricing right.

Remember Step 3 is easier to do when steps 1 and 2 are completed.

And for Beckett, getting Steps 1 and 2 right are even more important since BGS and COMC, among others, needs to use those checklists.

Step 3 is also important but can wait for 1 and 2

Rich