How to put cash value on cards

[Vintage Vern]

that don't come up for sale often? Other than the often sold high value cards, the value guides are worthless IMO, at least for rare uncommon cards. So how do you put a value on something that isn't anything more than an obscure common player that rarely sells at AH or EBay that many people have no interest in. It seems if I find a card it always has a premium price for a common player. So how should I approach this? I basically have 2 options over pay or never aquire a card. Is there any way to reach middle ground? Also how do people track AH for rare uncommon players. Is there a simple way to track a certain player at all AH? I'll just kick this out for an example. PSA says card value is $53.00 the seller wants way more $400.00, but I have little resources with sales recently for guidelines to counter offer. The other issue is these don't come up very often yet still don't have the value. So how do I play the game?