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

[barrysloate]

Price guides are exactly what the name suggests: guides. They are often not accurate but can still be useful to help one determine which cards are valuable within a set. You may not, for example, be able to accurately price T-206 by using a price guide. But you will recognize that Demmitt and O'Hara are key cards, that they are worth more than Elberfeld, which is worth more than G. Brown, etc. So they are not entirely worthless, but by themselves not sufficient to determine market value.

I would say use everything available to you- guides, ebay and auction sales, VCP, prices, retail lists, and anything else you can find. The try to interpret these numbers as best as you can. Somewhere among all that data are accurate values.