What is happening with baseball card prices?

[Johnny630]

Originally Posted by packs

I have a theory and I believe it is sound but nobody likes it on the main board. There are a few unscrupulous sellers who are known to shill bid their auctions or at least not do anything about their consignors shill bidding their auctions and over the last few years there have been thread after thread about them.

The threads all have a common theme: how is X getting this price for this card?

They're not. Nobody ever pays for the card. That's why the card gets listed over and over and over again by the same seller. It never actually sold.

BUT if you have the same card in the same condition and you SEE a sale price for a card that didn't actually sell, you're more than likely to use that sale as a benchmark for pricing your own card, believing that price to be market value.

As a result, you have cheap cards being measured against a price point they should have never reached. Thereby raising the price of that card.

Totally Agree and it's been happening for years....It's my guess it's legal/or extremely difficult to prove, Who is the Victim? Is it the Marketplace and Future Perspective Buyers? I don't know seems like a conspiracy to me but I guess without a true victim its hard to charge..idk i'm holding out hope .....but have little to no faith left. We know altering a card isn't a crime. We know TPG's won't back up their grade, we know most major auction houses will not accept returns, we know to expect to see the same card by same auction house to be relisted time and time again always selling or we are led to believe selling at a higher number. Very Odd Or How about a now expected to see norm...it's depressing.

I see no signs of this stopping.....it's Had No Effect on the Prices Rising.

Will it only continue to go up???? Who Knows.... I've been wrong before.

One thing in this hobby will never change, Buyer Beware. That's all you can do, protect yourself, no one else will.