eBay Selling Price Guides -- Interesting Article in WSJ

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Posted By: Hankron

I will note that I have an aversion to price guides and, as a seller, know how off they are. If I sell two identical things, call them C, the first C will sell for $5 and the second C for $40 ... A month later a collector emails me and says, "I have a C. Do you know what it's worth?," and I will say "You've got me." ... If I were to say, it's worth $22.50 (average), that would be as arbitrary is if I said it's worth $5.

I tend to beleive that an expert in the area, including an active buyer and seller, is a superior judge of financial vale than an analysis of raw sell numbers eminating from a computer screen. If a price guide 'expert' can't tell the difference between a fake and an authentic card being offered or why that's a particularly desirable and rare pose of Mickey Mantle in that photo, then I don't know the value of his (or her) final numbers.

And do you know what most many experts in an collecting area will tell you when you ask to learn about value? "Throw away your price guides."