T205 card value estimator

[Archive]

Posted By: Herb Jones

i actually found this board because of a forum message on VcP. I found VCP on a website called sportscollectorsdaily.com Which i think is a great site. I am not much of a vintage collector (my favorite player is Herb Score) and i just started collecting a little while ago ... i have done the most reading on T206 which is done here. But i still don't know that much.

Here are some pro's and cons of both sites:

Pro's of VCP:
1) links to ebay auctions / it's a nice way to find stuff i'm looking for.
2) images already tied to checklists - although they don't have a ton of images most of what i looked at had a card shown.
3) the site looks like it is a place to get "vintage" prices so that works well. it is also fancy with the bling on the top bar ... nice work there. the flash animation does it well.

I have not signed up for their paid service so i don't know how good their pricing information is or is not so i cannot comment.

Con's:
1) functionality seems next to impossible for me. this may be a me thing and not an everybody thing but it takes forever to get to the information.
2) I didn't spend a lot of time checking out all the other "content" because it doesn't really work ... does that make sense... like my cards might work but it was so hard to navigate to card information i was just frustrated to try it out.
3) confused by the information - why is T206 split up into more than one set. Maybe this is confusing for me. If that's the case then do they count this as just one set in their set count or as multiple.
4) the searching is flat out broke .. it took me 20 guesses to figure out that i had to enter white borders to see 206.
5) one thing that disturbed me was that the article said that VCP had way more members than they do according to the vcp site itself.


I checked out CardPricer.com shortly after reading the post a few above by Leon. It's in beta and the forum post from the mod seems to invite commentary by people so i guess that will explain some of the stuff


Pro's-
1. In response to the post above by gilbert.... there stats are impressive. I think they seem to have a ton of data (500,000 sales entered) and a ton of checklists, players etc. That absolutely dwarfs what is listed on VCP. it seams to cover the same stuff VCP is trying to cover except for 89 upper deck. It's nice too that they appear to be in the process of providing information for everything so you don't have to sign up at 30 different places to get information that you want.
3. it's not the easiest site to figure out but it's fairly easy to get information once you get your head on straight (i don't know if that's good or bad). I guess a little bit of both.
4. Decent search - it works better than vcp but is still a little more difficult than i would like. If you type in 1952 topps you don't see anything... you have to type in topps and then find 1952. If you search by player .. the list works great but it would be nice if you were just taken to the page if you type in hank aaron. The search by year is nice too but i just feel like the message is missing. I come to the homepage and i feel like my expectations weren't quite met.
5. Massive amount of pricing - they have over 6 million transactions in their que ... so i guess those are waiting to be posted or something ... but assuming that data isn't going anywhere that's a lot of information they are sitting on.
6. 2 week trial, i'm able to get pricing for some sets because of a free trial.


Cons -
1. You can't see any individual transactions and you don't know how many counts are in their numbers. Their registration thingy alludes to this being included soon but i have not seen it. That would certainly help.
2. image access - you have to go to a whole new "site" to view their images. They apparently have a ton of them ... and i like the option of being able to see their images but you can't see them at the same time as a "checklist".
3. my collection is a bit on the clunky side. one of their news snipets on the front says they just added some features so i would suspect they are working on them. You don't have to use my collection from what i can tell so maybe that's not a big deal.
4. I didn't realize it at first, but apparantly what the "live sets" button is supposed to tell you is which sets have pricign entered. It's a bit of a problem for the whole site where you just don't have a consistent enough understanding... but if they fix that it will be a nice step up.
5. there is no way to compare cards within the sets to one and other .... like a price guide page (does that make sense).


Okay so that's kinda it for me. They're both out and i don't think either has a completely finished product. They each have their pros and cons It'll be nice to see what happens when CardPricer.com moves out of Beta and when VCP gets the site working.

Herb Jones