VCP and auction houses

[wonkaticket]

Originally Posted by thekingofclout

but can't VCP gather the info for themselves and post their findings on their website? I understand that it will entail more work for them but they do charge a fee for their services.

I wish I had someone doing my legwork for me, free of charge, but unfortunately, life rarely works that way.

Bingo...my thoughts too.

[Jim VB]

Doesn't seem to matter what they do tonight. They are always logged on for me, but tonight, they signed me out and won't allow me to log back in.

There are alot of cards that never make it to VCP. Pricing has to be half you and half them to stay on top of what it really is. Cards that I know for a fact that have sold many times show 08 and 07 as last dates sold. They are auctions and auction houses selling not private and store sales.

[thekingofclout]

Originally Posted by Pup6913

There are alot of cards that never make it to VCP. Pricing has to be half you and half them to stay on top of what it really is.

If that's the case, why in the hell would anyone pay for their services?!

If paying customers are expected to report all/any of their buys and sells, seems to me that there should only be a nominal fee, if any fee at all.

I don't buy into that argument at all. For example, let's say that there are three auctions a month from the top dozen auction houses with 60-70% of the lots being slabbed cards. I would think that there are plenty of students looking for a part time gig where they could do all of the work at home or in their dorm room. Not that big of deal for them to harvest all of the needed info pertaining to the card sales. Also, I would think that some young go-getter could write some software that could do the bulk of the work.

On the other hand, many auction houses are usually running on a skeleton crew as it is, and to expect them to dedicate X amount of man hours to provide VCP is certainly not reasonable in my opinion.

I want to be clear that I am not saying that this is what VCP is asking from the auction houses in any way, shape, or form, as I have no idea. I'm simply responding to the comments made in this thread.

Sincerely, Jimmy

[Leon]

There has to be code exchanged on both sides of the equation for VCP to scrape data from any place.
It would probably be extremely time consuming to do it manually.

[BobbyVCP]

Just to let you know we have been adding there sales data to the site and yes it is very time consuming and a major pain. What you do not get is the email alerts for any items that may be on your want list. I think it is a dumb move on there parts. There explanation to me was that buyers where comparing the lower priced sales from eBay and not paying as much as before. So by not having them in our site does that mean that the people still won't check out prices before placing a bid? And how many potential bidders are they missing out on from our more then 2000 Want Lists created by our members.

Yes there are a lot of private sales but we will not include non verifiable data on the site. We are not going to base values on he said she said.

[Abravefan11]

Originally Posted by BobbyVCP

There explanation to me was that buyers where comparing the lower priced sales from eBay and not paying as much as before.

Not submitting their prices doesn't stop me in anyway from getting the same Ebay information. So this explanation doesn't hold water or was poorly thought out.

"It's the economy stupid!"

[BobbyVCP]

[QUOTE
I want to be clear that I am not saying that this is what VCP is asking from the auction houses in any way, shape, or form, as I have no idea. I'm simply responding to the comments made in this thread.

Sincerely, Jimmy[/QUOTE]

This is a very simple xml feed that is provided by the auction houses software company and takes just a few minutes and is at no additional costs to them.

[teetwoohsix]

What sounds strange to me is that 3 auction houses decided to do this at the same time
Nothing like having buyers pay waaay over current market price for an item,right?

[thekingofclout]

Originally Posted by BobbyVCP

[QUOTE
I want to be clear that I am not saying that this is what VCP is asking from the auction houses in any way, shape, or form, as I have no idea. I'm simply responding to the comments made in this thread.

Sincerely, Jimmy

This is a very simple xml feed that is provided by the auction houses software company and takes just a few minutes and is at no additional costs to them.[/QUOTE]
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Of course, that makes perfect sense to me now Bobby. Thanks for clearing that part of it up for me as I obviously have no idea about website technology, as well as many other things...

Do all of the other Auction houses participate with you?

Also, how in the world do you gather all of the sales info from ebay? Does ebay give you an xml feed as well?

Anyway, I'm going back to the memorabilia side were I belong...

My best, Jimmy

[BobbyVCP]

We have an eBay license and they provide us with API system. We cover most of the auction houses as well as Grandslam once they launch later this month, hopefully.