"Ebay is not a price guide" explored: What's your take?

[greendawg]

OH GOD i had a guy pull the beckett out again today to try to rip me off. Sorry im not giving my stamkos rookies up for a card has never sold for 1/5 the price in the beckett. These guys are so apparent in thier methods to try and rip people off. It wasnt on here, it was on HI. I would have to say the majority of the time i get these offers its on HI. Bogus offers like these ™™™™ me off cause you know the person is actively trying to rip you off.

[tdavidautos]

With e-Bay, the problem is that you never really do know what someone is willing to pay. If you could see someone's maximum bid that is never reached, only then do you know what someone is willing to pay. If a card sells for $5.00, but has a max bid of $30.00, does that mean that $5.00 is the price to go by? I would say no, because someone who needs said card will pay the higher "max" price.

For an Irbe I need, I don't assume e-Bay values, I go by the book as real Irbes tend to go for the book value or higher. As such, I bid so I cannot be beat on things that I need.

When trading, I use a hybrid model. I would never trade a Crosby/Lemieux dual jersey card for $14.99 because of what it went for "that one time", nor would I trade it for $100, as that is also unrealistic. A mediation in between must be met to make it fair for everyone.

I often find that in the buying/selling section here, many people (but not all) are extremely contradictory in their methodology. Some of these people want to sell everything for profit often saying things like "one of these recently sold for $XXX over book value, or this recently sold for $XXXX, therefore I want this much", yet some only want to buy " way below e-Bay value" sayihng something like "this card sold ten minutes ago for $XXX, so it must be worth less", yet these same people could see that for said card, others have sold in the last week for $XXX more than the one ten minutes ago.

That's why I believe in the hybrid model.

extremely well said

[JJcan]

Great post, good discussion.

You have to really admire both EBAY and Beckett.

Everything is all relatively the same. Beckett guide is wide, and sometimes very late in pricing and not up to date. A guide.

Ebay is a great up to the minute price for what is sold, but says nothing of potential or possible scaricity and also is wide, look at Buy it now prices. Ebay has many examples of items that are very high almost beckett pricing.


Many buyers expect the deals the 50-90% off deals from Beckett prices when shopping at ebay, and get mad when they have to pay close to book.

Some EBAY buyers could care less and hit the Buy It now prices and pay full value if they want it. (full Book!!) Harder to find those buyers for sure.

Alot of it has to do with, seller, reputation, scaricity, inventory maybe they are just buying lots of cards to finish sets.

Buyers market for sure but alot of things come into play (Expectations) It is the same thing, can buy a nice meal at a fancy restraunt, or at dennys and be satisfied.

Some people love to look at cards in a Baseball card store, hold it, talk about it, stare at it and know that yeah its 25-50% more in the store, but they shared an hour talking about their favorite hobby. Or they buy a card and wait 3 days for shipping and brag to their friends i got it for 30% of guide. All depends on the need at the time for that card.

Bragging rights, Collection filling, Hobby reminiscing, the Joy of collecting what is it worth to you, him , me. Thats where all that extra +/- % comes into play.

Can you blame a card store owner trying to get more than ebay, he probably sells on ebay and buys on ebay also....

Same as the guy trying to trade Book value for Hot cards and is unfair to the other trader.

We all can make our decisions where to spend and most of the time we end up being loyal customers to the ones who treat us the best and fairly.
But thats life.

We are always going to pay a little more sometimes, maybe book, and we are always going to look for that STEAL,

But its always the ride we really remember the.. The stories of..i remember when i opened that pack, When i traded so and so, When i got my cards (stuff signed), Remember when I stopped collecting and when i started again, When i sold my cards for gas money..lol

I have fun on ebay, its instant. But reading a beckett on a plane can be fun too, and can help you sleep.

[theonedru]

Using the Ebay theory lets say

Someone lists a bunch of the same cards and they garner zero bids, then using your theory of Ebay and values those cards are worthless, hold no value and thus might as well just toss em in the garbage. Whereas with Beckett you get a generalized ballpark GUIDE figure to what something MAY go for. You must remember that what can sell low in one place may sell over book in another and vice versa. Ebay values get their values fromn 1 place. Beckett from thousands.

My main argument with Beckett is that they say card values are copy written which is a lie as you cannot lay claim to values determined on an open market by society, it would be like saying Stock vales are copy written which they are not

[baseballphr3ak17]

asdf

[xelloss1012]

I notice that for newer cards when sold on eBay, the price drops considerably over a month, and then a year later. So prices can greatly fluctuate.

For Beckett, they standardize the BVs based on what the card sold for when it first was released within the first 2-3 months. However I have seen flaws on their BV scheme as some subsets I remembered looking at all of the sudden doubled in value for no apparent reason. This was particularly on the 2005-06 to 2007-08 sets when I last looked at the OPG many months ago....

[Ianril]

eBay is THE price guide source... but only for cards that people actually want. :D

[mrveggieman]

Beckett used to say that their guides do not represent fixed prices, are not an offer to buy or sell cards at their prices and no one is obligated to buy/sell/trade their cards based on those prices. People need to have that same way of thinking when it comes to dealing with ebay. Bottom line is any trading card is only worth what someone is willing to buy it for.

[JBpatches]

Nowadays Beckett is useless and I have rolled my eyes at people who use still use it. 15 years ago I used to do card shows every week and then I needed Beckett, I would sell most my stuff for half of the high book value.

Beckett is a meaningless "guide". They list countless cards for like $25 that normally sell for .99 cents on eBay. What person in their right mind would pay anywhere near "book value" for a card like that? Let me know, I have a few monster boxes of base cards.. probably thousands in book value, I'll give you a good deal! Then I'll buy a couple cases of National Treasures or Triple Threads.

eBay/sell value is the only true value now. People might pay a little bit of a premium for a card or box at a LCS or show, but they usually won't go way over eBay prices.

I laugh when I see sellers list BV values in eBay listings and they sell for a tenth of the BV value. Wow! This card books for $100! Why did it only sell for $7? Because it's only worth $7.... just like the dopes who have BIN listings on cards for $50 or so that normally only sell for $10 because the seller goes by BV.. good luck with that.

[greendawg]

«heres another example of Beckett being a complete waste of time. «i just picked up a 2 clr Steve Mason Cup ARP on the Bay. BV = $350 ahahahahahaha
Real Value = $41 :)
Being a Mason collector i get headaches all the time because people always spring up the bv of his cards when in fact they usually sell for 1/5th to 1/10th of becketts manufactured value. There is no market analysis or tracking of prices to get these values. They are simply made up out of thin air it would seem. «i guess those shysters at beckett gotta keep up thier racket tho. Oh well i will continue to use the Bay as my main source of pricing.