Results 1 to 7 of 7
-
06-22-2009, 08:16 PM #1
BV or SV? The Great Debate
BV or SV? The Great Debate
By John Jimenez aka gmoney168
Book value or sell value? It has become one of the largest disagreements for all card collectors. Some people swear by book value because it is the only set value for all cards, while others swear by sell value because it is shows what collectors will pay for a card. To me, the decision seems obvious, but to others, it keeps them up at night. With BV, everything varies. Some values are updated often, while others have never changed since the day they were added. Also, some cards are obviously listed with the wrong BV, but people ignore the obvious and use the outrageous BV anyways. The choice is all yours, however.
One of the biggest problems I see with BV is regarding patches. There can be patches from a set that are one or two colors, while there can be three or four color patches from the same set. Obviously, the values for a two-color patch aren’t the same as a four-color patch, which is where BV can’t tell you things that SV can. Although some people might say that you can’t use SV on patches, there actually is a way to figure out a similar price between Sports Card Forum and eBay sales. As long as you can look up the player and find a patch of him on the same team, odds are that there will be at least a result or two of a patch very similar in color and breaks. Take the average price of the results, and you have a SV. It is a much better price than BV, since it is in real time, and a card is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
A perfect example of why BV is messed up and SV is a better value measurement is SP Authentic baseball letterman. A Hunter Pence 2007 SP Authentic RC BTL #/50 has had six recent sales of $13.50, $24.00, $22.49, $18.50, $25.49, and $21.50. This gives it a SV of $20.91 if you average out all of the sales. Of course, then you look at BV, which lists the value at $80. Think about it- do you trust sales to six different people or the value one worker puts on the card, rather than what the collectors themselves pay? This shows the weaknesses of BV, and considering this is only one of hundreds of SP Authentic letterman, I should probably spare Beckett the embarrassment if we looked up every SV and BV of all letterman. Just remember that most letterman carry a BV of $60, but when you look up SV, lots of them can end up being as low as $4 after a few sales. Now what value is to be trusted after looking at those numbers?
Although book value can be considered a more standard value, if people were less lazy they would be able to look up the real time value that we call sell value. If there were a way for Beckett to weigh the current sales of cards with their book value, prices would become a better average. This way it would be easier to judge prices on scarcer cards that haven’t had many sales. However, Beckett would need to come up with values for every card, and not give collectors anymore of that N/A value stuff. Luckily for collectors, the Sports Card Forum online price guide will do just that for them!
-
-
06-23-2009, 12:19 PM #2
Great article John, thanks for posting it! Link to the article site version coming up!
-------------------------------------------------
Book Value or Sale Value? The Great Debate
By John Jimenez aka gmoney168
Book value (BV) or sale value (SV)? It has become one of the largest disagreements for all card collectors. Some people swear by book value because it is the only set value for all cards, while others swear by sale value because it shows what collectors will pay for a card. To me, the decision seems obvious, but to others, it keeps them up at night. With BV, everything varies. Some values are updated often, while others have never changed since the day they were added. Also, some cards are obviously listed with the wrong BV, but people ignore the obvious and use the outrageous BV anyways. The choice is all yours, however.
One of the biggest problems I see with BV is regarding patches. There can be patches from a set that are one or two colors, while there can be three or four color patches from the same set. Obviously, the values for a two-color patch aren’t the same as a four-color patch, which is where BV can’t tell you things that SV can. Although some people might say that you can’t use SV on patches, there actually is a way to figure out a similar price between Sports Card Forum and eBay sales. As long as you can look up the player and find a patch of him on the same team, odds are that there will be at least a result or two of a patch very similar in color and breaks. Take the average price of the results, and you have a SV. It is a much better price than BV, since it is in real time, and a card is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
A perfect example of why BV is messed up and SV is a better value measurement is SP Authentic baseball letterman. A Hunter Pence 2007 SP Authentic RC BTL #/50 has had six recent sales of $13.50, $24.00, $22.49, $18.50, $25.49, and $21.50. This gives it a SV of $20.91 if you average out all of the sales. Of course, then you look at BV, which lists the value at $80. Think about it- do you trust sales to six different people or the value one worker puts on the card, rather than what the collectors themselves pay? This shows the weaknesses of BV, and considering this is only one of hundreds of SP Authentic letterman, I should probably spare Beckett the embarrassment of looking up every SV and BV of all letterman. Just remember that most letterman carry a BV of $60, but when you look up SV, lots of them can end up being as low as $4 after a few sales. Now what value is to be trusted after looking at those numbers?
Although book value can be considered a more standard value, if people were less lazy they would be able to look up the real time value that we call sale value. If there was a way for Beckett to weigh the current sales of cards with their book value, prices would become a better average. This way it would be easier to judge prices on scarcer cards that haven’t had many sales. However, Beckett would need to come up with values for every card, and not give collectors anymore of that N/A value stuff. Luckily for collectors, the Sports Card Forum online price guide will do just that for them!
-
06-23-2009, 12:35 PM #3
-
-
06-23-2009, 06:20 PM #4
Darn! I was going to write an article about this :(
-
06-24-2009, 01:56 AM #5
I thought you wanted to write about people's collecting pet peeves... That would be a good topic for your first article!
-
-
06-24-2009, 06:10 AM #6
I have to write 5 articles, and that was going to be one of them :)
-
07-03-2009, 10:44 PM #7
Only time BV is in question is on this site. Nobody in their right mind should ever use it if there is recent SV. It is great for kids and kids only when they trade base
-
