Ever Wonder Why Beckett Keeps Getting Worse?

[chajones]

I hate to say it but I still subscribe to becketts pricing. I think if a different guide comes out and is accurate i would switch over though.

What does accurate mean? Something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. RARELY does anything sell for book price. So I don't see how Beckett is accurate.

[gosox55]

How is this not a much bigger thread? These scam artists are going to take Beckett, which was once great, and take the stinking carcass that remains of what Jim Beckett already sold, and then use it to scam, and steal from people. This is bad for our hobby folks. There's too much lying, cheating, scamming, and stealing in our hobby as it is. If the so called "leading authority" in the hobby has become part of an outright mail fraud scam, it bodes very poorly for the future of sports cards.

I agree:

The future according to Beckett, or what passes for the classic Beckett is not a future I want, and I think many more traditional collectors do not either. Eventually the manipulation and unethical behavior by Beckett and others (including the card companies) will cause the bubble around the current card market hype to collaspe, but I think as long the nostaglia and collecting mind sets stay around, people will still collect cards just not on such a overwhelming speculative basis.

I doubt if the mag has much more life left, I haven't bought a monthly for years, and I've never subscribed to their price structure. I still visit the baseball board occasionally but that's become less of a easy visit and more of a chore nowadays. A great many former posters over there have left or cut back drastically on their posting. A sorry end to a good magazine.

Richard
gosox55

[dfr52]

I agree:

The future according to Beckett, or what passes for the classic Beckett is not a future I want, and I think many more traditional collectors do not either. Eventually the manipulation and unethical behavior by Beckett and others (including the card companies) will cause the bubble around the current card market hype to collaspe, but I think as long the nostaglia and collecting mind sets stay around, people will still collect cards just not on such a overwhelming speculative basis.

I doubt if the mag has much more life left, I haven't bought a monthly for years, and I've never subscribed to their price structure. I still visit the baseball board occasionally but that's become less of a easy visit and more of a chore nowadays. A great many former posters over there have left or cut back drastically on their posting. A sorry end to a good magazine.

Richard
gosox55

I agree, I think the end might be coming. Appraise ran Beckett into the ground and the new owners seem to be piling the dirt on to the grave.

[SingleDaddyof2]

...I doubt if the mag has much more life left...

My thoughts exactly. I think sometime in the very near future, we'll see a news article announcing Beckett Publishing goes out of business. I wonder if the Becket merchants are also disgruntled too.

[tikitomoka]

i gurantee beckett will not go out of business anytime soon. there are always going to be the idiots that live and die by the price-guide and people that refuse to let PSA grade their cards

[dfr52]

i gurantee beckett will not go out of business anytime soon. there are always going to be the idiots that live and die by the price-guide and people that refuse to let PSA grade their cards

While the mag is useless these days the grading service is still solid. I'd love to know their business numbers to see if the site switch has hurt the grading side. I find it hard to believe that the elimination of their registry hasn't hurt their grading business.

[bidds55]

While the mag is useless these days the grading service is still solid. I'd love to know their business numbers to see if the site switch has hurt the grading side. I find it hard to believe that the elimination of their registry hasn't hurt their grading business.

I have to think that the epic fail of a transition that was the change over to the beta site has hurt all aspects of their business. Remember that those boards were a war zone for weeks, as long standing members were outright flaming the company for the debacle. The Beckett boards have never recovered, and that change was also the last straw for a lot of people in terms of online pricing, and buying the magazines, which are now have so little content you can literally read all the "articles" in your $12 magazine in under 10 minutes.

[EdgarM_11]

Print media is going the way of the dodo anyways. The only thing I ever visit beckett for anymore is to update my checklists. What I don't get is why a small company doesn't start creating free checklists and compiling known information on their own? A single, comprehensive, user friendly, searchable database with card checklists and information is desperately needed by this hobby. Forget pricing. Beckett had the opportunity to create an amazing database... instead they took something that worked just OK, and broke it beyond repair.

[gosox55]

Print media is going the way of the dodo anyways. The only thing I ever visit beckett for anymore is to update my checklists. What I don't get is why a small company doesn't start creating free checklists and compiling known information on their own? A single, comprehensive, user friendly, searchable database with card checklists and information is desperately needed by this hobby. Forget pricing. Beckett had the opportunity to create an amazing database... instead they took something that worked just OK, and broke it beyond repair.

I know I would subscribe to a database of checklists, especially if it included team designations. Instead of paying my 40$ for a standard catalog every year I would support such a database. I'll bet a great many others would also.

[booyahlaw]

i gurantee beckett will not go out of business anytime soon. there are always going to be the idiots that live and die by the price-guide and people that refuse to let PSA grade their cards

I agree. As long as people need BV to define what their cards are worth, Beckett will never go completely out of business. It's these people that will always keep the goodwill/intangible asset value of Beckett worth enough money to make it attractive to a potential buyer. The buyer will then run off Beckett's name alone, and cut every thing else--including catalog content and quality--to the "bare bones" to maximize return on investment.