General Forum

Pricing on Sport Lots is now up to .20 plus tax and box shipping so the minimum is probably at least a quarter. The rub is some guys charge $3-$5+ for shipping and with some shipping is free/box shipping. <p>

To me, .18 means you can probably find it in a quarter box if you are patient. But $1-3 kinda means that too. You just have to be more patient or find $1-3 that other guys want and trade them for your wants.

So anything under $5 is kinda relative. How bad do you want that Bonds insert? How much is it on COMC/Sportlots/eBay(sold)? What does the guy want in trade? You might have to dicker or go back and forth or have some fun and sort it out like a market in Morrocco.

I'm happy that they are doing the API from Sportlots.  Not because of the prices but now I do not have to add the prices of around 500 cards that I have purchased from them.  Lazy me!!!

As far as prices they are not all .18  from Sportlots.   One card I purchased from them shows 16 prices from them and 3 from members.  ranging from .18 to $4 (from Sportlots)   from 2005 to 2022    It shows my .25 purchase.   The median price shown is .75   Avg price is .80 from Sportlots and   $1.15 from all.  All the $4 and above are from 2005 or older.

So if you are worried about prices just do not look at the Median price listed.  Take the time to look at all the prices enter here and verify with other sites and when they were sold.  Time of sales do matter!!!    Hyped to bust  -  a no one to super star

Keep in mind there are people dumping cards at a low price and other that are trying to make a living selling cards.   My nephew would have never sold his cards at the prices I am selling them at.

As sellers/traders we have to understand there are people willing to pay/trade premium and other are really cheap.  Do not take it personally when someone questions your prices.

Has anyone ever considered eliminating prices and instead focusing on supply/demand on this site with an idea of arriving at a value of the card independent of info on other sites/overall marketplaceon? Right now there is already data for cards showing how many users have a card on want list and how many have it listed for sale/trade (or perhaps "unwanted" might be more appropriate). That provides perhaps the most relevant info of all - everyone always says value is all about supply/demand (I can imagine someone could also figure out a way to incorporate how many people have card on site into the demand and supply factors by using some stats/math, but Im lacking in that category). If people putting cards on sale/trade list also indicated a price they considered value for trade or sale, or by not putting anything and implying at least the card is not worth the time for them to do so, there could also be a blanket floor value in such circumstances(.  Links to other sites for a particular card with searches could just be there for people to easily access info from other sites if they wanted to use that info for some reason - COMC wouid never give it's sales data that it gives to paid subscribers but I could see it being perfectly fine and see potential advantages of allowing a link that could access what a particular card is being put up for sale on it, which is available to everyone for free. Personally, I think it very well could be better with no links, but not that important 

How to do the math and coding for this is outside what I know, and on that basis I should maybe shut up altogether, but I would be interested if anyone has ever contemplated anything along these lines and ways to do it, eg, only use info from site, focus on a value of a card on this site using wantlist/trade/sale data, maybe not even have anything for values equated to an actual price other than what users have inputted themselves as value they would buy/sell cars for.

I just think it is preferable and better to not use market data from other sources as it will just end up being comparing apples, oranges, zucchini, bacon, humus - different sites have different business models in how they profit off transactions baked into prices, so the more info from those sites actually creates more things to figure out, points of disagreement, and are problematic in arriving at some market average; Data from all sites will always be incomplete and not represent overall market, so why not just try and focus on the market on this site if there is data on site available to use in a helpful, but not perfect way, and that can be added onto more to make better.

Problems on other sites can also infect this site without the ability to know or do anything about. If there are pints of disagreement with site's method, it's better to at least have one thing to work off from resolving disagreement instead of using different sites and then not even having a common place to start from to find resolution.

Therw may also be an in issue as to how values are used and matter to traders vs buyers - with trading it seems the value is important to arriving at 0, so any method works even if crazy so long as it applies to both sides and results in 0; buying or selling involves something that doesn't really allow for that and one side won't it shouldn't accept it. 

I'm a buyer who is just interested in building collection - I can see how the difference in value can occur by some using eBay sales whereas I would prefer, if anything, use comc because that is where I would otherwise go for the cards. I've seen differences between my limit and their limits that are more or less bridged by gap of fees for listing on comc but it wasn't clear whether or how person was using comc so I didn't understand how I could even try to bridge gap and it seemed like better use of time on both sides to just say didn't look like we could come to deal. I've had someone take a range for cards taken from eBay prices and use the low, and I couldn't quite grasp how or why person wouldnt use the low as the starting off point followed by reduction in fees associated with going on eBay and then using that as number to give me for a price in deal (and even that would be a compromise for me because listing on eBay probably wouldn't even result in sale and the time it would take to scan the cards and everything else involved - giving I'm only unreasonable in how reasonable I am, I would have made that compromise). As a buyer, if I wanted to use eBay to determine values, I would just go to eBay and buy the cards there (same with comc). Nobody has actually used the value of card listed in this site interestingly. Obviously, not being able to reach deal is going to happen and I'm just ranting a little, it's something that if it happens a lot to people they are probably going to turn away from site because of resulting time spent with minimal or no results; people will get upset at one another eventually if they end up spending a lot of time trying to work out deal but come up short. 

In any event, I think the site could not only match and connect people in wanting/having particular cards, which the site does incredibly well and is unique in that regard, but it could also connect people who place similar value on those cards. At least getting a bit closer to getting people connected with similar valuations before any offer or proposal is even made would create exponential benefits in reducing time spent on deals that end up not being completed. 

Someone probably did pay .18 cents for the card the card boon is over card prices are coming down to the pre pandemic level I buy a lot of cards off sports lots you can find great deals there and yes a lot of the cards are .18 the people who were paying the outrageous prices for cards are losing their shirts now 

In response to Drudpwn99:

There was another thread regarding the pricing on the site that mentioned something about most wanted / least wanted cards. I don't know where it is now, but there was some discussion about it.

You wrote: "I just think it is preferable and better to not use market data from other sources as it will just end up being comparing apples, oranges, zucchini, bacon, humus - different sites have different business models in how they profit off transactions baked into prices, so the more info from those sites actually creates more things to figure out, points of disagreement, and are problematic in arriving at some market average;" - Actually, this is precisely why other site's data is needed. I know it's weird for me to talk about Beckett and their price guides on here, but they didn't ask one dealer for their input before publishing prices in their monthly guides, they received input from hundreds of dealers across the country (and possibly even a few outside the US) to get an idea of the pricing. And it was always advertised as a "guide', not an absolute "This card is worth $x, don't even think about getting more for it if you're selling or if you're buying, paying less", no, in fact, they had a high/low price indicator for the listed cards and even for the commons and "unlisted stars", and again multiplier ranges for the parallels. Prices received from multiple sources across the hobby. (And even then, their prices weren't always "realistic" by the time the magazine hit the press due to the nature of the hobby.)

Trying to use our data, and our data only is not a wise choice because we are such a small slice of the hobby. I know several people involved (heavily) in the hobby that have never been to the site (not without me asking them - lol). We should have their input as well. And let's face it, we know Sportlots, COMC, and ebay all have different "pricing" methods, especially for the lowest-end cards, and that those are the largest markets for cards today (not to take anything away from the single-person/family sites such as card barrel or baseballcardstore.ca), so we need to incorporate all of their pricing into consideration - hence the indicator as to where the prices are coming from.

You state you're a buyer. Cool. But as a buyer, naturally you'll be looking for the lowest price to buy. Someone who is selling is looking to get the most they can. Nature of business (and anyone who thinks the hobby is not a business is not being realistic). And so by extension, we'll have the sellers on here listing the higher prices (or setting higher prices) while the buyers are trying to lower the price. So in that regard, we can't just leave it up to the people to set prices (just as we don't allow listings to be reported but actual prices - I can list a 1987 Topps baseball Bo Jackson for $3,000, but it will never sell for that. But when it's selling regularly on COMC for 50 cents and Sportlots for 18-25 cents, those are realistic prices. My $3,000 listing shouldn't skew the pricing because "some knucklehead" is listing a card for that.

There are reasons why the site has moved to add pricing the way things are, and that's to try to eliminate "opinion" pricing, and focus on actual, realized prices. Only reporting TCDB-transacted prices would be way too small of a sample size, and would not show the majority of the transactions that take place in the online world. The site needs those to show a more accurate representation of prices.

Hear, hear, Dan! Well-thought-out, and well-written!

Dan is on the point with what he said and appears to be the way the site is going.    There are members that agree and disagree just like a lot of other things here.  We do get along for the most part.

Supply and demand information:    When you look at a card here you can see who wants them and who has them FS/FT.  No need to look at the ones that are in member's PC as they are not in the supply chain now.   There is your supply and demand factor HERE.   You need to look at other sites to get a real view of the supply and demand.  As supply here may be really low for a lot of cards.  COMC may have sold a lot of them in the last 4 years vs only a few still for sell.  Then look at when the cards were sold.  (this month or years ago)  Times matter with prices and the supply / demand of cards.   20 cards sold over a year ago and none sold in the last year and there are 10 cards for sale.   Appears the demand is low now. 

I worked for the weather service for years.   You would not believe the amount of data they put into the forecasts and they still get it wrong a lot of times.  There were 27 models using the same data but in different ways and none are the same.   If you watch Ian moving to FL you would have seen all the different paths forecasted.

We could have all the data out there on prices and supply and demand and someone would want to use it in a different way then the way the site puts it out.  But again the weather service said more data the better and that goes here also.

Honestly, with the Sportlots pricing update it seems like this site went from inaccurate or missing prices to inaccurate prices with less missing prices.  I'll buy as many of those $0.18 vintage (pre-80s) hockey cards Sportlots can provide.  The problem is they don't exist in reality.  I always took the pricing here with a grain of salt and that philosophy is unchanged with this price data dump from Sportlots.  If you want real market prices, and I don't care because I use this site solely as an inventory of my collection, eBay sold or 130 point are far more accurate sources.  Also, I appreciate the effort by the admins to continue to improve the site but pricing is always going to be a subjective topic.

I just entered a number of single cards I bought at two different LCS's and COMC, consisting of a lot of the lower end RC's of basketball hall of famers and all-stars, and the pricing on the site actually was quite accurate for the prices I paid and entered. These were $3-$10 range more or less. 

Can you point to an example?  So far the cards I've seen for 18 cents are mostly cards I expect to find in the 10 cent bins at card shows.  I found a few that were stars from the 80s junk era and when I looked on ebay, the highes they sell for is $1 so after entering in a few auction prices, the prices balanced out.  And from what I've seen, hockey generally doesn't sell well to begin with so that might be accure sale prices from sportslots.