Site Forum

If we included the shipping costs for the sport lots purchases we would probably see that these cards aren't "selling" for .18. We include it from eBay and other sources so it should be reflected for these purchases also. From my experience on sport lots the only way to make money was selling at the .18 and then making money on the shipping costs.

I understand that card prices have decreased due to a number of factors, but I am not a fan of the fact that Sportlots utilizes a seemingly across the board practice of valuing cards at 18 cents.  Either use better data to provide a more accurate market value of cards or just use a value of $-0- if you are do not want to put in the effort.  Figure out how to use average sale prices from eBay or just don't bother posting a value.  Very frustrating to users.   

Ebay charges a fee on sale price to include postage (which is also taxed).....

A card might cost so and so, but seller rarely makes a killing....

Sportlots is a market place for cards. They are not a price guide, nor do they create values. These cards are selling on their website for $0.18, which is their minimum listing price (soon to be $0.20).

The fact is that even at Sportslots $0.18 (or about to be $0.20), most cards are still over-priced; ebay is even worse with their minimum start price. Whether shipping is added in or not, you can get many common or semi-star cards for 10 cents or less.  I just bought almost 2,000 cards from another member on here. The lot included some key RC (1992 Bowman Piazza, Topps Base set Molina, Verlander, Freeman, Alonso, Roberts) and a few other notables.  There were 13 cards the member priced individually. For the remainder, he used a starting price of 10 cents and then gave me another mark down for volume.  In the end, if I priced SP cards and HoF cards individually as well, I paid around 7-8 cents / card and that included UPS shipping. I would only use Sportslots as a last resort to complete sets. Ebay I would only use for vintage HoF cards or larger lots of vintage (even then highly doubtful if I would due to their broker fees coming into Canada).

All this to say, being a member on this site you have access to cards for much less than the online prices. Every once in a while, a member advertises that he wishes to down-size his collection and is looking to sell at low prices. Reach out and help him do so while getting cards you want. As well, we have one member baseballcardstoreca who lists his cards at $0.10 /card. He is beginning to list on this site instead of his own site so matching your wants to what he has is about to become much easier. Why would you start with sites that charge twice as much when you can buy from someone here?

Bruno, your simple forum post has just changed the way I look at this site, and I've been here for probably 8 or 9 years.  Thank you!

@randylaw This was exactly the point I made as soon I saw the announcement that Sportlots sales data was going to be used to populate pricing on TCDB.  To me the arrangement between Sportlots and TCDB was very one-sided in favor of Sportlots (Sportlots received non-sports checklists that TCDB members built and which Sportlots can use to make money while TCDB members received a boatload of headache inducing data that TCDB members don't like or can't handle.)

I'm hopeful that if there are future arrangements between TCDB and Sportlots that TCDB members will reap better benefits.