General Forum

I know someone who would buy my collection but it's 1700 Card and I don't really know how accurate the value I see at the Collection tab in my profile. Can someone give me an advice or help me out with this?

It's pretty arbitrary.    Values fluctuate.   People key in values which may be too high or on the low side.   I would take these values with a grain of salt.    If you are serious about selling and have the time, I would search Ebay for recent sales of the same item, not what someone is asking.    Sometimes you can get more by selling individually or by team but it is a lot more work.     I am sure others will help with their opinions.

I agree with NJDevils. I have my own Excel sheet of my collection, with estimated value from Beckett's. It's about 60% of what this site estimates for my collection.  And I suspect, my own estimate is about double what I could actually sell it for.  On more expensive cards, I've taken to estimating the value on actual eBay sales. Unless it depresses me too much. Then I go with book value.

And of course, there's always the problem of the collective of individual cards being worth more than the complete set. Add up all the individual values of the cards, and my 1972 Topps set is probably "worth" $3000 book. Ain't no way I could sell it for that, though...

Good luck.

v3

I fully agree with Vwergeer. The dilema of indivudual card versus the set value is not to be silved soon.

You can't go by what's listed here. It's too random. Case in point: 1970 Topps Bob Christian. Ever hear of him? Me neither, at least until I checked off my copy in the database. He's listed at $19.42, but look at the prices that it's based on - One person put in 65 cents, while someone else valued this card at $75.00! (Attention anyone willing to pay $75 for this card - I have one available to sell!)  The condition of your cards are going to play the biggest factor.

Maybe if a system like the judging of Olympic diving was used in determining the price, where the high and low value are thrown out before calculating the average, we could eliminate aberrations like the Bob Christian price described by Kep75.

I appreciate the effort, but there's no way to get an accurate price indicator for a card here because the prices don't take into account the condition of the card. So, who knows, maybe the $75 Bob Christian is a PSA Gem Mint 10, POP 1, if you're into that sort of thing. But just plain ol' Bob Christian in a penny sleeve is worth 65 cents.

The prices here are only occasionally useful, if I can find the card I'm looking for, priced by someone who reported buying that card in the particular condition I care about. Not likely.

But, again, I appreciate the attempt.

v3

Plus there is the variation of hot and cold. If we reported the 1987 sales of thr Jose Canseco RCs from 1986, they'd still be worth a lot. But if we age them out, then we get more or less what they'll really sell for. Basically, a price guide is outdated once it's printed. Even online ones are outdated once they get published. Even COMC is having a hard time getting their SRP off the ground. They thought they would have it some point last year, and it's still not really working.