General Forum

Hi all,

Forgive the rookie question here, but I have entered some prices from Buy-It-Now listings on ebay, and I am unsure whether these should be classified as auction or retail. I checked the FAQ link but did not find anything there to clarify. Any advice?

I would enter it as Auction but I don't think it really matters.  You will find most people here don't use the pricing on the site as it is too vulnerable to eronneous entries.  In other words, the prices on this site have no validity, so much so that members can turn off the pricing feature for their own collection.

it used to have a book value option, which is what I used as it was for my own personal knowledge

I have never used the pricing feature but if I could use it to keep track of what I paid without it affecting the rest of the members pricing  Imight think about it in the future, as for a BIN price, personally I consider it just a retail price as it is an agreed apon amount.

You can put your personal prices in your card's details.  It will not effect Median Prices.

I do enter pricing on the site, although I do agree it is almost meaningless as there are many members that list prices that are absolutely ridiculous. I don't mean to offend anyone.....but really, some prices I've seen listed here are the kind of prices that you used to see Don West offer on QVC to rob little old grandmas of their social security checks.

IMHO....Buy It Now Prices are fine as long as the card actually sold at that price. My experience is that less than half the cards actually sell for the BIN price...again preying on the uniformed. When I enter prices, I only enter the price that a card actually sold for.

I would be rich if I could sell all my "ultra-rare" 1987 Topps baseball cards at some of the BIN prices on ebay

Here's a Barry Bonds RC for $9.00 plus $3.00 S/H. You can get the whole set for less than $20.00....I don't get it.

I would treat it as a retail purchase since you weren't competing against someone to purchase it. There are some of us that like the pricing feature for various reasons so please enter it especially if no other pricing is reported for that card.

I've entered a few prices on here, but like cnagle said I only used the sold for prices on ebay.  I never trusted the BIN price.  I like the feature but turned it off since it made my collection much more valueble than it really is.  I wish there was a feature on here that would take prices out of the equation if they are more than a couple years old.  I'm sure some of those prices might still be good, but I just think of Aaron Judge cards that might for $500 bucks now, in a couple years might go for two and the prices are still skewed.

I'll just agree that only actual sold eBay buy-it-now prices are useful. People put some pretty ridiculous prices up there. I suppose a store could do the same thing, but individual eBay sellers have more incentive to just go for it. Heck, the only time anyone accepted my (perfectly reasonable) buy-it-now price, I was shocked.

I'll also echo that I really don't use the prices here, although knowing what something sold for recently could be mildly useful. But I can look those up more reliably on eBay itself. I put the prices for the more expensive individual cards I buy into the datebase here, including shipping, because that was my cost. I figure I'm at least adding real, recent, sold prices.

But, again, I use the pricing here to get only the most general idea and only when I'm being lazy, and I'd never buy a card based solely on the pricing here.

v3

Thanks for the responses, everyone! Looks like I'll only enter ebay prices for items that have actually sold, and that the retail/auction distinction may not matter so much.