I have to agree with staying away from Beckett, and I also agree with it being a huge downfall in the hobby that they have no competition. Beckett has made billions over decades basically on opinions of prices. The one detail that always stuck out to me about Beckett prices is that all low prices are always the same percentage of the high price. If a price is 40¢ high, and 25¢ low, that ratio is the same for all 40¢ high cards on the entire site, and that is not how free market pricing works at all. The whole thing is basically just garbage for realistic pricing.
I would actually love to see the prices here on TCDB get locked in on a single, market changing price, rather than having random people enter in opinion prices, which becomes an average price that doesn't really reflect the actual market. Now, before anyone gets angry at me, I am aware that this idea is almost impossible because most simple base cards just don't have enough market activity to track efficiently, among many other reasons, but hear me out. What if there was a way to sell cards from one single location (like the TCDB set up here), have all sales tracked, and ever changing details like shipping, handling, hidden profit, etc. were always locked in? This is the only way that we could truly monitor the card prices by themselves. I remember back in 2004, Ebay had a better model than the Ebay of today. Once they started charging fees on shipping because people were just posting everything for 1¢, and a billion dollars shipping, accuracy of pricing was done forever on Ebay. It doesn't help that some Ebay sellers today (that apparently have more money than they need) are HAPPILY selling single cards for 1¢ with free shipping even though a stamp is 50¢ or more today. That also kills any chance of getting realistic pricing from the EvilBay.
Now that I found a site that has all cards ever made WITH high quality scans (or will in the future), and entering the card inventory and card info are super easy to enter, real time free market pricing for all cards is my new card related dream. Because I got a little off topic here, I may make a new thread about how to get accurate pricing for cards to see if anyone else has better ideas than what I have come up with over the years.
MrAnderson
I don't collect for myself anymore, so trading is of no benefit to me. The cards I have posted to help others finish their collections are only for sale. Don't be afraid to ask questions. We are all here because we love cards!!