General Forum

I support the notion that the price should not include shipping. You will always have an added on cost because you are either paying for shipping or you are driving to pick up the card. My issue with including shipping is that component becomes too variable depending on whether you are buying 1 card or 1000 cards. To me there are two separate components when deciding to buy a card.

1- What is the card worth.

2-What is it going to cost me to have it delivered to me or for me to go and get it.

Price is only #1. Otherwise every common would carry a value of say $.02 plus the cost of a stamp for example which isn't realistic. That is a common card valued at $.02 not a common card valued at $.57.

Ref. BLOW THE WHISTLE  2 lines are drawn here, with a few wishy washy members in between. Dan, Bruno, ADMIN, L8s no matter what your beliefs are, THE PRICING needs to be fixed. Like I said in an earlier thread, THIS will never stop until reliable pricing guidelines are set forth.

My 2 solutions:

1. Make it a Collector only price mechanism. Each Collector logins in and keeps track of his own costs. Not a pricing mechanism or price guide for everybody to fiddle with. A Personal Collection calculator.

OR

2. Add to how the pricing is entered. This still wouldn't fix the issue completely but may deter out of line pricing.

The submitter has to enter in the required fields or it will not be accepted. Get the boot.

Bobscardz the only problem with your suggestion that I see is that it is creating more work to submit a price. This probably isn't a good thing because much of the time when I go in to enter a price on the cards I am looking at a price hasn't been submitted for 18 months or more. Creating extra work will mean even less participation. 

Unfortunatly I don't have a good solution to present.

If there is this much controvery, and this much division between site members regarding the pricing, perhaps it's time to remove "site prices" and simply leave the "collection prices" where can input their own personal prices.

This removes the inflated values of the site (as someone who doesn't use the pricing, my concern with inflated values is the reputation of the site, but I can also appreciate how someone who is trying to value their collection is put off by inflated values), and also removes the debate about what constitutes a legitimate price vs. what doesn't (S/H, gas, time, etc).

Taking Bob's idea above, about more details being made available (which I REALLY) like, each member could input their own values if they wanted to - and could even add notes such as "willing to sell for", "willing to buy for", "bought for", "bought for + s/h" etc.

I will also stand by and maintain the idea that prices are fluid and always changing. That being said, there is no such thing as a set price, and there is no such thing as a free lunch. My point is that if you want a definitive price on a card, go sell it - THAT'S a definitive price. Beckett, Tuff Stuff, TCDB, they are all guides. If you can't look at a guide and be willing to move your opinion +/- $3.50 in one direction or another (the maximum for shipping, in my opinion), or if you look at a price and immediately try and calculate how much gas money or time/wages at work you would spending going to get it right down to a particular dollar amount, I think you're taking this way too serious. Remember folks, this is a hobby - if you want to do it for a living, that's a different story, but I don't think I've met anyone on this site in the last 3+ years who feels that way.

Again, I'm offering an idea, and words that some may find as harsh and/or offensive, I don't know. As I've said, I don't use pricing here (or really anywhere) but I do appreciate those who spend the time to go out and find prices that fit the site's guidelines, and do it the correct way. But 90+ replies, with many being stating an opinion or arguing their side vs. very few suggestions about how to better the system really doesn't do anyone a bit of good.

And with that, I will step away from this matter. If you've read this far, well done! Everyone stay warm out there!

If S/H costs were included, prices would be inflated.  Someone posted about gas money.  He is exactly right.  When I had my shop, I used to love hearing a customer state that they paid a bit less $$$ for a card than what I was asking.  I asked where he got it.  He said in a shop 40 miles away from where he lived.  Yeah, such a deal.  LOL.

So when someone sells on eBay with free shipping we should subtract the postage the seller paid when we get that item if you want a consistent policy. Otherwise you’re going to have two cards selling one for $2+$3 shipping and another $5 free shipping. We all can agree we really paid $5. The debate is over how much postage. 

So when you sell a card on ebay for $2+$3 shipping and another for $5 free shipping, how much is it if you substract the $3 shipping costs from the total paid by the buyer? $2 card either way you look at it. That's what the seller got. Why should everything be from the buyers perspective? It is the sellers in fact that set the asking prices. A sale price is a sale price is a sale price. Beckett or any other price guides don't factor in shipping costs in their stated card values. Why would you want to do that here? It's as simple as adding $0.50–$3.50 to the sale price if you need to figure out what it would cost you. It's really not complicated. Perhaps we can all agree that a shipping cost field might be useful to some users, and we can move on.

So, when we buy from Topps.com and get our three cards that week for $15 should I report they cost $4 each because that has free shipping? I asked first you answered with a question so I ask again.

I mentioned earlier that free shipping is problematic no matter what. I'd think free-shipping ebay sales should not be entered unless the card cost some minimum value realtive to shipping. The Topps example is another tough example. To me it is price dependent. If you get a $5 card shipped free, it shouldn't be entered unless you know what the real shipping costs were. If it was a $300 card, I don't think shipping makes up a significant portion of the cost to really matter. I don't know why anyone would enter the retail costs for buying directly from a card manufacturer though. Once again, a shipping cost field seems like it would cover these circumstances though.

Thanks for editing your replay. I now understand what you’re saying. I disagree because the person who really sets the price is the buyer. The seller can ask any price they like. If no one buys then there isn’t a transaction to report a price on. What might really work is to have a buyers price and a sellers price. The buyers price is total cost of the transaction and the sellers price is the price they actually get to pocket after mail, commission and fees. Probably too complicated but I think that is the divide we are seeing in the two philosophies.