General Forum

I imagine it's personal preference. I would rather see no price than a price 500% higher than what it should be. I can also identify cards in my collection with no price more easily and enter a price. I agree that you would also lose some data that is still pretty accurate.

Yeah, I don't think the pricing thing works for me either !

I work in business strategy and pricing.  Pricing is one of the most misunderstood concepts ever.  Markets are presented to consumers in overly simplified ways, thats to help consumers come to decisions.  Value is subjective.  Your Value is yours and yours alone.  Pricings is an offer to exchange value.  Card Values therefore are subjective to the purchaser.  And coincidentally subjective to the person you end up selling the card too.  Therefore the issue is not with the data, as long as the data is being created similarly, but rather with the reader of the data.  If each purchase is either, what you would be willing to pay for a card at this given moment(now), or what you ACTUALLY bought a card for, the reader of that data MUST understand that is a single datapoint in a sea of other subjective values, and thus can use that only as one datapoint.  If you do not wish to have the card, or have it and would be un willing to part with it you can not contribute.  We should therefore not imagine prices as points, but rather bell curves.  In a Bell Curve, as long as the data is being collected with a similar concept, then the output has value.  

Therefore, the most important thing for this forum would be to agree upon a common methodology, and an algerythem that weights for demand and time.  Giving greater weight to modern price points and tracking demand seperatly as a overlay.  In this the missing datapoint will always be supply quantity, but that is common with most commodities, and what leads to rising and falling prices.  

Condition, Geography (as adjusted by S/H), and Time would be the varibles necessary to track in accordance (i would imagine) to make the data more relavent.  It can be done, even with smaller populations, but the more the merrier in data.  

Exactly.

Amen, brother! I couldn't have said it better. I really couldn't.

Yeah, that sounds good, but are we doing that with the pricing here on TCDB? I still buy by bargains or supply and demand, If I want the card I will pay for it.

I went back and read some pages(8-12) I skipped before posting.  I saw an interesting topic that came up a bunch that I can clarify from a strategic standpoint.  Buying Cards and Shipping and Handling:

Buying Cards in Lots/Packs/Subscriptions:   When you purchase Lots, Packs, or subscriptions, You are NOT buying the card.  You are buying the risk and reward of which cards and the quality of those cards that you have no idea about before you get said cards.  It's like gambling.  Therefore the per unit cost of each card in a lot, pack, or subscription is meaningless.  It is not the price of the card and would never be plotted in a bell curve distribution.  What you purchased was the risk (good or bad).  If you bought cards in a lot, the price you should enter is the price that if someone offered you right now you would hand it over to them with very little forethought.    

Pricing Sets:  In a set, unlike the category above, all cards are known.  Therefore the risk is greatly reduced (not eliminated).  Set pricing differs from individual cards because some sets are worth more together, and some worth more sold individually.  As a result when assessing the individual price of a single card, its value in a set should not be considered, and should itself be a seperate category, which on this website it is by year and make.  

Shipping and Handling should be factored into the cost of the card:  Pricing online is complicted, and it has surprisingly little to do with the price of the card in your hands.  Thats because the supply and demand of a card online is vastly different than the supply and demand of a card in your hand.  Hell the price of a card on one website versus another differ because of different supply and demand factors on individual websites.  In addition the Risk of a card online is vastly different than the risk of a card in your hand.  In order to normalize prices shipping and handling should ALWAYS be included into the price of the card.  

So to summarize from a normalization standpoint: Lots/Packs/Subscriptions are not relavent to the value of a card because you are paying for possibilities(risk) not individual cards, Completed Sets should not be relavent to the value of a single card because sets have their own unique value, Pricing data points are relavent if normalized, to normalize prices across online and in person you should consider S/H.

A lot of arguments I have seen are very personal, fear of feeling taken advantage of...  I would remind everyone that while markets tend to be efficent, individual sales are never efficent.  Macro vs Micro Economics.   If you are a collector your efficency is less important and presents you a great range of possibilities, if you are a merchant your efficency matters a lot as you are looking to buy value.  All of us here are a little of both, as we like to trade, the important thing remains conscience, which is built through conversation and adherece.  If the group wants to make the prices more relavent we start with a list of rules, break them out, and discuss to reasonable conscience...If only polititians did this...  You can see the beginning of such guidence taking shape above.  

Very nicely written!

Sonofearl….love your posts. Most of my career was spent in strategic plans and policy. Although I’m not an economist, I had the unfortunate pleasure of frequently having an acquisitions geek on the planning team. (kidding of course, it was the lawyers that were the unpleasant ones). Your posts bring back memories of discussions / arguments about PRICE vs COST.

Although I do love your post, I do disagree on your shipping comment, "Shipping and Handling should be factored into the cost of the card". Are we capturing COST or PRICE on TCDB?......

I view the intent of the pricing feature on this site to establish a basis to determine a “Fair and Reasonable Price” valuation of a card-in-hand. Let’s say that card “A” has an accepted/established market price of $1.00 and card “B” also has an accepted/established market price of $1.00. If I want to trade card “A” in my collection for card “B” in your collection, it would be reasonable to assume that this is a fair and reasonable trade in terms of price.

The COST of the trade is a separate matter. If I ship card “A” in a PWE at a $1.00 shipping rate, using a .05 cent standard envelope, and some recycled cardboard as protection, the total COST of the trade from my end is $2.05 ($1.00 card price + $1.00 shipping + $.05 envelope). If the owner of card “B” shipped the card in a .10 cent bubble mailer with a $4.00 shipping fee, the COST of the trade for them would be $5.10 ($1.00 card price + $4.00 shipping + $.10 for the bubbler).

In this example, is the price of the card $2.05 for one person and $5.10 for another? I would argue no. The price of the card is $1.00 in both cases. The COST difference only relates to shipping. I’m not  discounting the price of shipping….but it is not related to card price. I would argue that it is related to RISK reduction. A better packaged card has less risk of damage. The owner of card “B” is paying extra to reduce RISK, not because card “A” or “B” is of a higher price.

What if I see card “A” listed on ebay with a BIN of $1.00 and shipping of $1.05 and I see card “B” listed on ebay also with a BIN $1.00 with shipping of $4.10? Which is the better deal knowing that the established/accepted market price of each card is $1.00? I would argue that the asking price of both cards is fair and reasonable and that the shipping charges are also fair and reasonable (assuming card “B” is shipped in a bubbler). The difference in price only reflects the price of RISK. I’m paying extra to reduce the risk of damage during shipping. I’m not paying more for card “B” itself.

What price should be put into TCDB $1.00, $2.05, $5.10? Personally, I only want to see the price of the card ($1.00). I will make my own valuation on the price I’m willing to pay for risk reduction (shipping charges).

The price of RISK is why we see differences in Retail vs. Auction vs. Graded cards. This is a way to differentiate / capture / standardize the price of risk. There is more risk in an auction vs retail and more risk in “raw” vs graded. The price differences reflect risk not the price of the card itself.

Fun discussion but probably pointless unless, as you mentioned, TCDB manages to incorporate an algorithm to establish price confidence and has a significantly larger set of data points. The current “median price” method is kind of pointless.

I read thru both posts- Sonofearis and Chads. I admit Chad makes sense because it was placed in the card price scenario. Not that Sonofeari didn't make sense but to many on TCDB, it sounds more like an Economics Lesson. Members might have a problem with macro and micro economics as it relates to a $1.00 baseball card.

Thanks to you both for shedding new light on the subject.

This statement makes sense, because if all of us have the ability to add prices then we ALL must follow the rules of pricing , whatever it is, as a given standard.

If the group wants to make the prices more relavent we start with a list of rules, break them out, and discuss to reasonable conscience...