General Forum

It would indeed be lunacy to spend $5 shipping on a $2 card. But lunatics do that sometimes. Another reason I feel shipping should not be included in the price. Look at it another way, if you were to include shipping in your example, the card's "value" would have a median price of $5.50. That's higher than both the sellers' asking prices. Plus you never know whether the customer bought mulitple items and combined shipping. So really, we DON'T EVEN KNOW the shipping costs. I also don't enter OBO sales for the same reason. We all know that shipping cheaper singles is gonna run $0.50–$3.50. No reason to include this in the card's value. It's not a perfect solution due to free shipping sales, but it is better than the alternative. Ideally, it could be another field in the price entry form, but that would slow down entries.

ForTozs, you should only enter prices you know sold for X. So of course you can’t enter a OBO if you didn’t buy it or sell it. ebay as far as I know doesn’t show what OBO ended up being. Just a line through the asking price so you do know it was lower than that price. So I wouldn’t enter those prices either and I think everyone on our platform would agree with you that we shouldn’t ever enter such prices unless of course you are the buy/seller.

As for my prices I put in look at Topps Living. You’ll see one of the most accurate area of pricing on the site. I can’t say that for any other collection because it takes a lot of time just to collect this information. I do report single cards and bulk card sales. I do include shipping because these cards have never been able to be bought any other way then by shipping. When a multiple cards lot is sold I add up all the cards prices here and give each card a share of the sell price. It is by far the most accurate way to add real sales to this database. If you cry over seeing your $5 card be worth $2 in two months don’t look but if you can handle the truth feel free. 

When a multiple cards lot is sold I add up all the cards prices here and give each card a share of the sell price. It is by far the most accurate way to add real sales to this database??????

Each card already has a price? then you give each card a share of the sell price? Wow, Now we know why prices are so bad here.

This thread will never end. lol Pricing on TCDB, whether you  use it or not depends on what you are looking for. See, as I've said many times I'm looking for the card's value, not what you paid for it, sold it for etc. I don't believe that's it's true value, and to make matters worse, shipping and the kitchen sink are included. Thanks to all you pricing workers, but it's not for me. It's interesting and I wouldn't turn it off, but still just a "funny" tool to me.

No Bob we will not let it dead.

Pricing / value issues will always be there.  

  My value ( what I'm willing to pay) is not their value (what they want) so who is right?

Well, I started this thread on 01/05/19 and it looks like I stirred up a beesb nest (unintentional). I have read every thread and to my conclusion is, they are not one. Looks devided. No where did I ever say that  I added shipping to the prices, and I don't. But as many mentioned, some values look lop-sided. But gentlemen and ladies (if applicable) if we agree or disagree, we should be able to agree to disagree either way. I enjoy collecting and have since 1978. I am now loosing my sight in my right eye and the cards are harder to see. But by the grace of God I will continue to enjoy,as long as I can. And I am grateful to be a part of The Trading Card Database. And thank you everyone for you input, however you may believe.Thanks

BradLevi, if you are spending a lot of time getting prices I might could help you. I am connected to the eBay api, and not to brag, but my search algorithm is pretty damn good. I have no issue getting eBay price data, the problem is entering it here. But if you were to give me a list of sets/subsets you are interested in I could give you what I turn up. I don't see how I can paste an excel or csv file here, but I could put it on Google Docs or something. It gives you price, shipping costs, total cost, grader, grade, item link, etc. It's conservative, so it may miss some sales, but that's made up for in the sheer amount of price data it can generate. That's why I was looking for a way to do a bulk import of sales data here. Btw, I'm not sure I agree with splitting lots into sales either. Seems like it would definitely deflate prices if reporting bulk buys. I consider the pricing here for single sales only. I understand that there won't ever be agreement here on the proper price data guidelines, but it would still be worthwhile for the site to give us some guidelines, so at least there is some consistancy. Ultimately, I have specific cards I follow, so worst case, I can always look at my entries. Still, it'd be nice if we could turn the pricing data into something that most of us can trust.

ForTozs, I’m fine with getting the information from eBay. Thank you for the help. It’s the inputting that takes time.

To clarify what I was saying in an early post. If I had a two card lot where one normally trades for $5 and the other trades for $30 but the sold together for $25? 

It’s not rockets science to figure out a fair price to report for both it’s basic algebra.

$25/$35= 0.7142857 

(0.7142857)$5= $3.57 rounded

(0.7142857)$30= $$21.43 rounded

I don’t care if one single other person agrees with my method but it works better than any other system. If you’re not going to capture these lot sales then you’re going to have fake inflated prices that I keep hearing about. 

As for the other guy who said I was the reason for the bad prices? Amazing how powerful I must be to control all prices. Maybe if there are cards you follow you should help the site out and report those prices. I don’t live in the problem. I’m here to help the site. 

I think it would interesting to see what ForToza has to offer. I would actually be interested in his method. If you have a chance, please send a sampling to bobscardz@aol.com. TY, ~Bob~

@ForTozs Is eBay API public?  Or are you saying you have unique access to it?