Net54baseball.com Forums - eBay Selling Price Guides -- Interesting Article in WSJ

Net54baseball.com Forums (http://www.net54baseball.com/index.php)

- Net54baseball Vintage (WWII & Older) Baseball Cards & New Member Introductions (http://www.net54baseball.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2)

- - eBay Selling Price Guides -- Interesting Article in WSJ (http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=64425)

eBay Selling Price Guides -- Interesting Article in WSJ

Posted By: ChrisOkay, not entirely and directly related to vintage baseball cards, but believe potentially can play a role in buying vintage Baseball cards on eBay. The link to the article is at the bottom. But essentially, eBay has quietly begun selling pricing sheets on several categories and items, providing such data as ASPs by models and month over month changes. Right now, it doesn't appear collectibles and specifically cards or being offered, but probably will, which means there will be yet another source for pricing on cards. While I think having another source for pricing 'checks' would be great against SMR etc. . ., there is one giant inherent flaw, it makes the assumption that those buyers completing a transaction paid a reasonable price. And I'm sure we would mostly agree, that is not entirely the case on eBay. In any event, interesting article. <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107083482199345500,00.html?mod=COMPANY" target=_new>http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107083482199345500,00.html?mod=COMPANY</a>

eBay Selling Price Guides -- Interesting Article in WSJ

Posted By: Tom Boblittlooks like that is a subscription only service article......... I've long thought that ebay would serve as a perfect place for price guides. It could be an online service they could offer by category and actually follow it up with print guides on a yearly basis. It would be difficult (as the other guides) to split out single cards from lots that are sold and the question of shill bidding affecting price would certainly affect the accuracy of any guide. For PSA, BGS and SGC type cards--it would serve as a TRUE model of what something sells for. I've always had a problem with SMR pricing cards that are graded by PSA and I don't think Beckett has done an adequate job pricing graded cards--especially pre-Topps/Bowman stuff.

eBay Selling Price Guides -- Interesting Article in WSJ

Posted By: ChrisAt eBay, Sales Prices Are Also for Sale By NICK WINGFIELD Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL For years, eBay Inc. has let its users buy and sell almost anything. Now it wants to become the blue book for just about everything. Earlier this year, the auction Web site quietly began selling to other companies huge volumes of data related to the site's auctions. Among the hottest data for sale: the average selling prices on eBay of all kinds of products, from Sony DVD players to Ford Explorers. Recently, eBay stepped up the program with two deals that show how the San Jose, Calif., company's sales data could end up as the basis for guides used to determine fair-market prices for items that may never be purchased or sold on the site itself. In one of those deals, the PGA of America is using eBay's data on its PGA.com Web site to show market values on the auction site for used golf clubs, including more than 76 brands and 2,000 models. And Mountain View, Calif., software maker Intuit Inc. recently began using eBay data to help people estimate the value of charitable donations when they fill out tax forms. The idea: Prevent audits by eliminating the guesswork that often goes into valuing things like old televisions or computers. EBay is making the push at a time when its site has grown monstrously large, with enough auctions of items across various categories that the company says it can provide representative market prices. Auction listings on eBay last quarter totaled 235 million, more than triple the 68.5 million auctions it listed in the same period three years ago. The company says it doesn't expect its new business to be a big moneymaker anytime soon, though commercial licenses for the data start at about $10,000 a year. Instead, the company is hoping broad use of its auction data will give it a marketing boost. "It's an incredibly intriguing asset to have eBay better known as the definitive source for prices," says Jeff Jordan, an eBay senior vice president. "It's the best pure market reflection of the meeting of supply and demand." A NASDAQ FOR EVERYTHING Market value of selected items listed in excellent or good condition on eBay: Item Feb. 1 Nov. 1 Price Change Dell Laptop Inspiron 3800 $567 $455 -$112 JVC 27" Standard Television $202 $121 -$81 PlayStation 2 System $158 $122 -$36 Canon PowerShot A50 camera $113 $82 -$31 Sources: Intuit, eBay Many people have long been using eBay informally to find market prices for products, even when they weren't purchasing the items on eBay. Some technology managers, for instance, use the site to find prices for networking and computer equipment so they can get better deals from manufacturers. With auctions closing every second on the site, eBay can provide real-time market information where none previously existed. "There are certain ways in which eBay is like the financial markets," such as the New York Stock Exchange, says David H. Reiley, an economist at the University of Arizona who has done several academic studies of pricing on eBay. EBay will have a hard time displacing price guides that practically have become bibles in their categories. Kelley Blue Book, for instance, published its first price guide to used cars in 1926. Since then most of Kelley Blue Book's readers do their research on the guide's Web site, updated with new prices every week with data from dealers, consumers and other sources. A Kelley spokeswoman says the company's guide counts far more car transactions than occur on eBay, which facilitated $1.68 billion in car and car-part sales last quarter. "The quantity of their data could not possibly provide a fair market value that would be as accurate as Kelley Blue Book values," the spokeswoman says. EBay says its data compares favorably to others. "From what we've seen to date, the accuracy of our marketplace data is as reliable as existing methods," an eBay spokesman says. Still, there are clear cases where eBay has become one of the richer sources of market prices available, industry executives say. The It's Deductible division of Intuit has long surveyed thrift and consignment shops across the country to estimate the value of an old suit or a leather sofa, figures it compiles to help consumers when they're doing their tax returns (Tax laws say consumers can deduct the fair market value of their donations). But in the past, Intuit stayed away from estimating the value of electronics, for instance, because it couldn't get enough gadget prices from stores to be statistically sound. By licensing eBay's data, Intuit was able to add electronics to its price guide, a software application that can be updated with new data over the Internet. EBay provides a clear window into the steep decline in the price of most secondhand electronics, which quickly lose value as new gadgets appear. Just after it was released in February of this year, the Nokia 3650 -- a cellphone with a color screen -- sold for an average price of $400 on eBay. By July, it had fallen to an average of $245 on the site and this month it is selling for about $225. PGA.com's used-golf-club price guide was created by Leigh Bader, co-owner of the Pine Oaks Golf Course in South Easton, Mass., and an eBay seller. The guide lists the price range on eBay for a steel-shafted Callaway Big Bertha Blade putter -- $38.12 to $46.43 as of Friday -- and the lower trade-in value a player could expect to get when selling it to a shop -- between $24.78 and $30.18. "It's the number of transactions that lend to the credibility of the stats" from eBay, Mr. Bader says. There are contractual limits to how eBay's partners can use the data. The company doesn't let others compile gross sales estimates for large categories such as consumer electronics or automobiles, something that would give outsiders a precise way to measure one aspect of the company's financial performance on a daily basis. Much of the data partners get from eBay requires a lot of cleaning up, too, since auction listings on the site don't describe the condition of items in a consistent fashion. EBay partners say the richer pricing data appear to be a hit with users. Software provider Andale Inc. licensed eBay's auction data earlier this year for use in a $2.95 a month service that lets users analyze pricing trends on the site. "It's growing faster than any of our other products," says Munjal Shah, chief executive officer of Andale. Write to Nick Wingfield at nick.wingfield@wsj.com Updated December 8, 2003

eBay Selling Price Guides -- Interesting Article in WSJ

Posted By: HankronIf they start a 'price guide' for trading cards, how do they take into context factors such as: 1) Fakes. Do they they include the prices for fake 1914 Cracker Jack Joe Jackson in the equation (real 14 CJ Jackson ($5,000) + reprint 14 CJ Jackson ($100) devided by two = $2,550), or do they get a price guide expert to identify the fakes. 2) Shill bidding and people who don't pay after bidding too high. 3) Variations in personal grading. Any who buys 'raw' material knows that one seller's Ex is not an other seller's Ex. As the above suggests, a price guide should be followed by a another book to help analyze the price guide.

eBay Selling Price Guides -- Interesting Article in WSJ

Posted By: HankronI will note that I have an aversion to price guides and, as a seller, know how off they are. If I sell two identical things, call them C, the first C will sell for $5 and the second C for $40 ... A month later a collector emails me and says, "I have a C. Do you know what it's worth?," and I will say "You've got me." ... If I were to say, it's worth $22.50 (average), that would be as arbitrary is if I said it's worth $5. I tend to beleive that an expert in the area, including an active buyer and seller, is a superior judge of financial vale than an analysis of raw sell numbers eminating from a computer screen. If a price guide 'expert' can't tell the difference between a fake and an authentic card being offered or why that's a particularly desirable and rare pose of Mickey Mantle in that photo, then I don't know the value of his (or her) final numbers. And do you know what most many experts in an collecting area will tell you when you ask to learn about value? "Throw away your price guides."

eBay Selling Price Guides -- Interesting Article in WSJ

Posted By: botnThe average sales price of a particular card sold on eBay is not information that I would deem as being relevant. There are far too many factors that influence data that eBay could (will) use that will render this statistic useless. If the data is not thoroughly analyzed before the average price is computed we may actually get a price from them on the numerous T206 Wagners that sell every week. Garbage in garbage out. I do however feel that since inception eBay has compiled tremendous data. The raw data of completed auctions would be great to have access to. Similar to what Teletrade offered. It was not a price guide, per se but a database of prices realized going back years. The information that ebay possesses is even more impressive due to the sheer numbers of items sold and the frequency with which they are sold, making the final prices more relevant. This is a "guide" that I would pay for. In fact 3 years ago I approached eBay with a business model for a website that would present closing prices for all card sales using their data along with all of the other major auction houses. eBay was not willing to make the information available or partner with us.

eBay Selling Price Guides -- Interesting Article in WSJ

Posted By: HarryIt would be great to have a master list of all prices realized from all of the auctions out there.

eBay Selling Price Guides -- Interesting Article in WSJ

Posted By: Juliebecause of sheer volume of stuff sold. But remember all the things an ebay buyer takes into account: 1) if scan is blurry, don't touch it.2) knck off at least 1 grade because it's on ebay--no matter HOW clear the scan! 3) If seller has few feedback, don't touch it. 3) if seller has too large number of negative feedback, don't touch it. 4) "can I get it elsewhere for the same price?" (just finished searching ebay for the hockey cards of three players--prior to ordering them from BMW. In some cases, I can get it CHEAPER from BMW (also searched "completed items.") 5)Notice how people buying on ebay gravitate toward the graded cards--can you really trust ebay with anything not in a holder (and do you really tust ANY grading service, if non-graded's what you collect (hence my 62 feedbacks only...) And after taking al these things into account, who's left to do the ebay buying on most cards?