Book Value Vs. Market Value

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Posted By: Jamie B

I am fairly new to this forum.. but have already found it to be more than helpful in collecting vintage baseball cards!!!!!... I wanted to share another website that I found which has also proved to be helpful. I am not sure how many of you might already know of it but this will be for those who do not...the website is

https://www.vintagecardprices.com/upgrade.php

I had to pay to use it ($10/month).. but I can search for any vintage cards.. and have email alerts sent to me when those cards that I choose are posted up on an auction site online.(.. ebay.. cleansweep.. heratige..etc).. the second feature which is the reason why I agreed to pay the $10 fee.. is that once you search for a card you can see the most recent closed sales for the card under what ever grade you are looking for.. and from what ever company you are looking to have the card graded by...( psa sgc BVG).. then once you have the card you want, in the grade you want, from the company you want.. you can click that grade and see all the sales for that card at that grade in the last 2 years.. and in some instances they have images of the card so you can even see the condition for yourself!!..This is great to find out what the card is currently selling for and what a good deal would be vs. paying too high for a card.. so for example you can click on for example you can search for cobb.. select t206 common backs red portrait.. select psa 2 and then get the history for all online transaction at auctions sites for the last 2 years for psa2 t206 red cobbs.... and I now know what a cheap price would be for this card vs a high price.. curious if this is helpful to anyone else..

Jamie B

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Posted By: stefan

is this an advertisement? i hope not....great site, but horrible numbers when you are talking rare cards right? or am i wrong i will let you be the judges. not trying to be rude heh??? im just stating my opinion could be wrong....... have before.
you know what edison says " i am not wrong i have just found 10,000 ways that don't work"

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Posted By: JimCrandell

Jamie,

VCP is one of the two best tools a vintage card buyer has in buying cards.

You not only know the price that every PSA or SGC card has sold for by grade and date but where it was sold--congrats to Bobby for this wonderful service. The second thing is of course the PSA pop reports which is invaluable in buying cards today.

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Posted By: Dan Kravitz

The original post seems like a commercial.

Jim-
I know a guy (you do too) who has submitted 1 card to PSA over 15 times. 15 times! We were laughing about it, because the card came back trimmed 5 times and finally ended up in an 8 holder. The idea that pop reports are valuable is a joke. You must be in LaLa land if you think PSA knows what they are doing or pop reports offer you any accurate information. The only info you can accurately gather is the amount of times a card has been submitted, and even that is wrong. I personally gave PSA an extremely rare Wagner to grade and they labeled it wrong. There is still no pop report for this card, yet I have it. A PSA pop report is a big fat joke!

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Posted By: Matt

Dan - there is a balance between saying the pop reports are worthless and saying they are accurate. Claims of a cards worth due to the exact number of cards in the pop report are indeed not accurate, for the reasons you pointed out. However, the pop reports can give you a measure of how scarce the card is and in that, they do have value.

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Posted By: leon

First of all I do think the card pricing sites like Bobby's are useful. In the more common cards it can definitely give you a relative value with respect to recent sales. On the more esoteric issues they aren't as valuable. Ya' just have to know the market/hobby.

I got a call a few nights ago from a quasi dealer friend that I know a little bit. He tells me he wants to buy all of the rest of my 19th century stuff. I say ok....tell me what you know about them. He starts out with "well, the pop reports.....blah blah blah"......and I didn't hear anything he said after he said pop reports. I go on to inform him that I don't need a freaking pop report on these cards...I have a good idea of a lot of them and their total population known. I never could convince him that the pop report is useless on this stuff. I don't know about the high grade more common cards but I have a good idea about what us collectors collect with respect to the cards I own. He said he would need to know something by Friday. I told him to call me back if he wanted to. He said "what, I am wanting to buy all of your cards and you want ME to call YOU back?". I said ...."only if you want to call me"....I still won't be selling them because I have another venue I am looking at but maybe more importantly is that he doesn't know what these cards are..The "pop report" comment kind of killed the sale too ....best regards

ps...I really mean no disrespect to Registry folks as they are collectors as much as the rest of us.... They just collect a little differently..

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Posted By: Dan Kravitz

"Dan - there is a balance between saying the pop reports are worthless and saying they are accurate. Claims of a cards worth due to the exact number of cards in the pop report are indeed not accurate, for the reasons you pointed out. However, the pop reports can give you a measure of how scarce the card is and in that, they do have value."

Matt-
I have a card that is not in the pop reports. Does that make it more valuable? If a card has been submitted 5 times, how can you assess true scarcity or value? I will agree that if there is only one card that has been graded by PSA in the reports, you would think that it is accurate, but I mentioned that I have cards that are miss-labeled and do not show up in the proper category. PSA is careless with their labeling and therefore can not be trusted to give us an accurate account of cards slabbed, giving us an unclear picture on quantity or scarcity. In my opinion, PSA pop reports are worthless.

If you collect rare back cards, it's even worse. I have a blue Croft's Candy Wagner batting in a PSA holder. The label does not say blue Croft's Candy on it, and therefore has no category to be placed in other than Croft's Candy. I have no idea how many black, blue, or red Croft's Candy Wagner's are even out there. And to make it worse, they didn't designate that it is the batting pose, which is another vital issue that PSA missed. I think PSA's approach to the vintage hobby is careless, but I understand that they do not really understand our hobby, just the business end of it.

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Posted By: JimCrandell

Dan,

No disrespect but you are obviously not a set collector. What you are talking about is the exception not the rule. In set after set after set there is a direct correlation between the Pop in psa 8 and the price. Are they 100 percent right? Of course not--but they are a very accurate barometer of where prices on a card should be.

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Posted By: Jamie B

It wasnt ment to sound like an advertisement.. I was wondering if any of the board members have used this site before.. and to share it with those who have not as it has helpped me to not get ripped off when buying graded vintage.

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Posted By: Dan Kravitz

Jim-
You are correct. I have no use for the reports. I just wish that an important issue like grading be taken more serious by one of the top companies. It's a shame they don't put more effort in what they do.

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Posted By: Matt

Dan - "I have a card that is not in the pop reports. Does that make it more valuable? If a card has been submitted 5 times, how can you assess true scarcity or value? "

As I said, using pop reports can give an indication of relative scarcity. As you say, using them for exact counts of how many of X card exists is not worthwhile.

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

Jamie,

You are new here and this is a common practice for most of the members to bicker each other to death.

In regards to the website it is mine and yes most people on this board are members or know about the service. I am glad you find it a useful tool in your arsenal for collecting, they know you are not advertising and it is a newbie who jumped the gun and should have more time invested before he should call you out on it.

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Posted By: Dan Kravitz

Jamie/Bobby-
I said "The original post seems like a commercial." I didn't come down on anyone for the post.

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

Dan,

My comment was directed towards Stefan not you. I know you are a fixture in this place and allowed to say your piece.

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Posted By: Steve Murray

Why is it that anytime someone mentions VCP someone else has to come on and go negative on it?

I would never buy a graded card without first researhing it on VCP. For me it is an invaluable resourse.

Apologies to the poster for the reception afforded by some. Hope it won't sour you to this board though if it did I wouldn't blame you.

Disclaimer: I am a subscriber to VCP; I have no other affiliation with VCP; and I don't know Bobby except from his service.

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Posted By: Bruce Babcock

1. I think VCP is a great service.

As for pop reports, as Jim points out, they can be invaluable for popular widely traded issues. Topps baseball and football issues, certainly, but also many vintage issues such as T206, Diamond Stars, Goudeys and many others.

Leon is also correct in that many vintage issues are so thinly trading that most pricing information is nebulous. SF Hess, Kalamazoo Bats, Darby Chocolates, AWH, Western Playground, Diamond S Cigars and dozens of others trade so infrequently that a "book" price becomes pretty meaningless.

Having a recent transaction price from VCP is very helpful but the price alone doesn't tell us if this was the last card a player needed for a set, or if two bidders went berserk beyond reason to come out on top. Both scenarios could give an inflated idea of the "true" market value. Also, many of my recent pickups, and I'm sure this is true of others, have been private transactions, so the results don't show up anywhere.

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Posted By: Jamie B

Do you get a sword and helmet with every membership? it appears there is a battle with every post.. I knew I liked this site for a reason!