Cogito Ergo Sum

JollyElm · #1 01-29-2020, 06:07 AM

I think, therefore I am...but am I???

One of my favorite resources is the PSA Auction Prices Realized site. It lets me see how much the cards I'm looking at generally go for, but I can't find the last time a card I bought on ebay actually appeared there. What in high heck is going on?? Sometimes it seems they have a lag of a month or two in reporting prices, but sometimes you look and very recent auction prices are listed. Is this happening to other people?? It's as if the many cards I've bought (over a bunch of months) are being completely ignored for some reason.

A few cards I looked at were too expensive, so I talked to the seller and was able to get a slightly reduced price. They sent me an official offer, so it was a regular sale and should be reflected as such. A couple of other cards (1972 Wilt Chamberlain and a 1968 Tom Seaver were both PSA 9 OC) had the wrong year stated in the auction listings. Did that mess it up, so they simple disappeared into The Twilight Zone?? The Wilt was erroneously listed as 1971, but searching in that category (1971 Chamberlain) on the site shows nothing, and in the 1972 column there is also no sale posted, even though the purchase was many months ago. Seems like the itemized listings there really aren't in any way comprehensive enough, and perhaps they need to update their data gathering methods??

It's just strange, as it could work for or against you. For instance, if I remember correctly the only 1972 Chamberlain PSA 9OC listed says it sold for $179 (not including tax and shipping). I believe I got mine for a total of a little over $100?? So if I went to sell it, the buyer would see the last one sold for $179, and that could benefit me, the seller. On the other hand, if someone is looking to buy one and my purchase price of $100 is absent from the database, he would probably end up 'overpaying' for the card (based on the only available figures), and that would be detrimental to him, the buyer.

jchcollins · #2 01-30-2020, 07:30 AM

Yeah PSA has slacked off on this recently; I’m not sure why. Maybe with all of the volume they took the folks responsible for updating that page and made them graders instead? It used to be that almost every eBay purchase I made of a PSA card, it would then wind up on that page a few days or weeks later. But that rarely happens anymore. Sad, because I’m not paying $30 a month or whatever for a VCP subscription anytime soon.

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swarmee · #3 01-31-2020, 05:09 AM

A lot of PSA's Auction Prices Realized cards are filed under the wrong card entirely because they do try to read either the barcode or the cert number from the photograph and frequently get it wrong because of image quality.

There are also some eBay sellers (like COMC) that utilize a program where instead of selling the single item, they have they ability to mark the item as "Out of Stock" instead of sold. I think the system doesn't really know what to do with those and may not report those sales to VCP or APR.