Dean's Cards
 

What are the experiences others have had with them?

Are they low ballers? Reasonable to work with?

Thanks for sharing.

Peter got a card from them once that was undergraded.

Phil bought a card he thought was fairly priced.

John's wife bought him some cards for Christmas, but she paid way too much for them.

As for me, I needed a $5 card for my set, and Dean's had one for $10. I was going to buy it anyway, but they wanted to add $5 for shipping. I asked them if they could put it in a PWE and charge me $1, and they said No.



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Any card dealer will be a low baller - they can't pay market value or they will make no money.

Ha! Well put Al.

When I spoke to them about buying a 250 card post war lot a few years ago they said they only buy lots of 500 or more. Not sure if that's the case or if they didn't like the lot but they were nice about it. I'm sure if was a Cracker Jack lot they may have been more flexible.

That was way too funny...I'm done telling that story every time someone asks, and chuckled when I read that. I'm way to predictable...:)

To be fair, it does look like their pricing had come down to decent...not as many ridiculous listings as they used to have. Not that I would buy one...lol...

I purchased a non-sport card from them, I feel I did alright. Service + shipping was fine. They seem to be on the higher end of the price scale so I usually don’t bother with them.

Not surprising feedback but good to hear from each of you. thanks!

No, cards went UP by that much, they look fairly priced ;)

Back scans and reliable service if you can find what you need or want at a price you are willing to pay. On a couple of large orders years ago prices were negotiated off eBay and off their site

I have looked for years, and maybe bought about 3 cards from him (50 Bowman FB to complete a set in Ex+), one of which was severely overgraded and was returned (no problem). With card prices having escalated, i had hoped his prices moved into fairness, but they are still way too high for almost everything…but he has inventory if you need something badly and if its cheap the overpay wont kill you. He does carry a lot of stuff, which is fairly unique these days, but must pay/have paid very little for it.

On the other hand, having likely not sold much due to his prices, he has had great returns on his card “investments”!

Never sold to Deans.

Bought one thing, once. Overpaid but I needed it. I recall no issues

Deans prices are so stupid high that I summarily skip any Deans listing if/when I search eBay. I recall his website prices being only a wee bit less worse than eBay, and still way too high to transact.

They of course are free to ask whatever prices they want

That was entertaining...

Dean's has a lot of neat stuff, but I usually pass right by it as fast as possible or try to filter them out because the prices are "optimistic".

I'm not sure if they take consignments, but if they do, they may be holding on to your stuff for a while because it's just going to sit there (in most cases) if "they" put a price tag on it.

In my case I have bought T210s form them for cheaper than I could find on eBay. I have never sold to them but have no problem buying from them.

As a buyer, I have found they have a nice selection but the prices are the highest of any seller I know. Many items priced at 200% of the going rate. They seem professional, just high prices.

When searching on eBay, I now exclude them from the results, given that their ebay prices are 10% higher still than their website.

Here's an example: I can't find N300 Mayo's anywhere, only at Dean's. In desperation I purchase one for $1,100 that previously sold at auction for $501.00 + shipping and tax. Few weeks later same grade equivalent is a BIN on eBay for $799. I paid higher than a recent auction price and higher than the next BIN price because the item was hard to find. No deals can be had at Dean's... something to keep in mind.

You may want to look over these prior two threads;

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...light=dean%27s

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...light=dean%27s

Mike

I've made a couple of small purchases from Dean's and was quite satisified all around. As others have noted, I find his prices overall to be very high and for that reason I don't look at his listings that often.

Thanks, Mike. Ya, I tried to search history but the search function on net54 isn't quite as good as google :D

I have only purchased from Dean's once and the transaction went fine.

Prices were extremely high but with the 20% discount when you buy a certain amount from their website the prices on the cards were ok enough for me to pull the trigger.

I've made a few purchases directly from the website. Prices are a little lower than on eBay and additional discounts are available depending on total purchase amount. Delivery has always been very fast and I have not had any issues so haven't had to try returning anything.

Great service. Most of their stuff is too high, sometimes absurdly so. But occasionally they either forget to overprice it or don’t update it for a while. This happened a lot in 2021 when things went nuts early in the year. There’s a regular dealer at my show who was always overpriced and his stuff started getting affordable because he hadn’t kept up with the value jumps. This probably happened a lot back during the Covid era. Tech challenged older dealers not keeping up with price jumps. Same thing happened to some of Dean’s stuff.

I still occasionally pick stuff off from them. Their self grading is very strong, better than Greg Morris IMO, good professional service too.

I buy misprints and varieties from Dean. They have large quantity with back scans, which is greatly appreciated for this purpose. I don’t mind spending $3
For a variation nobody knows about and so is worth $1 if you can find it. I would never buy anything else most of the time. Occasionally I’ve bought a card at fair price. I got a VG Ray Nitschke rookie card for like $12 on their site last year. I think that was fair.

Sale to Dean's
 

This is probably not possible to replicate at scale, but...I bought a T205 Ruelbach PSA 2 in 2020 for $30, decided to sell in 2022 because I got a higher grade. Figured I might now pay $50, so I put it on ebay at $70 for some negotiation room. Dean's bought it immediately, then listed it at 225.

Is Deans eBay buying handle the same as his selling?

No, it was the mailing label that gave it away.

Last time Dean bought from me, "stuckonthird" was his ebay name.

As i thought, Dean pays very little
(At least relative to his sale prices) and holds a lot of inventory, or he would have to lower prices to move stuff faster.

Many of their cards are insanely overpriced and overgraded. Ive seen them win auctions numerous times and immediately turn around and list the same card for 3 to 4 times the price they won it for. They are bad for the hobby.

I honestly don't get this attitude. Every business charges more than they paid. You think that is a big mark up buy furniture or jewelry.

Look a how many others have said the same thing in this post as well as numerous posts on fb pages...Its a very well known and shared view on Deans from many hobbyists Ive spoken with.

I do get that many people say it, doesn't mean I have to agree with them. Plus the majority of them have never owned a business so really don't understand how it works. Before I owned a business I was like this and was appalled by price markups. After learning about all the real expenses of running a business I quickly changed my opinion.

Agree with most others on here. Good service, high price and bought from them direct. I will turn to them for some of the hard to find items. It is a matter of finding the item I want at a price I want to pay.

Dean like Levi charges to much for his cards. He will never make it in this hobby. Manny a hobbyist has said this, many times, over many years :-)

I get certain use cases for him, like us variation geeks using his great scans and large stock to 'overpay' for tough defects that are hard to find, but I really do not understand how his business works at the scale it does in fact work at. It's not like he stocks tons of cards that are so tough you can't go find them on eBay for 50% of his asking price or less. I don't get why it is that evidently many people will pay him much more for a card than they will others. His site isn't any easier than buying on eBay, there's no carrot that I can see here. There are tons of sellers who provide fine customer service selling the same items for far less, and yet his business manages to survive and thrive.

He must have lots of blinder-saddled supporters or he couldn't stay in business, given his current pricing model.

They have bought numerous of my high grade 1933 Goudey's at auction. The last one was a PSA 6 for $200. All I can say is, they won it via .99 cent auction. Other bidders had the exact same chance to bid on the card and chose not to go higher than $200. So don't fault them for being the high bidder. Blame the under bidders for not bidding the card up.

I'm not familiar with prices of higher grade 1933 Goudeys. Would you say that $200 for a PSA 6 was lower than you expected? If so, then Deans buying it for that price then listing it for a higher price would make sense. If you think that $200 was a fair price then it seems like the issue isn't that under bidders didn't bid higher but that Deans is now trying to sell it for what is considered a lot higher than current market value.

I felt it was a bit low. Not outrageously low. But low. But it's not like you see high grade cards from 1933 every day. If he bought it for $200, I am sure it is in his store for $400. Maybe more. No telling how long he will have to sit on it. But if someone wants it, they will pay it.

I know I've said this before, but being a card dealer is not like a typical business. Acquiring inventory takes a lot of effort and knowledge. You can't just go out and order more. Low margins may work for some, but it is a lot more hassel (cost, bidding, offers, tracking inventory, scanning, listing, accounting, etc) to replenish the inventory. If you have the resources to hold the inventory until you find a buyer, why sell low and go through that effort to constantly replenish stock? Set your price and wait for a buyer. If no one buys, eventually they would need to sell or go out of business, at which point they would be selling as well. Obviously Dean's, 707, etc must be doing something right that works for their business model or they wouldn't have been around for as long as they have.

As far as where and how much they pay for cards, my guess is in most instances there isn't a special resource no one knows about. As others have indicated here, they are competing with others for the cards they buy. They were just willing to pay more than someone else at that moment. If you're upset that they won the card and are now charging more for card you want, perhaps you should have put more effort into finding the card and bidding more to win it. If you're upset that they bought a card from you and are now selling for more, perhaps you should have set a higher price or not put it in an auction.

I do think there is a basic difference between buying wholesale and selling retail versus buying retail and selling retail. Dealers who buy whole collections, go to estate sales, garage sales, etc., sort through collections to create lots, etc. are providing a service to collectors and should be paid for the service they provide. On the other hand, dealers who outbid collectors at auction because they have more capital and can do so are like someone who walks into a Walmart, buys out their supplies of paper towels, and sets up a table in the parking lot to sell paper towels at a new higher price. There is no utility provided to the end consumer in that instance, just price-gouging.

Exactly this.

Here is an example: I decided to get back into the hobby in 2011. My first project was to build the 1978 Topps baseball set. The first site I landed on was Dean's. Looking at their prices, I almost quit before I started. I was fortunate enough to find the thriving eBay marketplace.

I guess it's time for this...

746. Sitcommerce
When apologists for notorious on-line price extortionists claim they have fine business models, and you can’t help but laugh and wonder, “If that’s the case, why don’t they buy up all of the same cards that others list on eBay for 1/4 of their price and sell them for a huge profit??”

Such an interesting topic to me, as a former dealer (although in memorabilia.) The whole trick to making it work, of course, is the difference between what you pay (cost of goods sold) and what you sell for, minus your expenses. For common items, you have price guides, eBay completed sales, auction results, etc., to steer you in the right direction. But for rare or especially one-of-a-kind things, you're always guessing about what the market will bear for it and therefore how much to pay. That's why virtually every dealer of vintage material at a show is or was a long-time collector, no other experience or education will give you the information and sense to navigate that terrain successfully. To my knowledge, there is no such thing as somebody thinking, "I'm going to learn as much as I can in the next few months and become a vintage card (or memorabilia) dealer." I don't think anybody could make that work. In the case of graded cards, though, it is a mystery why any dealer would price much of his inventory well outside of what can be easily obtained elsewhere, perhaps multiple elsewheres. It would seem they are depending on luck, as in first-time buyers stumbling upon their site and figuring without any research that's what the market pays for what they're looking for. For the truly rare stuff, though, who is to say what the market really is? Maybe Dean or Levi is setting the market for things you can't find anywhere else. I suspect the reason they have been successful for so long while seemingly priced higher than the competition is that a consistently rising market has justified their prices over time, and that has become their actual business model. I can remember asking an autograph dealer friend about whose prices everyone complained why he didn't lower his prices a bit in order to sell more of his vast inventory, and this is what he told me: "I price everything by what I might have to pay to replace it." I thought about that and responded: "But that means you will always be perceived to be at least a little (or maybe a lot) ahead of the curve, and potential buyers will shy away and complain." But he did OK as it was, and it seems that Dean, Levi, and others with that philosophy are doing OK, too, so what's the use of complaining? We should rather be spending our time trying to find what we want at lower prices, or adjust our collecting to what is there to be had at what we're willing to pay. Of course, in the end this is all part of the fun of collecting, the challenges on the road to acquiring our beloved "stuff."

That ain’t nothin’. There’s an even worse seller. This guy lists cards that are marked up to 10x the going price. He belly aches if you leave eBay feedback that his cards are overpriced. Yet this same guy admits that his cards are listed at real high prices. This guy is so bad that he was featured in the New York Times. To make matters worse, he’s a super seller on eBay ( which he prominently displays on his “for sale “ items).

If he's a super seller, he must be finding plenty of buyers willing to pay his prices.

We're talking baseball cards and memorabilia, not bread, or insulin. The only people who buy collectibles at high prices are those who voluntarily choose to do so. If someone has an addiction and simply cannot stop themself from over-paying for cardboard, then they have the problem, not the person offering the items for sale.

No, just means there’s a lot of suckers.

I guess I am one of those suckers. I started collecting in 1957 at age 7 and with some small gaps have been collecting ever since. I have bought cards from Dean and Levi. In both cases most of my purchases did not take place on ebay or off their site, but rather through phone and email contacts or at shows. Today if I buy a card from Dean it is usually a card with a back variant as he is dependable for back scans

I get why some pass on Dean and Levi because they price for the market to come to them....as it did in many cases during Covid. I just do not get why some buyers get so bent out of shape that some sellers have cards they want but will not sell them at the price they want to pay. Some sellers have cards they are willing to sell at a particular price and if they can not get that price prefer to keep the card.

.

Interesting thought - how many cards did this thread help Deans sell? I bet some.

I bet a number of people looked up Deans as a result of this thread, saw something they wanted, and paid (or overpaid) for it. Publicity is publicity and bet Deans does just fine every time a new thread is started about them.

So Net54 collectors found things they wanted at prices they're willing to pay, and that's a bad thing? I don't get that. To me, the bottom line on this entire discussion is that nobody's holding a gun to anybody's head to do business with Dean or anyone else. If ever there was a last bastion of pure, unadulterated capitalism left, it's our hobby. Supply and demand, take it or leave it, pure and simple.