Wow ! the cost of finding out values, Is It Wasted $$

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Posted By: Al

I think this issue revolves around what you collect, how much you pay for cards and how much information are you willing to pay for. I believe VCP gives me plenty of bang for buck. In addition to looking up cards, I have created several "want" lists, which, when a card comes up at a bunch of different places, I get an email telling me about it. This saves a TON of searching. Additionally, I can create my own collection list, which shows me trends in sales patterns to give me a general idea of market conditions. VCP is really the way to go for me.

SMR is really a useless rag. True, when you re-up you get 6 free submssions, this assumes you are a raw collector, otherwise you'd have to be a crack-out and submit person to get value from the freebies. I've not gotten the coffee table book, but I understand it is very well done. I think the SMR values stated over and over AD NAUSEUM, year after year after year, are simply not valid. Try as I might to bring this to the highest person in PSA, it has done no good, nada, zip, zero. It is sad to read how they tout about "scouring" sales, auctions, blah, blah, but I see almost little change in the set I am primarily interested in, which is the 55 Topps baseball set. Year after weary year, the SMR has shown card #3, Art Fowler in a PSA 8 to have a value of $80, GL finding one for less than a grand. This is just one example in the set, there are many others.

With VCP, I believe there are two levels of membership, Gold and Silver. I only go for the Silver option. While VCP is not the be all, end all to information, what is available in VCP is clearly light-years ahead of the rather dubious, if not down right useless data found in SMR. One would think they would really improve in this area, but I've seen almost no viable changes to their publication in a long time.