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Is Beckett Price Guide In Touch with Market Prices?
mygotta
Posts: 1,652
About a month ago I won on eBay a George Bell Fan Favorite Autographed card for a whopping $1.50. The "common" card is listed at $12.00. In addition, I have from the series George Foster, Greg Luzinski, Cleon Jones, Terry Pendleton and Ed Kranepool. These are listed around $15-$20, but could be had for about $2-3 each for bidding.
That said, standard issue cards as well, from the same series seems seriously undervalued in comparison with prices based on Beckett's guide. Ripken listed at $4 could be had for a buck or less. And same goes for all the other stars and rookies save Harper being almost complete opposite or on target with book value.
What are your thoughts? Am I missing something with the price guide? My assumption is that new cards are usually mint out of the package (cutting and centering has become very good in the past 20 years). Older cards I can understand variances in pricing based on condition, rarity, etc. But these new cards there is enough to go around at least once so I wonder if people are just letting them go at any price or the interest in them are not reflective to Becket's pricing.
In general it seems eBay is a more accurate price guide.
That said, standard issue cards as well, from the same series seems seriously undervalued in comparison with prices based on Beckett's guide. Ripken listed at $4 could be had for a buck or less. And same goes for all the other stars and rookies save Harper being almost complete opposite or on target with book value.
What are your thoughts? Am I missing something with the price guide? My assumption is that new cards are usually mint out of the package (cutting and centering has become very good in the past 20 years). Older cards I can understand variances in pricing based on condition, rarity, etc. But these new cards there is enough to go around at least once so I wonder if people are just letting them go at any price or the interest in them are not reflective to Becket's pricing.
In general it seems eBay is a more accurate price guide.
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WTB: PSA 1 - PSA 3 Centered, High Eye Appeal 1950's Mantle
Some guys seem to use the Beckett as their bible, and will get really bent out of shape if you disagree.
As I see it, if I want a particular card, recent past sales on Ebay is a good indicator as to what I should expect to pay for the card, except for when the player does something recently that causes a bump (or dump) in demand.
WTB: 2001 Leaf Rookies & Stars Longevity: Ryan Jensen #/25
James
I believe they single handedly started the market boom back in 1984. Either they change for the better or they will eventually soon fade away. Oh, and bring down the prices on there magazines. $10 month for prices that stay stagnant. Ummm no thanks.
On the other end of the scale though, take a well centered, vintage, HOF rookie card and you will have to pay much more than most book values. VCP is pretty accurate for the middle of the range graded card, but not accurate for the top of the range graded card, but that really doesn't help you for newer items.
I should add that there is at least one anomaly where a card has increased in value greatly recently, and in a short time span. That being the Ruth M101-4/5. It is low in the Guide but correct for pricing from late last year.
That said, I've paid hundreds for cards Beckett says are worth a few pennies...so they're wrong from both directions.
<< <i>I find that Beckett Price Guides needs a major revamp. I think they should come out with a Vintage Price Guide and a Modern one. They really need to get a team of individuals and really start looking up prices and just rework there whole listing system - starting with the major cards first. Then work there way down. q]
That would be so much work, but that is exactly what needs to be done.
Successful card BST transactions with cbcnow, brogurt, gstarling, Bravesfan 007, and rajah 424.
Perhaps it was all an illusion. Perhaps Dr. Beckett didn't have a pricing formula at all. Perhaps no one could really tell that a 1989 Score Von Hayes was really selling for .12.
But regular Beckett's suck.
My small collection
Want List:
'61 Topps Roy Campanella in PSA 5-7
Cardinal T206 cards
Adam Wainwright GU Jersey
Its a valuable reference in its own right, but as you all mentioned, does not seem to reflect current prices people are paying. I thought before internet sales, most prices came from card shows. Either what was being purchased or sold at or some sort of average of the two.
but, e-bay is the great equalizer... nothing beats real world market prices... and the auction activity backs this up...
if you set your opening bid too high, your item will not sell... set it right and it will sell... although it might for less than either the seller or beckett would have hoped...
ps---gore did not invent the internet... i believe he was busy inventing global warming at that time...
<< <i>I have the Beckett Graded Price Guide, 1st Edition 2012. The Vintage is spot on. I have looked at hundreds of vintage prices and every single one is accurate. I don't collect anything after 1949 so can't comment on those.
I should add that there is at least one anomaly where a card has increased in value greatly recently, and in a short time span. That being the Ruth M101-4/5. It is low in the Guide but correct for pricing from late last year. >>
Leon is spot on...Beckett introduced a new guide at the National and actually gave out free copies at the Net54 dinner...This guide seems to be more accurate than SMR...One draw back is the low pop commons...Beckett left the price blank on a lot of these due to volatility of pricing...I spoke to one of the Beckett guys and asked if maybe they could put LP for low pop or another symbol instead of a blank...The way I check a guide is by looking up the price for a 65 Namath rookie...Beckett was really close to the actual market price...But the best realtime priceguide is VCP by far.
Kirk
<< <i>I use VCP & eBay.
And IMO, while it's important to take note of the off eBay auction house results for a given card, I find they can often times be wildly inaccurate.
Case in point is the 1975 Topps #620 Gary Carter PSA 10 that miconelegacy recently sold via Probstein:
Basically you gotta filter any info you get. >>
You can never under estimate the amount of ego in our hobby (I have one too
As for the new Beckett guide, I will stand by my original statement, as I perused it again just yesterday. I can't find a pre-war price that is very far off at all.
What is also very frustrating to me, since I collect vintage cards and try to only get very well centered cards, is that you have to figure out the premium yourself. One of the places I keep track of my inventory is on VCP, and I am always in the red of their average prices.
<< <i>Beckett hasn't been relevant since Al Gore invented the internet >>
And just when would that have been?
<< <i> Some guys seem to use the Beckett as their bible, and will get really bent out of shape if you disagree. >>
Amen. I hate trading with them too... Fortunately haven't run into many here, just other boards and groups.
What I'm selling
Building Sets, Collecting Texas Rangers, and Texas Tech Red Raiders
<< <i><< Some guys seem to use the Beckett as their bible, and will get really bent out of shape if you disagree. >>
Amen. I hate trading with them too... Fortunately haven't run into many here, just other boards and groups. >>
I recently had an interesting interaction with a seller (lots of feedback selling raw and graded modern cards) who got offended when I made a best-offer that was less than half "book."
I pointed out that the last few sales of the card were in line with my offer, and he said:
"Those prices are not market value. Market value in beckett, which requires more research, is more accurate than recent sales on eBay. You go around offering people half book value on cards because you missed out on a good deal is the a-hole move."
LOL.
WTB: 2001 Leaf Rookies & Stars Longevity: Ryan Jensen #/25
This has been discussed before and one day I will find the old beckett issue that had it in there, when in the readers write section, someone wrote in about how most cards on ebay sell for under the low price listed in Beckett and never sell for close to the high price and the editor wrote back that beckett does not use ebay prices for the standard pricing of cards. The will sometimes however use sales as a "blurb" if it is a rare or high grade card, but for general pricing, they do not take into account ebay sales at all.
This has been debated, but I know what I read and if you look at virtually any card, would bear out the truth of this. How many people are paying $30 for a raw score Barry Sanders rookie? Very few if any. Same goes for raw Ripken, Boggs, Bonds, Sandberg and so forth.
You can never win if you are a guide. Several people want to pay half VCP these days.
There is not a single guide that can give you the exact value of any item.
So no becket is not in touch with this given seconds market price.
<< <i>So no becket is not in touch with this given seconds market price. >>
It's not in touch with this given year's market price.
WTB: 2001 Leaf Rookies & Stars Longevity: Ryan Jensen #/25