Keeping Track of Your Collection Value
Copyboy1
Posts: 479 ✭✭✭✭
How do you guys keep track of your collection value? The PSA options don't seem to keep up with reality. I looked into some apps like CardBase, but none got great reviews. Ebay sales plus a spreadsheet?
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Yes. My collection is small enough with 250 cards. I update once in a while by averaging with excel the 5 previous sales to assign a value.
Amazing how the average price can sometimes predict the next sale price; literally within the dollar
The recent run-ups started blowing previous sales out of the water hence averaging up my cards' values.
IMO, averaging works the best, throwing out obscenely high sales and too low BINs incorrectly valued by seller
Who can keep up with the "reality" of prices these days. PSA is careful not to overshoot with their price guides and I can understand that. A card selling between 50-60K last month and today selling 40K. VCP averages don't even mean much anymore. Today, cards are like stocks. Up one day and down the next. Only thing that keeps it somewhat in line are the grades assigned. If you own a 7, you know it shouldn't be worth more than the same card in the grade of an 8 (same rule does not always apply for vintage however). You should have an idea of what your big cards are at least selling for by searching recent eBay sales. That's all you really need and can go if you want the current market value. Spreadsheet would be suffice as a form of tracking.
When all is said and done, I'll be somewhere around 500 total cards - which is a pain to manually update. But I love your idea of averaging the previous 5 sales.
I have about 450 cards. I just use the PSA registry to keep track. Since i got back into collecting 7 years ago I have been putting the date of purchase and what I paid. About once a week I will pick about 25-50 cards and check prices on Ebay sales. I usually take the last 3 average sales and manually put that price in for the cards worth. It gives me something to do.
it is very difficult in this environment. everything is so volatile. prices a week old are old old news.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I was hoping for some service that pulled from the big auction sites (kind of like PSA does) plus pulled recent Ebay sales and then averaged it all and automatically applied it to my collection.
I haven't been on vintagecardprices.Com for a while.
They worked pretty well last time I was active.
You can set your preference to average price or most recent.
They pick up beckett and sgc cards as well.
I still record all my purchases on the site
CardBase trying to do dynamic update personal portfolio, Not many cards when I tried...gonna take awhile. Market MOvers may have it w their paid service as it collects that data, and is now feeding it to Dibbs to support their new soon to come dynamic fractional share exchange
Like other folks here, I also track eBay sales in an Excel spreadsheet for my more valuable cards. If the card has a large sample size of recent sales, I try to average the most recent ~20 sales. I may update a particular card 2-3 times a year, to adjust for pre-season and post-season swings. It can be alot of work, and I'm sure some of the eBay sales aren't paid, but I haven't found anything better. Once I have the average, I use a label maker to put the price (and date) on the back of my card holders, (for my family) in case anything ever happens to me.
PS ... it would be so much more helpful if eBay would remove auctions that were not paid.
All of my graded cards are listed on VCP. The value is updated every time similar cards sell.
James
date + price paid + seller(when possible) here
Sports Collectors Digest
Trading Card Database. Great for managing your inventory. Have many cards values as well. When values are not given I use sites like Beckett and PSA and then go into my inventory and edit the details. Great site. Here are some stats:
Cards Listed: 13,754,707
Cards with Images: 3,735,474
Sets Listed: 256,649
Following. I checked all of these out and non-seem to be a perfect solution to me, the closest being trading card database but it is quite clunky to navigate.
HOF SIGNED FOOTBALL RCS
One thing I really like about VCP is you can pay for a month and input all of your cards. Then cancel your membership and renew it for a month when you want to check the value again. I think I have probably only paid for 5 or 6 months over the last 3 or 4 years. VCP should only be used a reference though, you should check ebay, other auctions, etc... too.
Successful card BST transactions with cbcnow, brogurt, gstarling, Bravesfan 007, and rajah 424.
There's no perfect tool. VCP is about the best in my opinion. It doesn't capture some of the major auction house sales and it's not good at best offers on eBay. However, it will get you a good sense of the value of your collection. In this environment, I'm paying more attention to last price than I did in the past. I previously put more stock in average price value but that undervalues cards due to the recent spike.
I frustratingly went through about 5 tools yesterday and none were adequate so I started a google sheet to track. Stinks that there won't be auto-updating of values but it seems the only option customizable enough.
HOF SIGNED FOOTBALL RCS
I use the app Cardbase on my Iphone. I really enjoy it.
As others have said - I use VCP. Works well for graded cards.
I saw that but have a huge list ti input and would prefer to use Pc. Does not appear they have a desktop version.
HOF SIGNED FOOTBALL RCS