It CAN be done

SOM

Hardly two days go by before you read a slam at the SMR on these boards. And the slams are well deserved, because their pricing information is laughable.

Leave it to Beckett to get it right.

Their newest quarterly rag, "Beckett Graded Card Investor," is a darned good effort at reporting on the card market. They sure give it the old college try, reporting realistic prices on short prints and even low-pops in all of the vintage sets!

If it is indeed possible to do so, they make the SMR's pricing template plummet even further by comparison.

Joe, my suggestion: give up the pricing section. It's a conflict of interest anyway. Rename the magazine "Registry Report" or something similar, and focus on high end collector topics. Things like set history, profiles of Registrants, player updates, etc. You do a wonderful job in the editorial sections of the magazine; do what you do best, and do more of it.

Heck...we might even start to look forward to our monthly issues!

Happy New Year, everyone!

hankcaddy

Joe, my suggestion: give up the pricing section. It's a conflict of interest anyway. Rename the magazine "Registry Report" or something similar, and focus on high end collector topics. Things like set history, profiles of Registrants, player updates, etc. You do a wonderful job in the editorial sections of the magazine; do what you do best, and do more of it.



i could not have said it better.

MeteoriteGuy

<< <i>Joe, my suggestion: give up the pricing section. It's a conflict of interest anyway. Rename the magazine "Registry Report" or something similar, and focus on high end collector topics. Things like set history, profiles of Registrants, player updates, etc. You do a wonderful job in the editorial sections of the magazine; do what you do best, and do more of it.



i could not have said it better. >>




Well said!

Clear Skies,
Mark

helionaut

Funny that Beckett puts out a magazine like that. Every time I've looked at it in the past year (a couple times at the news stand) they have blurb called "Wasting Money" or something like that, putting down collectors who pay 100-1000x book value for a card because it achieved a rare high grade. And those cards are always in PSA slabs.

VitoCo1972

Graded Card Investor is an excellent option for those non PSA annual members. I subscribed after the first issue came out and have found it extremely useful. Although, I must say, since it IS released by Beckett, it does have to also be seen as a conflict of interest - particularly since they rank a Beckett 9.5 and a PSA 10 on the same level, thus attempting to make a BGS/BVG 10 seem more desirable (IMHO they ARE, but it's only based on personal experience).

RonBurgundy

I picked up a copy of Beckett's magazine a few weeks ago and was shocked at how good it was.




Ron

Davalillo

Add me to the list that thinks this is a very good effort. Like VCP, they attempt to use what cards have sold for at auction to determine prices and they put a lot of effort into it.

Joe, I know your answer will be send in your suggested changes with documentation but really--it is not our job to keep this up to date. You either have to hire someone full time to keep up with prices or give it up. The prices you list for many cards and sets are wide of the mark and it does not help PSA's reputation to publish this type of information.

WinPitcher

I agree with the various sentiments here.


Steve

JonB

I don't think PSA needs to give up their pricing report. I for one find it a lot easier to use than having to go buy a becket, or subscibe to another online service. PSA just needs to keep their prices updated more often.

Davemri

How about SMR just striking a deal with VCP?? That would solve all pricing issues.

Dave

Morgoth

Doesn't the SMR list a graded card index showing like the average price of 500 sportscards and it always shows an upward trend? I haven't gotten a new SMR in a long time so excuse me if it has been removed. But if it's still there I doubt PSA wants to show any downward trends to this index or really any downturn in graded card prices. Sure alot of low pops would go up in value but a majority of the 60's and 70's star cards would go down.

gemint

Folks,

Any price guide is just that, a guide. How do you accurately publish pricing for a card that one week sells for $20 and the next week sells for $45, then sells for $15 at a later date? I agree there are some prices that need updated because the cards always sell for more or less than SMR. However, it's a decent guide to give the overall value of a set (at least for non-modern cards). If you put together a graded vintage set, it's usually going to cost you pretty close to SMR. Some will sell for over and some for less than SMR but it will usually average out.

If you want accurate pricing, use VCP in combination with SMR. All pricing systems have their flaws. So using more data points will not hurt you, it will only help. So I see no advantage to abolishing pricing in SMR. If you don't agree with it, don't use it!

RonBurgundy

I don't know how anyone can defend the failure of SMR to accurately price material. Yes, all price guides are "guides", but the point of this post was that other publications are doing a better job of providing said guidance. There is nothing wrong with customers of PSA (politely) asking that its publication be improved.





Ron

fandango

the solution is soo simple....

get the same deal VCP has and tap into every ebay and auction house auction...

then you can trim payroll by not paying all those hours looking up auctions byhand.....

Fabfrank

I agree with Gemmint. It's a price guide not a price bible and should be used as such.

I might be able to shed some light on why SMR price guide behaves as it has done. I'm also a long time comic book collector (35+ years). The complaints that we hear about SMR had been echoed for years regarding the Overstreet Comic Price Guide. Chuck Rozanski (owner of Mile High Comics, the largest Internet comic dealer in the world) wrote in a recent article how Bob Overstreet had approached pricing over the years. To sum up the article, Overstreet Guide would raise prices about 7-8% per year, regardless of price movement. He felt that within any condition grade there would be a hi and low range and that any extreme sales on the hi and low sides were not indicative of the majority of sales that occured in the middle. His approach lent to a steady appreciation of most comics (and dealers inventory) and provided the outlook of a stable comics market. By reducing pricing volatility it gave the comic book market a sense of legitimacy.
We now have monthly price guides as well as VCP, which gives up to the minute average pricing. They all should be used as tools in determining price.
Bottom line guys, a collectible is only worth what someone else is willing to pay.

perkdog

<< <i>Bottom line guys, a collectible is only worth what someone else is willing to pay. >>




How true.

Ichiro51fan

<< <i>Folks,

Any price guide is just that, a guide. How do you accurately publish pricing for a card that one week sells for $20 and the next week sells for $45, then sells for $15 at a later date? >>



Well, there are formulas to use that will provide a fair and accurate price based on recent sales history. Basically, you take an average of all recent sales but discount any or most extremely high or low values that would be outside the normal sales realm. This keeps the average prices from being skewed by a couple of odd-ball auctions. This could be done quite easily by working with the data already being collected by VCP. I think the key issue here is incentive... from PSA's perspective, why would they want to invest extra time and money in making their price guide useable? I mean, they already have our membership money, and I bet not too many people join for the SMR access Some companies truly try to strive to constantly improve thier product for thier customers, but I think most of us would agree that this is not really PSA's top priority. Otherwise, they would have improved turnaround times and grading consistency many years ago. Personally, I have given up on PSA ever publishing a useable price guide for this reason. They are what they are... the top grading company (by reputation). If you want top dollar for your cards, you pretty much have to use thier services. In this way, they have a true edge in that they do not have to make improvements in thier processes as they obviously are getting more cards in to grade than they can handle in a reasonable amount of time. From my way of thinking, I believe that I few well invested dollars for improvements would actually return dividends for them and increase thier bottom line. But sadly, a lot of companies are blind to this possibility. They see thier current profits and decide that they are good enough, so why take chances by spending money to improve things. Yes, this is a backwards way of thinking, but it certainly appears as though PSA is of this mindset.