<< ........a service that I am paying good money for......... >>
Not for long apparently.
It is complaining to voice it on this thread repeatedly. Simply sending VCP an email asking for a correction/addition is all that is/was actually necessary. Unfortunately BobbyVCP pissed you off and now you are using this thread to bash VCP and their service. Your troubles with VCP aside I have found their service to be very useful and it has saved me quite a bit of money and will continue to do so.
I agree with nam, as I do find that VCP misses quite a few auctions. Usually ones that have a BIN attached, even if they end in auction ,many times never populate into VCP. If you aren't careful or already somewhat knowledgable on the issue you can be burned.
BUT, I also think VCP provides a nice service. One that I had been waiting to be invented for sometime. I used to track all ended auction of graded NFL HOF RCs myself. This was very time consuming, and I too missed auctions that were either mislabeled or listed in the wrong categories...
To me, the service is worth $99 a year, but not $179. Once my $99 year is up, I may go with the silver membership as being able to view the auction links and scans isn't worth $80 more a year. Not sure I will be willing to pay $30 more for the lesser service either so I may end up cancelling as well. All I use it for is to HELP determine pricing and/or how much I will pay. The differences in price (high/low) will usually tell you which card was the better looking anyway.
If the Silver membership were to stay at $99, I would almost certainly keep that service, but not sure I can justify dropping another $30 for the lesser service.
Jason
I'm here to question, not to inspire or build up. To live how I want, as I see fit, according to my values and my needs. Nothing holds dominion over me, I stand alone as the ruler of my life.
Why would a competitor want to come in? With a subscription base of ~5000 there really isn't enough of a market to justify it. Card collecting is at most a niche market and VCP probably is trying to figure out how to expand into other areas.
I doubt many of you are IT consultants but the amount of effort to build the functionality, store the data and keep the system updated is pretty extensive. Performance could be better but I just open multiple tabs on my browser and do something else while VCP is churning away. >>
I've created a few websites here and there, and know at least a good bit about cgi scripting.
If I was to start a competing business, I'd first need to secure whatever privilege VCP is paying Ebay in order to get access to more streamlined search results. Ebay probably doesn't like unauthorized search bots.
THEN, I'd need to write some sort of custom routine to be able to grab sportscard auctions. This is probably the toughest part of what VCP does. Filtering the results probably requires some sort of human intervention. They probably need to verify every search that comes up. Then, they need to set up a system to monitor the auction and grab the final closing price when it sells, including knowing as soon as possible when a Buy-It-Now hits. Snagging the scan and making sure it's the correct one is also not trivial.
After all of that, they need to put all the information into a massive database that is searchable and able to be catalogued. This is also not trivial and there are a million ways to do it wrong.
So this is clearly an enterprise that nobody is going to undertake and offer for free, but to ask $180 per year seems excessive, too. If they really need to charge $180 per year to perform this service, then it just may end up being an unsustainable business model.
If I had a say in a business of this type, I'd look for ways to get sellers to list through VCP, using the massive VCP database to automatically suggest starting prices, BINs, reserves, and to be able to list directly to E-Bay. One stop shop. That is something big-time dealers might be interested in, and THAT is something they'd probably pay way more than $180 per year to be able to do.
"So this is clearly an enterprise that nobody is going to undertake and offer for free, ..."
"If I had a say in a business of this type, I'd look for ways to get sellers to list through VCP, using the massive VCP database to automatically suggest starting prices, BINs, reserves, and to be able to list directly to E-Bay. One stop shop. That is something big-time dealers might be interested in, and THAT is something they'd probably pay way more than $180 per year to be able to do. "
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ALL of that has merit.
The only way I can think of to offer such info "free" would be for a "listing venue" - like EBAY or a competitor - to provide the data as an incentive to list iems for sale.
Folks Who Bite Get Bitten. Folks Who Don't Bite Get Eaten.
I wrote some similar software a number of years ago tracking value of my collection versus realized Ebay sales. Ebay used to offer a free web service for obtaining completed auction results, not sure if that exists any more or if they made it something you have to pay for. It worked alright but I got too many false positives on the auction results and I only kept a running average for price (I had a small Sun box in my house running Netscape web server and Oracle DB with a cron job kicking off my update process each night). If I were to redo it I would add in a workflow component to trigger admin reviews anytime the realized price fell outside a certain range (say +/- 30% of the previous average price).
I think the seller angle is very good and hopefully something VCP has been considering. I know I check VCP when I set my BIN prices and reserves.
As for pricing we will have to see what the market will bear. For me the $179 price point isn't an issue however only Bobby knows for sure what the impact has been on new subscriptions and renewals.
The reason for the delay in BIN's posting to the site is because when it gets added to eBay there is an ending time stamp. Our system records this time and when it occurs it gets checked and verified as a sale then posts to the site. So for example if it is a 9 day auction and sells on the 2nd day it will be another 7 days before it posts. Now there is a 30 day BIN listing which will make it even longer to post to the site. There is no other way around this problem that we know of at this time and that is why the auction Nick mentioned have not posted.
In regards to some of the things needed to build a site like VCP and one is a eBay License which costs about $7000 a year per section on eBay.
Right now there are 3 people working everyday entering data to the site. I personally have not had a day off in almost 3 years. Some days it only takes me a couple of hours to the whole day to do everything that is needed to keep the site current. It is a full time job for 5 people running this site and I would find it real hard to believe someone could do it for free.
<< <i>The reason for the delay in BIN's posting to the site is because when it gets added to eBay there is an ending time stamp. Our system records this time and when it occurs it gets checked and verified as a sale then posts to the site. So for example if it is a 9 day auction and sells on the 2nd day it will be another 7 days before it posts. Now there is a 30 day BIN listing which will make it even longer to post to the site. There is no other way around this problem that we know of at this time and that is why the auction Nick mentioned have not posted.
>>
Can you periodically check auctions with BIN's to see if they've ended early? Why restrict yourselves to only waiting until the absolute final ending time?
The reason why is eBay does not put a closed or end time when it is sold for a BIN in the code and still shows the original ending time. If they did then it would be easy for us to run a script and check all BIN's and BO's every hour to see if they sold. We tried getting eBay to make this change but as all of you we got nowhere with them. So we have to wait til the very end of the listing time before it can be posted.
<< <i>The reason why is eBay does not put a closed or end time when it is sold for a BIN in the code and still shows the original ending time. If they did then it would be easy for us to run a script and check all BIN's and BO's every hour to see if they sold. We tried getting eBay to make this change but as all of you we got nowhere with them. So we have to wait til the very end of the listing time before it can be posted. >>
One sneaky way to check would be to simply call up the page of the auctions and do a text search for "Auction has ended with Buy-It-Now" or whatever terminologly they use. You'd know the price if you grabbed it when the auction was posted. If you checked the BIN auctions every day then you'd be guaranteed of getting the end date correct. At the very least, you could put the sale in your database as "Pending Final Verification" or something like that. At least it would show up in some form. BINs are probably the single-biggest factor for price increases or decreases, so it's imperative they be catalogued as soon as possible.
I really don't know how the search-bot results get returned, though. The brute-force method would simply be to search the HTML, which could represent a massive server load that Ebay might not be too happy with.
We thought of that and asked eBay and they denied us to do it because it would violate the term with the developer license. They only allow us to use their API protocol system.
I was once a member(for about 6 months) and was paying monthly at $10 per. I enjoyed the service but just felt like I didn't use it enough to pay the $$. I definitely won't join for the price it is now. No complaints with the product, I just don't feel like it's worth the $$.
<< <i>We thought of that and asked eBay and they denied us to do it because it would violate the term with the developer license. They only allow us to use their API protocol system. >>
If it's impossible for you to get the information early, then it would be impossible for anyone else. Looks like you're doing the best you can under the circumstances.
Or you could hire somebody to constantly hit refresh on every single auction.
OR, you could include the BIN price in any searches, but simply list them as "currently in auction", meaning they wouldn't have any affect on the value, but it's still useful to know what sellers are listing their BINs at. You could even catalogue the BINs and track which were successful and which weren't (plus or minus). Such information would be hugely beneficial to sellers and buyers alike.
<< <i>There already is a BIN icon on the site and they all pop up in the GIN section you just have to make sure the + is selected on that section. >>
Oh, sorry. I didn't realize that.
It sounds like you really know what you are doing, and the site is great, but the gist from this thread is that it may simply cost too much for you to run it and recoup that in membership fees. Only you know that for sure, though, and time will tell. Have you considered a daily or weekly "one time" access fee? It would be just for searches. Maybe $3.00 per day. Payment could be handled automatically through Paypal. You could grab the "impulse" buyer that way. For example, if a guy is looking for a PSA 9 '73 Schmidt, he'd be well served to pay the $3.00 to be able to search your database. He's not going to sign-up monthly if he only does a few searches per year. The casual collector is a huge market that could be lucrative.
<< <i> Have you considered a daily or weekly "one time" access fee? It would be just for searches. Maybe $3.00 per day. Payment could be handled automatically through Paypal. You could grab the "impulse" buyer that way. For example, if a guy is looking for a PSA 9 '73 Schmidt, he'd be well served to pay the $3.00 to be able to search your database. He's not going to sign-up monthly if he only does a few searches per year. The casual collector is a huge market that could be lucrative. >>
That's probably the best idea to come out of this thread! I hope VCP can implement that. I'm not a user and I don't spend or sell enough cards to ever be one. But at some small amount for a single day access... I'd be all over that a coupe of times per year.
White Whales: 1996 Select Certified Mirror Gold Ozzie Smith 2006 Bowman Chrome Orange Refractor Chris Carpenter
<< <i>That is a great idea and going to look into that ASAP to see if it is doable. >>
And I'd guess to price the one-day access such that if someone is a regular user of the site that they'd be better served paying the monthly fee. At $3.00 per day, if someone needs the service more than six days out of each month, they'd be better off signing up monthly.
I know that as a casual collector, I won't sign up for $18.00 per month, but I'd occasionally buy a one-day access if it was priced low enough.
Looking more into it I think it is something we can get inline fairly shortly. This way as a Limited Member you can go and create your My Collection and do all the work getting it into the site. Then whenever you feel like it you can do the 24 Hour member deal and check the values of all your cards.
We will make it a priority and hope to have this added very shortly.
<< <i>Looking more into it I think it is something we can get inline fairly shortly. This way as a Limited Member you can go and create your My Collection and do all the work getting it into the site. Then whenever you feel like it you can do the 24 Hour member deal and check the values of all your cards.
We will make it a priority and hope to have this added very shortly. >>
As a casual collector, I definitely think you are on to something with this option.
<< <i>Looking more into it I think it is something we can get inline fairly shortly. This way as a Limited Member you can go and create your My Collection and do all the work getting it into the site. Then whenever you feel like it you can do the 24 Hour member deal and check the values of all your cards.
We will make it a priority and hope to have this added very shortly. >>
Nice. I'm going to go ahead and register and put my collection in there. I'm sure I'll be tempted to check the value every so often, and certainly any time I want to sell or buy.
WOW...cant believe what I started here...just had a question.
While we are on the subject...how about a price plan for access to a specific sport if thats all you collect. Seems like you could build a pricing package for those who want all sports and those who only want one. Seems like your target market would increase.
<< <i>Looking more into it I think it is something we can get inline fairly shortly. This way as a Limited Member you can go and create your My Collection and do all the work getting it into the site. Then whenever you feel like it you can do the 24 Hour member deal and check the values of all your cards.
We will make it a priority and hope to have this added very shortly. >>
I also think this is a great ideal. If fills the problem many such as I have with the $180. If priced around $3, I could see myself using it 20 plus times a year....or at least once a month.
Collecting PSA graded Steve Young, Marcus Allen, Bret Saberhagen and 1980s Topps Cards. Raw: Tony Gonzalez (low #'d cards, and especially 1/1's) and Steve Young.
We are working on the new $3.00 plan and it should be in next week. Keep in mind it is a PAYPAL only membership so no credit cards will be used.
Also on a quick note we got complaints that the search by grade and grader in the set pages was very slow. We fixed this and now it screams so try it out and see for yourself.
Bobby, I am a new member and am frankly very pleased with the site. It is a little slow at times, but I can live with that, and a little more than I would like to spend on a membership, but I will continue to pay the $12.99 a month. My question has more to do with the site itself and how you calculate the value of a collection. Currently your collections value is based on the last sale of any card in "your collection". Has any thought been given to actually averaging the previous 12 or 18 months sales of that card and that being a truer representation of that cards value? Frankly, One sale does not dictate the value of a card, I am more interested in knowing what the average of the last 12 to 18 months is, as that paints a truer picture to a cards value.
That is in the works we just finished and put up the new price system a couple of weeks ago and now we are integrating those results to show in the My Collection area.
Comments
Not for long apparently.
It is complaining to voice it on this thread repeatedly. Simply sending VCP an email asking for a correction/addition is all that is/was actually necessary. Unfortunately BobbyVCP pissed you off and now you are using this thread to bash VCP and their service. Your troubles with VCP aside I have found their service to be very useful and it has saved me quite a bit of money and will continue to do so.
Cheers,
Robb
<< <i>...Not for long apparently...... >>
When I am dumping VCP is irrelevant since I am a currently a fully paid member. If you like their service, good for you.
I agree with nam, as I do find that VCP misses quite a few auctions. Usually ones that have a BIN attached, even if they end in auction ,many times never populate into VCP. If you aren't careful or already somewhat knowledgable on the issue you can be burned.
BUT, I also think VCP provides a nice service. One that I had been waiting to be invented for sometime. I used to track all ended auction of graded NFL HOF RCs myself. This was very time consuming, and I too missed auctions that were either mislabeled or listed in the wrong categories...
To me, the service is worth $99 a year, but not $179. Once my $99 year is up, I may go with the silver membership as being able to view the auction links and scans isn't worth $80 more a year. Not sure I will be willing to pay $30 more for the lesser service either so I may end up cancelling as well. All I use it for is to HELP determine pricing and/or how much I will pay. The differences in price (high/low) will usually tell you which card was the better looking anyway.
If the Silver membership were to stay at $99, I would almost certainly keep that service, but not sure I can justify dropping another $30 for the lesser service.
Jason
according to my values and my needs. Nothing holds dominion over me, I stand alone as the ruler of my life.
<< <i>
Why would a competitor want to come in? With a subscription base of ~5000 there really isn't enough of a market to justify it. Card collecting is at most a niche market and VCP probably is trying to figure out how to expand into other areas.
I doubt many of you are IT consultants but the amount of effort to build the functionality, store the data and keep the system updated is pretty extensive. Performance could be better but I just open multiple tabs on my browser and do something else while VCP is churning away.
>>
I've created a few websites here and there, and know at least a good bit about cgi scripting.
If I was to start a competing business, I'd first need to secure whatever privilege VCP is paying Ebay in order to get access to more streamlined search results. Ebay probably doesn't like unauthorized search bots.
THEN, I'd need to write some sort of custom routine to be able to grab sportscard auctions. This is probably the toughest part of what VCP does. Filtering the results probably requires some sort of human intervention. They probably need to verify every search that comes up. Then, they need to set up a system to monitor the auction and grab the final closing price when it sells, including knowing as soon as possible when a Buy-It-Now hits. Snagging the scan and making sure it's the correct one is also not trivial.
After all of that, they need to put all the information into a massive database that is searchable and able to be catalogued. This is also not trivial and there are a million ways to do it wrong.
So this is clearly an enterprise that nobody is going to undertake and offer for free, but to ask $180 per year seems excessive, too. If they really need to charge $180 per year to perform this service, then it just may end up being an unsustainable business model.
If I had a say in a business of this type, I'd look for ways to get sellers to list through VCP, using the massive VCP database to automatically suggest starting prices, BINs, reserves, and to be able to list directly to E-Bay. One stop shop. That is something big-time dealers might be interested in, and THAT is something they'd probably pay way more than $180 per year to be able to do.
"If I had a say in a business of this type, I'd look for ways to get sellers to list through VCP, using the massive VCP database to automatically suggest starting prices, BINs, reserves, and to be able to list directly to E-Bay. One stop shop. That is something big-time dealers might be interested in, and THAT is something they'd probably pay way more than $180 per year to be able to do. "
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//////////////////////////////
ALL of that has merit.
The only way I can think of to offer such info "free" would be for a "listing venue" -
like EBAY or a competitor - to provide the data as an incentive to list iems for sale.
I think the seller angle is very good and hopefully something VCP has been considering. I know I check VCP when I set my BIN prices and reserves.
As for pricing we will have to see what the market will bear. For me the $179 price point isn't an issue however only Bobby knows for sure what the impact has been on new subscriptions and renewals.
Robb
In regards to some of the things needed to build a site like VCP and one is a eBay License which costs about $7000 a year per section on eBay.
Right now there are 3 people working everyday entering data to the site. I personally have not had a day off in almost 3 years. Some days it only takes me a couple of hours to the whole day to do everything that is needed to keep the site current. It is a full time job for 5 people running this site and I would find it real hard to believe someone could do it for free.
<< <i>The reason for the delay in BIN's posting to the site is because when it gets added to eBay there is an ending time stamp. Our system records this time and when it occurs it gets checked and verified as a sale then posts to the site. So for example if it is a 9 day auction and sells on the 2nd day it will be another 7 days before it posts. Now there is a 30 day BIN listing which will make it even longer to post to the site. There is no other way around this problem that we know of at this time and that is why the auction Nick mentioned have not posted.
>>
Can you periodically check auctions with BIN's to see if they've ended early? Why restrict yourselves to only waiting until the absolute final ending time?
<< <i>The reason why is eBay does not put a closed or end time when it is sold for a BIN in the code and still shows the original ending time. If they did then it would be easy for us to run a script and check all BIN's and BO's every hour to see if they sold. We tried getting eBay to make this change but as all of you we got nowhere with them. So we have to wait til the very end of the listing time before it can be posted. >>
One sneaky way to check would be to simply call up the page of the auctions and do a text search for "Auction has ended with Buy-It-Now" or whatever terminologly they use. You'd know the price if you grabbed it when the auction was posted. If you checked the BIN auctions every day then you'd be guaranteed of getting the end date correct. At the very least, you could put the sale in your database as "Pending Final Verification" or something like that. At least it would show up in some form. BINs are probably the single-biggest factor for price increases or decreases, so it's imperative they be catalogued as soon as possible.
I really don't know how the search-bot results get returned, though. The brute-force method would simply be to search the HTML, which could represent a massive server load that Ebay might not be too happy with.
<< <i>We thought of that and asked eBay and they denied us to do it because it would violate the term with the developer license. They only allow us to use their API protocol system. >>
If it's impossible for you to get the information early, then it would be impossible for anyone else. Looks like you're doing the best you can under the circumstances.
Or you could hire somebody to constantly hit refresh on every single auction.
OR, you could include the BIN price in any searches, but simply list them as "currently in auction", meaning they wouldn't have any affect on the value, but it's still useful to know what sellers are listing their BINs at. You could even catalogue the BINs and track which were successful and which weren't (plus or minus). Such information would be hugely beneficial to sellers and buyers alike.
<< <i>There already is a BIN icon on the site and they all pop up in the GIN section you just have to make sure the + is selected on that section. >>
Oh, sorry. I didn't realize that.
It sounds like you really know what you are doing, and the site is great, but the gist from this thread is that it may simply cost too much for you to run it and recoup that in membership fees. Only you know that for sure, though, and time will tell. Have you considered a daily or weekly "one time" access fee? It would be just for searches. Maybe $3.00 per day. Payment could be handled automatically through Paypal. You could grab the "impulse" buyer that way. For example, if a guy is looking for a PSA 9 '73 Schmidt, he'd be well served to pay the $3.00 to be able to search your database. He's not going to sign-up monthly if he only does a few searches per year. The casual collector is a huge market that could be lucrative.
<< <i> Have you considered a daily or weekly "one time" access fee? It would be just for searches. Maybe $3.00 per day. Payment could be handled automatically through Paypal. You could grab the "impulse" buyer that way. For example, if a guy is looking for a PSA 9 '73 Schmidt, he'd be well served to pay the $3.00 to be able to search your database. He's not going to sign-up monthly if he only does a few searches per year. The casual collector is a huge market that could be lucrative. >>
That's probably the best idea to come out of this thread! I hope VCP can implement that. I'm not a user and I don't spend or sell enough cards to ever be one. But at some small amount for a single day access... I'd be all over that a coupe of times per year.
1996 Select Certified Mirror Gold Ozzie Smith
2006 Bowman Chrome Orange Refractor Chris Carpenter
<< <i>That is a great idea and going to look into that ASAP to see if it is doable. >>
I know that as a casual collector, I won't sign up for $18.00 per month, but I'd occasionally buy a one-day access if it was priced low enough.
We will make it a priority and hope to have this added very shortly.
<< <i>Looking more into it I think it is something we can get inline fairly shortly. This way as a Limited Member you can go and create your My Collection and do all the work getting it into the site. Then whenever you feel like it you can do the 24 Hour member deal and check the values of all your cards.
We will make it a priority and hope to have this added very shortly. >>
As a casual collector, I definitely think you are on to something with this option.
<< <i>Looking more into it I think it is something we can get inline fairly shortly. This way as a Limited Member you can go and create your My Collection and do all the work getting it into the site. Then whenever you feel like it you can do the 24 Hour member deal and check the values of all your cards.
We will make it a priority and hope to have this added very shortly. >>
Nice.
While we are on the subject...how about a price plan for access to a specific sport if thats all you collect. Seems like you could build a pricing package for those who want all sports and those who only want one. Seems like your target market would increase.
Jeff
Dividing out the sports would be a lot more difficult to add into the system. The 24 hour deal will give you full access to the entire site.
<< <i>
<< <i>Looking more into it I think it is something we can get inline fairly shortly. This way as a Limited Member you can go and create your My Collection and do all the work getting it into the site. Then whenever you feel like it you can do the 24 Hour member deal and check the values of all your cards.
We will make it a priority and hope to have this added very shortly. >>
I also think this is a great ideal. If fills the problem many such as I have with the $180. If priced around $3, I could see myself using it 20 plus times a year....or at least once a month.
Raw: Tony Gonzalez (low #'d cards, and especially 1/1's) and Steve Young.
Also on a quick note we got complaints that the search by grade and grader in the set pages was very slow. We fixed this and now it screams so try it out and see for yourself.
Bobby
////////////////////////////////////////
In a falling/rising market, any average more than 30-days out can be VERY misleading.