[floydtown]

Here's a article (liitle old but u get the idea) discussing how beckett comes up with their pricing:
View Article

Also, The majority of the time the manufacturers do not provide accurate checklists, sometimes its like pulling teeth to get anyinfo from them on checklists- beckett does alot of work gathering this information. Maybe Bill will chime in as he explains it alot better than me.

[ny sports teams]

Here's a article discussing how beckett comes up with their pricing:
View Article

Also, The majority of the time the manufacturers do not provide accurate checklists, sometimes its like pulling teeth to get anyinfo from them on checklists- beckett does alot of work gathering this information. Maybe Bill will chime in as he explains it alot better than me.

After reading the article I've got a dumb question. It states a senior price guide analyst, Grant Sandground uses Mastro Auctions as one of the resources for determining card values. I thought they closed back in 2009 due to an FBI investigation into shill bidding and fraud.

http://www.originalprop.com/blog/2009/03...legations/

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-03-...tion-house


...Rick

[ricelynnevans75]

Here's a article (liitle old but u get the idea) discussing how beckett comes up with their pricing:
View Article

Also, The majority of the time the manufacturers do not provide accurate checklists, sometimes its like pulling teeth to get anyinfo from them on checklists- beckett does alot of work gathering this information. Maybe Bill will chime in as he explains it alot better than me.

Thanks for posting that article. I did find it interesting, and the right thing to do in my opinion, that they take into account the cost of s/h on ebay listings when determining value.

[_ZENAS_]

Here's a article (liitle old but u get the idea) discussing how beckett comes up with their pricing:
View Article

Also, The majority of the time the manufacturers do not provide accurate checklists, sometimes its like pulling teeth to get anyinfo from them on checklists- beckett does alot of work gathering this information. Maybe Bill will chime in as he explains it alot better than me.

and bigguy slumps away into the darkness.

You have been confused by the semi-star, star listings that beckett has always done (I remember them in the 90s and possibly the 80s). They are a way to conserve space in the monthly issue and nothing more. It isn't a method of pricing but a guide to go by when the cards aren't listed in the monthly. Had you bothered to read the beckett issues where these lists are found you would have seen it printed there. And also beckett used to commonly print how to use their guide including where they got their pricing from. It was no secret and floydtown just confirmed it for us that you are wrong.

---

and when both me and zenas agree, you must be REALLY wrong

lol I chuckled.

The earth must be out of alignment for a yankees and a red sox fan to agree. :p

[wtsjr]

We have a team of Sr. Market Analyst's in the Dallas office that are responsible for pricing. We receive checklists from the manufacturers, though they are not always accurate and not always complete. We do the research on each new product to a) verify the checklist the best we can, b) price as many cards as we can.

We do have some global methods of pricing large number of cards at a time based on completed market information we analyze from eBay, the Beckett Marketplace, other dealers and more.

We have close to around 5.8 million listings in our master database, and that list grows each and every day. We do the best we can to get new products priced in a timely manner, while also spending time on hot players, key rookies, key products, etc. Mistakes do happen, and once we find out about them, we will fix them.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, Bill S.

[joe callahan13]

Have you visited the Beckett booth at any of the Nationals in the last few years?

Every year it seems like it's less Beckett people, and more BGS people.

They've slowly evolved from a pricing company into a grading company, and their employee structure has shown this.

There simply aren't the employees doing the kind of research you're describing. They can't afford it.

Poor Chris Olds is already being made to do about a dozen different things. They're grossly understaffed.

Just get a copy of Beckett. You'll see that for each set they only list a handful of cards. These are often SPs, RCs, and hot cards. These take the time to manually price.

But the rest are just thrown into categories depending on what kind of star the player is. The magazine admits it's so. Why do you dispute it when it's been in every magazine for the past decade?

The only real work is pricing the common.

It's all datamining and databases. Of course they don't have tons of employees doing research, they don't need them. You would be astounded by what is possible. Just because they list things one way in a magazine to save space doesn't mean that is the lowest level of data they have or deal with.

[djjarrett88]

This whole thread just re-affirms my belief that Beckett could price cards with limited quantities, ie print runs of 5-25. It is just a guide, they have always said that. OK so guide us on the values of these cards as well. There has been numerous issues over the years with these low print runs, why can't they generalize the pricing for those like everything else? With all the market data out there Beckett's guess would be as good as any.

[john1580]

This whole thread just re-affirms my belief that Beckett could price cards with limited quantities, ie print runs of 5-25. It is just a guide, they have always said that. OK so guide us on the values of these cards as well. There has been numerous issues over the years with these low print runs, why can't they generalize the pricing for those like everything else? With all the market data out there Beckett's guess would be as good as any.

Yeah man i hate that they dnt price those cards...makes trading and selling very difficult.

[_ZENAS_]

This whole thread just re-affirms my belief that Beckett could price cards with limited quantities, ie print runs of 5-25. It is just a guide, they have always said that. OK so guide us on the values of these cards as well. There has been numerous issues over the years with these low print runs, why can't they generalize the pricing for those like everything else? With all the market data out there Beckett's guess would be as good as any.

Absolutely. I think the whole hobby understands it is just a guide. And further, it is a guide that is not all that exact when it comes to true market value anyways. It is more of a retail value. Plus, they have no trouble being completely off in some instances (rare 90s inserts come to mind), so why not just give a ballpark number.