[bojesphob]

sooooo ebay has sucked you in.. their method to madness has worked and a measly 9 dollars a month has pushed people away is what im seeing.
im due to buy a car shortly.. when i see the sticker price im gonna say NO WAY! am i giving that price.. and show them a reference as to where and when it sold. How dare them ask me to give them the exact value of a new car, they must be insane!

you really have to have a great group of traders because trading by sell value on ebay is absolutely insane. Lets go by prices from an auction from bigboydssportscards

where do people get that if a card books $20 that thats what it should sell for? everything has a value.. then a sale value.. EVERYTHING. I just bought a julius thomas contenders for 80 bucks and it VALUES 200.. its RARE so yeah, thats a great deal IMO. so WHAT if you got a favre card for .99 and it books 20, youre probably the only person at the time who wanted it. whos to say it wouldnt go for 5 dollars next time or MORE if MORE people had saw it?

This was my biggest issue with beckett as to why i stopped posting and just did my trade thing was the complaining and the turning something thats nothing into a huge issue. Every other darn post was people posting about shillers and how they should be stopped and who they were etc.. and NOW people base their trade prices off the "shillers" and its ok? what in the F&#% ? 9 dollars people.. and if you collect multiple sports.. im sorry football is the only one that matters here. I collect contenders auto.. and i guarantee nobody would give me a break on a no name short print no one gives 3 squirts of monkey pee for(only me) because they just wont.

Your first example is actually exactly something you can do. There is a website that you can go to where you can see every price that someone has paid in the past 6 months I think it was for the same exact make and model of car, from lowest to highest, and they tell you what you can you reasonably offer and get the dealer to come down to. When I bought my current car, I researched it there, went into the dealer, and said "I'll give you 24k for that 2010 Accord you still have on your lot" when the MSRP was 29k. They shook my hand immediately and gave me the deal. If you aren't negotiating when you buy a car, then you actually are paying way more then the car is actually worth. They jack those prices WAY up so that people who don't research before buying come in and pay it, and they made their profit for the week.

Value isn't what some book (ie, Beckett) says that it is, it's what people are willing to pay for it/trade for it. eBay isn't going anywhere soon, and what people are willing to buy it for is what it's value is, since that's what determines the value of it. While I agree that one auction isn't enough to determine the value of something, if you see a card, for example a Odell Beckham Jr autograph, consistently sell for about 100 bucks after 7 or 8 sales (including BIN and BO), then you can reasonably gather that the card will either net you 100 bucks, or you will have to shell out about 100 bucks to get it. Who cares if the BV in Beckett is 350? When would you ever get or have to pay that amount for it? Answer: never. If all you can get for it or have to pay for it is 100 bucks, the actual value is 100 bucks. When you buy or trade, that's the value I feel *I* should be going off of, not some nebulous "book value" that only takes into account... Ok, at this point I can't even say what they actually base it on... and
something that's irrelevant after a year because they don't really go back and update stuff after that player's prices have leveled off (or they drop out of the league, etc). Couple that with then paying for the OPG and a card organizer that you can get similar (and in some ways better) alternatives for free, I don't see the value, even at 9 (or 5) bucks a month.

Now, don't get me wrong, if that's how you base value for what you buy and trade, then that's awesome, you do it how you feel comfortable doing it, but I'm not the only one that thinks that they are outdated and that their "product" of ORG and OPG isn't worth paying for. It's not the amount that's the issue here, it's the value. I don't value their OPG at 9 bucks a month (I never use it), and I don't value the ORG at 5 dollars a month. It was nice when I was able to get actual trades, but with the majority of people gone, there aren't any traders that have anything that I trade for or need, the ones that do trade are the same people (not saying that is a bad thing per se).

Shilling, on the other hand, is a different beast. If I can tell that a card was shilled, I don't include that in my figuring of value. But, I've never had an issue with something I was wanting to buy being shilled, so I guess I've been lucky. Here's an example of how I determine value of cards:

I got a Bridgewater Gold Prizm auto and Gold base that I had no idea of what the value was. So, I went and looked at sold auctions on eBay (and sold cards on COMC) and gauged what the non gold autos were going for and what the variations for the base were going for. I came up with $300 for the two of them as the "value". I probably could have gotten a little bit more for them, but they sold in 4 minutes at 300. So, what was the value? I got 300 for them, and Beckett wouldn't even put a BV on them since they were both /10. My estimations of value put them at 300, and someone bought them at 300, so to me, the value was 300. Now, someone can see that auction if they pull a gold prizm Bridgewater auto and say "Well, that had an auto gold and base gold, so more than likely the value of the auto was 2x the value of the base, so the auto is worth about 200 bucks". No fuss, no muss, no looking at the BV, just looking at what someone actually paid (and hopefully an average over multiple sales), and saying "that's what I should get or what I would have to pay".

[pudge27t]

Exactly bonesphob! Most of the people I know that are on here or were on here believe exactly this. You hit it on the head, and I'm still curious where and what they base their prices on? Reggie Bush cards still have 06' price tags! :p

[onyxdragon5977]

Thank you for actually understanding, bojesphob. You put it perfectly.

Jfrench91, I bought my car for $4k less than what their "value" was, and they had NO ISSUE signing with me to buy the car. I got a $25k car for $21k, because I did my research. Did BV suck me in on that? No. Because I did my research on what the car was SELLING for.

I have 3 Steven Jackson Bowman Chrome Gold Autos that I would be willing to sell one to you. Are you going to buy it by BV? Because if you are, I am MORE THAN HAPPY to sell it to you. I got them for less than $50 each, which is 1/2-1/3 BV.

So tell me, would you rather pay 3-4x what the card is actually "worth", or would you rather pay BV, and be out 3-4x what you can get for the card later.

Beckett is outdated. If I went by BV, my collection would probably be worth $25-30k, but do you HONESTLY think I could sell it for that? Hell no. I could probably get $5-7k out of it on a GOOD day.

But if you EVER want to buy some Steven Jackson cards at BV, contact me. I will sell anything I have doubles of by BV to you ANY DAY.

[jeremy7269]

As a nerdy teen, I remember taking a Beckett and adding up the value of my cards. I was excited to get that total.

As a late teen, I had to sell some of my cards at some card shops (This was before Ebay). The store owners always gave a lot less than what Beckett listed.

After that I knew, the guide doesn't give true values.

When I was an active trader, I based value on cash value because there may be a time that I have to sell that card.


Ebay is not perfect by any means. However, it does provide FREE data that someone can research to understand the value of the piece of cardboard that they own.

[pudge27t]

Is there a chance Beckett would ever charge for using the registry?

What? Don't give'em any bad ideas!!