Just came across a post on Sports Cards Uncensored, responding to a post on The Baseball Card Blog, regarding the state of price guides in the industry. I started to leave a comment on SCU, but when I saw how long my comment was, I decided maybe it was worth a full post.
I actually don’t mind the price guides, although, their proliferation into side businesses–grading, selling, marketplace, etc–is annoying, and an in my opinion a blatent conflict of interest, even though they deny deny deny. Not the first company to profit off of a conflict of interest, not the last.
I know that the price guides don’t provide a “true value,” of a card, but at least it gives me some comparative indication into what I can start to expect if I wanted to list a card on eBay, or what to ask if I am at selling it at my local card shop, or what to offer if I was at a show. Of course, I can do all that research on eBay too, but the price guide can save me some initial legwork, and is more portable than a computer (for now).
I don’t think price guides are killing the industry, though–at least not directly. Price guides have existed for well over 20 years–it’s just the last 25-30 that they’ve turned into monthly publications rather than yearly books.
I think the single most destructive thing in the industry is the card manufacturers themselves, and their inability to do anything in moderation.
They hear a handful of people say “That’s kind of cool” when they see a game used jersey card from a superstar, and next thing you know, I’m pulling a game used Nick Punto patch as a “hit” from a box. Then, in order to make more memorabilia cards, we start having ‘event worn’ cards, and ‘was in the same room as this jersey card’ cards, and ‘personal assistant opened and tossed the unsolicited invitation to event where the jersey was’ memorabilia cards.
And then no one wants to buy big bucks for them, and the industry suffers.
Of course, one could argue that the price guides listing those cards as ‘valuable’ is what made the manufacturers overproduce them in the first place–but if people hadn’t started buying cards on the secondary market in the 50’s/60’s/70’s, proving that cards had value beyond use in bicycle spokes or card flipping games, we never would have had the price guides in the first place.
Regardless, whether you love the price guides or hate them (or, like me, not really care that much, other than when your issue is a week late), they certainly aren’t going away any time soon. At least until eBay starts putting out their price guide… (talk about conflicts of interest)…
