I've been interested in putting together a project for some time regarding the fluctuation of sale prices for vintage cards on Ebay. For example, take the 51-52 Parkie Howe RC. Let's say a PSA 5 sells for $1,500 (I'm just pulling these numbers out of thin air, mind you, for the sake of a hypothetical). How much did a PSA 5 Howe RC sell for a year ago? Two years? Five years? How much has every Howe PSA 5 on Ebay ever sold for?

Obviously, this information would be more useful for cards which [a] show up on Ebay often and [b] have been showing up on Ebay often for a number of years now. However, I think a study of this nature would be both interesting and highly relevant.

The only problem is there is no way of getting this information. The farthest back Ebay archives, I believe, is thirty days, which is useless if you want anything more than current price. Has anyone kept track of sale prices on Ebay for any cards? I don't mean rough memories, but actually taken notes on what something has been selling for, and kept these notes? Anyone know how someone could access this information?

The only way I could think to do this would be to actually start recording this information now, so that it will be useful a few years down the line. Of course, there are practical problems with this, as it would be a tremendous amount of work for one person, unless the field was narrowed considerably. And in that case, the information would be less useful since less cards would be kept track of.

I really wish something like this already existed. What do you guys think?

verry interesting project i hope you will share you precious information with all other vintage card collector..

I think ebay charges a monthly fee for access to older price info but I think it is only up to the last 90 days. You would basically have to start with that and keep track for the next year or 2 before the statistics became relevant. I know there are a few people that keep records of certain sets or certain players, maybe you can network with them to get a head start. Jim.

I'm wondering what relevance this would have; at least in terms of cost-benefit. I mean, if I am going to buy a card I check ended listings in eBay, see what online sellers have the card going for etc. What it went for 5 years ago doesn't really have any value to me. Not that it wouldn't be interesting academically, I suppose you could argue that you might be able to use the data to forecast the value of your collection, but I'm not sure that would even be possible, especially when you are dealing with the really rare stuff. Interesting yes, but useful ?

There was something in Beckett awhile back, must have been a year or more, where they compared the hobby to the stock market in terms of returns. It was interesting. Wasn't there a website at one time where they did this, had a ticker of card prices, made it look like an actual market ?

It would be relevant because in fleshing out the past performance of specific cards, it gives us more information on future performance. Obviously if something is particularly rare, this study would have less effect (which I noted in my post), but this would be a great service for people who buy valuable cards which pop up on Ebay frequently.

Also obviously, it's not indicative of what a card will be worth specifically in the future, but more information on past performance is better than zero. It's hard to say what the info would reveal without having the hard statistics in front of us. I think no matter what the statistics say, it would be quite compelling. If you want to relate this to the stock market, people certainly don't buy stock based solely on what the price of the stock is today. The more information they have on the stock, the more informed their purchase is.

Well, I didn't mean to imply that it was a bad idea, I just wonder if it would be worth the considerable effort (which you noted it would be). To have any real value the study would have to involve literally 100s of cards X multiple grades. Maybe someone could write some software that could to it ?

I have been keeping track of graded star cards on ebay since 2002. However I do not have the year of the sale noted. I simply record for example:

51-52 Howe PSA 6 Oct 14 1086.91


This sale occured in 2002. I know this by the order in which records were kept. Unfortunately my notes are spreaded in three becketts guides and would frankly take months to transcript properly into a spread sheet on the computer. However if anyone is dieing to find out some prices I may assist them. Beneficial but as mentioned in the thread. Historical prices are not reflective of current market as conditions change. In 2002 the US and Canada had big recessions that took away from peoples collecting budget. The economies of the US and Canada are great at this time for most so prices are strong. Also not to mention the US dollar was worth 1.50 in 2002. Take care happy collecting. Dan

Vintage Card Pricer already lists the price of all PSA hockey sales.

Jeremy,

While back I posted a link to my website and there are documented eBay sales for about last 15 months (under the "Price Guide"). Not many, only about 1500 records for 1910-1960 period. I asked forum members to contribute to that but nobody helped so far. Why can't you check it and let me know what you think?

http://www.collectthemall.net/hc/front.aspx

I've considered signing up for http://www.vintagecardprices.com/. Is the amount of info available on the site worth the subscription fees? Is it mostly baseball stuff?

Seems like there's a lot of good info at collecthemall.com, thanks for the link. It's pretty similar to what I was talking about. I'd have to take some time to read it and digest it all.

I think a project like this would serve more than an academic purpose. If someone did this, and no practical information were gained from it that changed the way you bought, sold or priced cards, then that in itself is a piece of practical information.

But chances are you're going to find something practical in there. For example, if you track the prices of Maurice Richard RCs for three years, you may find that in year one there was a sharp decline in the sale price of PSA-5's, in year two they remained the same, and in year three there was another decline. You might be able to match that information up against the population report for that card, and maybe you'll find that each of the two years in which the card declined saw new Rocket Richard RCs graded higher than 5 added to the population. You could draw an inductive argument based on that stating that it's likely that the added population of high grades for that card have devalued Richard RC PSA-5's.

The information itself would be useless without subsequent analysis. It would basically just be for the premises for arguments pertaining to why certain cards have certain selling trends. Maybe you have no idea why the Richard RC's dropped so badly in price those two years, which opens up to tons of theories regarding the fluctation in price. The analyses gained from this info could easily effect the pricing of such cards.

The point I'm making is without the information, we can't estimate what that info holds. With that information, even if it's useless, then at least we would now know that. But without the sales stats, there's no way we can know because we don't have the info.

I have been on ebay for 7 yrs and all I can say is pricing is all over the place. I sold a psa 8 69 OPC Tony Esposito RC for $360 I then saw the same card sell for $150 a week later!It is all about luck and timing and who is looking for certain cards at a certain time....really!

Yes, you had two people wanting it, one guy won the first and the second bidder won the second....it pays not to win sometimes!