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Atlanta Sportscard Shows.......Really Really bad!!!!!

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gmsieb

New member
Apr 19, 2011
1,265
0
I stopped going to shows a few years back because of a few growing trends.

1. Lack of pricing, almost no one had pricing in place.
2. Lack of modern/prospect stuff. Sure there was some here and there but mostly all outdated stuff. Not that this is bad, as long as you mix in the new stuff too.
3. Lack of attention. It was almost impossible to get someone to talk toy you, spend a few minutes with you.
4. Lack of personality. Almost all dealers, when you can get ahold of them, are stale and void of personality. Almost like you are bothering them.

Now I am not some big time buyer or anything but it was nothing for me to drop a few hundred here and there. It would just be nice to have decent selections, decent customer service, and decent (visible) pricing.

The bottom 2, nail it.
 

gmsieb

New member
Apr 19, 2011
1,265
0
To those in Atlanta I put the question. If this has been so bad for so long regarding shows why hasn't anyone stepped up and tried to put something better out?

It has been tried many times over the last 15+ years.. Mostly futile, including the shows with many good autograph guests..[/QUOTE]

He was using the one card as an example of the norm. It gets old, so the normal buyer, will just move on and quit coming. We don't even have shows in socal any more.
 

Erich

Active member
Aug 26, 2008
4,453
0
Anywhere Delta goes.
Fair Value is all relative to what an individuals market is, in addition to proper education. To use an example of Erichs point that 4-6.00 is too much for him to pay. Someone else would be more than happy to pay that for a card of Irvin. Especially when they are seeking to get free autographs....That is his right however if he feels like 4-6.00 is way too much and will never go to an Atlanta show...Cannot tell you how many times I have come up to my table and complained about the pricing because it is WAY TOO HIGH FOR THEM and someone else is more than happy to purchase. We all have certain items that we value that someone else wouldn't give a dime for and visa versa...

BTW I didn't say my inventory was turning, I indicated that it was always changing. That is due to me constantly buying. I am not the exception, more like the rule....Hope that point wasn't lost.

Bryan

The point of my post was Beckett is out of touch on what is fair market value. Would you as a dealer pay $4.00 to sell at $6.00 of a similar card I got?

For what it's worth Monte Irvin charges $10.00 for TTM so it's not free;)
 

Therion

Well-known member
Nov 19, 2008
5,780
388
Looooooosiana!
Here is my counter to the fair market argument used by dealers. If eBay doesn't accurately portray FMV, then why do dealers not use Beckett when buying inventory? I have on multiple occasions been offered half of eBay value (totally fair but about 20% of Beckett's listed value) and then told that they don't sell based on eBay because Beckett reflects the market better.
 

Brewer Andy

Active member
Aug 10, 2008
9,634
21
Beckett and dealers. Quite the symbiotic relationship.

Has Beckett ever explained where their "data" comes from? I'd have a hard time biting my toungue if a dealer told me Beckett was a more realistic FMV. I'm certainly all for dealers turning a profit and their right to name their price but at card shows its always such a silly dance
 
Jun 30, 2010
726
0
The point of my post was Beckett is out of touch on what is fair market value. Would you as a dealer pay $4.00 to sell at $6.00 of a similar card I got?

For what it's worth Monte Irvin charges $10.00 for TTM so it's not free;)

Both can reflect fair market value, according to what source a dealer chooses to use and his potential customer who wants the card. However, this is an everending battle that we all have to deal with....A customer wants to throw around the " I can get this card on Ebay for" when they want to purchase and also when the customer wants to sell their cards at a show, the dealer throws around the " I can get your card on ebay for thing right back at you as well"

So, Where does beckett get their data from then?
 
Last edited:

Brewer Andy

Active member
Aug 10, 2008
9,634
21
That's what I've always wondered. I've heard things like "reported sales" etc. But there has never been a link on their site or an ad in the mag to report sales. In almost 30 years I've never heard of a Beckett rep being seen recording sales at a card show. Any LCS owners have any sort of interaction?
 
Jun 30, 2010
726
0
Here is my counter to the fair market argument used by dealers. If eBay doesn't accurately portray FMV, then why do dealers not use Beckett when buying inventory? I have on multiple occasions been offered half of eBay value (totally fair but about 20% of Beckett's listed value) and then told that they don't sell based on eBay because Beckett reflects the market better.

I believe dealers try to use Ebay as their worst case scenario if they have to sell the items they are seeking to purchase and use beckett as an optomistic scenario to maximize profit. Not saying it is right or wrong but it is a good way to counter the constant from the customer " I can get it on Ebay" comment.

Plus, when a customer is looking to purchase a card they always seem to know what it is going on Ebay for. Many dealers ere the same when selling their cards as well. So, unless we all get on the same page and deal with the same parameters, then well will always have this discussion.

Or, everyone, customers and dealers alike, can just whip out each others laptops and buy and sell accordingly. It is already heading in this direction.
 

RStadlerASU22

Active member
Jan 2, 2013
8,881
11
The bottom 2, nail it.

Correct , sad really. If you are a show dealer , you can win (thus getting sales) by showing a pulse, saying a simple "how are you" etc. This goes from stores, site owners also. It goes a long way

Ryan
 

craftysouthpaw

New member
Jan 8, 2010
668
0
The problem with dealers and Beckett is they so often price the bulk of their inventory at high Beckett. That is "supposed" to represent the high that a card has sold for during a recent meaningful sample size. A reasonable market value for most cards would probably be a midpoint of the high and the low. Exceptions would be guys that are super hot at the moment, maybe popular regional players, etc.

Yet a dealer will frequently have every card on his table marked at high Beckett. Really?!? So every card on your table should currently sell equal to the highest recent sale?

Of course, all of this assumes a perfectly updated price guide to truly capture relevant sales data. Most of the cards in Beckett haven't changed in value in years and there is no way they truly represent recent sales. Virtually, the only cards in Beckett that have valid pricing are some vintage and guys selling briskly at a given moment in time.

For the most part, I've stopped even looking to buy singles at shows from dealers with no prices on their cards and who reach for their Becketts. Show me the guy that prices based on recent eBay sales and that is the guy that will get my money. I will say I don't buy the opinion that folks think dealers should knock off ~10% from eBay since they aren't dealing with fees as I think the cost of the table plus the time involved to transport and set up is roughly offset by the eBay/Paypal fees.

This isn't the sole reason my show attendance in Atlanta has decreased so much but it is a factor. It is tiresome to deal with.
 
Jun 30, 2010
726
0
The problem with dealers and Beckett is they so often price the bulk of their inventory at high Beckett. That is "supposed" to represent the high that a card has sold for during a recent meaningful sample size. A reasonable market value for most cards would probably be a midpoint of the high and the low. Exceptions would be guys that are super hot at the moment, maybe popular regional players, etc.

Yet a dealer will frequently have every card on his table marked at high Beckett. Really?!? So every card on your table should currently sell equal to the highest recent sale?

Of course, all of this assumes a perfectly updated price guide to truly capture relevant sales data. Most of the cards in Beckett haven't changed in value in years and there is no way they truly represent recent sales. Virtually, the only cards in Beckett that have valid pricing are some vintage and guys selling briskly at a given moment in time.

For the most part, I've stopped even looking to buy singles at shows from dealers with no prices on their cards and who reach for their Becketts. Show me the guy that prices based on recent eBay sales and that is the guy that will get my money. I will say I don't buy the opinion that folks think dealers should knock off ~10% from eBay since they aren't dealing with fees as I think the cost of the table plus the time involved to transport and set up is roughly offset by the eBay/Paypal fees.

This isn't the sole reason my show attendance in Atlanta has decreased so much but it is a factor. It is tiresome to deal with.

Then there needs to be a level of consistancy as well. If you(generically speaking) want cards at Ebay pricing then, when you sell to a dealer, you need to sell to him at less than Ebay prices(instead of reaching for your Beckett) so he can make money. Can't have it both ways( you paying lower Ebay prices and then telliing a dealer what he can get for the cards you want to sell him(using Beckett). Too many double standards by customers and dealers alike.

Bryan
 

smapdi

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
4,397
221
Ebay can be quite sketchy for pricing on a lot of things. Take, for instance, a raw Good 1955 Topps Monte Irvin. What is the Fair Market Value for this card?

There have been 3 examples sold on ebay in the last couple months. They went for $6.88 BIN, $1.29, and $2.25. This is a straight average of $3.47. OK, BINs are wild cards, because you never know when someone will hit one because they just need that card right then and the couple bucks over waiting for an auction to end (that they might not win) is an acceptable tax to pay. Auctions are also wildcards, because you have variations in pricing based on all sorts of subjective factors like time and day of auctions ending, is there a scan, is the title bad, etc. And I feel you'd also have to take into account the shipping prices, which aren't always visible when looking at the completed items page, only in the individual auctions. BTW, S&H were free, $3.00, and $0.99, respectively, on those 3 cards, so actual prices paid were $6.88, $4.29, and $3.24. This could be complicated by sellers offering discounted shipping on multiple buys, so the actual prices of these cards could be lower, etc., but let's stick with this for now. Strictly speaking, the dollars paid to get those cards was $4.80 on average. The BIN sale was probably an outlier, but we should factor that in because it's evidence of what a card might sell for if we're patient. If we give it half as much weight as the auctions, it comes up to $3.66. So, is the ebay price for this card $3.47, $3.66, or $4.80? More data is needed.

This is only looking at completed sales, which obviously can vary a good deal, and you have to go a little deeper than one page to get the real data. After all, the variation is over $5 (433%) between the lowest hammer price and the highest. Looking at active listings, I see 12 copies for sale. Sorting by price including shipping, they range from $6.88 to $20.70 (!). Only one of these is an auction, with a starting price of $20.70 (another 2 are $20.70 BINs). With this data, we can be reasonably sure that all these sellers are sitting around waiting for the market to come to them, and, being savvy card veterans, can be confident that they'll be waiting a long time, especially the $20.70 guy. Based strictly on ebay data, we don't know what the exact Fair Market Value for this card is, but $6.88 is pretty near the top, if not the absolute zenith for the time being.

Next, take into account human factors, like the likelihood of selling a Good 1955 Topps Monte Irvin during a show if you're a weekend warrior, or any given week in the lifespan of a shop. I'm not sure how to measure that, but I'm sure the chances are fairly low. If someone is in the market for such a card, the chances are good that this person is an older person, and as such has some amount of patience and money, and so is more inclined to spend a bit more to get a better copy. The fact that there are only 3 copies sold out of the hundreds of thousands of baseball cards sold on ebay in the last 60 days or so indicates that there is extremely little demand. If I've been sitting on this card a year, and the show isn't really moving and sales are slow, and I get a live one who makes an offer that's however much above what I paid for that card, or even just a little below, I might make the deal just to turn things over.

I don't know what Beckett puts this card at, but even their comical attempt to reflect actual sales surely would have this card under $10 in this condition.

So, assuming we don't want to hold out hope forever of finding that $6.88 buyer, and seeing as how the market price is not strictly defined on ebay but probably doesn't contain a whole lot of possibility for variation or volatility, a reasonable IRL dealer would probably put a nice round number on it. Then there is the issue of actually finding the buyer. Irvin is a Hall of Famer, though not a top tier one. And he's a living one, which attracts a market, like the guy in this thread who wanted a sig. He was a New York Giant, and a ***** Leaguer. New York has fans, the Giants have fans, the ***** Leagues have fans, Hall of Famers have fans, even Irvin himself has fans, I assume. As a dealer, I wouldn't think I'd need to fob it off on the next warm body at whatever price I can get. "Someone, some day, is going to want this card," I would think, "so I'll get what I'm gonna get off it." With all this in mind, I can be perfectly comfortable with a dealer putting a price of $5 on the card, especially if he has a mind to negotiate if need be. Yes, a truly frugal collector could probably get one cheaper online eventually, but the dealer has the card here and now for your examination. This availability is overlooked by most buyers.

If this $5 price isn't what the random buyer for such a card has decided is HIS price for the card, the dealer can lower his price, or say,"Sorry we couldn't come to an agreement." The buyer is buying for whatever reason, probably to stick in his closet for the next few years or decades. The seller is selling to make money to buy new stock, pay salary, cover his table fees, whatever the scale of his need is, it's not to take that $5 and put it in his closet for a few decades. This is a separate discussion but even though the medium of exchange is the dollar, the motives are quite different, and the friction they cause through that medium can get quite emotional.

As to the issue of using ebay pricing to buy, that's complicated by the fact that ebay makes everyone a dealer. While people do it every day to my astonishment, it's hard for a dealer to look up someone's cards on ebay and offer them, what, 25-50% of those prices for the cards in hand. More legitimate for them to use the printed matter. And, also, more profitable. If a card sells for $5 on ebay, but $10 by Beckett, paying 30% to stock it will yield them 100% more dollars going by Beckett. Of course, you can buy according to one and sell according to the other, but buyers tend to dislike those tactics, especially if you do it in front of their faces. If dealers use Beckett, and apparently they do, especially shops who actually carry it, I can understand why they prefer to use the higher price.

Now repeat this for the hundreds or thousands of cards a dealer might have at his table. In reality, of course, it's easy to look at a few numbers and say $5, or $3, or whatever. But just "using ebay" is a little more complicated on the other side of the table for little-trafficked items, especially in "well-loved" condition.

I would agree, though, that card shows are becoming untenable if they aren't the big 3-day Tristar kinds of shows. The little 20-table local monthly shows are dying out, by every thing I've read. They simply stopped being held here in Austin, hotel space got too expensive. Down in San Antonio, the only other regular local show in the area is ending this month because the venue it has been held in is being demolished (crusty old Live Oak Civic Center) and no other venue is available for the price. Another thread recently rehashed the death of the hobby as a whole, and I think consensus was that it was, if not dying, then greatly contracted, concentrated, and morphed in such a way as to make it difficult for dealers to service everyone they need to. Shows are the same way. It's interesting, even exciting to watch a 2009 BC Mike Trout Red Refractor on ebay. Go to a show, see one, it's cool, but you aren't buying it, so what's the benefit that defrays the costs? Why are these shows dying? Lots of reasons, but ebay is the primary culprit in my mind. I'm as guilty as anyone. When I see a cool card that I'd like to have, maybe a player or set I'm not super familiar with, I get the price from the dealer and say,"Thanks, I'll think about it." Even if it is a price that seems reasonable from my years of experience in the hobby, I'll still check ebay. Maybe the dealer says,"$50" and I'm nearly ready to do it, I'll check ebay. Maybe it is available for $40 and sells for less at auction (based on all my calculations detailed above), if the card is just so cool, I'll do it. But those times are rare, usually I just bypass the dealer and either buy it on ebay, or forget about it entirely. This kind of thinking is pervasive now, and it's no wonder shows, dealers, and the hobby are, if not dying, extremely sleepy.
 

jimmyjam1973

Active member
Aug 9, 2008
6,859
3
Schertz, TX
[MENTION=2077]smapdi[/MENTION] - I didn't know that Live Oak Civic center was being demolished. I lived in SA for 20+ years and set up at Howards show every month and Wallaces' show most of the time in Austin. Loved the 3 day show Larry D, used to do. The card market in SA/Austin is 100X better than here in the ATL. If I didn't do $400 at a Howard Lau show, I was pretty disappointed. Here in the ATL, I'm excited to to $150-$200.
 

cgilmo

Well-known member
Administrator
Aug 6, 2008
37,213
35
Alpharetta, Georgia, United States
Last show I did in ATL (one of franks shows) I did like 650. It was hard, but it's do able. You have to have bulk to do this. Setting up with only high end and mid range will get you no where in ATL.
 

craftysouthpaw

New member
Jan 8, 2010
668
0
Then there needs to be a level of consistancy as well. If you(generically speaking) want cards at Ebay pricing then, when you sell to a dealer, you need to sell to him at less than Ebay prices(instead of reaching for your Beckett) so he can make money. Can't have it both ways( you paying lower Ebay prices and then telliing a dealer what he can get for the cards you want to sell him(using Beckett). Too many double standards by customers and dealers alike.

Bryan

Absolutely. Hopefully, I didn't come across as suggesting otherwise.

But putting myself in your shoes, I'm sure you see this side of it as well. As my brief foray into the card shop world showed me, there is a constant deluge of people wanting to sell their collection from the late 80's, early 90's and they typically don't understand why the prices they see in the Beckett they picked up at Barnes and Noble aren't what a card shop owner is willing to pay them (of course, for those cards, most card shop owners won't take them for free!).
 

smapdi

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
4,397
221
That's what a guy at a local shop told me. I didn't make that drive for the monthly shows but the semi-annual larger one was a draw. However, in the last few years even those have gone down precipitously in attendance and dealer participation. They used to bring in lots of autograph guests, which drew customers, which drew dealers, but I guess that became unfeasible. The last show I went to there I think was a year ago and it was pretty sad. I had to really dig to find anything worth buying. Although my tastes have narrowed considerably, it was the same dealers with the same overpriced stock every time.
 
Jun 30, 2010
726
0
Last show I did in ATL (one of franks shows) I did like 650. It was hard, but it's do able. You have to have bulk to do this. Setting up with only high end and mid range will get you no where in ATL.

My point exactly!!!! 25/50/1.00 cards and bulk cheap stuff buyers here. High end and mid range buyers are not here like other great sportscard and collectible cities... That is, unless you blow them out to the ebay resellers...
 

cgilmo

Well-known member
Administrator
Aug 6, 2008
37,213
35
Alpharetta, Georgia, United States
My point exactly!!!! 25/50/1.00 cards and bulk cheap stuff buyers here. High end and mid range buyers are not here like other great sportscard and collectible cities... That is, unless you blow them out to the ebay resellers...


So you take a page out of Evan's book and carry tons and tons of inserts. Problem solved! At least that is what I would do if I still set up. Sunday is my only off day, and I tend to try and enjoy it.
 

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