Hey everyone,

I wanted to drop an update about future issues of NSU. We will be adding the manufacturer name to the titles of non-sports sets moving forward. We will also be retroactively adding those to the non-sports titles already in the database (around 38,000). So, as time goes on, you will begin noticing the changes in not just NSU but the annual Non-Sport Almanac.

It's a long tedious task that will take some time but in the long run we have to do what's best for market analysis and the grading department. We realize that sometimes change can be difficult to adjust to; however, we feel this is the appropriate process for set importation moving forward.

If anyone has any questions or concerns, feel free to email me at mbible@beckett.com or leave a comment below.

Thanks!

Does this apply to the price guide, to articles, to ads, ????

Do you feel like there's an existing problem that this will solve?

I can see this helping collectors with identifying products with licenses changing manufacturers more these days and probably so more so in the future. Will products such as “Dr. Who” read with the manufacturer at the beginning or ending of the description?

For example:
2015 Topps Doctor Who
or
2015 Doctor Who (Topps)

And a “Dr. Who” example with the newer manufacturer:
2022 Rittenhouse Doctor Who Series 11 and 12
or
2022 Doctor Who Series 11 and 12 (Rittenhouse)

Wonder what “Star Wars” will be paired in the future? Will it remain with Topps? Will it change to Fanatics? What if it goes to zerocool?

It really comes down to three crucial factors: market gathering, market analysis, and grading.

By doing this, market gatherers will be able to attain the pricing information faster and easier. I'll be able to keep track of everything easier and get things priced quicker. And grading will be able to get things graded faster by having that extra information (like they do with the sports cards).

My biggest hope is that I can make this as quick and painless as possible on everyone involved (us, collectors, dealers, etc).

The company name will be listed after the year, just like our sports cards. So, if we get a new Garbage Pail Kids set, it would look like this: 2022 Topps Garbage Pail Kids.

It will also depend on the brand. So, sometimes we'll have things like 2023 Finest Star Wars (patterned after the baseball listings), or 2022 Topps Now Andor Season 1. As usual, it's a case-by-case basis sometimes.

Right. For something like Dr. Who, which has been licensed by a few companies, it helps newer collectors and those of us who've gotten a little foggy on who had the license in the early 2000's, for example. I never understood why the manufacturer was dropped in the first place since the old NSU price guide (pre-2017) included it in its listings. I realize the answer is probably that it's a space-saver but there are better ways to save space without making each listing less informative.

quote:

Originally posted by Heroes For Hire:
I can see this helping collectors with identifying products with licenses changing manufacturers more these days and probably so more so in the future. Will products such as “Dr. Who” read with the manufacturer at the beginning or ending of the description?

For example:
2015 Topps Doctor Who
or
2015 Doctor Who (Topps)

And a “Dr. Who” example with the newer manufacturer:
2022 Rittenhouse Doctor Who Series 11 and 12
or
2022 Doctor Who Series 11 and 12 (Rittenhouse)

Wonder what “Star Wars” will be paired in the future? Will it remain with Topps? Will it change to Fanatics? What if it goes to zerocool?

It's a good idea. Like Jess said, I don't know why the maker got dropped either besides the space taken. But you could add a "key" chart for the majors, if that is a problem.

What I would also mention if I might, is that the up and down arrows should also make a comeback. Or highlight cards that have had price changes since the prior issue, like with new edition sets. Or put the line in BOLD. Or anything to make them standout as a change.

Line by line comparison takes too long and you only find out about changes when you look up a specific card. The arrows were always fun and easy to pick out first and it shows that market prices are being reviewed. Please consider bringing them back too.

Listing the year first seems like a miss.

Entertainment cards typically aren't collected by year like sports cards are.

Look a the mess they have on Upper Deck ePack:

Most Marvel sets start with 'Marvel' or 'Marvel's', but a bunch start with a year, and many don't start with any variation of 'Marvel' or a year.
Marvel Metal Universe Spider-Man
2020 Marvel X-Men Metal Universe
2019-20 Marvel Annual
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Far From Home
Fleer Ultra X-Men
Captain America 75th

Same with Bond.
James Bond Villains and Henchmen
2019 James Bond Collection

Everything is sorted by year, so you better know that if you want to find Alien Movie cards you need to look in the '2017' section.

Marvel Metal Universe Spider-Man
2020-21 Marvel Annual
James Bond Villains and Henchmen
2020 Marvel X-Men Metal Universe
Marvel’s Black Widow
Alien 3 Movie
Marvel Ages
2019-20 Marvel Annual
2020 Marvel Masterpieces
2020 Marvel Anime
Marvel’s Runaways
Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel
Marvel’s The Punisher Season 1
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compendium
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Far From Home
Marvel 80th Anniversary
2019 Marvel Flair
2019 James Bond Collection
Marvel Cinematic Universe 10th Anniversary
2018-19 Marvel Annual
X-Files: UFOs and Aliens
2019 Marvel Weekly Packs
Marvel’s Deadpool
2018 Marvel Masterpieces
Marvel’s Defenders
Marvel’s Ant-Man and The Wasp
Doctor Strange
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Homecoming
Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok
Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
2018 Goodwin Champions
Aliens Movie
Marvel’s Black Panther
Fleer Ultra X-Men
Marvel’s Agent Carter
Marvel’s Daredevil Season 1 + 2
Alien Movie
2017 Marvel Annual
2017 Marvel Premier
Fleer Ultra Spider-Man
Clerks
2016 Marvel Annual
Upper Deck Dinosaurs
Captain America 75th
2016 Alien Anthology

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
What I would also mention if I might, is that the up and down arrows should also make a comeback. Or highlight cards that have had price changes since the prior issue, like with new edition sets. Or put the line in BOLD. Or anything to make them standout as a change.

I enjoy seeing the up arrows probably as much as the next person (not too much on the down arrows though). But it seems like Beckett utilizes the up and down arrows for the (monthly) magazines instead of the (yearly) almanacs. Might be too time consuming and under appreciated to differentiate that the price is up from the previous Almanac, but down from the previous monthly magazine just prior to going to print for the Almanac.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
Listing the year first seems like a miss.

Entertainment cards typically aren't collected by year like sports cards are.

I believe that the Almanac lists by genre (GPK, Star Wars, DC/Marvel & so on) and then by the product followed by the subsequent year of release. It’s in the NSU’s abbreviated price guide that products are listed by year.

You are probably correct with how entertainment cards are generally collected. I hear many make reference to the year of release with Marvel with such products as 1990 Marvel Universe, 1992 Marvel Masterpieces and 2016 Marvel Masterpieces among others, but not so much with properties such as Buffy, Lord of the Rings, and Star Trek.

But even recalling which season or series a particular autograph or sketch card came out of can be challenging. Most cards have a year associated with the product on the printed on them somewhere. That, at least, helps give a ballpark idea of the product with association to the year of release. Even if the product with delayed getting to market such as the 2016 Marvel Masterpieces. Even if the art on the card says “2014” or the back says “2015” those dates are closer to a 2016 release than the previous 2008 or 2018 releases. Upper Deck has probably recently adopted the practice of not printing the year date on most of the Marvel packaging because of such delays.

But adding the year to products seems like (in addition to helping confused collectors) will aid market gathers, market analysts, and those that grade cards as Matt pointed out in a earlier post.

quote:

Originally posted by Heroes For Hire:

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
What I would also mention if I might, is that the up and down arrows should also make a comeback. Or highlight cards that have had price changes since the prior issue, like with new edition sets. Or put the line in BOLD. Or anything to make them standout as a change.

I enjoy seeing the up arrows probably as much as the next person (not too much on the down arrows though). But it seems like Beckett utilizes the up and down arrows for the (monthly) magazines instead of the (yearly) almanacs. Might be too time consuming and under appreciated to differentiate that the price is up from the previous Almanac, but down from the previous monthly magazine just prior to going to print for the Almanac.

I'm not sure if you are referring to some online edition, but if you mean the bi-monthly NSU that I was speaking about, arrows don't appear in NSU anymore.

As for the Almanac, which didn't have any either, a lot of the pricing on older cards is stagnant. I don't think it would be too burdensome to indicate cards that have been revised since the previous Almanac, not since the prior NSU. The arrows are an indicator of market trends at that point in time, and any price guide is just a temporary snapshot in that time. They will always be imperfect. So even if the effort only represented updates on the top 20% or 25% of changes, up or down, that would still be an improvement. Glass half full is always more positive than glass half empty to me.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
I'm not sure if you are referring to some online edition, but if you mean the bi-monthly NSU that I was speaking about, arrows don't appear in NSU anymore.

You are correct. The rest of the Beckett price guide magazines are monthly, where as the NSU is bi-monthly.

I don’t have the last few issues around at the moment to use as reference, but on NonSportUpdate’s Instagram there is a picture of the price guide for 2013 Fleer Retro Marvel Precious Metal Gems Red on March 15th that has up arrows.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb...?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=

Maybe nothing went up in the last few issues so no up arrows

In the latest NSU Dec. 2022/Jan. 2023 the listings for those same Fleer Retro Marvel Precious Metal Gems Red have all gone up, sometimes huge. As examples #1 Mr. Fantastic topped at $400 now $1,500 and #5 Spider-Man topped at $4,000 is now listed at $20,000.

Can't say when adjustments were made, Marvel has been going up all year, but no arrows appear for these cards in this issue or in the previous issue. Values are the same in both. There are also no other arrows indicated for any other cards in either issue. It would seem reasonable to assume that listed card prices must have changed on at least something over the period of two issues and four months, but nothing stands out. So either there really were no changes, or there were no price checks, or there just are no arrows.

So I backtracked to the Aug/Sept. 2022 issue of NSU and did find up arrows on a few titles, but mainly on the Marvel Metals.

Oddly enough, the 2022 Almanac that was released shortly afterwards with the same significantly increased prices shows no arrows or any indication that those cards took a big leap up in 2022. I think it should have. I think the Almanac should clearly identify big yearly adjustments in pricing when it occurs.

So my own conclusion would be that arrows are not totally obsolete in NSU, which is good, but price changes don't appear in every issue and trends may not standout over longer periods. That is of course accepting the fact that any printed publication must always lag behind real-time news. A printed price guide still remains a historical marker, to me anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
In the latest NSU Dec. 2022/Jan. 2023 the listings for those same Fleer Retro Marvel Precious Metal Gems Red have all gone up, sometimes huge. As examples #1 Mr. Fantastic topped at $400 now $1,500 and #5 Spider-Man topped at $4,000 is now listed at $20,000.

Can't say when adjustments were made, Marvel has been going up all year, but no arrows appear for these cards in this issue or in the previous issue. Values are the same in both. There are also no other arrows indicated for any other cards in either issue. It would seem reasonable to assume that listed card prices must have changed on at least something over the period of two issues and four months, but nothing stands out. So either there really were no changes, or there were no price checks, or there just are no arrows.

The up arrows for those 2013 Marvel PMGs happened in this year’s fourth issue (Aug/Sept 2022). Since those huge price adjustments were made in that issue many of the Marvel PMG cards have leveled off so it’s not surprising there hasn’t been any up arrows for last 2 issues on them. Actually, a few cards probably should see some down arrows in the near future if they continue to sell closer to the lower end of the price guide HI/LO range.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Heroes For Hire,

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
So I backtracked to the Aug/Sept. 2022 issue of NSU and did find up arrows on a few titles, but mainly on the Marvel Metals.

Oddly enough, the 2022 Almanac that was released shortly afterwards with the same significantly increased prices shows no arrows or any indication that those cards took a big leap up in 2022. I think it should have. I think the Almanac should clearly identify big yearly adjustments in pricing when it occurs.

So my own conclusion would be that arrows are not totally obsolete in NSU, which is good, but price changes don't appear in every issue and trends may not standout over longer periods. That is of course accepting the fact that any printed publication must always lag behind real-time news. A printed price guide still remains a historical marker, to me anyway.

Yeah, it was a little disappointing not seeing any up arrows in the final NSU issue of the year (Dec/Jan). But I guess there wouldn’t be many arrows since they rotated in newer listings of older products like: 2018 Black Panther, 2018 Daredevil, 2018 Defenders, 2018 Star Wars Sellar Signatures, 2020 Star Trek Discovery Season Two, 2020 Twilight Zone Archives, and 2020 The Umbrella Academy Season One among possibly others. But they didn’t include the shading for those older products like for “new pricings” of the new listings of 2022 products. There wasn’t even have a small blurb about it in the “How to use the price guide” section this time so it was a easy miss for me if I didn’t actual look through the price guide for reference to type this up

As for the Almanac, I believe that they haven’t traditionally utilized the up/down arrows for it. I could be mistaken though. But I concur that it would make it much easier to identify cards that had upward (and even downward) movement since the previous Almanac. There’s so much info in there that it’s easy to miss when cards have been adjusted. Maybe it’s something for the editor(s) to consider. But if it’s only BeckettBible24 doing the work then he already has a bunch of his plate doing all those other non-sport related Almanacs-type books along with the NSU price guide.

It was easier years ago to have arrows but there are just too many sets now. Checking for a price change and then making the change in the guide/Almanac is an additional time-consuming step for everything. Maybe they tried it to see how much extra time it took and then they stopped doing it. As a collector, I have an idea of whether something went up or down. If I'm really curious, I can easily grab the last issue and compare it to the current issue.

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
It was easier years ago to have arrows but there are just too many sets now. Checking for a price change and then making the change in the guide/Almanac is an additional time-consuming step for everything. Maybe they tried it to see how much extra time it took and then they stopped doing it. As a collector, I have an idea of whether something went up or down. If I'm really curious, I can easily grab the last issue and compare it to the current issue.

Yeah, but grabbing the previous issue isn’t as exciting as seeing those up arrows in the new issue!

I can imagine adding arrows is somewhat time consuming. Especially if the card(s) went up just after the Almanac was printed and then went down right before the next Almanac goes to print. Then you’d probably have to get the Almanac book and flip through the pages to double check to see if the price was higher or lower from that printed point in time of the last Almanac instead of just using the already updated pricings in the price guide system

Now imagine adding the year of release to all products, too

Hey everyone.

Just a quick update. While the addition of manufacturer to the titles will be featured in the price guide, it will NOT affect editorial content. Also, we still do the up/down arrows. It just depends on what I can get to adjusting and when. This time of year has been extremely busy so the last issue may not have had much. I'm currently working on price adjustments for the next issue that goes to print December 9th. As was noted by someone in an earlier post, we avoid the up/down in the almanacs since those publications are annuals. The information becomes outdated rather quickly and it wouldn't make sense on our end to include them. Hope this helps!

Just an update on this. The process has begun and you may see it in the next issue of NSU. We aren't adjusting the sort order just yet so the sets will still be in alphabetical order according to the franchise name and not the name of the company. It will be a tad bit confusing for a while but I'm working around the clock during the work week to get this done as quickly as possible. It is, in fact, a tedious process. The good news is, we will have a lot of updated pricing along with some of the newer products like Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, Star Wars Chrome Black and many others.

quote:

Originally posted by BeckettBible24:
Just an update on this. The process has begun and you may see it in the next issue of NSU. We aren't adjusting the sort order just yet so the sets will still be in alphabetical order according to the franchise name and not the name of the company.

I may be misreading this, but it sounds as though sets will be grouped by the manufacturer's name after adjusting the sort order? That can't be right.

Some franchise titles might be split between multiple companies and finding by maker and then year, or year and then maker, will throw off any alphabetical order, which is the easiest way to locate a set. Please clarify if the new sort is just adding the maker's name or is it reformatting all the listings by maker's name first as the group.

Yeah, I read it like that too but I think he was just saying that the sets were still going by date within franchises for now and won't be by manufacturer across the process of adding the manufacturer.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

quote:

Originally posted by BeckettBible24:
Just an update on this. The process has begun and you may see it in the next issue of NSU. We aren't adjusting the sort order just yet so the sets will still be in alphabetical order according to the franchise name and not the name of the company.

I may be misreading this, but it sounds as though sets will be grouped by the manufacturer's name after adjusting the sort order? That can't be right.

Some franchise titles might be split between multiple companies and finding by maker and then year, or year and then maker, will throw off any alphabetical order, which is the easiest way to locate a set. Please clarify if the new sort is just adding the maker's name or is it reformatting all the listings by maker's name first as the group.