quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
Hi Matt,

What's the deadline for sending updates for the Almanac?

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
So I've been trying to look over the last Almanac to come up with a more meaningful and specific adjustment and I find I have too many examples to mention on the autograph cards. I just think that a lot of the ranges are off. However my big problem isn't with the high prices, which may at least have a chance of being found. My big issue is with the low prices, which are just impossible in some of the mid-range and higher tiered autographs.

The general formula seems to be that the low price is established at about 50% less than the high column for all types of hits. If the card is priced higher, the low column may be a bit more than 50%, but it is always a pretty wide gap in comparison. Too much of a gap many times. Here are just a couple:

Daniel Radcliffe Order of the Phoenix $400 - $650
Daniel Radcliffe Update Phoenix $250 - $400
Daniel Radcliffe Update Goblet $400 - $800
Emma Watson Phoenix $500 - $1000
Cate Blanchett Fellowship of the Ring $100 - $200
Cate Blanchett Twin Towers $75 - $150
Christopher Lee Return of the King $75 - $150

Now I don't know if you can find a Radcliff for $400, but I don't think you can get one for $250. Can you find a Watson at $500? Or a Lee at $75? If anyone wants to sell me a Blanchett at $75 or $100 I'll take it, because I have never seen one offered for that little.

So you get the idea. Well known names on well known autograph cards aren't changing hands at these low column values. Maybe in a distressed situation, but those low prices would fall outside the average.

My suggestion would than be, even if the high values are deemed to stay, the low values should be increased on in-demand signers. Just randomly looking at some of these better autographs listed in the Almanac, a card collector knows that they will never find many of them at the low price range. So I would recommend almost an across the board reduction in the gap between the columns for autograph cards that are not in the common signer class and increase the minimum.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
Just two other thoughts about Almanacs and price guides in general and then I'll leave it alone. Is card condition left as a constant in the pricing process and through whose lenses are we looking at these prices and sales transactions?

I don't know what Beckett would say, but I would say condition should be at a constant and pricing should be based on the average range that normal card buyers, who are not dealers or sellers themselves, will pay. That's tricky, so I have to explain what I mean.

There has to be a constant condition, probably near-mint, where the card has no noticeable areas of significant point deductions. The low column should not include and be based on cards in lesser conditions that pull down the range. It has to be all the same condition and a premium would be in order for anything claiming that "10" or pristine or gem mint status.

For the second part, the range should also be based on what the normal buyer can expect to find in the normal market. This would seem easy since we have eBay sales, but traditionally that low column was used more by dealers looking to see the price they should buy at. Then the high column would be the price they turned around and sold it for.

That was a general rule until dealers started to decide that they had to buy at half the low price because they wanted to give "bargains" and sell at the low column. At that point if you tried to sell cards to a dealer they only wanted to offer 25% of the value, but they had no trouble selling for as much as they could. If a price guide looks through their eyes, that low column can get very low without being a price that a card collector could ever find.

That's what I mean by tricky and why we all agree that price guides are inherently flawed. However if the sales are at least judged "apples to apples" and not "apples to oranges", it is possible to come away with more practical, real world ranges then we have for many cards now in MHO.

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
Right, a dealer might see the low price as what he/she should pay, but as I said above, that same dealer might have his/her own idea of what could be paid based on what it should sell for. Dealers might like to pay half of the low but most sellers value their stuff too much to take that. Paying half of the low seems like a policy more for buying lots or collections where it's assumed some cards will sell slower than others.