Earlier this week I read on Beckett.com a piece written by Brian Fleischer solving the mystery of the HI and LO columns in the price guide.

https://www.beckett.com/news/h...eckett-price-guides/

The typical dry answer is found in first page of the price guide portion of the NSU under “What the columns mean” header ...

“The LO and HI columns reflect current retail selling ranges. The HI column generally represents full retail selling price. The LO column generally represents the lowest price one could expect to find with extensive shopping.”

Brian did a great job making that definition more relatable and making those price ranges more understandable. Hopefully this will help out other collectors, too.

You mentioned this is the other thread too and its good to know what Beckett intends the columns to represent. However, out in the real world, things are different and people apply price guide ranges as they choose. Usually that's using it to their advantage based on their position in the transaction.

Interestingly enough I have had occasion recently to both buy and sell cards in person from 2 dealers. Neither one picked up a regular price guide or annual. They went online to look at recent activity and, after spending a fair amount of time on consideration, figured out what they thought they could offer on the buys and would take on the sales. I accepted most, but declined a few that I thought were too far off.

I suspect that this is more the way of it now, with everybody having a PC or smart phone. Its not like in the old days when price guides were the easiest reference to carry to shows. Also many remaining dealers are not as up on their merchandize as they used to be because the ones left are selling several types of collectibles. Also they want only items showing high recent activity that will move fast, since new product is always coming. The guides can help collectors decide, but they won't change a dealer's mind, no matter how the columns are read.

Yeah, but I thought that it was such a good read that it should have it's own thread. Besidess it will be easier for newer collectors to find this in the future here instead of being buried within the other thread.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
You mentioned this is the other thread too and its good to know what Beckett intends the columns to represent. However, out in the real world, things are different and people apply price guide ranges as they choose. Usually that's using it to their advantage based on their position in the transaction.