But I still don't get the need for an online price guide. Besides all the difficulties and cost of running one.

NSU has a price guide - every two months it comes out. We're all free to email Bill to discuss omissions and corrections.

NSU is a magazine and part of why it sells is its price guide. Maybe everyone should just buy NSU and then there'd be no need for an online guide.
And should encourage other collectors to do that as well. NSU gives us alot.in the magazine and here. Boosting its sales would be a good thing!

After all, most changes are additions of new product, maybe 6 sets/7 sets every two months...and it is very difficult to price new product in ways that reflect the variations in the market at first.

We all have eBay..we all have each other...and there's a number of dealers on this board who a) run websites..or b) don't but are willing to give quotes if asked seriously.

I think I'm continuing to get amazed at how much people want, and want cheaply or free. The "I am entitled" mentality sometimes overwhelms me.

Have any of you ever asked how many folks at NSU volunteer and don't get paid at all? Have any of you asked how much it costs just to run this board the way it is? Have any of you thought about the fact that those that do get paid must be getting paid pennies per hour given the number of hours they devote to 'us'..

How many of you collectors are clammering for price guides and free promos are turning around and using them as 'cash' or selling them yourselves at shows, online or at flea markets, and not buying the series itself? And not supporting the manufacturers or the dealers that bring them to you? Or that want NSU to continue to put lots of promos inside of it so that you can sell them?

Sometimes...I just throw my hands up in the air..

End of rant!

Part of the anticipation of recieving our bi-monthly copies of NSU is to check the price guide. I know the price of most of our collections doesn't go up in value as fast as we'd all like them too,but, I like the way NSU uses their formula to raise or lower prices. How many times have you seen on Ebay, an item that hasn't been seen in a long time, go for a very nice price( above "book" value), then in the following weeks 3 or 4 of the same items appear(because everyone saw the first item go for a very nice price). Then the sale prices of those , generally decline to the price in NSU's listings! I've seen it happen numerous times, and got excited myself at first! Just My thoughts on the subject. HAVE FUN AND GREAT COLLECTING!! P.S. Bill & Harris, Could we have a few more UP arrows each month!! Ha Ha!

Starwolf,
My apologies - I misread your post! (I blame the bad eyesight I have at the moment)
Au Res.,
Paul

Sometimes, one pack is not enough...

O.K., there seems to be several reasons the rest of you don't like my idea for an online price guide. Lets go through them one by one, shall we.

1) not necessary.
O.K. quick go look this up, how much for a complete set of Star Wars Phantom Menace Pepsi cards. Darn, it's not in the magazine. the online guide would be alot bigger, there's no way they could put everything in the magazine, unless it's 200 pages. And as for contacting the Tosers, I'm sure they like the letters, but that their time and money to do.

2) it would cost money to set up and maintain the guide.
Well duh!! That is way, and the begining of all this that i suggested a Fee for use of this online guide. Is $10 a lot? No, not for 1 subscriber, or even 10, but 100 or a 1000 people, then we're getting somewhere.
How many issues of NSU are sold every year?
and even half of those subscrise to the online service? O.K., I know we wouldn't get that many, but maybe we would.

My suggestion would be to go for it...why not make a guide yourself? Keep a log and let us know your progress, bumps, scrapes and successes ....prove us wrong
There are reasons many people are resitant to the idea, but I honestly think they are reasons that don't translate well, as we seem to have the same discussion every so often without anything actually changing.....
So that leaves only the fact that there hasn't yet been anyone step up to the plate and offer the service, so it will have to come from someone who wants it bad enough to sit down and doooooo it..if that's you, then let us know where to look for it when it's done!
If it's not you, then hopefully at least we can come to an understanding that those who COULD do it won't (for whatever reason) and it will have to be left at that...

I am soo tired of this discussion. . .

But hey, I am here to help. . . and guess what?

There already is a non-sports online price guide.
In fact there are 2 of them that I know of.

Both of these groups of people have been working towards an online guide for a long time. . . both well over a year.

You can check out their sites. . . but before you do realize that these people went through a large effort personally to get these sites online, they relied for the most part on collectors to supply them with information, and when it comes down to it the people they were counting on just didn't participate. Can someone explain that to me? I have been soliciting for scans of rare autographs and box breakdowns for years. . . currently 1 person regularly sends me breakdowns (Thanks Greg!), and I maybe have had 5 autograph scans sent to me in the past 2 years. I know people use my site (I got 13,000 hits last month) but getting people to help out it very tough. What do I need to do to get breakdowns set, and what do these guys need to do to get people to send in pricing information?

At the very understandable request of NSU I will not post the URLs to the sites. . . they can be found doing newsgroups searches in rec.collecting.cards.non-sports If you have troubles finding them feel free to send me an email. . .

Jon

box breakdowns, show reviews, rare autograph gallery and more: www.webjon.com/index.html check out the new design!

[This message was edited by jon@webjon.com (spydrman) on August 07, 2002 at 11:18 PM.]

And therein lies the biggest rub. Unless it's a full-time job for someone a guide relies too heavily on outside help and that tends to unravel quickly and I doubt anyone is in a position to quit their jobs, hoping subscriber donations will keep his bills paid

Starwolf1001-

I just wanted to state that I'm not "against" an online price guide. I just know that it can be a massive undertaking that can end up being relatively expensive in terms of time and money. Trying to keep one up and running, up-to-date and etc, would be extremely time consuming. Because of this, the question is whether or not it would be cost-effective. And, since there are other options at the moment I take advantage of those.

However, I think STCrdgeek summed it up when she suggested that you consider starting one and see how it works out. You seem to consider it a worthwhile venture, and even have a pricing scheme figured out to some extent. It may very well turn into a "If you build it they will come" kinda thing. Just something to consider.

kathy warrior counselor

www.geocities.com/warrior_counselor/index.html

I was reading posts and came across this one. My question is If its to costly to have and online price guide, what cant there be one just for newly priced items? Maybe made available to Cardtalk members and NSU subscribers?

Just a thought...

Wow! Pulling up a topic from 4 years ago...

I think it still applies - much too time consuming & not cost effective to have an online guide....

it was replied to 2 years ago. But Im not asking for a complete list. Just something for newly listed card sets.

quote:

Originally posted by Master:
...Maybe made available to Cardtalk members and NSU subscribers?

Just a thought...

Would I be safe in assuming that you mean "made available free of charge to Card Talk members and NSU subscribers"?

well free would be nice or for a small price.

It seems to me that there is already a free online price guide for newly released sets. It is called eBay and is very easy to use For recently released sets, there are always lots of cards up for sale on eBay so the completed sales search gives a good estimate quickly. Furthermore, eBay sales is actually the most reliable way to gauge prices in the (fairly volatile) new release market - an online price guide wouldn't be able to do any better.

Jen

you cant always rely on ebay because as we saw when the LOTR Masterpieces Sketch cards came out the market was saturated and cards sold for around $1.

I am more interested in a small price guide similar to what beckett does for new release items prior to being in the magazine.

i agree if you want a price you should get a copy of the nsu mag or look else where this site does try to make its money to stay open from the nsu magazine

As mentioned in another thread - I think the "Ebay completed auctions" is one of the best guides to use.

WOW, almost 4 years after i started this thread people are still not a conclusion

if you had a site like Jeff Allender's checklist site, but on each page it had an average price for that set, chase etc. Then that would be ideal. It would take the NSU magazines idea of having the sets with average price, but using similaar codes/scripts that another trading card site uses you can show the average selling price for a set, and it gets updated every so often when it searches ebay.


There we go, problem sorted after 4yrs :P

quote:

but using similaar codes/scripts that another trading card site uses you can show the average selling price for a set, and it gets updated every so often when it searches ebay.

The problem with something like this is that automatic text searching relies on accurate and consistent descriptions. eBay sellers are very erratic. When was the last time you saw the title of a card on eBay having the set name, type of insert and card number? It is easy to see this by doing a search - any search will have some cards wanted in the search, miss some of the cards wanted and have lots of cards not wanted.