[ Closed ] Site-wide card pricing changes (Page 1 of 8)

We are still importing some of the foil prices, and fixing some of the missing ones, so this should be better later today.

We will base our prices, much like tcgplayer does, on min/max and median values for all currently listed cards for sale. We are pretty sure we will have enough price points for this a month from now at the latest.

Last edited by sebi (2014-04-02 08:31:20)

Thanks for reporting Berserk, I fixed it. I also just opened a new topic in Site Feedback for people to easily report this kind of issues: http://deckbox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=85547

For really rare stuff we will still display amazon prices, or pherhaps other price source from the web that we can use (i.e. from companies that will not sue us for it).

The pricing will not be abusable. We will have treshholds for seller accounts that count in price calculations (i.e. if you have not sold anything or have negative score, you do not count) etc.

In addition, we will also actively ban and suspend anyone who tries to manipulate pricing. We want to have a body of serious and respected sellers here, on whose prices and service to buyers we (and the buyers) can count.

Again, we are really sorry for this situation, and if it had been avoidable, we would have avoided it, but sadly we cannot.

I have tried to discuss and reason with the president of Tcgplayer, offered my thanks for the collaboration until now, explained our position on the market and general strategy for the future in a clear way. All we received were legal threats.

But we do understand the need for reliable pricing, and we will find a way to provide them. We want them to be more reliable than the tcgplayer ones and fix all the issues that we had with them, and that people kept reporting.

We were not able to do that before, but we are able to do that in the future.

Last edited by sebi (2014-04-02 08:42:05)

Yep, sure! We totally understand.  Keep the questions / suggestions coming, glad to answer.

I am very convinced it will not only not fall apart, but it will be better! And I am rarely convinced of things, as laura might confirm

Have you looked at MTG stocks? I heard they recently opened an API.

EDIT: is this because you guys explicitly added a market/sales functionality? If so... Get rid of it. I feel like your primary user base is traders not sellers (though I could be wrong). Maybe you should do some research or poll your active user base. I've sold stuff here occasionally, but I'd rather have TCG pricing integrated rather than a specific sales function.

Last edited by buughost (2014-04-02 10:32:53)

The problem with this is the inability to keep up with price spikes which is already difficult enough as it is.

I too would recommend pursuing an alternative way to monetize deckbox that doesn't step on tcgplayer's toes and allows you to keep access to their data.  Deckbox does not have an adequate critical mass of sellers to generate consistent pricing and tcgplayer pricing a collection was a big draw to coming here.  It seems like adding premium paid features and commission based referrals may be a safer way to monetize.

Then I'm sure you can expect quite a number of users to become frustrated with the site and largely stop using it.

You were doing one thing really well. Why compromise that in order to add half-baked functionality as well as diminish your ability to fulfill your original goal. I would strongly suggest polling your audience before making such huge decisions on their behalf. I understand you're the product owner, but you also don't want to leave your user-base feeling abandoned. I'm speaking not only as a user of the system, but as a UX/Usability professional.

This is why usability and focus-group testing are so important to the software/product life-cycle.

Last edited by buughost (2014-04-02 11:04:24)

And certainly there are other options to explore than this.

First and foremost, you guys, this stinks, and I am disappointed in TCG. I was wondering whether they considered their prices some sort of intellectual property, as well as if the marketplace launch intensified their efforts, if for nothing else than stamping out a potential competitor. At any rate, once things stabilize and you get a reliable set of prices, it could turn out to be a strong alternative to what's already out there in the secondary market, which is a good thing.

I've noticed the same here, even with more recent high-dollar cards such as Archangel of Thune. Suffice it to say, I'm putting any future trades on hold for a while. I can't imagine how many heated discussions are afoot with folks trying to salvage existing trades.

What precisely are you pulling from Amazon? I've observed a massive range of prices on cards based on the selling price + the shipping price, and it seems a decent percentage of them charge way more than the mean. If you're doing an average of all sellers, that helps, but the padding of shipping prices and sellers' practice of cheap buy price + high shipping price to entice a sale seems unreliable (as I see sebi has already alluded to in a recent reply).

Supreme best of luck to you all.

This is an april fool's joke, right?