Prices are too easily influence by one high listing. For example:

• The high price on lightning bolt is $52.48: http://deckbox.org/mtg/Lightning%20Bolt
• The high price on nether shadow is $79.98: http://deckbox.org/mtg/Nether%20Shadow

One high listing on TCGplayer, the "average" price on each card has jumped 5x from $.50 to $2.50. At one point a vendor was listing Avacyn for ~$1000 and that alone brought the average price from $10 to $25 for a few days.

I know the prices come from TCGplayer and you can't directly fix this problem. I've contacted them about using MEDIAN rather than MEAN prices for "average" but they've not responded. I don't know if you, as site administrators, would have any more pull.

In the mean time, I've tried using minimum prices, but the trade interface still adds total value based on the average prices and many trade partners initially think I'm trying to hustle them. Could we get an option in the trade interface for both parties to agree on low/average/high price set?

It'd also be really nice if cards added to the trade interface reflected any condition/foil/set annotations.

We will indeed be doing some improvements in price handling in trades (they will take into account your edition, if you have explicitly set one).

Your idea of having a "per trade" setting for min/avg/max is also interesting. Will take into consideration.

sebi wrote:We will indeed be doing some improvements in price handling in trades (they will take into account your edition, if you have explicitly set one).

Your idea of having a "per trade" setting for min/avg/max is also interesting. Will take into consideration.

Perhaps, instead of an option for low/avg/high, could the trade window show all three values? Would that pull too much data, putting a strain on things? Having all three would let both parties instantly see whether the average price is being skewed by high listings.

HikingStick wrote: Perhaps, instead of an option for low/avg/high, could the trade window show all three values? Would that pull too much data, putting a strain on things? Having all three would let both parties instantly see whether the average price is being skewed by high listings.

Good idea!

Forcing a trade partner to agree on a "price" doesn't make sense to some. People value cards differently regardless of published prices. Just something to take into consideration.

I've been noticing some pretty out of whack prices, too. Seems like quite a few cards from around Revised/4th Edition have clearly bogus max prices at some stores.

http://deckbox.org/mtg/Sedge%20Troll - $0.13 $5.66 $157.49
http://deckbox.org/mtg/Force%20of%20Nature - $0.15 $3.62 $209.98

I think the biggest thing would be to adjust the price based on the set marked on the card. If any card has more than 1, just separate them into new lines? How often do people have cards from across sets anyway, and even if they do, usually the prices differ enough that it does matter.

Polling from the version would solve the price issues from older cards that have beta/unlimited versions and then reprints in 4th, for example.


I doubt it's possible, but also adjusting the price for a promo/foil (if this exists in whatever API is used) would be nice.

Or we could just go by the prices as determined by the Black lotus project and not have this problem... just sayin...

pipdickenz wrote:Or we could just go by the prices as determined by the Black lotus project and not have this problem... just sayin...

yeah, but those get skewed too, especially for cards from older editions, or thinly traded cards.