[ Closed ] Site-wide card pricing changes (Page 5 of 8)

For Chrome users: go get the app AutocardAnywhere. It links directly to the card page on TCG for quick price referencing.

It's going to be a messy period while trying to establish deckbox-based pricing, but there is no reason it can't happen.

To be honest, I'm surprised at the number of people who were relying directly on TCGPlayer prices blindly for their trades or sales. They provided multiple data points in the form of low, mid, and high, and there were often large discrepancies between the reliability of these prices, especially for small-value cards.

All it takes for deckbox to get its own pricing system in place is a bit of sales data. Sellers should be pricing cards at their own prices, based on what they want to receive for their card (whether they prefer to get this information based on other retail sites, tcgplayer, ebay, amazon, their LGS, etc is up to them). Over time more sellers will have more cards available, and more sales will occur. In order to provide maximum pricing data to buyers and traders, deckbox would do well to include any of the following data:

- Most recent sold price
- Average sold price (last [1/7/30] days)
- Volume sold in last [1/7/30] days
- Lowest sold price in last [] days
- Highest sold price in last [] days
- Average volume available on deckbox marketplace in last [] days

With even a small volume of transactions on any individual card, with enough of these types of data points, it is easy to see a ballpark for what people are willing to pay for a card, and that range will get more precise over time.

The kind with money, who realizes the best time to get in for season tickets is when the team stinks...

Also, I'm sorry nobody warned you properly about Sacco's effect on an organization.

Edit: In regards to the actual thread - I can see why tcgplayer did this. I'm sure they get a lot of traffic with zero benefit from here, and now it's essentially a competing site.

Hopefully the price data here will be useful again soon. I've spent way too much time entering cards.

Last edited by asmodeanreborn (2014-04-02 17:48:39)

What about trying to go off of star city games web page? They would compare to TCG

Indeed. Also, SCG is notorious for not sharing their pricing information.

This sums up what I feel pretty well. I use Deckbox for trades and TCGPlayer/LFGS for purchases. I have no interest in combining the two into one site if the end result is worse for trades because the key feature that made bulk trading and trading in general convenient on Deckbox is removed and worse for purchases because the market isn't as competitive due to the lower amount of sellers.

I can't imagine there isn't a better solution to monetizing the site than the market. I understand the need to monetize, but why would you think it would be successful if in the process you alienate a good portion of the user base you've been building for six years?

Anyway, I haven't been here long enough or done enough trades that my opinion carries much weight. I will say the reason I switched to Deckbox from other trading sites was how easy it was to balance a trade. I think with that gone and this new farce of a pricing system I'm going to put trades on hold for a bit. Hopefully you guys come to your senses and figure out a better solution.

Last edited by clockworkcactus (2014-04-02 19:35:40)

1. You may be willing to accept that the market feature was the only way to monetize the site, but I'm willing to bet that you're in a very small minority among the users here.

2. You have absolutely zero way of knowing this. TCG Player is a large business. If you think TCG Player wouldn't again allow a site as heavily trafficked as Deckbox to resume driving business to them if Deckbox removed themselves as competition then I don't know what to tell you.

3. I'm not even sure what to make of this. It's a very blunt statement with nothing backing it up and it stands against common sense. The API problem came about because Deckbox thought, for some reason, that if they started competing against TCG Player that TCG Player would continue to allow them to use their pricing data.

Yes, that is what the developers are saying. They have stated that they looked into everything and the Marketplace was the only way to sustain the site. But it's hard to just accept that with the limited knowledge we as users have of their business. Per the Deckbox Trade Index:

"15036 users playing Magic the Gathering have logged in the last 2 months."

If Deckbox was a subscription based service and even 1/3 of those users actually paid for the service at $2 a month, that's $10k.

That looks pretty sustainable and decent for a part time business, but there are plenty of factors involved I know nothing about so my view is limited. I, by no means, fault them for wanting to make the website sustainable financially and make a profit off of their work. They definitely deserve it. Personally, I would just much rather pay a few dollars a month for the trading service than have the Marketplace.

If my understanding is correct, the Deckbox team never expected TCG to ignore them if they started competing with them. They simply thought they'd have a little time to use the TCG API to get they're own pricing data going.

So why not just scrape the TCGPlayer prices without using their API? Then go to the EFF if the legal threats continue and try to set a precedent corroborating Padmapper vs. Ebay. Or go down fighting, at least. It's shitty that sites think they can get away with stuff like this.

Okay, I know that's not a reasonable thing to ask but the price information *needs* to be fixed soon. I'll be curious to see what's in the works.

Last edited by 9700377 (2014-04-02 23:13:49)

Many of us have said--many times--that we would PAY to use Deckbox--the Deckbox we've grown to love.

In the interim, would it be difficult to add additional fields in the trade interface that would let members manually enter/modify prices for each trade item? That way, at least both sides would have record of the proposed price (looked up manually from a third party site) in the trade window.

Don't give up so quickly. All significant changes take time.