Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

P9CO wrote:
9700377 wrote:

So why not just scrape the TCGPlayer prices without using their API?

Here's a link to such an API that scrapes TCG. Please note I did not create this and have no affiliation with this. This is simply an informative post.

https://github.com/bedoherty/MagicTCGPriceAPI

You could hypothetically copy this to your own github account and let google manage the process. If TCG wants to disallow it they will have to block google.

cheers.


IANAL but this seems legally questionable AT BEST

Profile -- Tradelist -- Wishlist

127 Reply by P9CO

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

It's no difference to the server that sends you the information to your browser for parsing. In this case it parses the content that contains the prices. It's generally a frowned upon practice, but nothing inherently illegal.

> http://deckbox.org/users/P9CO

H: Tradelist | W: Standard cards on my wishlist
- The higher number on my want list the more I want it!

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

buughost wrote:
P9CO wrote:
9700377 wrote:

So why not just scrape the TCGPlayer prices without using their API?

Here's a link to such an API that scrapes TCG. Please note I did not create this and have no affiliation with this. This is simply an informative post.

https://github.com/bedoherty/MagicTCGPriceAPI

You could hypothetically copy this to your own github account and let google manage the process. If TCG wants to disallow it they will have to block google.

cheers.


IANAL but this seems legally questionable AT BEST

That google app isn't questionable. Although it's not optimized for mass collection, since you have to query cards individually when you'd rather query entire sets. Anyone (even me!) could make an app that does this, though, and then Deckbox could just use that app. TCGPlayer could still threaten Deckbox over it, of course. They wouldn't have a chance of winning an actual case, but oftentimes the threat of costly litigation is a sufficient deterrent.

Last edited by 9700377 (2014-04-03 06:24:10)

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

this may have been covered already in this thread, forgive me for not reading thru it...but I feel like the timing of this indicates that TCG felt that deckbox was stepping on its toes, so to speak, once deckbox started allowing its users to sell thru this site.

If we do away with the selling and go back to being a trading site, will TCG let us use their pricing again?

130 Reply by P9CO

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

Batman281 wrote:

If we do away with the selling and go back to being a trading site, will TCG let us use their pricing again?

The response would be an emphatic NO, you never get another chance whatsoever, If Chedy would even respond in the first place.

> http://deckbox.org/users/P9CO

H: Tradelist | W: Standard cards on my wishlist
- The higher number on my want list the more I want it!

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

If TCGplayer is willing to sell you the data feed, then I am willing to help pay if you can negotiate a deal.  Not having their pricing info is a major setback.

132 Reply by laura

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

P9CO wrote:

I suggest everyone to email Chedy directly tell him how disgusted you feel, and your opinions, chedy@tcgplayer.com

I definitely appreciate all the support we are getting from those of you who are choosing to stand by us in these times, but I have to strongly ask you NOT to email Chedy. We don't want the situation to get out of control and we don't want to start a revolution. I may be a hippie at heart, but I just want us all to get along smile. Chedy has been helpful throughout our collaboration and we ended because of a conflict of interests, I would not want us to start bullying him or his business as they are just trying to protect it and handle it all the best they can.

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

laura wrote:
P9CO wrote:

I suggest everyone to email Chedy directly tell him how disgusted you feel, and your opinions, chedy@tcgplayer.com

I definitely appreciate all the support we are getting from those of you who are choosing to stand by us in these times, but I have to strongly ask you NOT to email Chedy. We don't want the situation to get out of control and we don't want to start a revolution. I may be a hippie at heart, but I just want us all to get along smile. Chedy has been helpful throughout our collaboration and we ended because of a conflict of interests, I would not want us to start bullying him or his business as they are just trying to protect it and handle it all the best they can.

What it sounds like is a $$ situation. Likely, TCG does not like the idea of their prices being used, but not making any $$ from it, or the resulting transactions.

As such, it is a waste of time to email Chedy, or whatever his name is, since it will not change anything for the better.

134 Reply by P9CO

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

I don't mean to be misleading, I'm sorry about that; intentionally emailing chedy is probably not the answer, you're right. I've had past experiences so I'm a bit more intense or passionate and willing to fight, than I need to be.

I'm a hippie at heart too, that's why this aggravates me so much, can't we all just get along? There are so many dividing issues within the relatively small active MTG community as it is. We should more focus on being united than divided.

kind regards.

> http://deckbox.org/users/P9CO

H: Tradelist | W: Standard cards on my wishlist
- The higher number on my want list the more I want it!

135 Reply by sebi

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

BlackLotusGo wrote:

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.

Very true and insightful!

I am preparing a post with more information for later today.

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

I just noticed that you can still get the prices of complete sets (ie. Inventory, Trading List) via TCGPlayer. Is this intentional or will this be removed soon as well?

Total value of cards in this set: $3,611.17 (using the average price on tcgplayer.com)

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

LortGob wrote:

I just noticed that you can still get the prices of complete sets (ie. Inventory, Trading List) via TCGPlayer. Is this intentional or will this be removed soon as well?

Total value of cards in this set: $3,611.17 (using the average price on tcgplayer.com)

Shhhhh...don't say anything, I am still using this to figure out trade values.

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

What about using MTGprice.com or MTGGoldfish.com?

Maybe these organizations are more likely to be open to some type of partnership - especially if it helps to drive traffic both ways between deckbox and the partner site.

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

sebi wrote:
BlackLotusGo wrote:

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.

Very true and insightful!

I am preparing a post with more information for later today.

Considering you take into account our opinions, I would like to ask for some split in the American, European and Asian market, as well as intra-continental exchanges. For some expensive cards (let's say duals) the differences are huge and since I only trade in Europe, I'd like my trades not to be based solely on the American market as it was before.

To be honest, I think it's a bummer that you decided to turn into a marketplace kind of website. I don't know about other users, but I feel like the marketplace might dominate over the possibility to trade and I'm just not willing to dive into selling and/or buying, thus possibly rendering maintaining my deckbox account 'useless'. A choice is a choice and I definitely don't expect it to be changed, but I did want to voice my concern.

> http://deckbox.org/users/Rainar
> Trading with anyone in Europe!

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

Hey - i'm just a little user here and I wanted to ask/suggest something.  Maybe its something easily done with the code, maybe not.   

Is there a way to get tradebox to match traders up just by the NUMBER of cards, not considering the value?

Right now, certain cards might get weighed really high (celestial Archon, I believe is the one I've seen).  As a result, i'm getting match up on value with people that we really don't match otherwise.  Does that make sense?

Anyway, I think Deckbox is super awesome.  I am trying to keep my trading going even if takes a little longer to put it together.  I don't want to go anywhere.

Last edited by BlackAndBlue (2014-04-03 17:38:30)

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

Probably already discussed, but why not let the sellers put a price on the cards that they are selling? Magictraders doesn't use tcg prices they just have the user name the price they want for the card. If the seller wants to use tcg prices, amazon prices, or their own price that's up to them. Although there won't be enough, but if selling cards do get big on this site, you could scrap the selling prices and make those the suggested trade prices.

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

AdrianaLimaTime wrote:

Probably already discussed, but why not let the sellers put a price on the cards that they are selling? Magictraders doesn't use tcg prices they just have the user name the price they want for the card. If the seller wants to use tcg prices, amazon prices, or their own price that's up to them. Although there won't be enough, but if selling cards do get big on this site, you could scrap the selling prices and make those the suggested trade prices.

Wait, what? I haven't used the selling feature yet, but does it not allow you to set your price? You're saying that we have to use the listed values (now retrieved from Amazon) for sales?

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

BetweenWalls wrote:
AdrianaLimaTime wrote:

Probably already discussed, but why not let the sellers put a price on the cards that they are selling? Magictraders doesn't use tcg prices they just have the user name the price they want for the card. If the seller wants to use tcg prices, amazon prices, or their own price that's up to them. Although there won't be enough, but if selling cards do get big on this site, you could scrap the selling prices and make those the suggested trade prices.

Wait, what? I haven't used the selling feature yet, but does it not allow you to set your price? You're saying that we have to use the listed values (now retrieved from Amazon) for sales?

No, each seller sets their own prices. The plan was to use the data from sales here on DB to set the values for cards, but there just isn't enough data to do that yet.

Profile  Tradelist

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

The seller I saw today was linking to his inventory. The only prices I saw were those of amazon (unless he is giving duals away for free). So maybe this has been implentated and this guy hasn't used it, or maybe it has yet to be implented.

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

For me what would help far more than pricing data is the frequency of a card in the top8 ranked weekly decks.  this directly relates to value and actually gives a sneak peak to values before they actually go up or down.  Now if you really wanted to get into projections you would take into account cards that go out of standard a week or 2 before they go out.  Think big!

The gop 8 frequency also helps me determine which cards I keep in my collection for later modern rotation more than price.

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

brileetay wrote:

For me what would help far more than pricing data is the frequency of a card in the top8 ranked weekly decks.  this directly relates to value and actually gives a sneak peak to values before they actually go up or down.  Now if you really wanted to get into projections you would take into account cards that go out of standard a week or 2 before they go out.  Think big!

The gop 8 frequency also helps me determine which cards I keep in my collection for later modern rotation more than price.

They are already working on this: here. In the meantime mtgtop8.com works just fine.

Profile  Tradelist

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

I love this site and was using it way before I started trading on it (which is awesome).  Not having prices is rough, but I'm willing to give the DB team time to work out alternatives.  People attacking them without having patience is insane IMO. 

They've stated that they need a reliable way to generate income to keep providing this free site.  I can understand that.  I'm willing to give them time to figure it out, and I'll just work around the pricing issue in the meantime. 

A ton of users here don't even use the pricing, they just use it for inventory management and deck building.  People complaining are the vocal minority.

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

I agree with shmebula.

this site is great for collection/deck organization and I will continue to use it. I am sure they'll work something out for the pricing. For the time being I'll wait until the prices seem more reliable.

Last edited by ishboh (2014-04-03 17:03:59)

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

What about MagicCardMarket.eu prices? I was always using theirs anyway

Re: Site-wide card pricing changes

Ok, so I wasn't going to weight in until I read the whole thread. Took a while, there were 148 responses when I finally clicked reply.

But I hate being that guy who quotes one thing and restarts and old discussion.

With that said I will make only general observations:

1) I agree with what others have said, this site has changed the way I trade and made things so easy for me it's like going from my current computer to the thing I had 6 years ago...painful, and frustrating.

2) Continuing from above, though it is painful and frustrating now this is what follows growth, you know, growing pains, the thing EVERYONE can identify with from the physical stress of your body growing from when you were young. Guess what, this will take some time. Deal with it as you will, but quality takes time and investment, clearly Sebi and team are willing, question is are you? If not, cool, thanks for trading with us, but please be reasonable in your expectations

3) I think the functionality deckobx has is clearly superior to anything else on the market, it is a one stop shop now. It will just take some testing and time to get things into final release =P

4) I'm excited about all the changes and am looking forward to further releases

5) Thanks deckbox team, you made magic easy for me, it's been a blast.



@Paul_K
--- who I have had the pleasure of trading with many times, I liked your comment about the youthful generation (mine) and how they deal with issues, it is all too often true. Also I enjoyed your analysis of how we are all corporations. I would suggest you read The Un-Incorporated Man, was an amazing book, you might be horrified and vindicated in the read =P

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