Topic: Card Values

How are the card values listed in the trade tool determined?
How often are they updated?

Most players consider the TCG price to be the defacto market value, and for mid to high value cards the prices DeckBox lists on trades is usually close enough.
However, for lower value cards most cards end up listing way higher than they should.

This is causing friction on a trade I am in the middle of right now.
On my side of the trade, the person I'm trading with is asking for various foils and promo cards I have.
And there, the DeckBox value is only about $3 over the TCG value, in total.  (That part's fine.)
His side of the trade is a pile of Theros block uncommons and a few bulk rares, that he's trying to get rid of, and I need to complete my collection.  (On the surface, should be a win-win.)
However, despite both sides of the trade showing as roughly equal, the TCG value of his side of the trade is short by $9 ($12 lower than the DeckBox value).

Re: Card Values

100002924569461 wrote:

How are the card values listed in the trade tool determined?
How often are they updated?

Most players consider the TCG price to be the defacto market value, and for mid to high value cards the prices DeckBox lists on trades is usually close enough.
However, for lower value cards most cards end up listing way higher than they should.

This is causing friction on a trade I am in the middle of right now.
On my side of the trade, the person I'm trading with is asking for various foils and promo cards I have.
And there, the DeckBox value is only about $3 over the TCG value, in total.  (That part's fine.)
His side of the trade is a pile of Theros block uncommons and a few bulk rares, that he's trying to get rid of, and I need to complete my collection.  (On the surface, should be a win-win.)
However, despite both sides of the trade showing as roughly equal, the TCG value of his side of the trade is short by $9 ($12 lower than the DeckBox value).

As an exercise, put his side into your cart on tcgplayer and use the cart optimizer to see what the actual shipped price for the lot would be across the optimal number of vendors (and then repeat for your side)...many times prices on low value cards are artificially low on tcgplayer because they are loss leaders and don't account for shipping.  The administrative cost in cataloging, grading, pulling an order etc only is reflected if you look at an order involving the cards.

Last edited by bactgudz (2014-08-06 05:35:42)

Re: Card Values

We do not use, or have any affiliation with TCGPlayer card values. We calculate a market price based on prices of sellers on our website and from Amazon.

Which cards are most problematic from the list you mention? I can take a look if there are some pricing errors.

Re: Card Values

sebi wrote:

We do not use, or have any affiliation with TCGPlayer card values. We calculate a market price based on prices of sellers on our website and from Amazon.

Which cards are most problematic from the list you mention? I can take a look if there are some pricing errors.

It seems like you must be using some data that is derivative of tcgplayer though...if you look at the price history of a card like foil Lore Seeker, it spiked up to multiple thousands here when somebody listed it for 10k on tcgplayer as a joke.

Re: Card Values

deckbox had a bit of a falling out with TCG and their pricing api.  there's a thread somewhere with a lot of discussion about it not too long ago.  prices were really wonky for a while but have normalized. sebi and the team are doing a pretty good job of keeping things close.  So, credit/due there.

that being said, deck box prices aren't perfect (hint no ones are), i still check TCG low and eBay, it's good to compare multiple sources when calculating value.  tcg low (especially on standard) will give you a good estimate of what things are actually selling for and eBay should correlate with that in the ball park somewhere.  for modern/edh/legacy staples, condition figures in to pricing more so more research is required.  you can notice a huge difference on TCG mid (median) and low, especially on cards that just came out, because prices fluctuate a lot... median is better for older cards since it keeps some price memory of the real value of the card. 

In your case i would explain it to your trade partner and if they still refuse then you're just dealing with a stubborn person that doesn't understand how magic card values actually work.

Last edited by elpablo (2014-08-06 13:07:04)

Re: Card Values

bactgudz wrote:

As an exercise, put his side into your cart on tcgplayer and use the cart optimizer to see what the actual shipped price for the lot would be across the optimal number of vendors (and then repeat for your side)...many times prices on low value cards are artificially low on tcgplayer because they are loss leaders and don't account for shipping.  The administrative cost in cataloging, grading, pulling an order etc only is reflected if you look at an order involving the cards.

That's actually not correct.  Most offers are clearly marked shipping included, and those that are not are also clearly marked what the shipping cost is.  Lowest price + shipping (if any) = market price. 

You are partially correct, regarding the use of the optimizer tool, in that minimum order from any vendor is $1.  So, if you have selected any cards from a vendor that does not total the minimum amount you need to buy those cards from somebody else.  The optimizer can fix that for you or you can do it manually.  In either case, the variance is rarely more than +/- $1, which is in acceptable range.  A variance of 50% to only one side of the deal, however, is not.

Also, the optimizer does not account for things like cards from specific sets, foil, promo cards, etc.  It only matches by name of the card.

Last edited by 100002924569461 (2014-08-06 19:49:12)

Re: Card Values

elpablo wrote:

deckbox had a bit of a falling out with TCG and their pricing api.  there's a thread somewhere with a lot of discussion about it not too long ago.  prices were really wonky for a while but have normalized. sebi and the team are doing a pretty good job of keeping things close.  So, credit/due there.

Oh, yeah.  You can definitely tell they've put a lot of work into the site.  No question there.

elpablo wrote:

In your case i would explain it to your trade partner and if they still refuse then you're just dealing with a stubborn person that doesn't understand how magic card values actually work.

Confirms what I was thinking last night.

Thanks.

Re: Card Values

speaking of trades... i have a huge amount of the bulk you're looking for, if you have anything off my wish list.

Re: Card Values

sebi wrote:

We do not use, or have any affiliation with TCGPlayer card values. We calculate a market price based on prices of sellers on our website and from Amazon.

Which cards are most problematic from the list you mention? I can take a look if there are some pricing errors.

OK.  So basically, what you are suggesting is that DeckBox prices are vendor driven.  Its ironic, considering that trading is a consumer level activity, but I can work with that.

As for which cards you might want to look at, the variance gets less pronounced as the value of the card increases.  It would be infinitely less time consuming to point at anything at or under $1 as being problematic.  But depending on how your data is being polled, that might be easier said than done.

I was asking more out of curiosity, not looking to make more work for you guys.

Thanks, for the clarification.

Re: Card Values

100002924569461 wrote:

OK.  So basically, what you are suggesting is that DeckBox prices are vendor driven.  Its ironic, considering that trading is a consumer level activity, but I can work with that.

True, and ideally we'd calculate pricing based on prices of sold cards only, but for now there is not enough activity on the market for that, and for some rare / promo cards it will never be the case that are enough transactions to make that work sadly.

As for which cards you might want to look at, the variance gets less pronounced as the value of the card increases.  It would be infinitely less time consuming to point at anything at or under $1 as being problematic.

Yep, prices under 1$, especially bulk rares are a bit wonky. It's also a bit hard to define what is their value, since variations in both seller pricing, and as a result, also of their buying price are very big. But we'll be looking closer at this very soon.