Topic: Average Deckbox Market Price

I did a search for my topic subject and didn't turn much up ... I am seeing incorrect data for the Average Deckbox Market Price on some cards and I'm wondering whats up?

The first example I noticed:

Destructive Force shows in my inventory as $0.20 minimum deckbox price, while the average is $0.13. When I go to actually look at the card, only adventuresON has the card listed, and they have it at $0.20 and $0.29. Why then am I seeing $0.13 as the average market price?

Maybe I am just not understanding how average is being calculated but I assumed it would show me the average price of cards listed for sale.

If more examples are needed I can come back here and post them. Because of these inconsistencies I'm seeing, I'm basically manually pricing 50+ pages of my collection. sad

Other Examples...

I'm just going to stop adding them, theres obviously lots of cards with this issue.

Druid's Repository. Average price is showing as $0.13 while the minimum is $0.23, with the vast majority of copies at $0.24.

Bonehoard. Average price shows $0.14. Minimum shows $0.07. Actual lowest price is $0.24 (so a different issue there I assume) but average is displaying incorrectly as it should be be something in the $0.30 range.

Elemental Appeal. Average price shows $0.14 while the minimum is $0.20 (and the vast majority of copies are $0.20).

Last edited by ReDCl0uD (2014-10-08 15:43:10)

Re: Average Deckbox Market Price

Maybe I am just not understanding how average is being calculated but I assumed it would show me the average price of cards listed for sale.

That's definitely not how the average price is calculated, if only because the market for some cards is so thin that using actual sale prices would cause a ton of volatility, and people would be unhappy with this because then the prices would not be reliable for trading purposes (eg. I don't want the site to say that my foil Polluted Delta is $300 because the only person selling it is selling it for that price.) So it's definitely for the best that the "average price" is constructed the way it is.

It seems like what you're getting at is that you want a way to see if you can undercut current sellers en masse. Which is a fair request - why list all your cards at the average price if you have the only copy, or the only other guy selling the card is listing it at 200% of this average? Right now this capability doesn't exist, however.

Re: Average Deckbox Market Price

So I guess my question then is what are the parameters for average price? If it is based off completed sale data it is not very useful as a gauge of what a card is currently worth.

My goal is not to undercut current sellers, it is to choose a reasonable price for my cards. When the deckbox "average" is essentially the best buylist price reported by mtgprice.com, I don't think that is a responsible price point to list my cards for sale.  I don't know the market well enough to price my cards without doing research ... and I was hoping to use deckbox's data rather than going elsewhere to do research every single card.

I would love to price my cards en-masse as you suggested ... but not at the expense of loosing large amounts of profit. Take goblin rabblemaster for example ... the average price is $15.95 ... pricing at the average would cause me to lose $4+ based on the current market value ($~20).

Given that the lowest price could easily be someone who is just not paying attention to shifts in the market, I'm not sure what metric on deckbox could be used when evaluating the correct market price for a card.

Re: Average Deckbox Market Price

It's not based on completed sale data. It's probably based on some weighted average of all the other indices out there. It's not transparent because the site got in trouble when it just used TCG low/mid pricing, and so if it turned out that these prices still played a role in Deckbox pricing then this issue could arise again. For all I know, they just take TCG mid prices and then throw in a noise parameter that follows a random walk with drift (okay, I doubt they do that.) If that were the case, though, there's no way that they'd disclose this.

Obviously this will lead to issues. If Rabblemaster is still at $15, that's one. More-broadly, I've noticed that a lot of format staples (shocklands, etc.) seem slightly-underpriced relative to TCG mid. But 75% of TCG mid seems like an outlier. Outliers will always exist, though.

Re: Average Deckbox Market Price

I guarantee you that Deckbox does not do anything with TCG pricing information simply because access to that information was cut off when Deckbox released the Marketplace feature. I thought that DB average was based on the current price of available copies. I have an Alpha Tropical Island for sale and every time I change the price the DB average adjusts to match since I'm the only one selling one of those. Though with the information you guys have presented would indicate that there are other factors taken into account when calculating the average.

Profile  Tradelist

Re: Average Deckbox Market Price

The formula has been changed and tweaked, and will continue to be changed and tweaked for a while.  I am not comfortable discussing or publicizing it until I am sure it cannot be abused.

Re: Average Deckbox Market Price

9700377 wrote:

It's not based on completed sale data. It's probably based on some weighted average of all the other indices out there. It's not transparent because the site got in trouble when it just used TCG low/mid pricing, and so if it turned out that these prices still played a role in Deckbox pricing then this issue could arise again. For all I know, they just take TCG mid prices and then throw in a noise parameter that follows a random walk with drift (okay, I doubt they do that.) If that were the case, though, there's no way that they'd disclose this.

Obviously this will lead to issues. If Rabblemaster is still at $15, that's one. More-broadly, I've noticed that a lot of format staples (shocklands, etc.) seem slightly-underpriced relative to TCG mid. But 75% of TCG mid seems like an outlier. Outliers will always exist, though.

You're not helping because you're not addressing my questions:

  • Why is the deckbox average NOT reflecting the current average market value of cards?
    How is the deckbox average value calulated? (since my expectation is clearly not reality)

As I stated previously, I want to be able to do my market research and pricing on deckbox if at all possible. If I can't, it greatly decreases the speed/usability of pricing and selling my cards on deckbox.

The "lowest price" is a different issue that what I was bringing up in my original question ... but it is certainly a factor as I described due to non-store sellers setting their own prices.

Re: Average Deckbox Market Price

Kammikaze wrote:

I guarantee you that Deckbox does not do anything with TCG pricing information simply because access to that information was cut off when Deckbox released the Marketplace feature.

Technically they just cut off Deckbox's API access to tcgplayer. It's not like there aren't any number of other ways of acquiring the information if you want to use it, however.

Why is the deckbox average NOT reflecting the current average market value of cards?

Because, as I said, some of the markets here are way too thin for that to work. If a card has only sold a couple times at some crazy price, it's obviously a problem if this becomes the Deckbox price for the purposes of both selling and trading. No one will sell/trade for those cards and the prices would remain crazy forevermore. Sites like tcgplayer "work" because they have such a large volume that there is a supply of most cards at most times, as well as a frequently-updated transaction record. That's not true for Deckbox, so they have to do something different.

Last edited by 9700377 (2014-10-09 15:05:41)

Re: Average Deckbox Market Price

sebi wrote:

The formula has been changed and tweaked, and will continue to be changed and tweaked for a while.  I am not comfortable discussing or publicizing it until I am sure it cannot be abused.

Thanks Sebi, this is what I was looking for in an answer to my question. Glad you're still doing the changing and tweaking. :-)

In the mean-time, what method would you recommend for doing research and pricing cards on deckbox?

Re: Average Deckbox Market Price

9700377 wrote:
Kammikaze wrote:

I guarantee you that Deckbox does not do anything with TCG pricing information simply because access to that information was cut off when Deckbox released the Marketplace feature.

Technically they just cut off Deckbox's API access to tcgplayer. It's not like there aren't any number of other ways of acquiring the information if you want to use it, however.

Heh, you go ahead and try to get all of their pricing information without using their API. There's only, what, 13.6k cards without including all of the different printings. Oh, and do this at least once a day. Hope your server doesn't melt. Even if you did get the info some other way TCG would just make a change to cut of that access point.

Profile  Tradelist

Re: Average Deckbox Market Price

Kammikaze wrote:
9700377 wrote:
Kammikaze wrote:

I guarantee you that Deckbox does not do anything with TCG pricing information simply because access to that information was cut off when Deckbox released the Marketplace feature.

Technically they just cut off Deckbox's API access to tcgplayer. It's not like there aren't any number of other ways of acquiring the information if you want to use it, however.

Heh, you go ahead and try to get all of their pricing information without using their API. There's only, what, 13.6k cards without including all of the different printings. Oh, and do this at least once a day. Hope your server doesn't melt. Even if you did get the info some other way TCG would just make a change to cut of that access point.

You could just use the set price guides (eg. http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/price_gui … f%20Tarkir) to cut 95% or so of that burden. Just route the requests through TOR at various times of day. It's not unfeasible.

Last edited by 9700377 (2014-10-09 18:01:13)

Re: Average Deckbox Market Price

9700377 wrote:

You could just use the set price guides (eg. http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/price_gui … %20Tarkir) to cut 95% or so of that burden. Just route the requests through TOR at various times of day. It's not unfeasible.

Hmm, didn't know those existed. Regardless, if Deckbox tried to use them TCG would change something to cut them off from the information.

Profile  Tradelist