General Forum

Has anyone else seen their baseball card values tank in April?  I'm talking about your collection as a whole not any specific cards.

A 1993 Ivan Rodriguez Finest Refractor that I did not bid on just sold 2 weeks ago on eBay for about $2000 so unfortunately it has not tanked enough :(

Nor has buyer stupidity.

This is what I know, I don't worry about collection value. Actually, what I meant to say it that I just stick to my dealers I have a relationship with. Example, I just picked up an Aaron/Mays combo card from the 60s for a 66% discount; sharp corners, but off-center 80/20. And he was apologizing though he knows I don't chase perfection. All of these means, I just go fill other holes in my collection until the stupidity subsides and I can get back to some of those other needs.

I saw someone say that they think that Sportlots is adding more prices here which would mean that the value assigned by TCDB may be dropping somewhat. If you mean according to TCDB then maybe thatis what is happening. I wouldn't look at it as the value dropping as the prices starting to catch up with what they can be bought for (which for most commons is still not really what they are worth...but that discussion's been had a thousand times on here so i wont repeat it!)

Yep it's sportslots adding sales prices. There were 12 consecutive prices listed for 2017 Topps 30th Anniversary card# 87 Matt Carpenter. If they had of loaded them cheapest to highest sale price the value might have gone up ... but the pricing you see on this site is an average of the last 5 sales/prices entered. It looks like they are being loaded oldest sale to newest sale, and some from months back. Again only the last 5 sales prices are figured in to come up with a TCDB value for any specific card.  

It is not the average price of the 5 last cards.  It is the medium price of the last 5 cards.  example 1992 Upper Deck #SP3 Deion Sanders - Atlanta Braves / Atlanta Falcons SP

We all seen a drop when Sportlots started to add their prices.   I have not heard how they were doing it, but it appears they add the sold cards that were years ago and working their way up to the newly sold cards.  As you see more cards over .25 vs the .18 cards from them.   They may have added a lot of cards that you have in April and that is why you see a big drop in your value when others may not.

My cards are priceless, but the value here keeps going up and down.  Which I look at but not worried about.

The actual term is MEDIAN.

If there are 5 (or more) prices, the last 5 are examined - they are placed in value order and the middle one is the median.

For example:
4/15/24 - $3
4/14/24 - $2
4/13/24 - $1
4/11/24 - $12
4/8/24 - $15

The median is $3 (the MEAN, which is where you take all the values, add them up, and divide by the number of items being included, is $6.60).

Whenever someone discovers that I collect baseball cards they always ask, "What's your most valuable card?"   My standard response is that I have no idea.  I tell them I can only say what's the most I ever paid for a card, because once I buy a card I don't know, or care, what the current value is.  Once it's in my collection I don't ever intend to sell it.  Everyone has different priorities, but the value of my collection will only be important after I'm gone.