Price Guide

[toxicatom5]

Growing up I used to collect baseball cards, there was a price guide published monthly for most cards (or "classes" of cards such as "commons"). It was a particular company's view of the market value of each card. Anyone who had this same hobby knows that you'd actually be hard pressed to sell any baseball card for more than half of it's listed value, but if you went to a shop to buy a baseball card you could plan on paying near the "book" value.

I was perusing the "what's the value of?..." thread a few minutes ago. There are lots of questions about some unique items, but a lot of questions are also about editions that are not all that uncommon. It seems to me like we are the experts on these items (although some of us might have an inflated sense of the market, particularly when it comes to items we really cherish...or want to sell).

There are some free services out there like http://videogames.pricecharting.com/ , but they are prone to inaccuracy. Items like Uncharted 2 FHE are shown as having sold at ridiculous prices, but if you look closely at feedback or pay attention to new listings that go up later on, you'll see that many are not actually sold. Sometimes the buyer chooses not to pay so the same item is relisted (but the original listing will still show up as a sold item), or sometimes a proxy bidder might run the price up just to cancel the transaction later on, again still showing up as a sold item.

For a price guide to be effective, it needs to be kept in one place, be fairly easy to find what you're looking for, and updated periodically (i.e. not searching through 140 pages to find what you want, and only to find that the post is over a year old).

I just wanted to get this idea out there. Any interest? And if so, what input/suggestions do you have?