Baseball Card Guides and all the confusion : eBay Guides

Hello...I have been an avid card collector since the early 1970's and have seen and experience just about every and any anomoly this industry has produced.  I have witnessed the "Topps Only" era to watch it expand to the "Big Three" in the 80's...to the crazy proliferation of card companies of the nineties and beyond.  It has been a fascinating and wonderful ride.

My purpose for writing this is too dispute the erratic card value guides we have in this industry.  The hypocracy and confused values of cards that are raw versus graded has this industry spinning its head--yet worse, giving the collector a confused message of what really matters.

I am writing this passage as a way to share my thoughts and advice on trying to gauge a quality worthiness of a card for the card collector.  Many guides print many top dollar amounts for cards.  The most widely used collector guide is Beckett which is probably the most accurate in evaluating card values each month.  The other guide many use is Tuff Stuff, which I find is much more short and narrow in its guide evaluation of card values month to month.  Tuff Stuff seems to carry alot of advertisements and very little card values.  There is no doubt the Tuff Stuff tries to advertise more than draw interest into the card values.  So be it. 

My real concern for writing this article is to express the idiocracy of the price guide craize.  Collectors have the sellers that sale the card....okay, they are in for a profit; SMR for the graded cards has there guide; Beckett, Tuff Stuff, and several other magazines of much smaller proportion that tend to rate the value of cards in there own way. 

I find that a more narrow system of monthly card value guides needs to be reexamined and explored.  The hypocracy of this all is when a collector sees a graded 1962 Mantle PSA "6" rated by SMR at 280$ in value, yet a raw, ungraded card rated the same EXMT by a major dealer is selling for 450.....yet, the price in Beckett at NRMT value (the next grade higher) has the same card rated at NRMT vaule for a cool 500$ dollars.

Now I understand the population reports, however, population reports are only what PSA has graded...that really has no causal effect on the general population of cards.  In otherwords, there is only so many 1962 Mantle's on this earth.  It seems the grading system we card collectors use needs to be expanded and perhaps overhauled.

My proposal is to have a three or four tier grading scale for cards.  The book value in NRMT, as it already is; the next level down...commonly refered to as the EXMT; and then the Graded NRMT value (which should be automatically double in value of the raw NRMT value).  That is all that needs to be put in all card collecting publications.  SMR can still put in the value of graded cards, but there needs to be a prerequisite that graded cards gain an automatic 25% in value just for the fact they've been graded and certified on a reputable grading company.  Values in all old cards starting with 1994 back to 1869 need to be increased ten fold or more.  Just get out your old Beckett Magazines and you will see what I mean.  Canseco rookie cards should still be worth 100$ dollars....

Our industry has values spread out all over America.  It needs centralizing in an effective way.  I have always had my criticisms about how the values of cards are determined each month by the major publications, and still feel they are valid but need improving.  Namely, how can a 1962 Mantle card effectivly drop in price when there is only so many of them in print and it has been over 40 years ago?  I can see and understand new stuff fluctuating in the publications by way of value, but not something say ten years or further back.  What is out there will always stay out there. 

Many opposing critics tell me, "yea, what you say is true, however, how can you explain demand".....  To answer that, I think back at in the mid 80's when the 1975 rookie cards of Brett and Yount skyrocketed to 280$ dollars.  How can it be explained that the same number of cards in print (since 1975) could suddently be worth that much?  Then look at today's market and find the same identical card worth 80$...now these cards have not been produced in 30 years, yet the value has just suddenly dropped due to demand.... 

I argue that price guides need to be evaluating new printed cards just as fiercly as they do all cards, yet cards starting with 1994 back to 1869 need to be "increased" in value and never "decreased" just for the simple fact they are antiques and no longer in print......  Stamps and coins don't "decrease".  We also need a better centralized card value guide system that makes sense of the erratic differences between SMR guides and the major publications of Beckett and Tuff Stuff.