I have been collecting various Football, Baseball and Basketball Cards since 1988. From 1988 to 1990 I was an avid collector. I stopped collecting by 1991 and started the hobby again in 2008. I mostly collect Football cards but sometimes I will buy Baseball or Basketball cards. When I first started collecting I heavily relied on Beckett Magazine to trade my cards accordingly. however, that was 23 years ago, since I started collecting again in 2008 I realized Beckett's pricing ranges go from what you should expect a card or set to sell for with a low-end $ amount to a high-end $ amount, with the lower serial numbered cards, i.e. 1/1's or 5/5's sometimes 6/6's, just depends are unpriced due to scarcity. Beckett has done an excellent job of not putting any type of dollar amount for those types of cards. On the other hand, well, they just don't seem to get it when pricing every other card from Common's, Unlisted Sem-Superstars, and Unlisted Superstars. The bigger names, for now we will use NFL Football, like Brett Favre, Tom Brady, and Adrian Peterson are always listed with each years release, Topps, Upper Deck, Panini (Formally known as Donruss), and a few others. Rookies are the driving force that brings in the money for each of the big producing card companies. Beckett plays a major role in help driving those prices by pricing the top tier rookies from each years draft class. Beckett also has a section for names that do not appear on the price guide, Unlisted Rookie Stars and Unlisted Rookie Semi-Stars. This catagorization is the same for veteran players. Beckett also has a grading service, along with other grading services like PSA and the like. I am not a fan of either grading services but I would send my cards to PSA before even entertaining the thought of sending them to Beckett to be graded. Let's say I pull a 2010 Topps Prime Level 5 Autograph and 4 game-Used swatches of Adrian Peterson serial numbered to /75, which I did. Beckett had this card listed as high as $125, however it only sold for $80. A graded version of this same card sold for $119. Beckett grading is very biased, in that, the more money you send them the more likelyhood you will get a 9.5 or 10.0. Most E-Bay'ers eat this up and can drive your final selling price up $40-$100 bucks. Like any human, we make mistakes, in addition there is not a governing body that establishes ground rules for grading. I have seen both PSA and Beckett grade fake autograph cards. Just to have one card graded costs upwards of $40, depending on how quickly you want your item bac, not to mention it costs even more to have the autograph graded.
Overall Beckett needs to gleen information from E-Bay to help them set the price of cards within a given product. Tera Peak, an E-Bay application, one can pay for, will list all cards sold during a specific time frame. The free version only goes back as far as 3 weeks. E-Bay buyers drive the prices of what a card or set is worth. In the end all one receives when sending off their card(s) to be graded is a biased grade and an ugly looking frame that display's their bullshit. I once had respect for this magazine now Tera Peak, is my source for the price of any given card.
