CardPricer, a sports card valuation site, has undergone several transformations as a start-up and has learned that being flexible with a business model is a necessity in the start-up world. Founded in 2005, CardPricer was originally an online auction house specializing in high value collectibles. The company realized the value of creating pricing data on collectibles (particularly sports cards) and decided to ditch the auction house model in 2006 and focus strictly on providing pricing data on sports baseball cards, based primarily on Ebay market data. To date, CardPricer has linked 5 million completed transactions to its price guides.
CardPricer’s main revenue stream is from the pricing information on the site. CardPricer also offers users the ability to create a “virtual card collection,” where the user can manage a card collections and see accurate values of all cards owned in an easy to view grid system. Membership prices are lower than competitor Vintagecardprices.com, but Vintagecardprices.com and other competitors like Beckett Media offer valuation for basketball, football, hockey, boxing and non-sports cards as well (CardPricer is hoping to expand to this market in the near future). And Vintagecardprices.com has a flashier interface for users, offering users real time market reports and alerts when an auction house is selling a desired card.
CardPricer has a good price point compared to its competitors. The company charges $45 for a six month membership with unlimited access to its pricing data. And the company claims that it has a larger userbase and more published information than any direct competitor. CardPricer wouldn’t release the number of users, but said that traffic generally falls between 40,000 to 50,000 visitors per month. According to Quantcast, CardPricer has about 37,000 unique visits per month. Vintagecardprices.com’s unique visits hovers around 11,500 visits per month. Its selection is limited to baseball cards but with its continued flexibility, CardPricer has the potential to make its mark in the card valuation space in the future.
i wish this was around when i was 15 and into baseball cards
40,000 visitors
1% conversion rate (being generous)
400 paying subscribers per month
$21,600 revenue per month at the very top end
I would guess they make $175,000 a year in revenue at the high end, $75,000 at the low end.
VCP is vastly superior in terms of data quality and user experience.
There is no way they have helped people buy 5,000,000 cards, you should check your facts.
Any one that is a serious collector knows that CP is a joke. The owner Ted is a liar and his site is junk just read his own boards there is no pricing for anything. He tells people to make requests all the time so he can publish prices. Just go to the real collector boards like CU and Net54 and you will see they are all members of VCP and none of them even mention CP. This article is a joke and I just finished puking up my lunch reading all the lies.
Don Mattingly would punch you in the face
Pretty cool — too bad I don’t collect cards anymore. Wish it was free though.
Anyone can look up recent price on e-bay, selling that information for $8.99 per month isn’t very compelling. On Zistle we offer our real-time pricing for free…FREE. What we are excited about though is organization. If you want to really organize your collection online, you should go to http://www.zistle.com. The library is completely controlled by the site’s members so you can add any card that isn’t in the database.
Wow Ashley, that is a totally shameless plug for a lame me-too site. So glad you clarified the FREE part, does that include the rover links to eBay’s affiliate network?!
Lame.
Am I using it wrong or does Zistle just have an “average” price for a card… making no mention of different grades or grading companies? If so, that is of little help regardless of price.
http://www.Spor...ardDataBase.com will be launching this week – with real time pricing and comparative shopping for over 3.8 million cards. And best of all, all features will be FREE forever.
Please be sure to check it out, you will be glad you did.
Dude your site is dead… ASP.Net Null ref
Haha…made me laugh…why promote a broken site….nice job
Dead because it’s .NET or dead because it just BLOWS! LOL!!!
Dead because they can’t figure out how to setup VirtualHosts.
I think you need a longer URL… four word names are just not in vogue anymore.
Personally I like http://www.t-206.com which is also free, but only has coverage for a few sets.
I don’t know about these other sites, but for pay sites, http://www.vint...ecardprices.com leaves ‘em all in the dust.
I’ve used CardPricer in the past to quickly find a set list. But as I poke around their site, I find that it seems limited. Only one sport. And only two site updates in the last 12 months.
I tried Beckett for a while, but their site was too buggy. I left it behind out of frustration.
This last month I’ve been using Zistle.com as my organization tool. I’ve stuck with it because I get great service and a site that is easy to use.
Now, CP might serve a niche that Zistle.com doesn’t. CP gets their pricing from ebay transactions and the auction house of Robert Edward Auctions. I trust both of those sites for their data, but I can get the same info and save almost 9 bucks a month. REA is too ’boutique’ to use as a base for 99.9% of the cards in any database.
“CardPricer has a good price point compared to its competitors.” That should read “… SOME of its competitors.”
I’ll go with Ashley on the free part of Zistle.com . Money that I save by not using one of the other pricing sites is money that I can use to expand my collection.
Collectors should ask themselves what they want out of a site. Organization? Pricing? Multi-sport? Service? Community?
Remember, valuation of cards is only good if you have a buyer that is willing to pay that price.
If you want to find pricing for baseball cards try my website http://www.bbonly.com where I price and sell over
200,000 different baseball cards including vintage cards in all grades
Wow Dick, that is really a crappy site!
A site that gets no mention (because its beta launched in late january) is http://www.collexpo.com. There’s no pricing data, but the free database of cards (football and baseball) is hard to beat. There is functionality to build online collections and wiki about each card. Plus you can download spreadsheets of custom made lists.
I’m going to agree with Ashley and Mark Aubrey on this one, Zistle is the way to go in my book. I signed up for this site (which was completely free and took about 30 seconds) almost a month ago and have been totally hooked ever since. It’s exactly what I’ve been in search of for quite some time.
For one thing, Zistle already has libraries for baseball, basketball, football and hockey, which is a huge plus for me as I’m primarily a hockey card collector. Not only that, but the population of the card library is in the hands of the users. Who better to populate the library than the collectors who are purchasing and studying the cards and are intimately familiar with them? With Zistle, not only am I tracking my own collection but I’m helping to build an online database that anyone can use.
The pricing feature of Zistle will no doubt become more robust down the line, but the greatest part about Zistle is that it’s not just a pricing site, but encourages community and trading. You can share your online collection with others, and even create dynamically updating trade and want lists, among other things. Eventually the site will suggest trading partners based on these want and trade lists. This really separates Zistle from some sites which are geared towards pricing alone.
Most importantly, Zistle was created by people who are collectors themselves. They are very dedicated to the site and are constantly seeking feedback on how they can improve it. I feel like my online collection is in good hands and the site is being maintained by friendly people who are passionate about collecting themselves. If you haven’t given it a shot yet you really owe it to yourself to check it out.
Just to be clear I am not affiliated with Zistle in any way, other than the fact that I’ve spent countless hours populating my collection! This isn’t a plug, just an honest opinion.
I don’t know how you can have a discussion about card collecting and not talk about Sportsbuy.com. It’s covered in the new issue of Beckett along with other competitors. Of all of the places to buy I find it to be the most useful.
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And I of course made sure to make sure it was legit….because alot of these sites aren’t, and they even have a youtube video that shows you all about it. It’s awesome, look it up at, http://www.yout...feature=related
Seriously, check it out, it’s fun, free, awesome, and you can easily get your friends involved!
SPAM Douche.
Get a life.
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Not sure why there’s even a debate here, vintagecardprices.com is hands-down the best there is. Have a look at this video that shows how it works: http://www.yout...h?v=TSPkLQBYCvA