TCGplayer's New System
Economics forum
Posted on July 23, 2016, 9:12 a.m. by KillKid20095
There is market price, buylist price, and market price. My problem is do i trade at "Median List" price or Market? Because Median List price is just a the median of all prices which can really skew a cards value. Thalia, Heretic Cathar box promo has a Market Price of $8.54 at the time, but her Median List price is $14, i understand tcgplayer says use these as a guidline but there are some people who use trading apps and they get these oddly skewed prices. So what's would you guys call the fair trading price? I know i wont trade 14$ worth of stuff when i can pay 8$ for it.
The median price has issues around skew and also around market movements. The market price has just been introduced to address this by taking the average price that people are actually paying when they buy the card. Use the market price because it solves the issue the median price has. Essentially the median price doesn't actually tell you much about what a card is really worth whereas the market price does.
July 23, 2016 9:46 a.m.
KillKid20095 says... #4
So that means they are just guidelines, which would lead me to the conclusion that at about almost $9 Market and 14 median i can conclude that its acutal worth is 11.
July 23, 2016 9:51 a.m.
KillKid20095 says... #5
Extending above post
I feel the median price doesnt tell you how much its worth, but people will still flock to it for more value of course. So ill do an in the middle thing.
July 23, 2016 9:53 a.m.
Market price is what you can expect people to pay....trade is different...some people use scg for trades, some use tcg median...median flows quicker to market trends, and can spike from buyout
July 23, 2016 9:58 a.m.
All prices are just guidelines. But the market price is what people are actually paying for cards. The actual worth is the market price. Worth is almost completely defined by what people will pay. This is currency 101. If I saw you asking for $11 for a card when another dude was asking for $9, I just wouldnt bother to trade or buy off you, simple as. And the market price determines what MOST people are doing so going above that price means you're an outlier - you're overvaluing things compared to MOST people.
Median spikes when vendors hike prices through buyouts. Market spikes when buyers start paying more, but not necessarily when some vendors start charging more. It's a far better retail indicator in this way. Median price - easy to manipulate. Market price - very hard to manipulate. That's a great thing for the market because it means that if SCG starts charging $100 for a card that was $75 last week they're going to start losing out, whereas before it would have bumped the median price up, making it look like it was more reasonable.
July 23, 2016 10:08 a.m. Edited.
ToolmasterOfBrainerd says... #8
I dislike market price for trading because I've observed that if I'm trading 5 less expensive cards for 1 more expensive card, tcgmid would tell me that my end is worth much more, while market price would say that his end is worth more. It appears to not scale down by a constant percentage, but rather by a variable percentage that depends on the card, making it really undervalue cards in the $2-5$ range.
This isn't to say that there isn't a reason for that - there is. More expensive cards are (usually) more expensive because they're harder to find or more high-profile cards, so it's reasonable that they'd be bought closer to their tcgmid prices, yet even though you can buy $2-$5 cards for less, that doesn't mean they should be degenerated to $1 bulk when trading.
If it scaled evenly, I'd be happy to use market price, since when trading all prices are relative anyway, but it doesn't scale evenly, so it just doesn't work for trading for me.
July 23, 2016 10:09 a.m. Edited.
....well that just tells you that people don't value less expensive cards as much as shops do. Which tells you that shops are ripping you off for the less pricey cards.
And that is EXACTLY what that means. Prices should be degenerated to the point where they represent the minimum people are willing to spend, not what shops are selling. If you have 1000 shops selling a card for $3 to $5, spread evenly, but all the people are only paying $3 each time and ignoring the shops pricing the card at $5, then the card is worth $3, not $5.
This is kind of how things work. You could price your card at whatever you want. $1, $2, $3, $4 etc. That's fine. But in a market of varied prices the real price is the one people are willing to pay. Therefore it very much is a case that if the market price for bulk is below the median that's an exceedingly good lesson in how we're being ripped off.
July 23, 2016 10:17 a.m.
Player3.14 says... #10
I gotta agree with Chief. A card is worth what people are willing to pay for it. Period. A card is not worth what someone decides to list it for. I could list last week's FNM promo for $100, but absolutely no one is going to buy it.
Before the introduction of the market price, the median price was often the 'safest' and most consistantly accurate card pricing metric. High price was ususally off the charts, and low price was often brought down by the presence of damaged cards.
Now, I think a lot of people have grown accustomed to mid price, and want to use it just out of habbit. But of the two presently avaliable pricing systems, it's the one that doesn't intuitively makes sense.
July 23, 2016 10:28 a.m.
Here's an explanation that might make how market price is superior clear. Just so it's easy to understand what is happening here.
We're all selling apples. There are hundreds of us all selling apples. Each of us prices our apples between $1 and $2 every day. People buy the apples for roughly those prices. Next week someone else comes in and starts charging $10 for those same apples. No one buys the $10 apples though - they'd be stupid to right? Everyone keeps buying the $1 to $2 apples because they're far more reasonable. So the dude charging $10 sits there and doesn't sell apples, but everyone else does. However, the median price now says the apples are worth $4, but the market price says the apples are still worth about $1.50. Obviously the median price is ludicrous. Sure the dude is still asking for $10 an apple. But no one is actually paying that price for them. The market price on the other hand represents the fact that despite some mental dude wants $10 for an apple, everyone is ignoring him and still paying between $1 and $2 - $1.50. It would be a lie to say the apples are worth more because some dude rocked up and started charging something ridiculous. They're not because you can still get the apples for $1 or $2 elsewhere, and that's what most other people are paying. The market price shows this.
BUT
What if we run out of apples?
What if someone buys every single $1 apple. There are no $1 apples. What do people do? Well they start buying the $2 apples now. What happens? The median price still says $4, or even increases more as more crazy dudes come in thinking they can charge $10 for an apple. However, the market price now says $1.75 - it's gone up. Why? All the $1 apples have gone, so people start buying the $2 apples because there just aren't enough of the cheap ones - and the market price increases. But they're still not buying the $10 apples right? Just because the $1 apples have gone doesn't mean we need to start paying 10 times the price. So they start buying the $2 apples and sure, the market price goes up - but just a little.
Hopefully this explanation helps you to understand that market price is a really fantastic metric that gives more power to us in general, and takes it away from crazy antics that ultimately hurt the market. It does allow for buyouts in some way so we still get spikes and all these other things, but it does it based on OUR buying habits, not THEIR selling habits. This ultimately protects us from overvaluations.
July 23, 2016 10:30 a.m.
KillKid20095 says... #12
OMG this is a great explanation i will most likely send my friends this. I was very confused and knew something wasn't right ty for the time and detail you put into explaining this.
July 23, 2016 11:17 a.m.
KillKid20095 says... #13
OMG this is a great explanation i will most likely send my friends this. I was very confused and knew something wasn't right ty for the time and detail you put into explaining this.
July 23, 2016 11:17 a.m.
ToolmasterOfBrainerd says... #14
Doesn't that overlook the fact that it's tcgmid, not tcg mean? One seller overcharging means that tcgmid will move up 1/2 of a price, so it'll go from 1.50 to 1.51 or possibly not even move at all if there are multiple sellers asking the same price. The only way mid will drastically change is if a lot of sellers demand more simultaneously, which really only happens in a buyout, but no one buys during a buyout anyway.
Market price is perfect for selling/buying cards with money. It's resilience to crappy sellers is noted and very much appreciated. But for trading, it doesn't seem to value cards correctly. It causes a skewed price curve of lots of expensive cards and lots of bulk, but very few mid-priced cards, which I think ought to exist. If it were a better metric for trading, I'd be all over it, but I just don't like it for trading.
July 23, 2016 11:18 a.m.
Chief really said it best but from my experience median is NOT a good trade metric because it really is so much more skewed than market price. I was doing a trade once where a card was 20 dollars more than it was actually worth on any other website because median was so skewed. My cards were not even collectively skewed that much adn I would have lost out on a lot of value if I went by that. The issue is that it does not change the same for every card so some cards will have way different prices on median than market and it is not worth taking that chance.
July 23, 2016 11:33 a.m.
ToolmasterOfBrainerd - You're correct. Median is somewhat resistant to skew but not totally. Market price isn't affected by skew in any way, shape, or form unless the skewed price is what people are actually buying the card for.
July 23, 2016 11:37 a.m.
I'm done buying cards and am just gonna buy apples from here on out. Makes way more sense.
:-D
July 23, 2016 11:48 a.m.
MindAblaze says... #18
And this is what happens when you try to trade apples for oranges.
July 23, 2016 1:45 p.m.
Bad thing about market price is it doesn't factor condition...now it would be s great price indicator if it separates the condition to break the price down...I don't want to sell my mint card for what people are paying for lp or mp. So I will not use it for trades unless they do separate conditions, as you are not comparing apples to apples, you are trying to get cashews for the price of peanuts....quality does matter
July 23, 2016 2:30 p.m.
None of them factor in quality so by that logic you might as well not use tcg at all
July 23, 2016 2:34 p.m.
My opinion is trade at what both traders feel comfortable with. But market price is the cash price, not the cards trade value. I normally use tcg mid but have used scg pricing, tcg lowest price for condition, and other sites.
July 23, 2016 2:53 p.m.
Right but what I am saying is that median does not ACCURATELY reflect trade value and does not scale correctly from card to card where as market price does reflect accurate scaling from card to card. So long as both cards scale correctly from the old tcg mid then it is actually an accurate trade value.
July 23, 2016 3:11 p.m.
I got to agree with Toolmaster .... In trading , tcg mid represents a fair price that dosent overvalue bigger pieces ... just beware of spikes ... buy AND sell for market price or buylist
Atony1400 says... #2
I have always used median, I will continue to use median.
Market price just doesn't seem right to me.
July 23, 2016 9:16 a.m. Edited.