Why the same card has four different prices in four groups
You check three places and get three numbers. It's not that someone's wrong, it's that "what's this worth" is four different questions wearing the same coat.
Someone posts a card. Someone else says "that is R900 on TCGplayer". A third saw one go for R1,400 at a tournament. A fourth would never pay more than R700.
All four can be true at once. Here is why.
1. An asking price is not a price
Most numbers you see are what someone wants. Not what anyone paid.
A card listed at R1,200 that has not sold in four months proves one thing. R1,200 is too much.
This is the biggest source of confusion, and it only runs one way. Asking prices sit above real ones. So a market built from listings always looks dearer than it is.
2. The rand moves
A US price at today's rate is a start, not an answer. By the time a card gets here it has picked up shipping, maybe customs, and a margin for whoever brought it in.
And the rate they bought at is not the rate you are reading at. Prices from overseas are always a little out of date.
3. South Africa is a small market
People forget this one. In a big market, one odd sale is noise. Here, one person paying over the odds to finish a set moves what everyone thinks the card is worth.
Small markets are lumpy. Two sales in a month is not a trend. One R1,400 sale tells you what one person paid on one day.
Is it even the same print?
Alternate arts, reprints, promos, staff stamps and other languages all get quoted as if they were the same card. They are not. That gap is often bigger than the one being argued about.
4. Condition, again
"That card is R900" almost always means "a Near Mint one is R900".
If yours is Moderately Played, it is not the same card. On a chase card that gap is large.
Half the price arguments in any group are really condition arguments nobody has spotted yet.
So what number do you use?
The better question is not "what is this worth". It is "what have people paid for this one, here, lately, in this condition".
That is four things. Drop any one and you get an argument:
- Paid. Real sales, not listings.
- Here. South African sales in rands, not a converted price.
- Lately. A price from last year is history, not a value.
- This condition. And this exact print.
A card is worth what someone near you paid for one like it lately. The rest is an opinion with a number on it.
What we do about it
Sleevr prices come off real sales on Sleevr. Not asking prices. Not a converted overseas figure.
Each card page shows what it last sold for, the recent average, and how many sales that average is built on. So you can tell a solid number from one sale wearing a confident face.
If a card has not sold here yet, the page says so. We are 20 sellers in, not 2,000. Plenty of cards have no local history at all. Making a number up would be the exact problem this post is about, with our name on it.