I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on these recent PWCC auction prices. There are mutliple auctions for extermely similar cards (same card and grade) but with vastly different prices. I get that people buy the card rather than the grade but these price differences are massive. I also don’t think that the subgrades should make that much difference on the Charizard and the cheaper one has a higher average subgrade which makes even less sense. Is this shill bidding or is there a rational explanation?
Pokemon cards aren’t fungible and never will be. Grading a card increases it’s fungibility, but still collectibles are inherently not at all fungible. 1 share of TSLA is a share of TSLA. Each one represents the same fractional ownership of the company as the other. A single PSA 9 Zapdos isn’t the same as any of the others.
You can come up with a whole list of guesses as to why the prices varied as they did, strong/weak, FOMO after missing the earlier ones, people running out of money for later ones, bad reflections on one photo, case issues, but at the end of the day these are just guesses and there is never going to be set prices for anything. Each transaction is just a data point and the “price” of any given card is just a living breathing constantly changing thing.
While I agree that the cards aren’t fungible I still think something weird is going on. The Charizard auctions both ended on the same minute so that doesn’t come into play. I also don’t understand why someone would pay $60k for a BGS 9 when there was a PSA 9 up for a BIN of ~$45k just a few days ago and there is a PSA 9 up for $53k BIN currently. Especially considering most people consider a PSA 9 to be better than a BGS 9. Finally I just can’t see any reason why one of the Charizards sold for more than double the other one they are both thin stamps too.
most people, including myself, seem to think the 60k charizard may not get paid for obvious reasons. the other cards are not that crazy when you have the same grade cards being sold in the same auction. when a card is several thousand, it’s normal to see swings of hundreds between the two.
Yeah I can see that $60k Charizard not being paid for. Someone mentioned checking if the card gets paid for on the PWCC site. I’m not too sure how to do that though.
Most of it is because pwcc cares more about making a buck with speed than they do about what’s best for their customers. They will stack identical listings closing at the same time like I think those two Charizard’s were you mentioned.
@gottaketchumall’s point is right for the market at large but this specifically is a big fault with PWCC. If you need a PSA 9 1st Edition Zapdos, what is the correct thing to do? Place your max bid on all 3? What if you win all of them, can you afford to pay that this month? What if you win none, can you easily find the card after? You can realistically only pick one to focus on and bid on in the last seconds of the auction, so it’s all up to chance whether you pick one being targeted by people with higher max bids than you. If there was even a minute between the same card/grade it would help a lot. I don’t know if that’s realistic for them and their business model but it’s something that would certainly help the bidders.
I can’t speak for the Charizard, but another thing that might be occurring is that people who miss one auction might increase their bets for another split second.
Why people don’t use snipers for PWCC and for every auction remains a mystery to me. They are very low or no cost, effective and efficient. Makes no sense.
Using snipers for PWCC auction groups (or auctions that end very close together) is usually not a good idea. Let’s say there are 10 PSA 10 Shining Rayquazas that end within 1-2 minutes of each other and I want to win one for a maximum bid of $250 (around market value right now). If I put 250 into a sniper service for each, I could conceivably win them all, or win 5 of them, or win none, for around my max bid. Not good for my wallet or my collection.
Some sniper services will have exclusionary bid groups, but these don’t work as well (or at all) with items that end very close together.
With this stuff, I’ve found the best thing to do is to get yourself ready with multiple tabs, pre-entered bids (so all you have to do is click bid now) and a good internet connection. In this context, sniping services really can’t compete with the calculations you’re able to do on the fly as an actual human.
That being said, something like a $32,000 discrepancy is not exactly explained by any of the things being described here. Something fishy is going on there.
As @garyis2000 said, multiple listings of the same card and PWCC doesn’t care. This has been a long time understanding. I think I listed with PWCC only once and my experience was okay… Honestly, I have made more money just posting it myself on lower end cards at least.
10 is a lot to be bidding on. I have never had issues with bid groups but I don’t mind buying multiples if the price is right. 32k is a huge difference. It will be interesting to see if paid for since the winner won most of the high end cards and a PSA 7 that ended last night.