Do Price Guides Guide Ebay Prices: The Market for Individual Baseball Cards

Abstract

The paper considers the question of whether eBay selling prices for baseball cards are correlated with “book prices.” Three book prices are used, “Lo,” and “Hi” from the price guide Beckett Baseball Card Plus, and their average “Avg. HiLo.” The paper demonstrates a close relationship between book prices and the final sale price. Higher book prices (by all three measures) were associated with higher eBay selling prices, and in separate regressions, each book price explained a substantial proportion of the variance of the final sale price. There is mixed evidence about which book price best is the best guide to the final sale price. The Lo price was closest to the final sales price, but the regression results suggest the Ave. HiLo price because its coefficient is relatively close to one.

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