Welcome to my baseball card blog. I fully intend on keeping this informal, laid back, and fun. So, to start, I will begin with Beckett Media.
First off, their web site. The web site which can be accessed at www.beckett.com, has been in a "beta" mode now for just over one full year. Over the course of the past month, the web site has been nothing if not dreadful. At times, you cannot even get to the front page of the site. Other times, you can get to the front page but not past that. And other times still, you cannot use the online price guide even when you are paying for it.
Speaking of price guides, does anybody ever actually do anything in regards to work on those prices? I recently read a post where somebody called out Beckett.com on having a "Book Value" of $25 for a card that just recently sold for $.11. Yes, that is correct. Eleven CENTS. Now, you may say to me, "Well, that could just be an accident. It was only one auction". And I would not disagree with you.
However, what Beckett recently did was create an article about a high school football card of the current Denver Broncos head coach. Somehow, because the team was 5-0 at the time, this card that had a BV of no more than $3 at the time, jumped up to $30. How is this possible you may ask? Well, because ONE auction ended on eBay for $26 of this card. That's right, 1. Before and immediately after that one auction, there had not been another. So there you have it, Beckett gave a book value of $30 for a card that ended at $26 in one auction. A Beckett member asked them about this in their article comments and apparently was ignored for some time. He did make a couple of good points and in the end, got an answer that was a tap dance around the issue, never actually answering the questions. My question folks is, what is that extra $4 for? Did they count in s/h for their value?
Secondly, Chris Olds. Let's talk about Chris Olds. This is a man who is known by many via the blogging world as a thief. This man actually copies/pastes blogs and stories and posts them on his own articles as his own. Why? Well, because he doesn't actually know what he is talking about that's why. He had a newspaper article one time. That's great, doesn't matter. He is an editor for Beckett. Again, great but what does that tell me about his knowledge? From what I see, even in his own thread in which members can ask him questions, he can never answer a question. He simply refers them to someone else or tap dances around the question without answering it. Half of those questions you can Google and find them right away. Apparently it's too much effort for Chris. The good majority of the people posting on that site know more about the hobby than he does. Keep busting your boxes Chris. It really shows what an "expert" you truly are.
In a nutshell, I like the Beckett.com site. There are a lot of good posters and traders on there. The concept of the site is great. However, it's been 15 months now. The site is continuously broken and not working and the members of their staff do not listen to its customers when there is a problem. Instead, they are told to clear their cookies. Everyone has Beckett and the problems are still there. Now what?
