| Jumping into thePit | |
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Sometimes it's tempting to answer a question before you've gotten all of the information. I think in the case of thePit.com many of us have been quick to come up with all the reasons it won't work, without considering why it might work. I'm still not completely sold on the idea, but my conversations with Marc Lore as well as Dean Diltz (their VP of Media Relations) have convinced me to open my mind a bit more.
The one thing most collectors, dealers, and investors in sportscards will agree on is that we need a better way of pricing cards. I get tons of mail from people looking for values on their cards and I always feel like I'm not giving them a good answer if I just quote one of the price guides. On the other hand, it takes me too long to look up recent auction activity on a card every time someone wants a price. So I have learned to put up with the occasional disgruntled collector who was unhappy when he found out his card was really worth less than half of what I had quoted him from the guide.
thePit.com could be the beginning of a new way of tracking prices on cards. Since their prices are based on actual buying and selling they should be much more reliable then what we read in Beckett or Tuff Stuff. I don't see them putting Beckett out of the price guide business, but it would seem that they will be forced to start paying attention to thePit's quote board.
Unfortunately I don't think that better methods of pricing is enough to convince me that the sportscard collecting hobby needs thePit.com. I believe that thePit will end up being just another side of the sportscard industry, but not one that most collectors and dealers will care about. Investors will love thePit, but then again investors are used to treating cards like they were stocks even before grading became so popular. I remember doing shows in the 80's and watching investors buying 800 count boxes of Ron Karkovice rookie cards in hopes that he became the next Carlton Fisk. The only difference is that now the investor never needs to leave his house and he doesn't even have to waste a closet for his cards as thePit will hold them until it's time to sell.
In speaking to Marc Lore, I learned that some of my problems with thePit will probably go away in time, but others still leave me with questions. I started charting the prices on thePit versus recent ending prices on Ebay and I'll show you some in the table below. Marc tells us that the prices will start to sort themselves out, but my question is why would anyone pay 30-50% more for a card on thePit then they could find on Ebay today? The Pat Burrell card in the table below has actually been going up at thePit since they opened yet I see no signs of auction prices going up.
| Player | Description | thePit Sell | thePit Buy | Ebay Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bonds, Barry | 87 Fleer PSA9 | 72 | 74 | 46-61 |
| Burrell, Pat | 99 Bowman Chrome PSA9 | 44 | 45 | 21-33 |
| Clemens, Roger | 85 Topps PSA9 | 69 | 71 | 38-45 |
| Culpepper, Daunte | 99 SP Signature PSA9 | 110 | 115 | 45-84 |
| Duncan , Tim | 97 Topps Chrome PSA9 | 65 | 66 | 36-45 |
| Elway, John | 84 Topps PSA9 | 310 | 320 | 153-260 |
| Francis, Steve | 99 Topps Chrome PSA9 | 61 | 66 | 26-45 |
| Garciaparra, Nomar | 92 Topps Traded PSA9 | 140 | 141 | 96-118 |
| Garnett, Kevin | 95 Finest PSA9 | 93 | 96 | 67-76 |
Other problems with thePit.com as it currently stands include the need of more players, more cards per player, and other grading service choices. Lore claims that they would like to create liquidity in the athlete and not the card so they've selected just one card per player to make it "more like the days when there was only one rookie card per player". The retro idea sounds nice, but it's not likely to work in this modern era of multiple manufacturers, brands, and rookie cards. One question I missed asking was how they are deciding which card to go with. Why use the SP Signature card of Daunte Culpepper or the Topps Chrome rookie of Edgerrin James? Why not SP Authentic? As a matter of fact it looks a bit odd that they selected SP Signature for the majority of last year's football rookies considering these cards have a questionable history of distribution and pricing. I was also not excited to see their 18 month exclusive deal with PSA. Eighteen months is a long time and I believe that Beckett Grading will catch up to PSA long before that time.
So, in the end, does our hobby need thePit.com? Probably not, but that's not to say there isn't a place in the sportscard industry for thePit. Sportscard investors have been here for many years and they aren't going anyplace, so if thePit is the perfect venue for the investors I welcome them into the industry, if not into the collecting hobby.
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