What is the Market Price and Who Decides it?

How do you determine Market Price on Rare MOC with no past sales information and who decides what the Market Price is?

Wreck-It Ralph said:

How do you determine Market Price on Rare MOC with no past sales information and who decides what the Market Price is?

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Only way I have seen is to auction it with the appropriate level of PR and be the trend setter / benchmark.

Any less rare mocs for comparison/ballpark?

Genuinely rare items tend to be traded privately, sent to auction or put out for general sale with a Hail Mary price and then gradual reductions and or take offers.

And obviously when traded privately there can be multiple factors, does one party only want to sell to another as it's the right place for the piece to go, do they need to fund something else, is a swap also involved- unfortunately for something truly rare their probably isn't something as simple as a "Market Value"

A really annoying term I am seeing more of is "fair price", WTF is that? Is that market value, is that eBay sale price, FB sale price or just a low ball price?

wrighty said:

A really annoying term I am seeing more of is "fair price", WTF is that? Is that market value, is that eBay sale price, FB sale price or just a low ball price?

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Market value less 20% if you're buying and market plus 20 if you're selling :lol: :lol:

Something is only ever worth what someone else is prepared to pay.

That is a fact, what someone else is willing to pay :!:
And what someone else is willing to pay is driven by how badly/desperately that someone wants the piece :!: What that piece means to the person who wants it :!: How long has that person been searching for that piece :!: So it is all that vs how dearly and high regard the owner holds the piece :!: This is how it is with v rare desirable pieces, market value doesn't come into it-there pretty much is no market value :!: :!:

I have to fully agree with Palitoyjunky, market value doesn't come into it, it is all about what the buyer is willing to pay and the factors and circumstances surrounding it, i.e how long has the collector been looking for a piece, is it a piece that completes a run and the likelihood of the piece coming up again within the next few months.

At the moment there seems to be a lot of collectors wanting the same figures and more who are focussing on Palitoy 30 backs which are so tough to find at the moment, for example, when was the last time you saw a good quality Lobot or Lando, two of the easiest 30's, collectors who have 30 backs know that they are like gold dust so are keeping hold of them until a ridiculous offer is made, so historically, a Lobot would be a reasonable price but now would fetch a lot more in good condition, so ultimately the seller decides the market price with these type of figures as they know if they don't get the right price someone else will make a better offer, basic demand and supply economics.

I think the collectors wanting these figures need to be very patient as it could be years until the next batch come up, having good contacts in this game is essential in order to progress with any collection.

All good advice here. For items that have very little sales history (or few recent sales) you really just have to start the price high and lower until someone wants it. If doing an auction, this is a great time to set a reserve price that you are comfortable selling it at - any higher then that's a bonus. I guess the problem here is finding the kind of person that really wants it in the timeframe you advertise. You may sell low only to findout another collector would have paid even more but they just didn't hear about it in time. For high end items, your market shrinks dramatically.

Is this a hyperthetical or is this advice for you? If you give some specifics some people here might be able to help out.

A good example from me is an item I bought last year, it's not Star Wars related but gives an idea, I was looking for some Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles medals from 1990, they produced a set of 15 medals which could be displayed in a collectors folder. These medals are very common and easy to find, however still sealed in the clear packets is a whole different story, they're so rare and hard to find it's ridiculous, iv'e only ever seen one single ebay listing for sealed medals in the last 3 or 4 years.

There's was no previous sales history whatsoever for any sealed ones so the seller had nothing to go on, he listed a full complete sealed set of 15 for £40 and I nearly snapped his arm off ( over the internet :lol: ). The point is this seller had no idea just how desperate I really was to get hold of some of these mint & sealed, I was genuinely prepared to pay up to £30+ just for a single sealed medal if I seen it listed for sale.

These medals were a huge part of my childhood and they really meant a lot to me, the seller could have made a lot more money out of me if he wanted.

subzero said:

A good example from me is an item I bought last year, it's not Star Wars related but gives an idea, I was looking for some Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles medals from 1990, they produced a set of 15 medals which could be displayed in a collectors folder. These medals are very common and easy to find, however still sealed in the clear packets is a whole different story, they're so rare and hard to find it's ridiculous, iv'e only ever seen one single ebay listing for sealed medals in the last 3 or 4 years.

There's was no previous sales history whatsoever for any sealed ones so the seller had nothing to go on, he listed a full complete sealed set of 15 for £40 and I nearly snapped his arm off ( over the internet :lol: ). The point is this seller had no idea just how desperate I really was to get hold of some of these mint & sealed, I was genuinely prepared to pay up to £30+ just for a single sealed medal if I seen it listed for sale.

These medals were a huge part of my childhood and they really meant a lot to me, the seller could have made a lot more money out of me if he wanted.

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Again we are talking supply and demand.
You say that he could have made more money out of you, as you wanted the items; but he would have made nothing out of me because I didn't want them.
That's what does or does not drive a market.

It is not just what someone is willing to pay, it is also what a person is willing to sell for.

A buyer and seller must overlap if the transaction is to take place. If you are desperate to buy, the price goes up. If you are desperate to sell, the price goes down.

Mr-shifter said:

It is not just what someone is willing to pay, it is also what a person is willing to sell for.

A buyer and seller must overlap if the transaction is to take place. If you are desperate to buy, the price goes up. If you are desperate to sell, the price goes down.

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Very true.

Mr-shifter said:

It is not just what someone is willing to pay, it is also what a person is willing to sell for.

A buyer and seller must overlap if the transaction is to take place. If you are desperate to buy, the price goes up. If you are desperate to sell, the price goes down.

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Nailed it!

Market price is set by the mods on echobase. If it's too cheap they tell you but if it's too expensive they just wait for someone to cough up and get mugged.

Only things that sell very regularly have market values, eg loose figures or common MOCs. For rarer pieces with no recent price history, the sky is the limit depending on who wants it.

jared007 said:

All good advice here. For items that have very little sales history (or few recent sales) you really just have to start the price high and lower until someone wants it. If doing an auction, this is a great time to set a reserve price that you are comfortable selling it at - any higher then that's a bonus. I guess the problem here is finding the kind of person that really wants it in the timeframe you advertise. You may sell low only to findout another collector would have paid even more but they just didn't hear about it in time. For high end items, your market shrinks dramatically.

Is this a hyperthetical or is this advice for you? If you give some specifics some people here might be able to help out.

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It is advice for me but more about buying than selling. I occasionally get offered some rare MOC and was curious how other collectors decide what is an acceptable price to pay. I use Star Wars Tracker but unfortunately it does not pick up the private sales which seems to be the preferred method of selling for rare Palitoy MOC (at least that is what I have experienced). So do you just pay what the seller wants if it is being sold privately?

Also how do I find out how rare something is, how many known examples exist both graded and ungraded as surely this has a bearing on the price?

Wreck-It Ralph said:

jared007 said:

All good advice here. For items that have very little sales history (or few recent sales) you really just have to start the price high and lower until someone wants it. If doing an auction, this is a great time to set a reserve price that you are comfortable selling it at - any higher then that's a bonus. I guess the problem here is finding the kind of person that really wants it in the timeframe you advertise. You may sell low only to findout another collector would have paid even more but they just didn't hear about it in time. For high end items, your market shrinks dramatically.

Is this a hyperthetical or is this advice for you? If you give some specifics some people here might be able to help out.

Click to expand...

It is advice for me but more about buying than selling. I occasionally get offered some rare MOC and was curious how other collectors decide what is an acceptable price to pay. I use Star Wars Tracker but unfortunately it does not pick up the private sales which seems to be the preferred method of selling for rare Palitoy MOC (at least that is what I have experienced). So do you just pay what the seller wants if it is being sold privately?

Also how do I find out how rare something is, how many known examples exist both graded and ungraded as surely this has a bearing on the price?

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I think the point here is the rare high ticket items maybe looked at as an investment for a potential buyer, but the demand for said piece is distilled into a a pool of would be buyers, that have the collecting bug, with all of its emotive elements ( that are not there with the investor buying the piece to sell ata a profit) therefore it's is much harder to price. If a potential buyer needs said piece for his personal "run" then he is more likely to pay a higher price for it but won't get into a frenzied eBay or auction type freeforall!
A little bit like an antiques collector having great contacts in the antique dealer market who buy specifically for a client they know and know their needs and wants, thus meaning the original investor needs to be for want of a better word an "expert" on the particular area of collecting. As we all know the experts are the collectors themselves who buy to keep not as an investment ( other than maybe an investment at one point they bequeath as they won't sell anything that they have in their " Kung fu grip"!)

Just my opinion on the buying to sell as an investment.

Wreck-It Ralph said:

Also how do I find out how rare something is, how many known examples exist both graded and ungraded as surely this has a bearing on the price?

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I use Star Wars Tracker to get an approximation of these questions. It's not foolproof but can help gauge things. On the desktop version you can sort price guide results by how many samples seen. So for the Gammy, you can instantly see for example that a 65D is not seen nearly as often as a 65B. But the price does not reflect that one way or another.



Doing this over various time spans - especially with a start date of 2013 when I started collecting data, and including all graded/ungraded will quickly give you a view on the situation. Note, there is no POTF 92 back in these results for the criteria selected - so that should also tell you it's particularly rare if you do come across one.