The other day there were these auctions ... two of them for 50 reverse holo cards and one for 100 reverse holo cards ... and there was NO action on them at all. I'd won cards from this vendor in the past, and was amazed at the value. I waited as long as I could (I seem to recall I had to be AFK when they ended), put in a "reasonable" bid on the two 50-card auctions, and later discovered that I'd gotten both at the minimum bid of $14.99 each. Now, spending thirty bucks is "pricey" for this little eBay hobby of mine, but I just couldn't let these go. The cards arrived today (they must have pushed to get them here by Xmas, as I wasn't counting on them at all for part of Daugther #1's presents), and I was amazed. Now, I ended up spending $32.48 (with shipping) to get these 100 cards ... I just checked a few on the "low reference site" ... just the six cards that Daughter #1 didn't have of the reverse-holos of the holo cards of the Legendary Collection set would have been $54.00 "at retail" (and that's the low site). Heck, the first six duplicate cards from that set would be more than what I shelled out for all 100 cards! Such a deal!
All-in-all I think Daughter #1 "needed" about 1/4 to 1/3 of these 100 cards (a lot of them were from the Sandstorm set, which she was more complete on than a lot of others), but I'm guessing that were I to figure out the price per card even on those, I'd be in the "ten cents on the dollar" range!
Speaking of pricing on the cards ... I won a few "pig in a poke" (i.e., the seller wasn't specifically listing the cards) auctions from a card/game shop ... they were apparantly clearing out some stock, as all the cards came with price stickers on their sleeves. It was interesting to see actual retail pricing on some cards (since most of my price data comes for on-line vendors) from a brick-and-mortar setting. Their prices for the holo/reverse-holo cards were about a buck lower than my "low site" ($6.99 vs. $8.00) but their rare cards were much higher ($4.99 vs $2/$3), although in one case it was a wash (a revese-holo Jolteon from the fairly rare Skyridge set was marked $7.99 when the low site had it at $8.00) ... again, it's nice to see what I'm figuring on as "street price" is pretty close to what's out there.
