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| CED Prices from the eBay Auction Site | ||||||||||||||
After I completed the rarity rating in the CED Title Database, a common question I received was how soon would it include a dollar value for each title. Sometimes I even get lists of CED titles requesting that I assign a dollar value to each title. I was comfortable doing the rarity rating, because it was largely determined by quantitative means, but CED value is far more subjective, and it would be presumptuous (and inaccurate) to simply assign a dollar value to each CED title. This page is the nearest thing to a price guide that I can come up with at present, as it includes the actual prices CED's have sold for in eBay auctions over time. But even these auction prices need to be taken with a grain of salt, as there are a number of other factors to consider:
Prices for the same item can vary widely at eBay:
The title and description have a bearing on price, as well as how many people are competing to win the auction. For example, the highest price I have ever seen a consumer retail CED title go for on eBay was $211.00 for the "Rocky Championship Collection." This took place in 1998, not long after I posted a message to CED Digest Vol. 2 No. 30 about this title. This is an example of a bidding competition between collectors (probably for just the box in this case) and is not indicative of the price the item might sell for in a set price sale. I got this same title about a year later for the minimum bid of $9.99 as the seller neglected to mention that his auction for Rocky I, II, and III also included the discs in a box, and since then I've seen this title go for $20 - $30, when it's clear the discs do come in the Rocky box.
Prices at eBay vary over time:
Those who have been tracking prices at eBay since the early days are probably aware that CED's initially sold for fairly low dollar amounts, then prices increased for a while, followed by a decline in price. This relates to supply and demand, as in the early days CED sellers outnumbered buyers on eBay. Prices seemed to hit a peak in 1998 after the CED FAQ was updated with information on eBay, as collectors outnumbered sellers for a while, and some titles that were merely rare seemed to go for overly high figures, probably because of competition among collectors anxious to fill holes in their collections. When eBay added the specific CED Category in 1999, it seemed that more non-collectors became aware of a way to dispose of their CED's, and prices declined. CED players are also present in the auction listings, and have been more stable in price over time.
eBay prices usually don't take caddy and disc condition into account:
With most collecting hobbies, condition of the item plays a major factor in determining value. For example, an old coin in brilliant uncirculated condition will be worth a lot more than the same coin in fair condition. Condition hasn't been a major factor with CED's to date, because discs still in shrink wrap don't sell for that much more than rental discs, but I believe over time this will become more of an issue. It already is for me, because I've been using eBay for the last few years to gradually replace the rental discs in my collection with better condition copies, and have sometimes been chagrined to get a disc in even worse shape that the one I was trying to replace. It certainly helps to have a picture of the caddy in the eBay auction, but caddy condition doesn't necessarily reflect the condition of the disc inside. Any price guide for CED's will have to take condition of both the caddy and disc into account to be accurate.
Sometimes a title sells for more in one auction than the minimum bid in another:
This is the auction phenomenon where by starting with a low bid, a seller stimulates interest in an auction so that a number of people are participating. The seller in the other auction who got no bids may have set his initial bid too high, discouraging anyone from making the first bid. And if a reserve price is set, bidders can again be discouraged even if the initial bid amount is low.
The following completed auction listings from the CED Category at eBay are in reverse chronological order according to the date and time the auction ended. The listings consist of five columns as follows:
Title: The auction title as typed by the person who originally ran it on eBay. Note that some auctions may seem to have nothing to do with CED on the basis of the title, and that can be the case if the seller mistakenly listed an unrelated product in the CED category. There are also instances where unknown CED titles appear to be listed because what the seller really offered was a LaserDisc, VHS tape, DVD, etc., but it was put in the wrong category. This page is an unedited list of every auction in the CED Category with no attempt to remove mistakenly listed items.
Highest Bid or Initial Bid Amount: When one or more bids were placed, the dollar column represents the highest bid submitted for the auction. If no bids were placed this dollar figure represents the initial bid amount the seller required. In this later instance the dollar amount is essentially meaningless, as a seller can pick any number to be the initial bid. But if you're trying to sell CED's, it will be useful to pay attention to the auctions that got no bids in determining your initial bid amounts.
Number of Bids: A number here represents the actual number of bids. A dash indicates no bids were placed in that auction.
Auction End Date: The month and day the auction ended. There are some days that have no ending CED auctions, and occasionally database corruption at eBay will not allow certain completed days to be viewed.
Time Auction Ended: The hour and minute the auction ended.
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