G1 Prices: New source?

[aurax]

Hi, gang.

I had a fortuitous find today while working on my semi-whenever update of my collection's value (for insurance purposes), and at long last I came across a top-notch source for original retail prices for G1 releases, at least through 1987.

Behold: http://pleasesavemerobots.com/vstp/vstptf84.html. BOOM.

The question on the table: As with my own Access file, there's a dearth of info on G1 MSRPs on Shmax (dozens upon dozens of data points by my reckoning). Is this an acceptable source for the board for G1 pricing? If so, a follow-up: The retail prices vary widely, based (at least partially) on geography. Where I grew up (mid-Atlantic), the prices are higher than some locations in Texas, but lower than California and (of course) Alaska. For my purposes I'm picking regional prices and rounding or averaging to the nearest dollar. What would be a suitable formula for the db?

[engledogg]

Hey,

Yeah, I've been aware of that site for quite some time now.  It's nice that they provide a range of sale prices, and I've used it to help obtain some MSRPs in the past.  I usually look at what store it is, if the regular price is mentioned, and then the "size" of the store.  The little hobby/drug stores usually always have higher regular prices, so I tend to go by the regular prices of the major chain stores.  Even then, it's hard to nail an actual MSRP as MSRP doesn't always match up with a store's regular price.

Of course all these are my unscientific estimates from a very small sampling of data and shouldn't be considered absolute or manufacturer's suggested retail.

Actually, that's one of the reasons why we have the comment box beside the MSRP box.  If the actual MSRP isn't known, we can put a range of prices seen until we have hard info for the MSRP.

Sigh...as I usually do when visiting that site, I wish I had a time machine.  Anyone have a spare flux capacitor lying around? 

MIKE
engledogg

[shmax]

Actually, that's one of the reasons why we have the comment box beside the MSRP box.  If the actual MSRP isn't known, we can put a range of prices seen until we have hard info for the MSRP.

Every now and then I'll have the idea that we should find some way to support a range of prices for things that never really had a hard MSRP that we know of. From a UI perspective, what if we just let you type in a range? Something like "9.99-12.99". Under the hood, I would parse the hyphen, split the two values into a "high" and "low", and just sort of average them together when doing appraisals (though I don't think I'm actually doing anything with the MSRP yet).

Whaddya think?

[shmax]

Oh, alternatively you could just a release info row for every hard price that you know of, and type the name of the store in the "comments" field, something like:


United States            3/12/1984          $7.99            "JC Penny"
United States            3/12/1984          $8.99            "Sears & Mervyns"
United States            3/12/1984          $9.99            "Toys R Us"

in fact maybe that's even better, as then we're encoding even more specific info, and people won't have to dig up those catalogs anymore.