Two companies have formed a partnership aimed at improving the effort to find what sports memorabilia and other collectibles are really worth.
Appraising baseball cards and getting accurate, up-to-date information has been a challenge for collectors, dealers and auction houses since online shopping became the norm.
Printed price guides are out of date almost as soon as they’re printed and they don’t account for various subtle differences in condition. Now, two up-and-comers in the online world are joining forces to spread the gospel of reliable knowledge.
WorthPoint Corporation Thursday announced that it has signed a seven-year partnership agreement with Terapeak, the industry leader in eBay research and education.
The Victoria, British Columbia-based Terapeak Price Report provides eBay sellers and buyers with two years of trending data to help target the best products to sell, as well as 90 days of item-specific data to guide average expected pricing, sell-through rates, list timing, keyword choice and category selection.
Under the terms of the agreement, AERS will provide WorthPoint with eBay’s entire daily sales of antique and collectible data for inclusion in WorthPoint’s database. In addition, Terapeak will re-sell WorthPoint’s knowledge-based products, which include expertise provided by “Worthologists” (WorthPoint’s art, antiques and collectibles experts), WorthPoint employees and related professionals with more than 2,000 years of combined domain experience that is incorporated into the database.
“We are excited to partner with Terapeak, which boasts the largest customer base for eBay research,” said Will Seippel, CEO of WorthPoint. “WorthPoint’s database already houses 30 million items, and we have become the largest repository of art, antiques and collectible data in the world. WorthPoint has data from more than 500 auction houses and millions of products sold for retail. eBay data will now complement this database, so that consumers, collectors, dealers and others will be able to accurately assess the value of most any item.” Seippel said that the partnership with Terapeak is a major element in a significant WorthPoint product roll-out slated for late January.
“Our partnership with AERS and Terapeak will make WorthPoint the world’s most comprehensive source of information on art, antiques and collectibles,” Seippel said. “We will be adding more than one billion items to our database over the course of this agreement and will make information accessible in an easy-to-use format so that people can learn more about the value of their collectibles. In these difficult economic times, people need help finding additional sources of income, and WorthPoint is the resource to help them do that.”
Commenting on the partnership, Fred Speckeen, CEO of AERS, said: “Terapeak and WorthPoint aim to develop the ultimate resource for collectors and sellers. Comprehensive new products will be created with the vision of serving the breadth of the market, from small collectibles to high-end works of art. We are excited to work with the experts at WorthPoint to offer services that answer the questions most collectibles enthusiasts and sellers ask: ‘What is this worth? Where can I buy or sell this? Which of these items are valuable?’ The combination of education, market research data and analytics will provide pinpoint responses to these concerns and more.”
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