CardPricer, a sports card valuation site, has undergone several transformations as a start-up and has learned that being flexible with a business model is a necessity in the start-up world. Founded in 2005, CardPricer was originally an online auction house specializing in high value collectibles. The company realized the value of creating pricing data on collectibles (particularly sports cards) and decided to ditch the auction house model in 2006 and focus strictly on providing pricing data on sports baseball cards, based primarily on Ebay market data. To date, CardPricer has linked 5 million completed transactions to its price guides.

CardPricer’s main revenue stream is from the pricing information on the site. CardPricer also offers users the ability to create a “virtual card collection,” where the user can manage a card collections and see accurate values of all cards owned in an easy to view grid system. Membership prices are lower than competitor Vintagecardprices.com, but Vintagecardprices.com and other competitors like Beckett Media offer valuation for basketball, football, hockey, boxing and non-sports cards as well (CardPricer is hoping to expand to this market in the near future). And Vintagecardprices.com has a flashier interface for users, offering users real time market reports and alerts when an auction house is selling a desired card.

CardPricer has a good price point compared to its competitors. The company charges $45 for a six month membership with unlimited access to its pricing data. And the company claims that it has a larger userbase and more published information than any direct competitor. CardPricer wouldn’t release the number of users, but said that traffic generally falls between 40,000 to 50,000 visitors per month. According to Quantcast, CardPricer has about 37,000 unique visits per month. Vintagecardprices.com’s unique visits hovers around 11,500 visits per month. Its selection is limited to baseball cards but with its continued flexibility, CardPricer has the potential to make its mark in the card valuation space in the future.