Newbie Question: Commerce Corner Pricing

Hi all,

Quick question. Been looking at offers in Commerce Corner a bit and have noticed most folks tend to look at pricing vs. Wine Searcher.

In looking at retail/auctions in the past (which are obviously different channels), I’ve always relied more on CellarTracker “Community”/“Auction” pricing to determine if something seems like a good deal (I have Cellartracker “premium”). I’ve done this in part because I don’t have Wine Searcher Pro (am I making a big mistake in not having this?) and in part because for many wines Wine Searcher doesn’t return many results (and even the number it says pro has isn’t that big) whereas I feel like CellarTracker numbers are a bit more robust.

Am I making some obvious (or not so obvious) mistakes in approaching things this way? Do folks compare Commerce Corner to retail or auction or cost or something else?

Any response posts / PM’s appreciated. Trying to come up the learning curve. Any other “Idiot’s Guide to Having a Good Experience in Commerce Corner” type stuff is appreciated. Read the sticky in that forum already.

Thanks!

-Dennis

CellarTracker “Auction” pricing is driven off of the last year of data (I think a year, but it could be shorter) from the Wine Market Journal database. Better to just get a WMJ subscription, remove the bad auctions, and look at the most current time period. Also ‘hammer’ is different than what the buyer pays of course.

To your question, I think people in CC use WSP because it’s easy. Most people have it (it’s incredibly useful and so cheap if you’re looking for wine from regular retailers), so it’s a common tool. For CC sales of wines that are in the distribution channel it can even be useful. You’re of course correct though, that for wines that are either rare or have been sold through many years ago, WSP is pretty useless.

I know when I offer something on CC, I use both, WSP data and WMJ data to make the value point. And when I buy something on CC, I only care about WMJ data.