jhm

I think digital will win here, but it's so tough to capture the same feeling as you get flipping through those beautiful pages in a that amazing oversized book 

Some of my own favorite pieces of the book are the SI and RVI numbers. Unfortunately, they're a bit out of date though. There so much more data in today's marketplace that will eventually lead to more fun around buying and selling (for this geek anyhow).

Sprinkle in census data, sales data and interactive modeling that can occur between issues within the same (or similar) series and our hobby will attract new investors (for better or worse).

Some of my own experiments (forgive the works in progress):

Just now, G.A.tor said:

Don’t have a scanner , but I took a better pic 

Awesome - thank you!

16 hours ago, G.A.tor said:

Only one likely to ever be certified 50/50 chance (since there are only 2 known copies I’m told)

Gorgeous! Thanks for sharing. I can't find this documented anywhere. Any chance I can get a scan from you?

1 hour ago, Yorick said:

Action Comics 133 was released twice?

Actually, the 2 you're seeing there are from Simcoe Publishing... not the 1949 edition from DC

If anyone is interested.... As of today, there are 23,038 comics on the CGC census with at least 1, but no more than 9 graded copies with a Universal holder whose issue data is within 1938-1955.

I hold an API key, so querying can be a lot of fun for a geek like me.

In case anyone wants to verify, here's a couple samples from an assembled spreadsheet (I'm not sure I have "permission" to post the entire data set - sorry).

Data goes: Title, Issue, Year, Total Graded

Note: I didn't capture variant names in this data... Ex: Action #28 below represents the sole 15 cent variant on the census.

Planet Comics #69 question... I'm doing some homework behind census populations and came across this one separately labeled by CGC as both a 1952 and 1953 issue. Anyone know the history of whether or not this was double released (or maybe some other story)?

1953:

https://www.cgccomics.com/census/grades_standard.asp?title=Planet Comics&publisher=Fiction House&issue=69&year=1953&issuedate=Winter 1953

1952:

https://www.cgccomics.com/census/grades_standard.asp?title=Planet Comics&publisher=Fiction House&issue=69&year=1952&issuedate=Winter 1952

14 hours ago, Zolnerowich said:

Fantastic bubbles you got there!! BTW I’m digging your sandhog avatar (no pun intended?)!

Thanks and thanks! One of my favorite covers that I was finally able to pick up a few months back.

I only have a couple planets, but love the bubble covers... was happy to see a nice high grade come up and couldn't resist over paying 

A little more digging... I believe this 7.5 copy used to be this 6.5 copy that sold in 2014:

https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/all-negro-comics-1-all-negro-comics-1947-cgc-fn-65-cream-to-off-white-pages/a/7087-91238.s

How would they "clean" the area to the bottom left of the red star at the top of the book?

Or are the distinct similarities purely coincidence?

22 hours ago, Sqeggs said:

Yeah, you just don't know with books like this because the number of buyers once you get into five figures is pretty small.  And there are two other 7.5s out there (assuming the three entries on the census represent different copies and not resubs that failed to get a grade bounce), so presumably that's two potential buyers who won't be bidding on this copy.

Still, it just takes two determined bidders to send it to the moon.

It looks like the three 7.5 copies are unique if you look at the images:

2002 Sale: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/all-negro-comics-1-d-copy-pedigree-all-negro-comics-1947-vf-75-off-white-pages-the-epitome-of-esotericity-this-one/a/805-5133.s

2009 Sale: http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?id=296286

One of my favorite covers that I was lucky enough to pick up recently

Congrats to whomever I was battling on the FC#3. I hope it was a boardie 

Anyone worked with Matchfire before? I'm curious if they turn around pre-qual pretty quickly.

2 hours ago, Chicago Boy said:

Welcome to GA !  It is addicting!  The closest shop to you it sounds like is in Kenosha .  A store called Inner Child.  Owner is Dr Steve Kahn.  Fantastic and honest guy (Overstreet Advisor too BTW).  It's not a GA store per say  but he is always looking and might end up with some depending on what inventory he brings in week to week.  He is a collector too and has GA so he might be interested in selling some of his personal collection (can't hurt to ask).  Are you looking to travel into the City at all ? I'm sure you are aware of WW in Rosemont next week --a plethora of GA if you haven't been.....

Thanks! I didn't realize Steve dealt in GA. I don't know him personally (yet) but we've exchanged emails. I know his son from video game collecting.

I'll definitely be out and on the hunt at WW in Rosemont. And always willing to travel a bit. I'm in both cities all the time for business so making a sidebar to a comic dealer is always on the table

Hi all - I'm somewhat new to buying GA, but I'm officially hooked. I think the Berk auction infected me somehow!

Can anyone make recommendations for dealers near Chicagoland or Milwaukee areas? I'm in northern IL and trying to find specialty shops/dealers near me.

Thanks!

1 minute ago, 1koko said:

Just been outbid on the Mystery Men #1.

 Time to mannup

$40,500 was my highest. I didn't want to go over 40. Did you get it?

Thoughts on why this went for only $580? Only one graded. Just not desirable? I've been picking up toooo many GA books from this auction for "market research" and the final prices confuse me at times.

We'll be at C2E2 booth #1233 if anyone would like to drop a resume or fill out an application. I'll be conducting interviews on-site. Thanks!

We're seeking Illinois residents that want to work part-time of full-time from home. We're also seeking speculation bloggers that want to get paid on a per-article basis (Illinois residency not required).

Open positions:

• Comic Book Specialist (Part-time)
• Comic Book Historian (Full-time)
• Comic Investment Speculation Bloggers
• Full-stack Web Developer (PHP Focus)

More info here: http://comics.gocollect.com/jobs

We'll be conducting interviews all three days at the GoCollect booth at C2E2.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks,
Jeff

Thanks for the conversation everyone! I feel like I should shed a little more light here...

 

Part of what makes GoCollect different (aside from listing sales from the other grading company and allowing subscribers to flag bad sales) is that we provide the following extra information on each sale:

 

Venue where it sold

Auction/listing ID of the sale

Sale format (exposing true best offer prices)

Image(s) of the comic sold

Ability to analyze specific venues (now hidden because it’s only eBay)

 

I personally feel like that’s great info for the collector/investor. However, the venues don’t seem to be overly excited about sharing that much info.

 

Aside from the images, that information can legally be organized and reported from our platform. However, it gets tricky when you begin scraping the content in an automated fashion (which yes, is quite simple to do). The only reason we don’t report in that way is out of respect for those venues.

 

I would hope that the reason you don't do this is because it's illegal.

Reporting on a sale is not illegal. It's news. We don't web scrape because it's a gray area. When I said we don't "report in that way" I was referring to reporting the news of the sales.... not web scraping.

Thanks for the conversation everyone! I feel like I should shed a little more light here...

Part of what makes GoCollect different (aside from listing sales from the other grading company and allowing subscribers to flag bad sales) is that we provide the following extra information on each sale:

Venue where it sold

Auction/listing ID of the sale

Sale format (exposing true best offer prices)

Image(s) of the comic sold

Ability to analyze specific venues (now hidden because it’s only eBay)

I personally feel like that’s great info for the collector/investor. However, the venues don’t seem to be overly excited about sharing that much info.

Aside from the images, that information can legally be organized and reported from our platform. However, it gets tricky when you begin scraping the content in an automated fashion (which yes, is quite simple to do). The only reason we don’t report in that way is out of respect for those venues. I’m not looking to burn bridges in this industry. I’d prefer to work with everyone rather than against them. But if we can’t find some common ground, I’ll eventually need to change my tune.

Also, no one seems too excited about selling their sales info.

I’ve also been told that some of these venues like the fact that users need to sign into their accounts to access past sales data. It gives their platform additional mindshare for the collector and provides the venue with data on who are the heaviest users. If GoCollect reports those sales at the level of detail mentioned above it will eventually reduce that value for the venues.

Anyhow, it’s a great conversation and I’m happy it’s unfolding.

Side note: I think GPA is a great service. And although I’ve never met or talked with George, I’ve heard very good things about him. I wish that team all the best. Competition is a good thing.

Hi Everyone -

I must admit, I'm frustrated to continually hear from our audience that we're inferior to GPA. It frustrates me, because the core argument is absolutely accurate - we only track eBay sales; GPA has more data. However, it's not by choice.

I think most would agree that the GoCollect interface is superior (and it’s getting a major upgrade in the coming months). Our "tech" feels superior from my point of view as well. But, at the end of the day, data rules this game. Unfortunately, the major players are keeping us down. I hate to call everyone out here, but it's time. I've read several threads like this one and have bit my tongue out of respect for the following brokers/dealers:

Heritage

ComicLink

Metropolis/ComicConnect

Pedigree

MyComicShop

Hake’s

I've either personally spoken to many of the leaders within these organizations OR continually reached out to them with no response. They all (except CL) feed data to GPA, but seem to refuse to do so for GoCollect. I've heard many theories "why," but I won't get into that.

So why haven't I done anything about it?

I'll get real and come clean on this one - GoCollect has not been a major focus of mine personally. There are only a couple of GoCollect employees and they're quite busy managing the fire hose of eBay sales while also maintaining a popular property we acquired a couple years back - ComicList. What about me? Well, I'm the CIO of a mid-size corporation, which chews up about 70 hours of my week. There aren't many leftover hours these days and my family gets most of them.

How do we change things? How do we get the collectors a superior valuation product?

It's going to start with cooperation from the list above. OR it's going to require a social effort for individuals to manually report sales from those platforms to the GoCollect platform. I've had my legal counsel look into the latter scenario and have a high confidence that no laws would be broken in such a situation. Side note: I'm all ears to hear any disagreements. For those who know or have met me, hopefully my open mindedness has shown through. I truly appreciate being challenged.

I’m hoping to get the collector audience on our side. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how we harness this data. As (admittedly) a bit of an outsider in the comic circles, I’m at a disadvantage. Perhaps you’re “on the inside” and are willing to talk to the individuals responsible for suppressing our efforts.

I will make the community a promise: If I can get at least 2 of the above players to share their sales data with us, I will personally invest a substantial amount of money into growing GoCollect. I’ll do that by (1) hiring one to three full-time database managers that will be responsible for ensuring our database of US comics is as robust as possible (2) make deeper investments in our UI to ensure a seamless mobile experience (3) make several investments in engineering with a focus on artificial intelligence for extrapolating superior valuations for both GRADED and RAW books (4) use those engineering upgrades/insights to provide the community with highly improved trend analyses.

Thanks for listening.

Best regards,

Jeff Meyer

Founder, GoCollect

jeff@gocollect.com

you can also use gocollect for free, but you can only look up the sales data of 5 comics books per month

 

and it's true, just ebay sales data over a 24 month period

Howdy all - jut saw this thread and figured I'd jump in with some extra info:

1) At present we only collect eBay data

2) We have several years of eBay data, but show only the past 24 months by default. You can check the "All time" box on an individual comic's page to get at historic sales.

3) We now have a license to display CGC census data and are slowly integrating it into the site. You can find it under the appropriate tab on the individual comic pages.

4) As a free member you can unlock 5 comics' data per month.

5) We recently launched tool that's free for everyone to use that has been getting a lot of use which shows the most active comics in the marketplace: http://comics.gocollect.com/most-active

6) Here's a free one month coupon you can use to get full access: CGCBOARDS

Anyone can feel free to get in touch with me directly at any time: jeff@gocollect.com

Thanks for listening!

Hey all - sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I talk with many of you via email, but I haven't been very active out here in a while. For those I haven't met, I'm Jeff Meyer - founder at GoCollect.

 

We have had a ton of requests to build out a better marketplace activity feed then what we present on the home page and your dashboards. We finally got it launched about a week or so back. While the page has been getting a TON of use, we miraculously haven't had much feedback on it yet. So I wanted to drop a link out here to see if anyone would care to share any constructive criticism:

 

http://comics.gocollect.com/most-active

 

As you probably know, we track sales activity of graded comics sold though eBay. The above tool allows you to see the graded comics that are the most popular in terms of total sold. We're looking to expand on these popularity metrics and would love to hear feedback. Feel free to post here or email me directly any time: jeff at gocollect dot com.

 

Thanks in advance!

One thing I found interesting is that not one Golden Age comic made the top 1000 in most active list and not many silver age made the most 1000 active list.

Is it because of prices or that the interest really is not there compared to bronze,copper or modern?

 

I really found it shocking,especially with golden age. I would have expected at least one GA book would be in the top 1000?

 

First off - thanks for the feedback!

It's important to note that this tool [currently] looks only at total sold listings that were graded by CGC (or the other popular team) on eBay. Unfortunately, Golden Age comics within those restrictions don't see a lot of action. However, if you're looking to gauge the most popular Golden Age books within those restrictions, you can do some adjustments to the dates on the left of the screen to get a sense of popularity amongst themselves:

http://comics.gocollect.com/most-active?sales_start_date=08%2F01%2F2015&sales_end_date=01%2F16%2F2016&compare_start_date=11%2F17%2F2015&compare_end_date=12%2F16%2F2015&release_start_date=01%2F01%2F1930&release_end_date=01%2F01%2F1955

We've tried to get a few of the other popular auction houses to work with us to share their data, but they seem to be allowing GPA to monopolize that situation. So we're working on some methodologies to circumvent getting their "permission". Unfortunately, that entails manual effort to match their sales to our database... but I'm in hopes a solution will come along sooner than later. At that point, I would imagine Golden Age would technically see a larger footprint within this activity data.

Hey all - sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I talk with many of you via email, but I haven't been very active out here in a while. For those I haven't met, I'm Jeff Meyer - founder at GoCollect.

We have had a ton of requests to build out a better marketplace activity feed then what we present on the home page and your dashboards. We finally got it launched about a week or so back. While the page has been getting a TON of use, we miraculously haven't had much feedback on it yet. So I wanted to drop a link out here to see if anyone would care to share any constructive criticism:

http://comics.gocollect.com/most-active

As you probably know, we track sales activity of graded comics sold though eBay. The above tool allows you to see the graded comics that are the most popular in terms of total sold. We're looking to expand on these popularity metrics and would love to hear feedback. Feel free to post here or email me directly any time: jeff at gocollect dot com.

Thanks in advance!