Is it time for CGC board marketplace sales to be reported to GPA?

[awe4one]

Jim and Jim. Are you guys nuts?

 

There are likely dozens or 100's of people that bid each other's stuff up every day out there.

 

You can't police everything. I can tell you that this market is more reliable than 90% of what's out there right now.

 

If you have people that pass some sort of "approval" I would trust them more than shill bid auctions and the like.

 

Not only that, you would be able to follow every transaction in the "proposed thread" abnd decide for yourself whether it is credible or not.

 

I think it's a great idea considering this place has likely moved over 1/4 $MIL in books in just the past 6 months.

 

Think about it.

 

At the end of the day this is a message board with abosultely no oversight on sales (and CGC doesn't want the responsibility). If you or anyone wants your sales to "count" then I suggest you spend the money on your business model and become a "player"..because right now all there exists around here are anonymous posters on a Forum.

 

Maybe Bob is right...every collector here is a dealer wannabe but don't want the responsibility it entails...

 

Jim

[joeypost]

Roy's right. I would trust sales reported here more than anywhere else. We're far more transparent here than eBay or Heritage.

 

(thumbs u

[nearmint]

Jim and Jim. Are you guys nuts?

 

There are likely dozens or 100's of people that bid each other's stuff up every day out there.

 

You can't police everything. I can tell you that this market is more reliable than 90% of what's out there right now.

 

If you have people that pass some sort of "approval" I would trust them more than shill bid auctions and the like.

 

Not only that, you would be able to follow every transaction in the "proposed thread" abnd decide for yourself whether it is credible or not.

 

I think it's a great idea considering this place has likely moved over 1/4 $MIL in books in just the past 6 months.

 

Think about it.

 

At the end of the day this is a message board with abosultely no oversight on sales (and CGC doesn't want the responsibility). If you or anyone wants your sales to "count" then I suggest you spend the money on your business model and become a "player"..because right now all there exists around here are anonymous posters on a Forum.

 

Maybe Bob is right...every collector here is a dealer wannabe but don't want the responsibility it entails...

 

Jim

 

So anyone can post a book on eBay and have the sale reported to GPA, but long-standing, respected collectors can't sell here and have the same privilege?

 

This isn't about being a "player", Jim. I don't get off on having my sales reported on GPA, but I do want GPA to be as comprehensive and inclusive as possible.

[VintageComics]

Jim and Jim. Are you guys nuts?

 

There are likely dozens or 100's of people that bid each other's stuff up every day out there.

 

You can't police everything. I can tell you that this market is more reliable than 90% of what's out there right now.

 

If you have people that pass some sort of "approval" I would trust them more than shill bid auctions and the like.

 

Not only that, you would be able to follow every transaction in the "proposed thread" abnd decide for yourself whether it is credible or not.

 

I think it's a great idea considering this place has likely moved over 1/4 $MIL in books in just the past 6 months.

 

Think about it.

 

At the end of the day this is a message board with abosultely no oversight on sales (and CGC doesn't want the responsibility). If you or anyone wants your sales to "count" then I suggest you spend the money on your business model and become a "player"..because right now all there exists around here are anonymous posters on a Forum.

 

Maybe Bob is right...every collector here is a dealer wannabe but don't want the responsibility it entails...

 

Jim

 

At the end of the day a sale here is far more transparent than Comiclink, Metro, Ebay or any other place you want to name. Most of us know each other (some for years). Those of us who are newbies often know someone we know. Those who are unknown by all will be scrutinized until they are known. In the end all sales and sellers would be listed so I don't see the problem.

 

The only problem I forsee is anonymous buyers who buy via pm. They may not want that info disclosed and then those sales would go unreported.

 

The majority of anonymous sales show up else where on the boards as collectors show off their collections in scans and photos.

 

I paid record price for a *rare* SA Marvel key 3-4 years ago in a *private* sale.

To solidify the sale I had the seller set up a BIN on Ebay and I covered the fees on top of the sale price. It was the only way I could protect my investment at the time...so I do put in the work whenever I can.

 

I have bought so many books here privately at record prices (and none are a secret as I flash everyone of my purchases) that you can understand why I would love to report these sales. Does that make me a bad person?

 

Call me what you want (dealer/collector is irrelevant at this point), the truth is it is a great idea.

[burntboy]

Alot of sellers offer books below GPA prices sometimes right? Or am I getting that confused with OSPG? in any case, it seems that if GPA uses sales from the market place, and sellers in the marketplace offer items below GPA prices, wouldn't we get into a slippery slope where prices keep on getting lower and lower?

 

Books sell for below GPA on eBay everyday. I can't imagine we'd negatively impact GPA to much of a degree. Anyway, if a book is consistently selling for less than GPA, those sales should be reported to correct or balance GPA's sales history of that book.

 

Right on, Jeff...

 

All truly transacted sales should be the ultimate goal of GPA. prices will fluctuate on any and all sites, but I'd suppose they'd be most likely to go down here...

 

As I've said in a couple of AF 15 threads, GPA is woefully lacking in some recent data. None of the big sales of CGC 7.0's show up. they still show $22,500 as the highest sale and it's been topped 5 times already this year .

 

anything that accurately (a potential stumbling block) produces more data is a good thing in my mind...this is a great idea... (thumbs u

[DrWatson]

Yes, I am nuts, but that's beside the point. With eBay and the consignment sites, you at least have to pay some type of fees. Here there are no mitigating financial factors. You don't have to pay around $100 per thousand to have your transaction recorded here.

[fantastic_four]

You can't police everything. I can tell you that this market is more reliable than 90% of what's out there right now.

 

I agree with you on this specific point, as of today. However, if GPA started recording sales here, that would change. People would create artificial sales to boost the price of books. They would shill and stage fake sales purely to boost the price of books they want to sell. This isn't really even hard to do on high-dollar books with low turnover per year...a sale or three could establish what appears to be a new price level for low-turnover, high-value books. The cost of this fraud is free and very cheap in time, so it absolutely would happen. Guaranteed, no way to avoid it.

 

Heritage, Hake's, ComicLink, Pedigree, and even E-Bay do have mechanisms built-in to police themselves, although E-Bay's mechanisms are pretty easily circumvented also and unreliable. They cancel the accounts of people who shill or don't pay for auctions. Do people still abuse the system? Absolutely. Is market manipulation rampant with them? Maybe. I find it hard to accept that there isn't SOME manipulation of sales by them, but there easily may not be. The professional consignment companies have the same vested interest in rooting out fraud and not faking up the market for a book themselves--if they get revealed, their reputation and sales suffer. Is there any safeguard for sellers in these forums that has any acceptable level of reliability? No. Do sellers have any vested interest to not scam here? Not much of one. The cost to disappear and create a new identity is low. Hammer did it multiple times just for the sake of being able to post here. If there were money directly at stake attached to posting fake sales threads here, the fraud would increase quite a bit.

 

If GPA starts factoring in amateur sales, their numbers will become amateur. I'm pretty sure George knows he has to stick with professional sellers, ones who make significant income from their comic sales and therefore have a vested interest to keep their sales at least MOSTLY above-board. What safeguards exist here? None that can't be circumvented.

[Subliminal]

Anything that gets people to make public the sales data here would be welcomed. Its an asset that should be available to everyone considering buying/selling here and if it was in a structured database easily searchable that would be even better.

 

 

[VintageComics]

You can't police everything. I can tell you that this market is more reliable than 90% of what's out there right now.

 

I agree with you on this specific point, as of today. However, if GPA started recording sales here, that would change.

 

That is a truth, right there.

 

R.

 

 

[fantastic_four]

So anyone can post a book on eBay and have the sale reported to GPA, but long-standing, respected collectors can't sell here and have the same privilege?

 

GPA should be noting when sales occur there as well. You can fake sales all you want there, and as far as I know, there's no way to tell when it happens.

[Comicdey]

Yes

[fantastic_four]

GPA should be noting when sales occur there as well. You can fake sales all you want there, and as far as I know, there's no way to tell when it happens.

 

Actually I'm not 100% sure I'm right about this. I base this idea that E-Bay sales are unreliable upon the presumption that GPA is screen-scraping their data. GPA started out doing this, but they may not be doing it anymore--I'm not current on E-Bay's reporting methods. I'm not sure that E-Bay doesn't have some way of reporting completed sales that they've collected their fees on. If they do, then those figures being in the GPA sales is about as reliable as you can reasonably achieve since it attaches a real cost to faking auctions sales.

[VintageComics]

Yes

 

Yes, what?

[Comicdey]

Yes

 

Yes, what?

 

Yes to the original question....I got here late to the thread, and just posted up my opinion. CGC graded slab sales on the boards should be in GPA. Many of the sales of difficult to find GA books have not passed through the other venues in quite a while, or never and it makes GPA unrealistically low on GA books.....

 

Low or High, I think they should be included.

 

I've bought a few GA slabs that have "no" GPA data and still don't.

 

 

[nearmint]

Heritage, Hake's, ComicLink, Pedigree, and even E-Bay do have mechanisms built-in to police themselves, although E-Bay's mechanisms are pretty easily circumvented also and unreliable. They cancel the accounts of people who shill or don't pay for auctions. Do people still abuse the system? Absolutely. Is market manipulation rampant with them? Maybe. I find it hard to accept that there isn't SOME manipulation of sales by them, but there easily may not be. The professional consignment companies have the same vested interest in rooting out fraud and not faking up the market for a book themselves--if they get revealed, their reputation and sales suffer. Is there any safeguard for sellers in these forums that has any acceptable level of reliability? No. Do sellers have any vested interest to not scam here?

 

The accountability here is that everyone's very protective of their forum rep. That's why transactions are cleaner here than elsewhere. Most sellers here would rather get a neg on eBay than have it known they didn't treat a board customer well.

 

And you're examples are all auction houses or consigners. There are dealers who report sales data to GPA. Why would sales data from the boards be anymore susceptible to market manipulation than data from dealers? Where's their verification?

[VintageComics]

The accountability here is that everyone's very protective of their forum rep. That's why transactions are cleaner here than elsewhere. Most sellers here would rather get a neg on eBay than have it known they didn't treat a board customer well.

 

 

(thumbs u

[Flaming_Telepath]

Real easy answer...trader verification. George runs those who wish to apply through some sort of check process, any deals involving two verified traders get reported. (thumbs u

 

A side benefit would be having 'trusted seller' status in the Marketplace. Everyone's a winner.

[comicwiz]

For what its worth, I will be reporting CGC sales that either occurred on these boards, or were faciliated by these boards (i.e. sales of books which may not have been posted, however inquiries that led to sales which were faciliated via PM communication). I think the communication aspect of the boards shouldn't be overlooked in reporting - an aspect that in my mind provides a more complete picture, especially when compared to the potential for offline deals on sites like eBay to get missed.

[nearmint]

Real easy answer...trader verification. George runs those who wish to apply through some sort of check process, any deals involving two verified traders get reported. (thumbs u

 

A side benefit would be having 'trusted seller' status in the Marketplace. Everyone's a winner.

 

[MutantKeys]

I've sold over 30K worth of books in the last 3 years, mostly on the boards (pm and FS section).. with all my focus changes. Alot of them at the time were either limited GPA data or none in the grade at all.