• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

GPAnalysis: Good subscription to have if you're trading in CGC books?

Started by minutekev@50,

38 posts in this topic

fantastic_four

fantastic_four

Posted
Posted

If you buy or sell a lot of comics, then yes, it absolutely is worth it. I've been manually doing what they do on titles I collect for years, but when I think about expanding out to other titles to buy books for flipping, I can't imagine doing the data collection work their web site does automatically...it would be way more work than the $84 a year you pay them to do it for you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Zanarkand

Zanarkand

Posted
Posted

I have a subscription too, and I don't even sell a lot of comics. I sold my first two slabbed books only recently, and have probably sold 50 raw books on Ebay in my whole life. I like it anyway because it helps me recognize a deal when I see it, or whether or not something is slabworthy.

 

There are a lot of gaps on the site though. I couldn't find several late 70s Hulks and Thors because people haven't bothered to slab and/or sell them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
deathlok

deathlok

Posted
Posted

Absolutley worth it if you want to know the true value of your slabbed books. I believe they track most of the online auction sites, which you may not normally see or track.

 

My only complaint with them is that it can be difficult to find certain titles based on their pull down menus. It would be nice to see a list of titles by alpha with such info as dates, issues # run, and publisher. That might make it easier to choose which title you to view.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
rob_react

rob_react

Posted
Posted

That's monthly.

 

Personally, I've easily made more than my annual subscription JUST flipping books based off of GPA info. If I see a book that looks cheap but lies outside of my strong collecting area I can now get some decent data to play with when figuring out whether or not it's a likely moneymaker. It used to be more of a gamble. Of course... it's still a gamble even with GPA data, but it's nice to have that second opinion available on books I don't know the market of by heart.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
BronzeBruce13

BronzeBruce13

Posted
Posted

Obviously I'm "Pro-GPA", but I think there is most often significant benefit even if one doesn't buy/sell in great volume. The data can easily guide a subscriber into making more informed purchases and sales that may represent surprising savings compared to what decision they "would have made" without the data. That is a very important point when measuring the service's value. If you would have paid $X for a book, but with the data you were either "more patient waiting for your buy price" and/or "used the prior sales info to negotiate the price down" to $Y instead... that "direct savings" is what you need to consider IMHO.

 

Even with a moderate amount of activity, GPA has heard enough feedback where subscribers have credited the service for paying for itself for the year after only a few transactions. For those dealing in more expensive items, its quite possible to pay for it in one deal. Personally speaking, I have made "better decisions" and "have used sales data to my benefit" to the tune of thousand$. Of course, each individual experience will be different, but I think the service will more than pay for itself even with sporadic use. Considering that only a very small handful have left GPA after joining (even "pay by the month" subscribers) supports this.

 

Try the GPA Analysis FREE Trial Offer on the site... even though you won't have the most current data, I'm willing to bet you'll see the potential in short order.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
sfilosa

sfilosa

Posted
Posted

I also use it.

 

For me, I have the $9.99 per month subscription because I do a lot of analysis, comparing the same title of book in groups (i.e. ASM #60-70). It nice to see if a certain issue has a huge difference in price than the issue around it.

 

Good tool to have.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
dam60

dam60

Posted
Posted
Obviously I'm "Pro-GPA", but I think there is most often significant benefit even if one doesn't buy/sell in great volume. The data can easily guide a subscriber into making more informed purchases and sales that may represent surprising savings compared to what decision they "would have made" without the data. That is a very important point when measuring the service's value. If you would have paid $X for a book, but with the data you were either "more patient waiting for your buy price" and/or "used the prior sales info to negotiate the price down" to $Y instead... that "direct savings" is what you need to consider IMHO.

 

Even with a moderate amount of activity, GPA has heard enough feedback where subscribers have credited the service for paying for itself for the year after only a few transactions. For those dealing in more expensive items, its quite possible to pay for it in one deal. Personally speaking, I have made "better decisions" and "have used sales data to my benefit" to the tune of thousand$. Of course, each individual experience will be different, but I think the service will more than pay for itself even with sporadic use. Considering that only a very small handful have left GPA after joining (even "pay by the month" subscribers) supports this.

 

Try the GPA Analysis FREE Trial Offer on the site... even though you won't have the most current data, I'm willing to bet you'll see the potential in short order.

 

Bruce, as always your posts are well thought out and insightful. I would like to offer my experience with GPAnalysis. I had the service for one month. During that time I was able to find some valuable information on books that I was trying to sell and it served its purpose admirably. However, I was a bit disappointed by the excessive amount of screens you have to go to to finally get the information for the book in question as well as the inability to access more than one book at a time. Furthermore, while I would say that having the differing auction sites on GPA, the "major" auction site for Comics would be Heritage. With that said, Heritage lists books on ebay (which are then captured by http://www.thecomicsheet.com )

 

I opted out of GPAnalys and signed up with thecomicsheet.com (Darryl) . Darryl offers a massive excel file that has all the information from ebay (including some Heritage sales). Now being that I use excel extensively at work and can do anything with excel I have been able to manipulate Darryl's data in a way that I find useful. For instance, I have a pivot table that has generated a grid with all the Batmans from 1-100 and the average sale price per grade from the start of the data. This is just one example, but I like the fact that the data is in excel and can be manipulated at your lesiure.

 

The only drawback to Darryl's database is that it comes out weekly while I assume that GPA is up to the minute.

 

So in conclusion, while I think that GPA does a fine job, if you are comfortable with excel thecomicsheet.com might have a better alternative for you.

 

My $.02,

 

DAM

Link to comment
Share on other sites
deathlok

deathlok

Posted
Posted
Join the 90's there DAM

 

So, does that mean you are going to be forsaking all of that pre-90's [!@#%^&^] and start selling high-grade Image books?

 

 

Are you saying someone is buying high grade Image books??

Link to comment
Share on other sites
gpanalysis

gpanalysis

Posted
Posted

Hi DAM and everyone else on this thread, just wanted to clarify a few things with respects to what our data is comprised of. We list all sales from eBay, Heritage, All-Star Auctions, Mastronet, Vault Auctions, and even JParrino (although they've only had one major auction, last year). We also add Yahoo auctions, although there are very few each week (occassionally an important book gets sold through their auction site, so it's worth tracking).

 

Heritage Comics does not list all their books on eBay - they list some after the end of their regular auctions, and usually reserve listing all books in one of their auctions only for signature auctions. And even then the price can change again due to further bidding on the floor once the eBay live auction is over.

 

The other differentiator with our service is that the sales information we provide is timely - eBay sales are added daily, all other auction house's results are added either on the day ending, or one day after (Heritage offers "buy-it-nows" on their auctions for three days after auction end and so we update continually over that period on our site).

 

A GPA subscription now also includes Market Reports, which summarize important sales information at the end of every month and are free to our paying subscribers. These give subscribers a snap shot of results and can assist, as Rob_React notes, in buying/selling books one does not normally track.

 

 

The screen issue you mention is one of those things that works for most of our subscribers - some would like it to look slightly different. We are working towards a Windows-based application which will allows us to do much more and include even greater functionality. The web, and browser based software are unfortunately clumsy environments to deliver rich functional technology.

 

We are currently adding even further information/functionality to our service, and subscribers will enjoy even more features shortly. We're also happy to hear from

our subscribers on how we can improve our service.

 

Regards

George

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Go to topic listing