GPAnalysis - Is it worth it??

[panhandlefool]

Hey guys, I was just wondering what your opinion of the GPAnalysis is? I have it as a trial customer, but the trial only gives info up to 12/2002, so it's useful to see how the website works, but leaves you craving more. I can easily see using this to check out Golden Age as well as Silver Age books, then just watch the Modern market for entertainment's sake.

 

And does anyone know what auctions they record in their database? I would presume they attempt to record all ebay transactions, but do they record ComicLink, Heritage, and other major auction/buying places?

 

And finally, it seems to me the Power membership ($100/yr) would be the best deal. That "Gold" membership really doesn't appeal to me - 2x the cost just for a watchlist, it appears.

 

Thoughts appreciated...

[Timely]

I guess it really depends. Since I am specializing in only certain Golden Age titles I know all of the sales for my titles in the last 3 years, including some private and convention sales that GPA does not know about. Not only that but I have a list of the books that did not sell or meet reserve, and I know those prices too! That really helps out for future reference! So unless I stray out of the main Timely titles I collect, I have little need for GPA.

However if your collection interests are vast, like you want every Marvel ever made, then GPA would be a great tool.

 

Timely

[panhandlefool]

Thanks for your thoughts, Timely. I do tend to get scattered in my collecting - I'll work on World's Finest for awhile, then work on a Iron Man #1-100 9.4 or better run, then look at Silver Age Daredevil in high-grade, then jump over to GA All-Star Comics in mid-grade (not that I ever finish anything), and occasionally pick up a SA Hulk or Thor, if the price seems right. That said, I don't build up a lot of expertise on the books before I just start bidding. About the extent of some of my research is my own records, the OS guide, the "past 30 days" feature on ebay, current listings, any current offers/bids on similar books on ComicLink, but that doesn't even begin to tell the whole story like an extensive, simple listing like GPAnalysis can compile. I'm seriously considering getting the "Power" subscription for 1 year, and then writing it off on my taxes (investment research expense)!! Thanks again.

[Timely]

Speaking of Iron Man, do you need a #19, it's CGC graded 9.4 OW/W pages. It's the Highest Graded copy so far.

[murph0]

I'm using ComicSheet still, it's cheaper and great for watching eBay stuff. If I want to look up non-eBay books, I just go to the respective auction website

I tried GPAnalysis back before it "officially" came out, thanks to Bruce on that one. It was alright, but I didn't feel like spending 80 dollars on it.

 

Brian

[CGCMINT]

Nah, not really. Just check out eBay for what comic books are selling for.

 

John

 

[fantastic_four]

Nah, not really. Just check out eBay for what comic books are selling for.

 

How can you remember what every Golden Age Batman (don't you collect those?) issue sold for? Or any other title which you're almost certainly not going to find in the 2-week completed auction history E-Bay limits you to?

[Rickdogg]

GPA is definitely worth it if you collect multiple titles. The time and effort you would have to spend compiling this info. is more troublesome than the $6.95/month $75 annual charge

[panhandlefool]

Actually I thought you could go back 30 days on ebay, but anyway, I went ahead and got it. I think this thing will become more meaningful as they get more history. I started buying CGC books in about 2000, and GPAnalysis only starts at June 2002, so a lot of the initial CGC sales aren't there. Plus, some of these books don't trade that often, so it's hard to just go by one or two sales. It's very useful for bigger books traded often, like the Silver Age keys. The moderns are so volatile it's tough to use, other than to say "what insufficiently_thoughtful_person paid $100 for that book - it's only $40 now" (i.e. recent Lee Batman books). The Goldens trade so infrequently on an individual book basis that it's tough to really know what's going on. You can see two of World's Finest #X sold in the past 18 months in the condition you specify, and they try to identify restored and pedigree books, but if there's only two sold, it's kinda tough to say "well, I should pay this for it". The past two sales could have had worse page quality, or other notations that turned off sellers. There could have been a bidding war and one sale was overpriced. You just don't know. Anyway, I've got it for now. I'll definitely check it before jumping in and buying any high-$ books. If it can save me from overspending on just a couple of books a year, it's definitely paid for itself.

[Rickdogg]

Awesome It's a great way to support their efforts in making it easy for us CGC collectors

[kryptonitecomics]

Sounds like your happy with your small investment, which is the most important thing.

I agree with some of the others that I don't need it. I can track the books I am interested in on Ebay and Heritage etc so for me it wouldn't be worth the $$$.

 

The amount of books you buy and the type of books would be some of the biggest factors. Like you mentioned Silver age keys are fairly easy to track, but when you are looking for information on Golden Age books or obscure titels that rarely come up for auction, the service could pay for itself with 1 purchase.

 

[fantastic_four]

Actually I thought you could go back 30 days on ebay

 

They keep tuning parameters like that for performance. I know it used to be 30 days a year or so ago, but at some point they limited it to 2 weeks. Go try it--I just did and couldn't see any data from before December 14th.

[panhandlefool]

Actually I thought you could go back 30 days on ebay

 

They keep tuning parameters like that for performance. I know it used to be 30 days a year or so ago, but at some point they limited it to 2 weeks. Go try it--I just did and couldn't see any data from before December 14th.

 

I just tried it, and you're right, it does appear to be only 14 days. I could've sworn it was 30 days - maybe a few months ago, I suppose. Another reason to get that GPAnalysis, I suppose...

[fantastic_four]

I also noticed that I have to be logged into ebay now before I can search the completed auctions. I'm pretty sure that's new also...wonder if they did that to make HTML spiders like GPA a little harder to do, and so that they could track their activity?

 

E-Bay offers an automated XML web service to do searching, but most companies don't use it because they charge money for it...they could actually be transitioning to wanting to charge for searching too much in their completed items section at some point. Doubt it will affect GPA since they don't do automated searches much more often than once a day.

[jduran1]

Does GP track non ebay sales Comic link, Heritage, Vault, Mile high etc etc etc. Also there are a lot of private sales that reflect current market conditions.

 

I think GP is a good tool for a particular point in time. The past. Its a good reference point for sellers and buyers. Some sellers have set buy it now prices using this data only to realize that they underpriced their comic. New market prices are set everyday since the final determinant of true value is the ultimate buyer. I have written several emails to them about improving their service and value. They are very good about responding and with Bruce on board will continue to evolve and add value to the comic community as they correct their mistakes and take advantage of their opportunities. They are on to a good thing.

 

The bottom line or at the end of the day as they say is that I have not bought the service. It could be the classic "Right idea done the wrong way".

[joe_collector]

What are you talking about?

 

You spout gibberish like "new market prices are determined every day", but GPA is trying to show long-term history of a given comic, including recent sales. That's what they do, and this gives the buyer information on trends, not just the price that some coke-addled stringbean paid yesterday, using a stolen account.

 

So if some shill-meister pays 10X GPA average today, for some lame RRP book, are you saying that should be the only price they show? Or that it should get more weighting, simply based on how recent it is?

 

If I'm misunderstanding, please outline your ideas to correct the many GPA mistakes...

[jduran1]

Thanks for responding. My point is given how fast the marketplace is changing showing " long term history of a given comic" is sometimes not the only approach in buying or selling comics. For some it is. Past buying behavior doesn't always predict future buying behavior.

 

I think to many people rely to heavily just on GP analysis and should look at other market factors. Using a weighted average is good assuming GP has "all" the market data and sales and a low price and high price should always be thrown out as aberrations.

 

And my last point is that if I thought is was such a great tool I would have subscribed. So apparently some of us are able to make sound buying and selling decisions without using GP. This is thread to discuss GP so I don't think we should label anyone's input as gibberish . I don't have all the answers and I know some of us will disagree but thank goodness there is a forum where we can do this. B But as I said before I thing GP is on to a good thing.

 

Happy New Year.

[Aman619]

GPA collects and sells sales data. SO for all of us who cante be everywhere taking notes on every public sale, they do for us fora fee. Sounds pretty simple to me... BTW, I dont subscribe because Im not actively putting together 9.4 CGC runs. If I were, Id sure as heck wanta know the last 20 or whatever sales of a particular book in a particular grade were w/o sitting at my computer 8 hours a day taking my own dam notes and making my own dam charts to make sense of all the data I'd have collected!!

[panhandlefool]

Jduran,

 

If you read my post that started this thread, I asked the very same question about whether they track non-ebay auctions or not, and no one replied, so I still don't know the answer to that question. On their website they claim they report "on-line sales" but I'm not sure exactly what that encompasses for them. They claim and I quote "Subscribers to GPAnalysis for Comics will have access to an extensive database of every CGC-graded comic traded on-line since the beginning of June 2002.". So, it sounds like they should be attempting to collect sales data on non-ebay sites, such as ComicLink, Heritage, and the less popular auction sites, but whether they do or not I suppose is anyones guess unless someone asks. Anyway, as I stated before, I think it's pretty valuable for more often-traded books (esp. titles like ASM and FF), but if you're looking up a Captain Marvel Jr. that has one trade recorded and only 2 copies graded (per CGC database), you can only take the data so far in making a buying decision, at least IMO.

[sterlingcomics]

In my opinion, gpanalysis is a great tool--both for sellers and buyers. When I've had to sell my spidey's--I've used the average price as a target start price (I hate using reserves and I instantly realized books I overpaid for). When buying books, I've used it to gauge how much I will buy it for using past auctions as a measuring stick. (For example, there was a thread about Iron Fist 14 going for over $2,000 which was over what the average eBay bidder usually buys it for).

 

To answer your question, they only track eBay sales, so that could be a disadvantage depending on your point of view.

 

Yes, its not perfect because the market (buyers/selling leaving etc) changes, but its much better than flying blind. It's great when you combine it with the OverStreet guide and average prices from other sources other than eBay. Can you get this data without gpanalysis? Yes. Is it easier and more convenient? Absolutely. Does it save me time? You bet. That's what sold me on the service--I didn't want to be a data miner.

 

I've easily received a return on my investment in gpanalysis just for my purchasing. I used the bottom of the barrel service level and it's worked out just fine.

 

Hope this helps.