GPAnalysis - Is it worth it??

[lou_fine]

Since I am basically a GA collector, I don't find that the GPAnalysis service is of much use to me. I signed up for the trial period back in the summer and attempted to use it a few times. The basic problem is that sales are so few and far between (if any) for any particular issue in the GA area, that it would be almost misleading to use the data. Pretty tough to get any type of weighted average based upon sales of only one book or in some cases, no books in a particular grade range. As a result, I certainly wouldn't pay any money for the service since I wasn't using it when it was free.

 

From a GA point of view, it may also be misleading if they are including all of the final Heritage auction results. I strongly believe that a significant portion of the Heritage results is not a true reflection of market prices since you cannot access the bidding history for a particular book. The final Heritage auction price may not be a result of 2 or 3 bidders bidding the book up, but rather one irrational bidder willing to place a high enough bid to meet the Heritage "bump" price or the seller's reserve price. eBay results are a much better reflection of the marketplace since the bidding process is a lot more transparent.

 

I feel that the GPA service is primarily of use to speculators and flippers and generally limited to the newer books which have enough volume activity to generate trends and averages. This is particularly true for Modern books just off the newsstand or hot Bronze Age books (lots of copies of these around). This service may have been useful for the speculators who were caught holding onto their copies of B&W's, Valiants, Images, etc. long into the crash.

 

 

[sterlingcomics]

You definitely pointed out me-I flip a few books, buy a few books...I can see how GPA may not particularly help a GA collector. However, I think the project is going to mushroom in the future where it may be of more use--just a hunch.

[thecomicsheet]

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...

 

They currently have the completed auctions screen set to go back 14 days.

 

If you happen to have an auction item # you can can do a specific search for that auction up to about 4 1/2 months back. The time varies a bit. I think I have seen it as few as 90 days and as long as 6 months. Right now I can look up auctions that happened 135 days ago.