Do today's high key comic price increases have a historical equivalent?

[Bronty]

yeah but who cares. they already include pseudo values ("registry points") in the registry... this is just offloading the chore of updating the points values

 

Never suggested I cared.

 

 

Just think it's odd that a third-party grading company has decided to assign values to the books they grade.

 

okay, but its been done since day one of the registry... surprised at the timing of your concern

[THE_BEYONDER]

yeah but who cares. they already include pseudo values ("registry points") in the registry... this is just offloading the chore of updating the points values

 

Never suggested I cared.

 

 

Just think it's odd that a third-party grading company has decided to assign values to the books they grade.

 

okay, but its been done since day one of the registry... surprised at the timing of your concern

 

I'm not concerned.

 

 

I have zero stake in the fate of the CGC market.

[fantastic_four]

Just think it's odd that a third-party grading company has decided to assign values to the books they grade.

 

It doesn't seem fair to characterize CGC as creating the product AND the product's value when the values are being determined by CPG. I do see a potential conflict of interest with CGC listing prices in the Registry, and I think it's the exact same one you see, but I can't substantiate it yet into something that will cause a loss in confidence in CGC and subsequent deflation.

 

Is it a real risk? Not sure... If there is some specific problem I'm not seeing yet, CGC could solve it by giving the Registry to CPG to manage.

[THE_BEYONDER]

Just think it's odd that a third-party grading company has decided to assign values to the books they grade.

 

It doesn't seem fair to characterize CGC as creating the product AND the product's value when the values are being determined by CPG. I do see a potential conflict of interest with CGC listing prices in the Registry, and I think it's the exact same one you see, but I can't substantiate it yet into something that will cause a loss in confidence in CGC and subsequent deflation.

 

Is it a real risk? Not sure... If there is some specific problem I'm not seeing yet, CGC could solve it by giving the Registry to CPG to manage.

 

How will CPG determine the values that CGC includes along side their census data & registry sets?

 

I'm still trying to figure out why CGC chose to snub GPA like that.

 

[fantastic_four]

How will CPG determine the values that CGC includes along side their census data & registry sets?

 

I'm still trying to figure out why CGC chose to snub GPA like that.

 

I doubt they snubbed GPA. Isn't CPG free to use anyway? If CGC were listing GPA's data in its registry, few people would subscribe to GPA. It would put them out of business. I thought CPG was making their money from people who buy and sell through the site and advertising, but I could be wrong, I haven't looked at it in years.

 

I dunno how CPG comes up with their pricing. Last time I looked at CPG prices they looked like Overstreet's and Wizards, i.e. cooked up based upon empirical analysis of the market.

[THE_BEYONDER]

I doubt they snubbed GPA.

 

I can't seem to locate the thread, but it did seem as if George was kinda snubbed by the announcement.

[fantastic_four]

I can't seem to locate the thread, but it did seem as if George was kinda snubbed by the announcement.

 

Hmm. My guess was that CPG probably pitched this to CGC and they bought the idea because both sides were getting something. Was George really willing to give CGC pricing data in return? I can't imagine he'd do that.

[supapimp]

Howard the Duck 1 was a $25 book in like 1976, right?

 

$25 in 1976 was a lot of $$$.

[fantastic_four]

This relationship between CPG and CGC reminds me of the Wizard-CGC relationship they almost established back in 2000 when they were planning to create some kind of "Wizard" grade that included their logo on the slab label. CGC got absolutely blasted at a con for it due to a conflict of interest between pricing and grading and decided to drop the idea. That same potential conflict of interest seems as if it could also be present in this new CPG relationship, I just can't substantiate how, exactly.

[THE_BEYONDER]

I can't seem to locate the thread, but it did seem as if George was kinda snubbed by the announcement.

 

Hmm. My guess was that CPG probably pitched this to CGC and they bought the idea because both sides were getting something. Was George really willing to give CGC pricing data in return? I can't imagine he'd do that.

 

LINK TO THREAD

 

This is very interesting. Before Steve left from CGC, he got me onboard with integrating pricing from GPA through the CGC census. I spoke with Scott after that and they were excited about shared information between the census/GPA - we even setup an XML feed using the CGC number which meant there was zero work for CGC - all they had to do was do an XML post to our system and it would return relevant information directly through the census.

 

An odd announcement indeed.

[THE_BEYONDER]

This relationship between CPG and CGC reminds me of the Wizard-CGC relationship they almost established back in 2000 when they were planning to create some kind of "Wizard" grade that included their logo on the slab label. CGC got absolutely blasted at a con for it due to a conflict of interest between pricing and grading and decided to drop the idea. That same potential conflict of interest seems as if it could also be present in this new CPG relationship, I just can't substantiate how, exactly.

 

It just seems as if CGC will have no choice but to overstate the values. If the values are understated....CGC will have a ton of unhappy consumers to contend with. Why create a registry set if your collection becomes devalued by doing so?

 

It's a serious can of worms that CGC would do best to avoid IMO.

[joe_collector]

This relationship between CPG and CGC reminds me of the Wizard-CGC relationship they almost established back in 2000 when they were planning to create some kind of "Wizard" grade that included their logo on the slab label. CGC got absolutely blasted at a con for it due to a conflict of interest between pricing and grading and decided to drop the idea.

 

Actually, the idea went ahead, and there were Wizard 9.5's for sale - the entire idea fell apart because Wizard couldn't get enough higher grades to make $$$, and the 9.5 grade on Moderns wasn't worth a cent.

[THE_BEYONDER]

This relationship between CPG and CGC reminds me of the Wizard-CGC relationship they almost established back in 2000 when they were planning to create some kind of "Wizard" grade that included their logo on the slab label. CGC got absolutely blasted at a con for it due to a conflict of interest between pricing and grading and decided to drop the idea.

 

Actually, the idea went ahead, and there were Wizard 9.5's for sale - the entire idea fell apart because Wizard couldn't get enough higher grades to make $$$, and the 9.5 grade on Moderns wasn't worth a cent.

 

I believe FF is referring to the 'Wizard Grade' initiative ( which was replaced with the 'Modern Grade' )...not the 'Wizard First' initiative (which used the 9.5s you're referring to).

[fantastic_four]

I believe FF is referring to the 'Wizard Grade' initiative ( which was replaced with the 'Modern Grade' )...not the 'Wizard First' initiative (which used the 9.5s you're referring to).

 

Oh yea, that was it.

[THE_BEYONDER]

I believe FF is referring to the 'Wizard Grade' initiative ( which was replaced with the 'Modern Grade' )...not the 'Wizard First' initiative (which used the 9.5s you're referring to).

 

Oh yea, that was it.

 

Moondog discussed it briefly in a thread called 'CGC's bottomline' :

 

What many of you don't know is that CGC originally was going to call modern books Wizard Age after they were slabbed. The reasoning is very obvious - Wizard was promoting HOT comics and CGC's business model is based on volume - a huge volume of modern comics that take only a few minutes to process (see baseball card slabbing). They strategized that the Wizard connection would be very attractive to all the speculators who were hoarding the Wizard top 10 list each month.

 

From their perspective this made perfect sense.

 

When CGC presented this plan to us at the Diamond conference, they were about run out of the building. We all looked at each other aghast at the thought. It was almost comical. Needless to say they scrapped the plan, but the need of attracting collectors to submit a spoon load of modern books didn't go away.

[MR.COMICBOOK]

Howard the Duck 1 was a $25 book in like 1976, right?

 

$25 in 1976 was a lot of $$$.

Using my amazing calculator on my Iphone, I get

$25 in 1976 would buy you 20 new Marvel comics at the new stand

$25 today would buy you 6 new Marvel comics at your LCS.

a step further 20 comics today would cost you $80 today.

so yeah $25 bucks was worth a lot more than it is today.

[chrisco37]

Using my amazing calculator on my Iphone, I get

$25 in 1976 would buy you 20 new Marvel comics at the new stand

$25 today would buy you 6 new Marvel comics at your LCS.

a step further 20 comics today would cost you $80 today.

so yeah $25 bucks was worth a lot more than it is today.

 

You could get "way more" than 20 books for $25 in 1976 (that's like 80 cents/book).

 

More like 80 books (cover price 30 cents)

[joe_collector]

More like 80 books (cover price 30 cents)

 

1976 still had 25-centers and the `Still Only 25-cents``covers, so let`s say 90+.

[chrisco37]

More like 80 books (cover price 30 cents)

 

1976 still had 25-centers and the `Still Only 25-cents``covers, so let`s say 90+.

 

Yeah, wasn't quite sure of that one. Only book that popped into my head was PPTSSM #1, which was 30-cents.

 

Either way, a helluva lot more than 20.

[joe_collector]

The actual mathematical answer is 93.75 comics, or approximately 94.