SMH @ the difference between C.B.G. and Wizard's price guide

[Hawkman]

i don't use either as a price guide, but occasionally i read both. i just find it funny how completely different a lot of prices are.

 

 

Wizard, September 2009:

 

Walking Dead

 

#1 = $150.00

#2 = $75.00

#3 = $40.00

#4 = $40.00

 

 

CBG, August 2009:

 

Walking Dead

 

#1 = $45.00

#2 = $32.00

#3 = $15.00

#4 = $12.00

 

 

Wizard:

 

GI JOE

 

#1 = $30.00

#154 = $45.00

#155 = $100.00

 

 

CBG:

 

GI JOE:

 

#1 = $14.00

#154 = $7.00

#155 = $16.00

[Earl Davis]

You need to know what the guide is trying to tell you. There are not all trying to do the same thing. CBG for example bases it's values on an educated shopper shopping around a number of sources for the best deal as opposed to providing a value for a best a seller could ever hope to achieve.

[Earl Davis]

I don't know what data Wizard uses but I would assume from those values that Wizard is looking at top end sales on internet auction sites and CBG is trying to factor in convention sales, LCS back rooms and wholesale deals and what a delaer might offer you for your issue.

 

Just looking at a single source, say mycomicshop.com there are two sources of prices there. There is what Mycomicshop.com is trying to sell stuff for and what mycomicshop.com is trying to buy stuff for.

 

If you are using Mycomicshop.com as a source of pricing for a guide you might chose to use their selling price, their buying price or an average of the two on which to build into a valuation. So that single source of data could lead to three very different guide values depending on how you choose to use that data.

[maloney414]

Right, the different guides out there have different philosophies.

 

I find Wizard to be the best for Modern comics. That seems to be there thing. I think they do make an effort to follow the current sales. They are worthless for SA and GA books though. Since they only provide one value for NM which isn't pratical. Those books are usually bought in lower condition. If they are NM, they are usually graded so something like GPA is the best source.

 

Overstreet is far better than Wizard for SA and GA books. But again, you have to know how to read it. They view their values as predictions of future value. SA and GA books already have a history/track record so their predictions are quite good. Plus, they give values for lots of different conditions of books. To me they are worthless for modern books though. Because they are basically giving a careful estimate of the books future value. So that Walking Dead #1 is going to be way undervalued because they don't know if it's still going to be hot 10 years from now. They NEVER over value a modern comic.

 

 

[short_box-migration]

How does Wizard and CBG compare to CPG prices?

[RockMyAmadeus]

You need to know what the guide is trying to tell you. There are not all trying to do the same thing. CBG for example bases it's values on an educated shopper shopping around a number of sources for the best deal as opposed to providing a value for a best a seller could ever hope to achieve.

 

They do? Really?

[Earl Davis]

You need to know what the guide is trying to tell you. There are not all trying to do the same thing. CBG for example bases it's values on an educated shopper shopping around a number of sources for the best deal as opposed to providing a value for a best a seller could ever hope to achieve.

 

They do? Really?

 

Ok. That's what they claim.

[mschmidt]

You need to know what the guide is trying to tell you. There are not all trying to do the same thing. CBG for example bases it's values on an educated shopper shopping around a number of sources for the best deal as opposed to providing a value for a best a seller could ever hope to achieve.

 

As opposed to just pulling numbers randomly from a hat? Because, seriously, that's what your CBG examples point towards - good luck finding a Walking Dead #1 for $45 or a GI Joe #155 for $16

[Earl Davis]

To quote CBG from page 20 of the Standard Catalog of Comics 4th Edition..

 

"Convention Sales, mail order sales and shop prices throughout the United States are gathered on a regular basis."

 

"Each week since 2000 the CBG staff has downloaded thousands of completed transactions from autction servies, including every single ebay auction for books graded by CGC."

 

"CBG also consults a number of dealers each month"

 

"There are many price guides avaliable for comics, some of which rely on each other so much so that the prices seem the same." - Goes on to say CBG is different.

 

"Our philosophy isn't to publish the highest prices we can find to make people feel better about their collections, but rather publish prices that smart collectors shopping at a variety of retail, convention and online venues are likely to find."

 

 

[Earl Davis]

You need to know what the guide is trying to tell you. There are not all trying to do the same thing. CBG for example bases it's values on an educated shopper shopping around a number of sources for the best deal as opposed to providing a value for a best a seller could ever hope to achieve.

 

As opposed to just pulling numbers randomly from a hat? Because, seriously, that's what your CBG examples point towards - good luck finding a Walking Dead #1 for $45 or a GI Joe #155 for $16

BUT they list all the actual sales data on which their valuation is based.

 

Example from the Standard Catalog of Comics 4th Edition. (From a couple of years ago)

 

This is the G.I Joe A Real American Hero 155 entry from their guide.

 

CBG Raw Valuation in NM = $16, 49 copies CGC graded, best in 9.8

CGC9.4 15 Auctions captured. Low $36, Average $64, Highest: $81

 

Sales data is also provided for other grades

 

I don't know what more you can expect. The CGC "values" are the low, average and high of actual auction results and they seem to assume that the raw value is about half of the low end of the CGC auction results.

 

Not only are they giving you their opinion, thet are backing it up with every ebay auction of CGC books at the same time and giving that data to you.

 

Earl.

 

[Earl Davis]

So in summary CBG give you at least 4 values for each issue...

 

The Lowest a CGC copy has ever sold for in that grade

The Highest a CGC copy has ever sold for in that grade

The Average of all CGC auctions sold in that grade

A raw value estimate usually set about 50% of the lowest CGC sales.

[Hawkman]

thanks for your replies earl.

[mschmidt]

You need to know what the guide is trying to tell you. There are not all trying to do the same thing. CBG for example bases it's values on an educated shopper shopping around a number of sources for the best deal as opposed to providing a value for a best a seller could ever hope to achieve.

 

As opposed to just pulling numbers randomly from a hat? Because, seriously, that's what your CBG examples point towards - good luck finding a Walking Dead #1 for $45 or a GI Joe #155 for $16

BUT they list all the actual sales data on which their valuation is based.

 

Example from the Standard Catalog of Comics 4th Edition. (From a couple of years ago)

 

This is the G.I Joe A Real American Hero 155 entry from their guide.

 

CBG Raw Valuation in NM = $16, 49 copies CGC graded, best in 9.8

CGC9.4 15 Auctions captured. Low $36, Average $64, Highest: $81

 

Sales data is also provided for other grades

 

I don't know what more you can expect. The CGC "values" are the low, average and high of actual auction results and they seem to assume that the raw value is about half of the low end of the CGC auction results.

 

Not only are they giving you their opinion, thet are backing it up with every ebay auction of CGC books at the same time and giving that data to you.

 

Earl.

 

No, they're not backing up anything, really - they're using a random mathematical formula to come up with these raw prices which is about as accurate as asking my non-comic-book-collecting next door neighbor what he thinks the price should be.

 

Taking a book in CGC 9.4, then picking the lowest ever sale of that book in that grade, then dividing that number by half and then pretending that's an accurate assessment for a "raw NM" price is silly - CGC prices & raw prices just don't work like that.

[Earl Davis]

I’m not saying I agree with their approach, only that at least with CBG they give you the actual data plus their opinion. On G.I Joe and many other listing I don’t agree with that opinion but at least I can see what thought went into it. With Wizard I just get a value with no idea of what that means or how they arrived at it. CBG are attempting to do a combination of GPA type data presentation (although no where near as detailed) plus provide an opinion like OPG does.

 

In the past it’s been hard to provide the same sales data for raw books, the main issue that it’s hard to agree on grades between buyer and seller. Even just looking at a single source like ebay, how do you factor in sales of entire runs in pricing and the assumption that many buyers factor into bid process that the grade will be worse than advertised vs sales a a lcs where the buyer can examine the book in detail.

 

So you either try and collect raw sales data and try and make some sense of the mess or apply a series of formula + some common sense to establish a likely raw data. My personal assumption is that a raw 9.4 will sell for about 50% of the average CGC9.4 sales value across multiple sales platforms, obviously selling for better than 50% when the book is examined in person, selling for a bit less on ebay than seen in person providing it’s from a trusted seller, a bit less again from a less trusted seller with big scans, a bit less again if the scans are not good and a lot less from a seller with poor feedback. The number of factors involved in raw books sales data analysis is very complex.

 

CBG’s approach in the future will as I understand it present raw sales data as well as CGC sales data in their guides and that should give them a unique offering. The only downside is the sales data will be limited to a single source that being Atomic Avenue’s raw sales data but it’s a step in the right direction in my opinion.

 

[short_box-migration]

CBG’s approach in the future will as I understand it present raw sales data as well as CGC sales data in their guides and that should give them a unique offering. The only downside is the sales data will be limited to a single source that being Atomic Avenue’s raw sales data but it’s a step in the right direction in my opinion.

 

CBG only uses Atomic Avenue for its raw data? Wow. That pretty much invalidates their prices right there, doesn't it?

 

I hope TomG over at CPG has something up his sleeve. If he does it right, he could make CPG the price guide. Since Overstreet refuses to go online, Wizard is all hype, and CBG is lacking, TomG has a great opportunity. I assume that's why he left Overstreet, because his saw this opportunity (and the fact that Overstreet is becoming irrelevant).

[Earl Davis]

CBG’s approach in the future will as I understand it present raw sales data as well as CGC sales data in their guides and that should give them a unique offering. The only downside is the sales data will be limited to a single source that being Atomic Avenue’s raw sales data but it’s a step in the right direction in my opinion.

 

CBG only uses Atomic Avenue for its raw data? Wow. That pretty much invalidates their prices right there, doesn't it?

 

I hope TomG over at CPG has something up his sleeve. If he does it right, he could make CPG the price guide. Since Overstreet refuses to go online, Wizard is all hype, and CBG is lacking, TomG has a great opportunity. I assume that's why he left Overstreet, because his saw this opportunity (and the fact that Overstreet is becoming irrelevant).

 

No, CBG does not only use Atomic Avenue data, I listed their claimed sources earlier. What I think they proposed (I forget the details) with the Atomic Avenue data is provide the low, average and high sales data from Atomic Avenue in their guide like they already do for cgc sales on ebay.

 

In terms of CPG the last update I had from CEO Bryan Neely is that they plan to include actual sales data from ebay alongside the existing valuations. I don't have an ETA on this or exactly how it will work. I will ask him for more info on this if people are interested.

[Earl Davis]

I was always interested when Wizard started and people complained about the pricing in the guide compared with Overstreet when in fact the Overstreet price update publication and Wizard were done by the same guy, Jon Warren who moved straight from OPG to Wizard.

 

One of the later Wizard price guide editors started as a member with CPG and then joined Wizard as an intern in the pricing department so we used to be able to talk about pricing a bit until he got promoted a couple of times, got real busy and it probably did not seem appropriate for a Wizard editor to be hanging at CPG anymore.

[mschmidt]

I’m not saying I agree with their approach, only that at least with CBG they give you the actual data plus their opinion. On G.I Joe and many other listing I don’t agree with that opinion but at least I can see what thought went into it. With Wizard I just get a value with no idea of what that means or how they arrived at it. CBG are attempting to do a combination of GPA type data presentation (although no where near as detailed) plus provide an opinion like OPG does.

 

I think you're missing the point here - just because CBG take actual sales data for CGC'ed books and then uses a mathematical formula to come up with a raw price, that doesn't mean their raw pricing is any more accurate than that of Wizard, the OSPG or sites like comicspriceguide.com.

 

Come to think of it ... I'd actually say that the CBG pricing is less accurate than that of Wizard who use real sales of raw books to come up with their raw prices - a claim that is firmly supported by the pricing examples you posted in the beginning of this thread.

[Earl Davis]

I’m not saying I agree with their approach, only that at least with CBG they give you the actual data plus their opinion. On G.I Joe and many other listing I don’t agree with that opinion but at least I can see what thought went into it. With Wizard I just get a value with no idea of what that means or how they arrived at it. CBG are attempting to do a combination of GPA type data presentation (although no where near as detailed) plus provide an opinion like OPG does.

 

I think you're missing the point here - just because CBG take actual sales data for CGC'ed books and then uses a mathematical formula to come up with a raw price, that doesn't mean their raw pricing is any more accurate than that of Wizard, the OSPG or sites like comicspriceguide.com.

 

Come to think of it ... I'd actually say that the CBG pricing is less accurate than that of Wizard who use real sales of raw books to come up with their raw prices - a claim that is firmly supported by the pricing examples you posted in the beginning of this thread.

 

I do hear what you are saying. You are not wrong in what you are saying.

 

What I am saying is they are giving you their opinion AND the actual sales data. If you don't agree with their opinion you ignore that line in the guide and use the ACTUAL sales data instead. Wizard does not give you that information so all I am trying to say is that CBG gives you more information than Wizard about what your book might be worth and I have an idea how they arrived at their figures. I can disagree with that but at least I can guess how they arrived at them. With Wizard I have no idea.

 

You might then say but the CGC actual sales data does not really help me establish a raw value, and you might be right in saying that. It does help me however when I see the CGC9.4 average sales figure is less than some other guides show as a raw NM value.

 

For around $30 or whatever I paid the CBG guide lists actual sales data - a sumamry of what you get from GPA, print run data for most issues, artist and writer information which I don't get from Wizard.

 

That's why for me I find CBG more useful than Wizard.

[Earl Davis]

Just for interest I checked a few more gudies for Walking Dead 1...

 

Walking Dead 1 in Raw NM

 

 

$160 (Comic Book Realm Value)

 

$150 (Wizard Value)

 

$80 (ComicsPriceGuide.com value)

 

$45 (Comic Buyers Guide Value)

 

$5 (Overstreet 9.2 Value from 2007 edition, anyone got the 2009 value?)