GPAnalysis rant!

[esquirecomics]

First off, I'm a GPA subscriber and consider it a valuable resource. So thanks George, et al for the site. BUT isn't it about time the service started providing page quality data? I mean, I really think that in a lot of cases, the sales data would make more sense with PQ because it would likely answer for the disparate prices realized for a book at a specific grade (i.e. white pages statistically command more than cream, off-white, etc.).

 

Is this a valid request or am I being too picky?

 

Nope, not too picky and wouldn't be much more work for them either. It sure is easy to sit and do nothing to improve when you are the only game in town as GPA has. I toyed with the idea of competing with those guys years ago and I had PQ in my data as I always thought that was a glaring deficiency in GPA. It would also be great to see the median, mode and range values which are easily calculated. I do like the live auctions feature they added, but would prefer more statistical analysis and more ways to sort/group the data. Also, would it kill them to add cover images? Comics.org allows images to be borrowed as long as credit is given to them. What's the hold-up?

 

When you say "cover images", are you referring to a generic one or of the actual comic book sold? A generic one wouldn't add a whole lot of value. And providing the cover image for the actual sold comic is a technical and content-management nightmare. As I recall, GPA recently did a major site restructuring where part of it was to reduce response time on the searches. Adding cover images would impact the performance gained from that restructuring. Plus, consider how much work is involved in loading the images to the service, one at a time. I imagine that would hike up operation cost which no doubt would be passed on to the subscriber.

 

I'm talking about generic images and I absolutely see the value there. As I am browsing Batman (1940) and can't remember the issue number I'm interested in but can remember the cover image, seeing a little thumbnail as I open the tree-view next to a number would help me identify the correct issue.

 

Other ideas off the top of my head that would benefit all:

 

At least sort the "title" combo box by most popular descending or by start date of the series, not alpha-numeric or however they do it now. If I type in "Incredible Hulk", I need to hunt through tons of entries to find Hulk (1963). This should be the first entry in the list, not somewhere in the middle.

 

Why limit the search to comic title? The "title only" search system is terribly inadequate. Allow common searches that most all comic related sites allow:

Searchable by issue story synopsis

Searchable by character cross-reference

Searchable by creator (Writer, Artist). I know I want to find Neal Adams books and I want to browse them all in one search, rather than run hundreds of individual queries.

 

Show me Live Auctions that were listed for a particular date or date range, so I can browse the newest additions for Buy-It-Nows and check GPA data on those books at the same time.

 

Once implemented, these improvements don't cost GPA anything. Only the initial cost of doing the data entry and improving the code.

 

No charge for these suggestions GPA, get crackin please.

 

You gotta be kidding me Do you want GPA to flip the pages of your comic for you too?

 

No but I hate the fact that nothing changes simply because they own the monopoly. Step up and show your subscribers that you care about being the best you can possibly be. Don't stand pat because you can. If you aren't going to do it right, don't do it at all. Frankly I'm surprised that some of you are defending the way GPA works as status quo and that's the best we should expect. Don't understand that view point at all.

 

With all due respect, this is not only an untrue statement but it is completely unfair and out of line as far as I am concerned.

 

For one thing, GPA does not "own the monopoly" simply because it happens to be the primary, if not for the moment only significant, online entity to provides this type of service. If anyone believes they can do a better job, by all means step up to the plate and do so.

 

And having worked closely with GPA and its owners for several years now I can say unequivocally that George Pantela has nothing but the best interests for this community in his heart and mind and the manner in which he operates GPA reflects that sentiment. He is open to any constructive criticism, comments or suggestions, and is always looking for ways to better the site.

 

If anyone thinks GPA is raking in the bucks at the expense of its subscribers, you would be sadly - and unfortunately - mistaken.

[gpanalysis]

The CGC serial number is key to bringing information together, as is the ISBN number for books, etc.

 

That doesn't mean GPA would interrogate the CGC registry via our website whenever a subscriber clicked on a cert number - that would still be up to CGC to allow, and hence why I talk about relationships and business decisions outside of what "can" be done.

 

The problem for us, as a service, isn't that we can't extract information from properly setup feeds, but that a lot of the data out there is not using CGC cert numbers, so there is no unifying identifier. So we end up with "all the information we need" for 70% of listings and "no information/little information" in 30% of listings. When you make a decision to show additional information, it needs to be universal.

 

For example, showing pricing information for each sale does not depend on the cert number. It is universally present regardless of sale, venue, time, etc.

 

PQ is dependent on the cert number being present, otherwise you need to look at each sale ( ) or create an automated lookup that tries to be as accurate as possible. "As accurate as possible" is ok in some respects, as long as the errors/exceptions are at a minimum. And because we're talking about pricing data, incorrect information can have a detrimental effect on conclusions drawn from that information.

 

On eBay, more and more sellers are adding the cert number info, which is great. Especially when those listing books realise that we will promote their auctions through our Live Auction Links and additional services such as Slab Hunter, etc.

 

It may be that we get to a point where the cert number is used universally and trying to figure out some other system becomes irrelevant; or nothing changes and we (GPA) comes up with some other solution.

[Mac Man]

I'm only an off and on subscriber but it's a good program. I am curious though whether or not board transactions could be viewed as viable deal so long as they are completed WITHIN a sales thread (and not via PM to maintain public accountability of the sale)? I think Collin raises a valuable point that there are many sales taking place here that would be worth keeping track of I'd assume.

 

What do you think George?

[gpanalysis]

I'm only an off and on subscriber but it's a good program. I am curious though whether or not board transactions could be viewed as viable deal so long as they are completed WITHIN a sales thread (and not via PM to maintain public accountability of the sale)? I think Collin raises a valuable point that there are many sales taking place here that would be worth keeping track of I'd assume.

 

What do you think George?

 

The information would need to be setup as an XML feed for both "sold" and "for sale" items. It would need to contain (at a minimum) the cert number, the price, the seller, the buyer. It would need to have a verifiable electronic transaction record, as in PayPal. Someone here would need to build it.

[ComicsAndCode]

I'm only an off and on subscriber but it's a good program. I am curious though whether or not board transactions could be viewed as viable deal so long as they are completed WITHIN a sales thread (and not via PM to maintain public accountability of the sale)? I think Collin raises a valuable point that there are many sales taking place here that would be worth keeping track of I'd assume.

 

What do you think George?

 

The information would need to be setup as an XML feed for both "sold" and "for sale" items. It would need to contain (at a minimum) the cert number, the price, the seller, the buyer. It would need to have a verifiable electronic transaction record, as in PayPal. Someone here would need to build it.

 

George, I realize this is sort of off topic, but you got me wondering about transaction verification. In the process of collecting eBay sales, how does GPA verify a completed transaction, if at all? Do you use an eBay or PayPal API call to look-up that information? Or rather, do you simply capture sold items from the completed auctions and that itself, qualifies as a sale?

[gpanalysis]

I'm only an off and on subscriber but it's a good program. I am curious though whether or not board transactions could be viewed as viable deal so long as they are completed WITHIN a sales thread (and not via PM to maintain public accountability of the sale)? I think Collin raises a valuable point that there are many sales taking place here that would be worth keeping track of I'd assume.

 

What do you think George?

 

The information would need to be setup as an XML feed for both "sold" and "for sale" items. It would need to contain (at a minimum) the cert number, the price, the seller, the buyer. It would need to have a verifiable electronic transaction record, as in PayPal. Someone here would need to build it.

 

George, I realize this is sort of off topic, but you got me wondering about transaction verification. In the process of collecting eBay sales, how does GPA verify a completed transaction, if at all? Do you use an eBay or PayPal API call to look-up that information? Or rather, do you simply capture sold items from the completed auctions and that itself, qualifies as a sale?

 

We continuously monitor any "sale" after the fact and often label unsold books as "relists" in our system. There is a limit to what can be done.

 

However, that doesn't prevent a newer system from having as verifiable sales as possible (sp/gram).

[greggy]

George is a poopie head

[gpanalysis]

George is a poopie head

 

trying..... not to..... respond......

 

[ComicsAndCode]

I'm only an off and on subscriber but it's a good program. I am curious though whether or not board transactions could be viewed as viable deal so long as they are completed WITHIN a sales thread (and not via PM to maintain public accountability of the sale)? I think Collin raises a valuable point that there are many sales taking place here that would be worth keeping track of I'd assume.

 

What do you think George?

 

The information would need to be setup as an XML feed for both "sold" and "for sale" items. It would need to contain (at a minimum) the cert number, the price, the seller, the buyer. It would need to have a verifiable electronic transaction record, as in PayPal. Someone here would need to build it.

 

George, I realize this is sort of off topic, but you got me wondering about transaction verification. In the process of collecting eBay sales, how does GPA verify a completed transaction, if at all? Do you use an eBay or PayPal API call to look-up that information? Or rather, do you simply capture sold items from the completed auctions and that itself, qualifies as a sale?

 

We continuously monitor any "sale" after the fact and often label unsold books as "relists" in our system. There is a limit to what can be done.

 

However, that doesn't prevent a newer system from having as verifiable sales as possible (sp/gram).

 

Got it. Thank you (thumbs u

[benz]

i think George is doing the best they can and i am happy with GP Analysis.

[Flaming_Telepath]

I'm only an off and on subscriber but it's a good program. I am curious though whether or not board transactions could be viewed as viable deal so long as they are completed WITHIN a sales thread (and not via PM to maintain public accountability of the sale)? I think Collin raises a valuable point that there are many sales taking place here that would be worth keeping track of I'd assume.

 

What do you think George?

 

And every sale could be a 'set-up', an attempt to create a false market, a particular risk when members here don't even have to reveal who they are and many are not who they say they are.

 

Additionally, when this was discussed in the past, a few concerns were raised that the 'cheap deals' that are regularly consumated here shouldn't be included because, well, because they were 'cheap deals'.

 

Furthermore, although I can't say exactly what would be involved, I'd imagine George would have to design a whole new way of reporting stuff from here, at which point I'd think a cost/benefit analysis would be on his agenda.

[chrisco37]

It would be nice to have PQ listed but, at the moment, serial numbers are available on most books (as George noted).

 

All it takes is a simple 2 minute, free, phone call to CGC for that info. Heck, for that info, you don't even need to be put all the way thru to a grader. You call, say you want notes, give them the serial number, they say "Book X, 9.4, white?" to confirm your request. And then you get put thru to grader.

[gaz973]

It would be nice to have PQ listed but, at the moment, serial numbers are available on most books (as George noted).

 

All it takes is a simple 2 minute, free, phone call to CGC for that info. Heck, for that info, you don't even need to be put all the way thru to a grader. You call, say you want notes, give them the serial number, they say "Book X, 9.4, white?" to confirm your request. And then you get put thru to grader.

 

Yeah, but that's not quite so handy if you don't live in the US.

[chrisco37]

It would be nice to have PQ listed but, at the moment, serial numbers are available on most books (as George noted).

 

All it takes is a simple 2 minute, free, phone call to CGC for that info. Heck, for that info, you don't even need to be put all the way thru to a grader. You call, say you want notes, give them the serial number, they say "Book X, 9.4, white?" to confirm your request. And then you get put thru to grader.

 

Yeah, but that's not quite so handy if you don't live in the US.

 

Move.

 

Yeah, I didn't really think about that. I guess you could always PM one of us to check for you (I know that isn't the preferred way, but it's a way for now).

[gaz973]

It would be nice to have PQ listed but, at the moment, serial numbers are available on most books (as George noted).

 

All it takes is a simple 2 minute, free, phone call to CGC for that info. Heck, for that info, you don't even need to be put all the way thru to a grader. You call, say you want notes, give them the serial number, they say "Book X, 9.4, white?" to confirm your request. And then you get put thru to grader.

 

Yeah, but that's not quite so handy if you don't live in the US.

 

Move.

 

Yeah, I didn't really think about that. I guess you could always PM one of us to check for you (I know that isn't the preferred way, but it's a way for now).

 

I'm typing a list for you as we speak.

[chrisco37]

It would be nice to have PQ listed but, at the moment, serial numbers are available on most books (as George noted).

 

All it takes is a simple 2 minute, free, phone call to CGC for that info. Heck, for that info, you don't even need to be put all the way thru to a grader. You call, say you want notes, give them the serial number, they say "Book X, 9.4, white?" to confirm your request. And then you get put thru to grader.

 

Yeah, but that's not quite so handy if you don't live in the US.

 

Move.

 

Yeah, I didn't really think about that. I guess you could always PM one of us to check for you (I know that isn't the preferred way, but it's a way for now).

 

I'm typing a list for you as we speak.

 

Send it. I'll get to it when I get to it.

 

You can only do one request per call, so it may take awhile.

[gaz973]

It would be nice to have PQ listed but, at the moment, serial numbers are available on most books (as George noted).

 

All it takes is a simple 2 minute, free, phone call to CGC for that info. Heck, for that info, you don't even need to be put all the way thru to a grader. You call, say you want notes, give them the serial number, they say "Book X, 9.4, white?" to confirm your request. And then you get put thru to grader.

 

Yeah, but that's not quite so handy if you don't live in the US.

 

Move.

 

Yeah, I didn't really think about that. I guess you could always PM one of us to check for you (I know that isn't the preferred way, but it's a way for now).

 

I'm typing a list for you as we speak.

 

Send it. I'll get to it when I get to it.

 

You can only do one request per call, so it may take awhile.

 

Only kidding, thanks mate. (thumbs u

 

Might take you up on your offer in the future if that's OK though?

[THE_BEYONDER]

First off, I'm a GPA subscriber and consider it a valuable resource. So thanks George, et al for the site. BUT isn't it about time the service started providing page quality data? I mean, I really think that in a lot of cases, the sales data would make more sense with PQ because it would likely answer for the disparate prices realized for a book at a specific grade (i.e. white pages statistically command more than cream, off-white, etc.).

 

Is this a valid request or am I being too picky?

 

Nope, not too picky and wouldn't be much more work for them either. It sure is easy to sit and do nothing to improve when you are the only game in town as GPA has. I toyed with the idea of competing with those guys years ago and I had PQ in my data as I always thought that was a glaring deficiency in GPA. It would also be great to see the median, mode and range values which are easily calculated. I do like the live auctions feature they added, but would prefer more statistical analysis and more ways to sort/group the data. Also, would it kill them to add cover images? Comics.org allows images to be borrowed as long as credit is given to them. What's the hold-up?

 

When you say "cover images", are you referring to a generic one or of the actual comic book sold? A generic one wouldn't add a whole lot of value. And providing the cover image for the actual sold comic is a technical and content-management nightmare. As I recall, GPA recently did a major site restructuring where part of it was to reduce response time on the searches. Adding cover images would impact the performance gained from that restructuring. Plus, consider how much work is involved in loading the images to the service, one at a time. I imagine that would hike up operation cost which no doubt would be passed on to the subscriber.

 

I'm talking about generic images and I absolutely see the value there. As I am browsing Batman (1940) and can't remember the issue number I'm interested in but can remember the cover image, seeing a little thumbnail as I open the tree-view next to a number would help me identify the correct issue.

 

Other ideas off the top of my head that would benefit all:

 

At least sort the "title" combo box by most popular descending or by start date of the series, not alpha-numeric or however they do it now. If I type in "Incredible Hulk", I need to hunt through tons of entries to find Hulk (1963). This should be the first entry in the list, not somewhere in the middle.

 

Why limit the search to comic title? The "title only" search system is terribly inadequate. Allow common searches that most all comic related sites allow:

Searchable by issue story synopsis

Searchable by character cross-reference

Searchable by creator (Writer, Artist). I know I want to find Neal Adams books and I want to browse them all in one search, rather than run hundreds of individual queries.

 

Show me Live Auctions that were listed for a particular date or date range, so I can browse the newest additions for Buy-It-Nows and check GPA data on those books at the same time.

 

Once implemented, these improvements don't cost GPA anything. Only the initial cost of doing the data entry and improving the code.

 

No charge for these suggestions GPA, get crackin please.

 

You gotta be kidding me Do you want GPA to flip the pages of your comic for you too?

 

No but I hate the fact that nothing changes simply because they own the monopoly. Step up and show your subscribers that you care about being the best you can possibly be. Don't stand pat because you can. If you aren't going to do it right, don't do it at all. Frankly I'm surprised that some of you are defending the way GPA works as status quo and that's the best we should expect. Don't understand that view point at all.

 

Do you feel the same way about CGC?

[Flaming_Telepath]

First off, I'm a GPA subscriber and consider it a valuable resource. So thanks George, et al for the site. BUT isn't it about time the service started providing page quality data? I mean, I really think that in a lot of cases, the sales data would make more sense with PQ because it would likely answer for the disparate prices realized for a book at a specific grade (i.e. white pages statistically command more than cream, off-white, etc.).

 

Is this a valid request or am I being too picky?

 

Nope, not too picky and wouldn't be much more work for them either. It sure is easy to sit and do nothing to improve when you are the only game in town as GPA has. I toyed with the idea of competing with those guys years ago and I had PQ in my data as I always thought that was a glaring deficiency in GPA. It would also be great to see the median, mode and range values which are easily calculated. I do like the live auctions feature they added, but would prefer more statistical analysis and more ways to sort/group the data. Also, would it kill them to add cover images? Comics.org allows images to be borrowed as long as credit is given to them. What's the hold-up?

 

When you say "cover images", are you referring to a generic one or of the actual comic book sold? A generic one wouldn't add a whole lot of value. And providing the cover image for the actual sold comic is a technical and content-management nightmare. As I recall, GPA recently did a major site restructuring where part of it was to reduce response time on the searches. Adding cover images would impact the performance gained from that restructuring. Plus, consider how much work is involved in loading the images to the service, one at a time. I imagine that would hike up operation cost which no doubt would be passed on to the subscriber.

 

I'm talking about generic images and I absolutely see the value there. As I am browsing Batman (1940) and can't remember the issue number I'm interested in but can remember the cover image, seeing a little thumbnail as I open the tree-view next to a number would help me identify the correct issue.

 

Other ideas off the top of my head that would benefit all:

 

At least sort the "title" combo box by most popular descending or by start date of the series, not alpha-numeric or however they do it now. If I type in "Incredible Hulk", I need to hunt through tons of entries to find Hulk (1963). This should be the first entry in the list, not somewhere in the middle.

 

Why limit the search to comic title? The "title only" search system is terribly inadequate. Allow common searches that most all comic related sites allow:

Searchable by issue story synopsis

Searchable by character cross-reference

Searchable by creator (Writer, Artist). I know I want to find Neal Adams books and I want to browse them all in one search, rather than run hundreds of individual queries.

 

Show me Live Auctions that were listed for a particular date or date range, so I can browse the newest additions for Buy-It-Nows and check GPA data on those books at the same time.

 

Once implemented, these improvements don't cost GPA anything. Only the initial cost of doing the data entry and improving the code.

 

No charge for these suggestions GPA, get crackin please.

 

You gotta be kidding me Do you want GPA to flip the pages of your comic for you too?

 

No but I hate the fact that nothing changes simply because they own the monopoly. Step up and show your subscribers that you care about being the best you can possibly be. Don't stand pat because you can. If you aren't going to do it right, don't do it at all. Frankly I'm surprised that some of you are defending the way GPA works as status quo and that's the best we should expect. Don't understand that view point at all.

 

I think it's the best we should expect for the price.

 

Additionally, I don't think your suggestions are necessary improvements to allow GPA to deliver its brief. I think they're more like tools for the lazy.

[sterlingcomics]

Couple of points:

 

1. Dealers should already be using certification numbers. A number don't, and applying some pressure from you and buyers alike would help here.

2. eBay lobbying may be able to help if they would simply implement a CGC model for selling books; requiring a certification number would enforce it. I'm astonished that they have a model for baseball cards and other collectibles but still haven't enforced it for books.

 

Universally, everyone needs to get there. I think everyone applying pressure on the above will help.