New Guide prices

[PovertyRow]

I don't know. I literally read this post three times and it still does not make much sense to me.

[ubiquiti]

JP....

Mint!

Jay Parrino?

I think I'm gonna call up overstreet and throw my substantial influence around, myself.

Hopefully, Overstreet has been around long enough to know their price guide is only worth a if it is a impartial analysis of the market.

If certain dealers start influencing price guides based on whatever criteria/reason, Overstreet becomes worthless. I mean, given eBay, it's relevance is somewhat lessened anyway.........

[supapimp]

yes i know what he said that FF, but he still didn't release the name outright in the post. i know who he talked to, you know too, but some others out there don't.

[ubiquiti]

Good luck to the Silver and Black tomorrow by the way.

 

 

[Lockjaw]

The problem is that the guy Clobberintime talked to could really be the CGC mail clerk for all that we know. This idea of collusion to ensure that NM comics become worth many times what they are currently worth at this moment in time sounds like a fantasy by someone who would love a market where they could get rich overnight by selling a handful of comics.

 

Think about it, high-end folk have tried to manipulate the high-end collectible market before, remember when all the major auction houses got busted (this scandal brought down one auction house, I believe, do not quote me on that, and tarnished the reputation of Sotheby's and Christies if I remember correctly). Clobberintimes supposed source adds nothing new to how comics will be priced from here on out.

 

Not to mention, that we are not talking about an idea so unique, that up to now, no-one but clobberin's "deep throat" came up with such an idea. It is not difficult to picture many high-end collectors/dealers talking amongst themselves about the fantasy of being able to sell their merchandise for ten times what so and so guide claims it is worth, by getting so and so guide to validate their idea that collectible Y in Z condition should REALLY be worth... .

 

I am trying to say Clobberintime is not peeling back the curtain to reveal some shocking secret hidden from comic-collectors up until this point in time...people who make mega-bucks selling junk want to make more mega-bucks, so I am sure there are tons of people who think their words are the only ones to hold any weight regarding what they are talking about. I bet Steve Borock read the original post on this thread and had a good laugh (I suspect Clobberins supposed source probably thinks from their mouth to God's ears )

 

Regards

Christopher H.

[PovertyRow]

I got that. Have a hard time believing that. But you have to remember - I am a pre-code horror Fine collector. And also it has that "I have a friend who has a friend" feel. I mean...many high end collectors are already involved in CGC and they are really knowledgeable collectors. I have a hard time believing this can be pulled off. But will await the next one or two guides.

 

Please insult me.

[supapimp]

thanks for the support, the ray-duhs will win on BLACK SUNDAY tomorrow, by two touchdowns or more. it's going to be eagles versus ray-duhs, a rematch from the supabowl in 81.

[BachelorOfComix]

Oh joy, another influx of coinees buying comics. Can't wait to compete with their deep, speculating pockets.

 

Cheers,

 

Bachelor of Comics

[blowout]

Agree with pov here, would like to think that Overstreet would not bow to this kind of outside pressure.

The Overstreet price guide is based on decades of price data, and the super high grade cgc multiples should NOT be factored into it. Even if coin investors DO get lured into the hobby, how long will they hang around for? They will pull out when better a investment potential comes along and where will that leave the OS price guide? All that will happen if new investors come in is a short term spike in prices, then a big fall back as they all get out and take their money with them. You cannot rely on someone who has no emotional attatchment to a comic book to hang on to it for long. Overstreet is not and should not be reflecting these kind of short term spikes.

Anyway, is any of this really news? JP has been around since the start of the CGC boom and I'm sure many high end investors from the coin world have already hoped on the comic investment train and are already starting to hop off.

[drbanner]

Well, as we all know, CGC 9.4's and above have been selling for waaayyy above NM guide prices for the last 2+ years. Many collectors/dealers "applauded" Overstreet for the conservative price increases in last year's guide, and felt that one or two years worth of insane prices weren't enough to justify Bob increasing AF 15 in 9.4 to 100k, etc.,. Well, now that the books have been selling at those prices for three years, there does need to be a change - either a CGC price guide, or big jumps in Overstreet to reflect what 9.4+ books are selling for. So I don't think Bob cranking up the prices on NM books is any conspiracy...it's reality.

 

Of course the big jumps HAVE been caused by the influx of coin collecting $$ into the hobby, so while truly passionate comic book collectors hate that deep-walleted "investors" that could care less about the Green Goblin are causing the prices to rise, it's not Bob's fault...and certainly you can't blame Overstreet for raising guide prices to reflect what the high-grade books are really selling for.

 

Finally, as I've been advocating for years, guide prices on Good, Fine, and even VF need to be lowered dramatically. And not because they're "over-valued", but because the books simply have not been selling for Overstreet G/F/VF prices for years!!! I think OS has been systematically/programatically dragging low-mid grade prices up with NM prices without full analysis of what low-mid grade books sell for. In general, CGC low-mid grade books do not sell at a premium above guide, but they do sell at a slight premium above what raw books sell for. So, I guess relative to true market prices, there's a slight premium for low-mid grade CGC books.

[clobberintime]

Yeah that guy does pay some nutty prices at times -what a hypocrit to be complaining about high prices! The point is that the prices on all of this cgc stuff has fluctuated greatly over the last 3 years. When it started out and there were few graded books, prices were pretty high for any graded book and since then we have been thru several spikes and "crashes" The dreaded C word! I still think prices are pretty unstable - affected by movies, seasons of the year, economic changes, the tide, the full moon. I know a lot of people who will bid on a book just because someone else they dont like is bidding on it. Is all that the way you establish prices for "THEE" guide? As for the basis of the story, anyone who knows anything about very expensive books knows exactly who i spoke with and he is not hard to find. call him up and chat about market prices and what he sees for the future. I didn't say this was any kind of fraud - it amounts to a manipulation of the market. Whether by having the dough to kind of corner the market at the first big cgc sale ( which is no myth as I was a live on line bidder and sat thru about 4 hours of it and saw that Floor Bidder #1 bought just about everything), or the influence to get the guide to change its prices, I still think it amounts to an artificial creation of prices or an artificial market - not based on the way that Overstreet has always said that it has always determined prices. However, maybe this is just a big evolution for comics and all the old rules are going to be wiped away and high grade comic books prices will continue to zoom.

[FlComicFan]

well thats the way it has always been. Did you ever stop and wonder why certain Golden Age books languished at prices that no sane person would sell them at while common DC's were priced so you almost always had to discount them to move them? A few select people basically pull the puppet strings. They decide where the marekt is headed at least as far as the cream of the crop is concerned.

[FlComicFan]

"it sounds like that cgc coupled with the new guide startegy is aimed at making them just another investment commodity

 

No brainer there. When buyers start to pay 8 or 10 times for a book that has a miniscule improvement over the book just below it, the market has passed collectors mentality of owning the best and entered pure speculation cash making BS.

 

Its ok though sooner or later this trend will price out or just plain off enough collectors till its just the few Rockefellers and then they can sit sip their wine eat their cheese and discuss their Action 1 hanging on the wall next to the Monet.

 

There are enough of you out there willing to pay huge multiples of guide for differences that cant be seen unless you have the Kryptonian vision of a CGC grader so until that trend breaks that where we are going

 

Regarding lowering of prices I agree with Dr Banner that silver and up prices need to be looked at in grades below VF. There are large amounts of books like Spider-Man 1 in good, vg etc and the prices in the guide are probably much to high as evidenced by what the do regularly sell for on Ebay etc.

 

If they lower Golden Age prices on lower and mid grades then they are way off the mark. If anything good Golden Age seems to sell for premiums as collectors are still holding sway there and they just want a copy of that elusive book they need in any grade they can find and afford

 

 

 

 

 

 

[delekkerste]

Note: this post is not directed at anybody in particular...

 

So, suddenly we've gone from worrying about the "crash" to "oh no, prices are going to skyrocket to even more unaffordable levels because there is a conspiracy afoot!"

 

I'm not worried, for many reasons. The market is what the market is. A book that sells for 6x Overstreet in 2002 is likely not going to sell for 6x Overstreet in 2003 if the Guide price has doubled. Overstreet doesn't set the prices; the market sets the prices. Overstreet may set the established reference point, but the market will decide by supply and demand what percentage of Overstreet to apply to a transaction.

 

As for luring coin collectors, that's probably happened to some extent. BUT, I doubt that this has affected the market in a big way, except at the high end. Can anybody seriously tell me that the guy buying $85,000 coins is currently wasting his time buying Daredevil #158s, Tomb of Dracula #10s, ASM #300s, etc.? Sure, some of those guys may have had an influence at the Heritage auctions and on the sale of GA and SA books that have sold for 5 and 6 figures. But do the majority of us collectors who do not play in that sandbox have anything to fear from the big, bad JP and his cronies? Hell, no.

 

Unless you are a true BSD spending thousands or tens of thousands on a single book, I don't think you have anything to fear from whatever these would-be market manipulators do. I'm sure that these mythical coin guys, were they suckered into our market by a vast conspiracy, would not be interested in 99% of books out there. Can anybody seriously see comic guys being priced out of the hobby by this? "Oh no, I can't afford a Wolverine #1 CGC 9.8 anymore...it used to be at $150, but now that the coin guys have come in, it's at $1,150!" Riiiiight. And please don't anybody come back with any typically lame, condescending remarks about the examples of books I've chosen - let's face it, most people collect books under $500 and very few venture into the $5,000 and up sandbox where any deep-pocketed coin guys would be playing.

 

And if prices did happen to soar for all books due to this conspiracy, I'm sure a lot of us would be laughing all the way to the bank with our sales. Nice thought, but don't hold your breath waiting for this to happen...'cause it ain't.

 

Gene

[sborock]

THANK YOU GENE! CAN I GET A AMEN?!

[delekkerste]

THANK YOU GENE! CAN I GET A AMEN?!

 

Nothing like a pre-emptive show of support from the CGC head honcho to silence the critics!

 

Gene

[OldGuy]

I was just going to say that......

 

Let's call it a "coinspiracy".

[clobberintime]

Ok then - this post is not directed at any one in particular either. if you read the original first post, the thought behind upping the prices in the higher range is to get the big spenders to notice. I think i said that most of the big spenders coin dudes would look down their noses at most of this stuff. If you get more books in the tens of thousands of dollars - by whatever means - then you will have more coin buyers. I only collect comics and I could care less what cgc is grading on comics after 1980 and who is wasting their money buying them. The prices on those books will never be serious enough to get anyone's attention at that level.But grading all that junk and having people pay multiples for new books is a very good way for cgc to make money. As for Mr. Borock and his crew, as i have stated before the scale between 9.2 to 10 books is one of the best marketing schemes I have ever seen. That kind of numerical quantification of comic book appearance and value comes directly from the coin market but works really well with the affluent anal retentive comic book buyer. I assume Mr. Borock or someone from sarasota will be at the Megacon and maybe I will truck over from Ponce Inlet and bring my 3 copies of Hulk Ann1 9.2, 9.4 and 9.6 and we can try to figure out why the 9.2 went for about $200 and the 9.6 for $1000 - other than what is printed on the label because they all look about the same to me. I fully believe the story I was told from the horse's mouth. I didn't say it was conspiracy or fraud or illegal or anything else like that. What bothers me about it - if true - is that O/S is bowing to this stuff, and that the price structure is changing for the purpose of getting more outside players into comics. if none of that bothers you then forget about it. I put the story up because i thought it was an interesting item.

[fantastic_four]

Don't you think people pay higher-than-guide prices for 9.2 and up, though? Both collectors and investors? And shouldn't the guide reflect that? Even if the actual differences in the books are trivial, people are paying them; even dealers consistently pay multiples.

 

Mr. Gong Show Contestant may have helped push this along, and getting coin guys to invest in comics may have been his motive, but the market has changed now...it's unclear that it will change back. The prices are softer right now than they've been for the last three years, but the overall economy's soft also. We won't really know if they're tied together until Bush finally gets put out of office so things can get better. And even in this softness, the prices are over current Guide NM.

 

Overstreet is particularly important to those people who don't follow comic prices like most of us do. I hate to think how many vintage original owner collections get bought for Guide prices and end up grading out at 9.2 and above! The too-low prices listed there would screw somebody like that over royally. Coin investors are the same way; how do they really know that Mr. Gong Show isn't taking them for a ride by charging five times Overstreet NM for a Mile High CGC 9.6? Shouldn't it be at least in the NEIGHBORHOOD of accurate as to how much people are paying for these uncommon, high-grade vintage comics? Mr. Gong Show has a slightly different perspective on the market than the rest of us, but he's right; the guide is inaccurate.

[Lockjaw]

Thank you delekkerste (and Steve Borock), I tried to get the ball rolling that all this talk of high grade books going up 10 times in value because of some sort of market manipulation attempt by the coin guys was bunk/more akin to an urban myth (gosh darn it, it is so hard to manipulate the market when everyone and their moms KNOWS what you are trying to do ).

 

It is worth a chuckle or two that because some deep pocketed coin guys want to enter our sandbox, so to speak--a book like Wolverine 1 in 9.8, almost overnight, would become a $1,000 book , because that is the way the coin guys want it to be, so it shall be that way

 

Mr. Borock, it appears that this thread did put a smile on your face, and elicit a chuckle or two as you read through it.

 

Delekkerste, you pretty much summed up all the points I was trying to get across in one post.

 

Regards

Christopher H.