Getting GPA Current?

[zosocane]

I think the OP's point is that more should be done to encourage all of the high volume dealers to report their sales -- as challenging as that might be. Maybe GPA should do more to encourage the additional reporting -- I don't know what perks they provide now to their reporting dealers.

 

A good example of what happens when there aren't enough reported sales to reflect market reality is Shazam! (1973) #1 in CGC 9.8 -- a book that is anything but rare and certainly no movie on the horizon. (See more on this in the Bronze forum.) An eBay sale at the end of March 2013 was reported at $2,500. Compare that single 2013 sale to five 2012 sales of the same 9.8 book in the $215 to $568 price band. Altough we don't know with certainty, the recent 2013 sale might have been a lucky "buy it now" sale to a perhaps less-than-experienced collector-buyer. Regardless of what happened, the 2013 sale is an obvious anomaly of what market generally commands for that book, and so more sales of that book should be reported to bring down to Earth what the average reported sale price is for that particular 9.8 book.

[Sqeggs]

I think the OP's point is that more should be done to encourage all of the high volume dealers to report their sales -- as challenging as that might be. Maybe GPA should do more to encourage the additional reporting -- I don't know what perks they provide now to their reporting dealers.

 

A good example of what happens when there aren't enough reported sales to reflect market reality is Shazam! (1973) #1 in CGC 9.8 -- a book that is anything but rare and certainly no movie on the horizon. (See more on this in the Bronze forum.) An eBay sale at the end of March 2013 was reported at $2,500. Compare that single 2013 sale to five 2012 sales of the same 9.8 book in the $215 to $568 price band. Altough we don't know with certainty, the recent 2013 sale might have been a lucky "buy it now" sale to a perhaps less-than-experienced collector-buyer. Regardless of what happened, the 2013 sale is an obvious anomaly of what market generally commands for that book, and so more sales of that book should be reported to bring down to Earth what the average reported sale price is for that particular 9.8 book.

 

I agree that more reporting is better than less reporting. But an alert user of GPA shouldn't conclude that the price of a book has increased four or five fold just because of one sale. Anomalous sales happen all the time and, particularly before paying five figures for a book, a savvy buyer should avoid concluding too much from a single sale reported on GPA.

[roulette44]

All good discussion, and I am in NO way asserting that this proposal is bullet proof. But just note the key points

 

• more data is better than less (as long as it's clean)

• the fact that some large dealers report and others don't creates inconsistencies

• yes GPA is merely a guide for many of us.....but the broader community contains more people who only use it, and trust whatever it says

 

I'm concerned about the lack of consistency (knowing it will never be perfect.....I'd rather be a "c" student than an "f" student).

 

Here's an example: back about a year ago, I bought 4 keys from one large dealer at a con.

 

TOS 39 8.0

TTA 27 7.5

X-men 1 7.0

Sgt Fury 1 8.5

 

The dealer later decided to take my sales price, and apportion them out to the books in a way he thought made sense. This produced a well-lower-than-GPA price on one, and much more in line with GPA for the three others. I approached the dealer on this and he basically said :shrug: have to report something!

 

So believe me - fool proof and 100% equitable is a LONG way away and likely impossible........but why wouldnt we want to try and improve things.

 

 

[joecgcmaniac]

All good discussion, and I am in NO way asserting that this proposal is bullet proof. But just note the key points

 

• more data is better than less (as long as it's clean)

• the fact that some large dealers report and others don't creates inconsistencies

• yes GPA is merely a guide for many of us.....but the broader community contains more people who only use it, and trust whatever it says

 

I'm concerned about the lack of consistency (knowing it will never be perfect.....I'd rather be a "c" student than an "f" student).

 

Here's an example: back about a year ago, I bought 4 keys from one large dealer at a con.

 

TOS 39 8.0

TTA 27 7.5

X-men 1 7.0

Sgt Fury 1 8.5

 

The dealer later decided to take my sales price, and apportion them out to the books in a way he thought made sense. This produced a well-lower-than-GPA price on one, and much more in line with GPA for the three others. I approached the dealer on this and he basically said :shrug: have to report something!

 

So believe me - fool proof and 100% equitable is a LONG way away and likely impossible........but why wouldnt we want to try and improve things.

 

 

The bolded part from above is exactly why all dealers don't report to GPA. Too many of them only want to report record-breaking sales, and not the lower-end sales. Not to mention there are a few whose morals and ethics would make taking any numbers from their sales questionable at best.

[roulette44]

Seemed important enough for a

[Jack_Remington-migration]

All good discussion, and I am in NO way asserting that this proposal is bullet proof. But just note the key points

 

• more data is better than less (as long as it's clean)

• the fact that some large dealers report and others don't creates inconsistencies

• yes GPA is merely a guide for many of us.....but the broader community contains more people who only use it, and trust whatever it says

 

I'm concerned about the lack of consistency (knowing it will never be perfect.....I'd rather be a "c" student than an "f" student).

 

Here's an example: back about a year ago, I bought 4 keys from one large dealer at a con.

 

TOS 39 8.0

TTA 27 7.5

X-men 1 7.0

Sgt Fury 1 8.5

 

The dealer later decided to take my sales price, and apportion them out to the books in a way he thought made sense. This produced a well-lower-than-GPA price on one, and much more in line with GPA for the three others. I approached the dealer on this and he basically said :shrug: have to report something!

 

So believe me - fool proof and 100% equitable is a LONG way away and likely impossible........but why wouldnt we want to try and improve things.

 

 

The bolded part from above is exactly why all dealers don't report to GPA. Too many of them only want to report record-breaking sales, and not the lower-end sales.

 

This is exactly why Josh from Comiclink is not allowed to submit his sales to GPA like he wants to.

 

Not to mention there are a few whose morals and ethics would make taking any numbers from their sales questionable at best.

 

This is exactly why Doug Schmell from Pedigree Comics isn't allowed to submit sales to GPA any more:

 

"The problem is some of the purchasers who got them at less than current GPA value ask me not to report the sale for obvious reasons and I respect that. If you bought an ASM 14, for example, at $5,000, knowing you got it on the cheap, want that sale to be purposely made public when you are trying to sell it for $9,000?"

 

http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=183167&Number=3775008#Post3775008

[roulette44]

So we're saying essentially, that GPA provides very little, if any, marketplace data

 

Alledgedly

- what's there now is often misreported to GPA?

- there is much that is not reported

 

George, would appreciate your weighing in here - I, for one, believe the GPA can be a more widely-recognized source and at the same time, provided a more exhaustive list of sales data......

 

Bottom line again, right or wrong, is that uninformed buyers use GPA incorrectly and force themselves to miss out on a situation (this is what happens most of the time - a buyer refuses to pay above GPA and doesn't realize the data is not conclusive).......

 

Let's talk solutions - recognizing this isn't going to be easy (or ever perfectly addressed, perhaps). But there is enough at stake here, that I submit we give this some serious thought.

 

Thanks

Joey

[Mark 1]

In theory....excellent idea.

 

In practice, it can't work.

 

The beauty of those sales that are gathered from ebay, heritage, etc is that the majority of sales are legitimate and true market value sales.

 

If you leave it up to dealers just filling out a form about books that "sold"....anyone can put any price to drive up the price of a book or to lower the price of a book. I'm not saying the well known dealers we all know would do something like that but i'm sure we can speculate there would be some that won't be as honest as others.

 

GPA is one instrument in assessing the price of a comic book. I find that if recent data points are present...it's usually a good indicator for FMV of that comic.

 

 

[Mark 1]

Let's take two examples that if viewed by a novice would think these are fair prices.

 

Last data entered was in 2011. It's 2013....would we use these prices as the gospel?

 

NO. We need more data to come up with a fair price for this comic.

 

TOS 39

( 9.4 ) (1) $147,500 - - - $147,500 Mar-2011

 

 

( 9.2 ) (1) $72,100 - - - $72,100 Sep-2011

[bababooey]

So we're saying essentially, that GPA provides very little, if any, marketplace data

 

Alledgedly

- what's there now is often misreported to GPA?

- there is much that is not reported

 

George, would appreciate your weighing in here - I, for one, believe the GPA can be a more widely-recognized source and at the same time, provided a more exhaustive list of sales data......

 

Bottom line again, right or wrong, is that uninformed buyers use GPA incorrectly and force themselves to miss out on a situation (this is what happens most of the time - a buyer refuses to pay above GPA and doesn't realize the data is not conclusive).......

 

Let's talk solutions - recognizing this isn't going to be easy (or ever perfectly addressed, perhaps). But there is enough at stake here, that I submit we give this some serious thought.

 

Thanks

Joey

You should give your opinion on how an informed buyer use GPA correctly because there was some very good and useful opinions shared in that old thread.

Also too much of the data collected by GPA is the result of uninformed buyers (ebay)

 

Every sale, reported or not, comes down to an individual buyer and an individual seller making a deal on an individual book - if you're negotiating from either side of the table I think people will present their pricing reasoning or evidence in negotiations.

 

How well you present your case may or may not influence the other party....in any long term buyer/dealer relationship I think most would prefer that the other party just be consistent in their reasoning. ie - don't point to GPA sales on one book and then dismiss GPA evidence when used as a negotiation tool by the other party on another book not sure if that made sense

 

[roulette44]

Appreciate the input so far.........

 

1) a few dealers do report their private sales to GPA - so why not try to encourage more?

 

2) people continue to offer responses saying (and i'll use an analogy to paraphrase) "we'll never get 100% of the DNA in our brains functional, so let's not worry whether we're 3% or 5% today"

 

(of course, this is extreme and unrealistic- but you see my point? why wouldn't we push for more data, so that the "gap" was atleast smaller?

 

Frankly, i'm really surprised this isn't more important on the thread list......

 

By the way, i didn't know some groups had been banned from submitting their sales data (now that's a shame); are the circumstances documented somewhere

[paperheart]

Appreciate the input so far.........

 

1) a few dealers do report their private sales to GPA - so why not try to encourage more?

 

2) people continue to offer responses saying (and i'll use an analogy to paraphrase) "we'll never get 100% of the DNA in our brains functional, so let's not worry whether we're 3% or 5% today"

 

(of course, this is extreme and unrealistic- but you see my point? why wouldn't we push for more data, so that the "gap" was atleast smaller?

 

Frankly, i'm really surprised this isn't more important on the thread list......

 

By the way, i didn't know some groups had been banned from submitting their sales data (now that's a shame); are the circumstances documented somewhere

 

because it's already been discussed to death in numerous other threads: josh isn't going to give george the data, george accepting data from every joe schmoe who purportedly sold a slab for X isn't going to happen, etc.

[roulette44]

I have been on the boards for about 18-months, and haven't seen it come up in that time (nor looking back at the history, did I see this discussed at length) - could it be important enough to revisit?

 

JD

[accessndx]

Simply put, additional legitimate sources of recent sales would be great. I don't see any problems with that. There are always going to be gaps and holes in available data but the overall resolution of that data would presumably be clearer with more of it IMHO.

[Tony S]

I spoke to George in Sept last year about submitting sales data. It wasn't going to be particularly difficult. The exact details I forget but basically he was fine with an Excel spreadsheet once a month with five or six data points. A nice guy.

 

The problem - and why I don't - is just simply I wouldn't have a lot to report. It can be easy to forget when you are a member of the these boards, but the VAST majority of collectors (and therefor sales) collect raw. I offer some slabbed books in each catalogue, but I end up selling most on eBay and a few on Comic Link. So GPA was already capturing the eBay sales and GPA doesn't want the CLink sales as per CL's request.

 

The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide was/is never perfect - and GPA is the same. An imperfect, but still useful tool. It's worth the subscription price to me if the only data they track is ebay, since the look back period on the eBay website is not very long at all. A month maybe? And eBay sales are both deep and wide. By that I mean hot but common books are represented in abundance (New Mutants 98) but the obscure stuff (Raggedy Ann) shows up as well.

 

The eBay data is also unbiased. Yes, there are some shennigans on ebay. But at least with eBay data, there is no dealer pondering whether or not to report a low sale of a book when they still have 10 more copies (think modern's that are hot one day and dead the next) that they would like to unload. If it sold for cheap on eBay, it's there on GPA.

 

I'd rather stick with data that is clean - even if the reported data isn't as complete as it could be - than risk the data being skewed. I think the best and most workable improvement would be for collectors and customers to lean on Josh at CL to provide their data to GPA.

 

My 2 cents

[Flaming_Telepath]

I'd rather stick with data that is clean - even if the reported data isn't as complete as it could be - than risk the data being skewed.

 

Absolutely agree. If data is not 100% accurate, the ability to skew - or even manipulate - the market is huge. (thumbs u

 

I think the best and most workable improvement would be for collectors and customers to lean on Josh at CL to provide their data to GPA.

 

My 2 cents

 

Josh is fine with submitting the data...so long as he gets to choose which data, and so long as he gets paid for it.

[Bio-Rupp]

Most of the guys I chat with feel that GPA is just like Overstreet in that it only hopes to provide a "happy" average.

 

I say "happy" in that it, as a sales tool, wants to find a "happy" average between buyer and seller.

 

As a seller, one would shoot for the high.

 

As a buyer one would shoot for the low end.

 

Case in point, the X-men 5.0 you offered me. I want to pay the low end and you want the high end.

 

All any guide/tool can do is point us toward a average of what one will give and one will take.

 

If an inexperienced buyer jumps in and causes a fluke high stat... then the market may or may not follow... and if it does, it will probably readjust quickly due to no other sales at the fluke price.

 

Early Valiants had a lot of fluke pricing if I remember correctly. As did some of the earlier high grade Silver Age pedigrees that are losing some of their luster as more high grade copies enter the market.

 

This has been said before, but when all the baby boomer collections start hitting the market in a few years, I'd say the the majority of high sales in the 2000's might be considered flukes.

 

I personally hope someone finds a warehouse loaded with Amazing Fantasty # 15s in untouched shape. While not feasible... still entirely possible.

 

Consistency of data would be nice... but all comes down to the basic premise of "give & take".

[roulette44]

But guys, the skewness today is significant

 

Some auction houses report, others don't

Some dealers report, others don't

Presumably there is some selection in what gets reported

 

I don't see how leaving things at their current spot helps us.....need to push for some consistency, certainly- in either direction.

 

 

[Flaming_Telepath]

Presumably there is some selection in what gets reported

 

Not from one source, there shouldn't be. Whether you're an auction house or dealer, you need to report every sale you make.

[Mark 1]

 

Case in point, the X-men 5.0 you offered me. I want to pay the low end and you want the high end.

 

 

Routlette wants the high end? NOOOOO! That's can't be true.