Overstreet prices for NM key books : key data or nonsense ?

[Kevin Boyd]

Actually, they haven't just dropped Valiant, but many Marvel and DC titles are not listed. I don't understand their policy completely, but if it isn't hot or tied in with an active title then I think it's removed for space reasons.

 

So I wouldn't go looking for the latest price of O.G.Whiz #3 'cause it's not going to be there. It might be worth something but it isn't "hot" so it isn't worth their time.

 

There isn't anything about Wizard that isn't already available online. It's a quick read in front of the tv on a wednesday night.

 

Kev

[blowout]

Now that I think about it, I'd bet that percentage is higher. 99% probably.

 

I think that most collectors who have gotten caught up in the whole ebay/CGC frenzy of recent years would be surprised at just how many raw books are still out there.

I still laugh when people quote the CGC census like it is the definitive guide of how many high grade books exist.

[greaterfool]

zilla: who was the lucky buyer of the ASM 1 and AF 15??

[Kevin Boyd]

Do the articles in Wizard have merit?

 

Tough question.

 

To me? No they don't.

 

As the only comics publication available on the newsstands today (not just comic shops)? Absolutely they do. It's the only access point for a lot of kids who don't know anything about the hobby.

 

Kev

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

I loved working on FAN and I still miss it. It was the most exciting thing we ever did here as far as I'm concerned. And I had the chance to keep hyping Doctor Who in the sci-fi column .

 

Arnold

[Crowzilla]

who was the lucky buyer of the ASM 1 and AF 15??

 

According to the post auction report, JP was the purchaser of not only the Marvel #1 (at least it was the cheapest of the 3 high grades he's bought - I thought prices were supposed to go up as you try to corner the market), but he also purchased the Fantasy #15 and the Spider-man #1.

 

[Kevin Boyd]

Hey Arnold,

 

You have much to be proud of. Fan was definitely a mag that was a cut above it's contemporaries (Wizard, Hero). I still have my copies handy.

 

Kev

[Rob]

I think that most collectors who have gotten caught up in the whole ebay/CGC frenzy of recent years would be surprised at just how many raw books are still out there. I still laugh when people quote the CGC census like it is the definitive guide of how many high grade books exist.

 

That is an excellent point. And I think that is why Overstreet doesn't jack up prices for NM's. I recently read an article in Coinage magazine that mentioned how common date Morgan dollars in MS-65 (CGC 9.4) sold for thousands in the early 80's, when slabbing first started. But as time went on, the population reports showed that they were more common than people thought. Today those same coins are worth $67. I wonder if that will happen to CGC comics?

 

Rephrase: I wonder how soon that will happen to CGC comics?

[fantastic_four]

This is almost a ludicrous discussion

This isn't a ludicrous discussion if we focus on exactly what the thread title refers to--key NM comics. Yea, 99% of all comics aren't slabbed, but also, 99% of all comics aren't key nor are they in NM condition.

 

There are two key problems with Overstreet's refusal-to-date of altering the NM prices on Bronze, Silver, and Golden Age comics:

 

• The Overstreet advisors have historically reported prices for NM books that weren't actually in NM condition.
• The Overstreet advisors have historically reported prices for books without knowing whether they were restored or not.

The first of those two problems explains why the prices appeared to jump so suddenly when CGC came out; it's not so much that people started paying higher prices all of a sudden for nice books, it's just that there was all of a sudden more confidence in the fact that a book was truly IN high grade, so higher prices began to be paid more frequently than in the past. The second of those two problems also watered down NM prices in the past; it's hard to shell out significant dollars if there's a risk that you could lose a huge portion of that investment if the book turns out to be restored. This has watered down the amount people were willing to shell out for NM comics in the past; CGC has instilled a new confidence in the financial investment of comics.

 

Overstreet will be at a competitive disadvantage if it sticks with only focusing on "raw" comics for the NM bracket on Bronze, Silver, and Gold books. For me, the word "raw" on NM key books is a synonym for "possibly restored," and if it's EBay or dealers via mail order, it's also a synonym for "possibly overgraded." Krause and the Comics Buyer's Guide could gain ground if Overstreet doesn't change. The rumor is that they're gonna change it this guide, but we'll see. Either way, they could have trouble competing against Krause's upcoming reporting of CGC prices in the Standard Catalog. That will be the first real threat to the historical hegemony of Overstreet's guide; it's a real threat to them since it won't be easy or cheap to compete with Krause in that arena since they've been collecting E-Bay data for years.

 

I strongly feel that the people who think that raw books are inherently different than CGC books are mistaken in thinking that the slab alone explains the difference. Yes, they're different markets, but not to sellers who instill buyers' trust in their grading. There is a GREAT willingness amongst collectors to pay premium prices for raw NM books from sellers who include copious auction descriptions, high-resolution scans, great and friendly customer service, and consistently strong grading. Sellers such as amazingspider-fan and comic-keys get multiples of guide because people pay multiples of Overstreet for the perception of quality, not just the plastic. When it comes to Gold and Silver Age--or more generally, any comic worth more than $200 or so--the people who focus on the slab are concentrating on the wrong cause for the higher prices enjoyed by CGC comics.

[Peter_Parker59]

Fantastic Four,

 

I really appreciate your post, because it shows you're the one to have fully understood what I meant in my first post.

I was refering to key NM books, nothing else.

 

And I think Overstreet prices should not be 'only for raw books'.

Thay should be for books which are UNRESTORED and which ACTUALLY are in the condition for which the guide states a price.

 

CGC is a just the most reliable means to be sure that a book meets these two requirements.

 

 

[Kevin Boyd]

MOST (over 99%) of books in the marketplace are still not CGC graded and not checked for restoration.

 

Therefore, if you follow that line of thinking any book that isn't CGC graded is not checked for restoration.

 

Thusly, should Overstreet only list prices for CGC graded books in NM and consider all NM books not CGC graded suspect for restoration?

 

I think not. That's a buyer beware issue.

 

Nor should Overstreet up prices on CGC graded books for perceived quality because they have been checked for restoration. That's up to the buyer to decide whether or not the perceived value of the grading and restoration check offers the book additional value.

 

What Overstreet should do is come up with a reasonable pricing formula for books that are identified as NM+ in order to bring some stability to the upper market. (IMO the only way to really identify a NM+ is by having it professionally graded by CGC.) But how many times the price of a 9.4 is a 9.6 or a 9.8?

 

Overstreet, as the foremost pricing authority should be out there saying a 9.6 should be considered 4x the 9.4 price, or a 9.8 should be considered 10x the 9.4 price. Those are just examples, not what I think the formula should be.

 

Overstreet also cannot automatically bump up the prices on particular books because one copy of that issue sold for a particular price on e-bay or at a heritage auction.

 

For example, if the Overstreet price is $1000 and there are 20 copies sold, 17 "raw" at approximately guide price or less, but three copies in the same grade went for $1800, $2500 and $4000 respectively because they were slabbed and sold online or at an auction house, should Overstreet suddenly raise the price to $4000 Or $2500 Or even $1800 just because 3 guys were willing to pay more for the CGC guarantee of perceived quality?

 

If the question is "Is the lack of a restoration check keeping the book at $1000?" Perhaps, perhaps not. As FF said, your view of the dealer him/herself will color your opinion of whether or not the book could be restored. And Overstreet prices ARE for unrestored books. A restored VG is still a VG - you as the buyer must decide whether or not he restoration raises or lowers the price of the book.

 

Personally, I don't consider all unslabbed books as suspect for restoration. But I sure wouldn't pay over guide for an unslabbed book.

 

Kev

 

 

 

[clobberintime]

this discussion has been had several times on these boards and there is no easy answer. What is the real price of a true nm key? No one knows for sure. It depends on the economy, if a movie is coming out , if a movie flopped, if JP is buying up all the copies etc. Sometimes prices far exceed what the guide has listed and even what conventiuonal wisdom says and sometimes it is much less. There is really no fixed price for most of this high grade stuff. You can start with the guide but the only way to know it or get a feel for it is to get into it. And I like that way - keeps coin spec types and bandwagon jumpers at a disadvantage.

[blazingbob]

Statement - 'Thay should be for books which are UNRESTORED and which ACTUALLY are in the condition for which the guide states a price.

 

The above statement and the word "ACTUALLY" is very powerful. It has consumed more time and energy and explains a number of things. Unless someone else agrees with your grading a book a NM, it's really not a NM. In some cases a collector won't trust the grade unless CGC says so. So much power has been given to CGC that nobody trusts dealers anymore. For that matter and I've said this before what merit as collectors do you have to grade? Because I have gotten a lot of books from "collectors" that are just as badly graded. The new grading guide has come out, where is the course teaching everybody how to grade? Where is the certificate stating that you took a grading course and that I should trust your grading. There is NO course, it's your word against others that you read the book, and MORE importantly intrepreted it the same way as everybody else did.

 

Overstreet serves two masters - Dealers and Collectors. Bob walks a fine line between the two camps. On one hand collectors who own the books want to see them go up, on the other side the collectors who want to buy those books say the prices are too high? Dealers complain that we are paying too much for books that don't sell, and oh by the way there are a LOT of titles and issues that don't sell, for any price! And when we buy collections we often don't get the cherry picker option, please buy my good stuff and leave me with the [!@#%^&^]. It's more like, take the [!@#%^&^] and leave me the good stuff.

 

The pricing of CGC books and a guide that tracks these prices really needs to have a very wide selection of input. Dealers, EBay, Auctions and Private sale reports. Sure, Krause tracks Ebay, but I have NEVER gotten any request for pricing data from Maggie Thompson. Comiclink is an advisor but Josh is one of many dealers who sells CGC books. Heritage provides auction results (I'm always wondering Did it really sell?) as well as some of the others - Vault, AllStar, Maestro, Phil Weiss but is their input factored into Overstreet. Not Likely.

 

 

 

[Darthdiesel]

So much power has been given to CGC that nobody trusts dealers anymore.

 

ANYMORE??? Who ever trusted them in the first place?

 

For that matter and I've said this before what merit as collectors do you have to grade? Because I have gotten a lot of books from "collectors" that are just as badly graded.

 

Collector right, dealer wrong...dealer bad....

 

The new grading guide has come out, where is the course teaching everybody how to grade? Where is the certificate stating that you took a grading course and that I should trust your grading.

 

I say we get together on this. You teach the course and I borrow the DF certificate of Authenticity template, then we go to Target and pick up some plastic diploma frames and make a killing!

 

There is NO course, it's your word against others that you read the book, and MORE importantly intrepreted it the same way as everybody else did.

 

Funny how, in a hobby of BOOK collecting, the skill lacked by most is the literacy. I totally agree with your assessment as it seems folks that sell some of these comics either can't read or choose not to believe that thier judgement is so impaired that it would need the rest of the world to smoke two bricks of weed and chug a fifth of whiskey to see the same way they do when it comes to grading.

 

Bob, we should all chalk it up to the folks who couldn't (or more like, wouldn't) shell out $24.95 on it when it first came out. They're still waiting til 2004 when Amazon will drop it down to $20 Maybe we'll all get on the ball by then.

 

[vic6string]

The idea of there being a flat formula for CGC books is great, I would love to see it, but it will never happen, at least not the way the market is right now. Some CGC books regularly get 2 times 9.4 price for cgc 9.6, but some regularly get 10 times that. It depends on the title, the age of the book, the scarcity, the demand, and a million other factors. Is 9.6 the highest graded copy of the book, or are there 20 9.8s out there? Would you use the same multiple for a 9.8 copy of Spawn #1 as you would for a 9.8 copy of Marvel Spotlight 5? Of course not, that is Bronze vs Modern, you have to group by age...Would you use the same multiple on a 9.8 of Hulk 179 as you do for a Hulk 181? Of course not. So there goes the argument for grouping by age. Overstreet does a great job at what they do...they provide a checklist/database/price guide for most books on a yearly basis. By being yearly, they cannot cover trends like hot new books or books that have a quick resurgence due to movies or new storylines, and they can't cover prices for the super high grade market because it is just too volatile and there is not nearly enough action on a regular basis. If a book sells 100 copies in a year for an average of $50 in 9.4 shape, but also sells 5 CGC 9.6 copies at prices ranging from $150 to $400, they can't possibly give you a 9.6 price or multiple...the sample size is just too small.

[fantastic_four]

Personally, I don't consider all unslabbed books as suspect for restoration. But I sure wouldn't pay over guide for an unslabbed book.

Do you pay over guide for CGC-graded NM books? If so, why would you not pay more for the same NM book unslabbed?

 

Overstreet shouldn't track CGC and raw prices separately. That spreads the notion that there's something fundamentally different about a shiny-shiny slabbed book with the ultra-cool label up top, which isn't true--that's all hype. A true NM, unrestored book is a true NM, unrestored book, regardless of whether it's in a piece of plastic or not. Gold and Silver collectors aren't paying for the slab as much as they are for the quality, although I'm not sure I can say the same thing about non-key Bronze and especially Modern CGC collectors.

 

Overstreet needs to raise NM prices because discriminating collectors have always paid multiples of guide for true NM comics, and CGC has brought to the masses that same discriminating taste that was previously possessed by only a few people like Geppi, Wilson, Overstreet, Brulato, etc. Pedigrees used to be the mark of quality that brought the multiples, but thankfully CGC has shifted the focus away from which original owner comics came from back to where it should've been all along--the actual condition of the book. And CGC has shown the industry how much people are really willing to pay for these key NM comics when the risk of overgrading and restoration is subtracted from the formula. Before CGC, it was hard for Overstreet to tell whether more than a handful of people really would pay these high prices for quality books, but now, we know. They're VERY willing.

 

There's another guiding principle for these high key NM prices nobody has mentioned that's important to keep in mind--the impact of the Internet. When we talk of the CGC phenomenon, we're really talking about the Internet/CGC phenomenon. I don't think the multiples would be as high if it weren't for the Internet hooking sellers up with groups of buyers in the most efficient way in history. So you people who think that CGC on key NM books will come back down to earth--don't bet on it, at least until the comic back issue industry as a whole goes into the crapper. The Internet ain't going away, and key NM books move faster and for more money there than they do sitting on display walls in stores or on dealer racks at most conventions.

 

Overstreet knows all this--he writes about exactly this same stuff in his forewards--but like Zilla says, he's just being conservative. He may correct the prices this edition with the addition of the 9.0 grade to the Guide.

[Kevin Boyd]

I'm not saying that it is completely feasible to do, but I was under the impression that with the grading guide out and with statements made online that Overstreet was going to enter the arena of pricing guidelines for 9.6 & 9.8 books.

 

They certainly have a number of advisors who would be willing to provide some input on this evening if it is that it is just not possible.

 

The problem I find is that pricing multiples for higher graded books is entirely arbitrary by dealers. X dealer charges 4x, Y dealer charges 10x. E-bay and auction houses end more or less at what the customer is willing to pay, but if I walk up to dealer X and that's his price then I might walk away thinking he's trying to rip me off by trying to charge me $400 for a 9.6 book that is $100 in the guide for a 9.4, or I might think his price is fair when his next door neighbour dealer Y is asking for $1000 for a similar book in the same grade!

 

If the Overstreet guide were to say we recommend 2x for 9.6, 4x for 9.8 then at least the collectors will have some idea of what is considered a reasonable price for these books.

 

Kev

[fantastic_four]

You can start with the guide but the only way to know it or get a feel for it is to get into it. And I like that way - keeps coin spec types and bandwagon jumpers at a disadvantage.

It also keeps original owners at a disadvantage, and that's one of the main reasons to adjust the Guide sooner than later. Dealers who buy collections like the too-low Guide prices because it means they can pay lower prices to original owners. If you sold a full run of NM Golden, Silver, or Bronze books to a dealer at some fraction of Overstreet NM prices and later found out that the Guide is wrong and that they were really worth many multiples of the price you got, wouldn't you be pissed off? And whose fault is it--is it Overstreet's, do you blame CGC, or do you blame the entire comics industry? Where do you correct that problem? You correct it in the price guide, of course; that's the entire reason you buy the thing, to be guided on prices in a resonably accurate way. I don't find it reasonable to withhold from original owners for too many more years via the Guide the fact that people pay inflated prices for key NM books.

 

Yea, there are highs and lows, and yea, the economy affects buying...but those economic factors have been true throughout history, yet somehow we've all found it useful to create and use price guides during all those ups and downs. We don't need to ditch the Guide, we just need to update it now that slabs have shown us how much people are willing to pay for books when the risk is almost entirely removed from buying key NM books.

[fantastic_four]

I doubt Overstreet will get into pricing 9.6 and above anytime soon...where did you hear he may do that?

[blazingbob]

Buying NM collections at too low Guide prices?

 

First off, I have never purchased any collection that graded out NM. And first off, before all of you others jump in with the exceptions to the rule let's talk to a typical collection. High grade takes on the form of different things to different people.

 

Is VF high grade or NM?

Most, and I've seen a lot of NM collections grade out more like VF+.

 

Cost to slab a average size "High Grade Marvel/DC Collection" after doing a "Is it worth to get slabbed inital review.

Out of pocket expense to either the dealer or Seller = $28,500 <<<<

Economy Avg cost $24 * 500 books = $12,000

Standard $40 * 250 = $10,000

Express $65 * 100 = $6500

 

Time to get books back

Economy - 2-3 months means I can't sell any books

Standard - 3 weeks which is more like one month, I can't sell any books

Express - 5 Days which means I pay more to finally get to sell some books.

 

Out of these 850 I can definitely state that I will not get all 9.4's. In reality I will see a fairly diverse spread of 9.0's, 9.2's, 9.4's and a occassional 9.6 thrown in. This is my observation from submitting thousands of books. If I use the prescreen method add one month to getting the books back add the reject cost. All of this adds up to you the buyer or you the seller to get that CGC Value that some of you would like to see in the price guide.

 

As I've stated before many high grade collectors do not sell NM books for 50% guide. If you know someone who has a NM collection, can grade and will guarantee grades and unrestored CGC returns than I will pay them a lot more than those too low guide prices. On top of that I'll even give you a finders fee.