jhm Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Thanks for the conversation everyone! I feel like I should shed a little more light here... Part of what makes GoCollect different (aside from listing sales from the other grading company and allowing subscribers to flag bad sales) is that we provide the following extra information on each sale: Venue where it sold Auction/listing ID of the sale Sale format (exposing true best offer prices) Image(s) of the comic sold Ability to analyze specific venues (now hidden because it’s only eBay) I personally feel like that’s great info for the collector/investor. However, the venues don’t seem to be overly excited about sharing that much info. Aside from the images, that information can legally be organized and reported from our platform. However, it gets tricky when you begin scraping the content in an automated fashion (which yes, is quite simple to do). The only reason we don’t report in that way is out of respect for those venues. I would hope that the reason you don't do this is because it's illegal. Reporting on a sale is not illegal. It's news. We don't web scrape because it's a gray area. When I said we don't "report in that way" I was referring to reporting the news of the sales.... not web scraping. JJ-4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blazingbob Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Is it "news" when you charge a subscription for it? You are making money off the data that is collected. One of the reasons I have never been excited about reporting my sales to GPA is that a sale is business knowledge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blazingbob Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Of course a venue wouldn't be excited about where the book was sold. If they don't get good numbers that would come out in the venue comparisons which for me is a BIG deal. I would love to see the MYTH that auction houses get the most money for books diminished. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mschmidt Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Thanks for the conversation everyone! I feel like I should shed a little more light here... Part of what makes GoCollect different (aside from listing sales from the other grading company and allowing subscribers to flag bad sales) is that we provide the following extra information on each sale: Venue where it sold Auction/listing ID of the sale Sale format (exposing true best offer prices) Image(s) of the comic sold Ability to analyze specific venues (now hidden because it’s only eBay) I personally feel like that’s great info for the collector/investor. However, the venues don’t seem to be overly excited about sharing that much info. Aside from the images, that information can legally be organized and reported from our platform. However, it gets tricky when you begin scraping the content in an automated fashion (which yes, is quite simple to do). The only reason we don’t report in that way is out of respect for those venues. I would hope that the reason you don't do this is because it's illegal. Reporting on a sale is not illegal. It's news. We don't web scrape because it's a gray area. When I said we don't "report in that way" I was referring to reporting the news of the sales.... not web scraping. It's not "news" when your entire business model is built around charging people money to view this sales data. There's nothing gray about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sqeggs Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Of course a venue wouldn't be excited about where the book was sold. If they don't get good numbers that would come out in the venue comparisons which for me is a BIG deal. I would love to see the MYTH that auction houses get the most money for books diminished. Most money compared with .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sckao Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Of course a venue wouldn't be excited about where the book was sold. If they don't get good numbers that would come out in the venue comparisons which for me is a BIG deal. I would love to see the MYTH that auction houses get the most money for books diminished. Bob makes some great points about diminishing the competitive advantage of companies by releasing their private sales data. It's never in their best interest to do so unless you come up with a method or way to make it profitable for them (or the entire industry) and to also insulate them from potential harm. If someone KNEW that a business model had a higher and more consistent sell-through for a similar book, they'd consign or place their books that way obviously. I.E. If it came out that books sold consistently higher through a particular website or type of website (automated auction versus buy-it-now versus immediate email drops of new acquisitions, etc.), other parties would see an immediate drop in business. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blazingbob Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Which is why most of the auction houses plant the best sales numbers on their home page. I have always been a believer that the best seller of material is the one that can sell the common stuff, not just the flavor of the month book that anybody can sell. JJ-4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrocHntr Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 So how is it that GPA has deals in place with ComicConnect and Heritage for their sales data? I can understand why auction houses would want to closely guard/protect their transactional sales data, but they obviously trust GPA enough to provide some kind of permission/feed. I've toyed around with GoCollect and I absolutely like the interface and website flow better than GPA. I guess I always just assumed that not including the auction house sales data was by choice. Jeff, it's a shame that you can't find a way to reach similar agreements that GPA has. Competition drives innovation, I'd think. Good luck with finding a path to bring more sales data to your site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ttfitz Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Is it "news" when you charge a subscription for it? Sure - back in the old days we called them "newspapers" and "magazines". These days sites like washingtonpost.com and nytimes.com provide what is called "news" for a subscription (you can get a limited number of stories for free, but that doesn't really change the dynamic). JJ-4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron C. Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Right now, I love having both GoCollect and GPA. I seem to spend more time on both sites than a grown man probably should. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sterlingcomics Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 I can totally get behind the need for a service that allows one to view PUBLIC sales records where all can enter and compete and bid---auctions especially fit this model. I can also get totally behind a private business wanting to keep their OWN information private when a PRIVATE transaction is entered into. In my mind GPA and GoCollect are complementary. Let the marketplace decide. Or at least that's what we used to do. Nothing to see here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buttock Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Is it "news" when you charge a subscription for it? You are making money off the data that is collected. One of the reasons I have never been excited about reporting my sales to GPA is that a sale is business knowledge. I always thought Metropolis' database would be worth paying for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aman619 Posted July 17, 2016 Share Posted July 17, 2016 (edited) I think that a subscription to GPA or GoCollect is not merely for the sales results themselves, which we call all see for free on the sales sites themselves... But rather for the PROCESS by which we can search and view the sales data in a unique format, either GPA or GpCollect. We pay a subscription fee for the TOOL THAT SEARCHES AND PRESENTS THE SPECIFIC SaLES DATA WE ARE SEEKING... Not just the answer. How are these sites different from Overstreet reporting last years sales and charging a cover price? They re-publish data freely given by the dealers in most cases from sales reports, but also record-breaking sales that are known to have happened. Does a million dollar sale need to be "reported' to Overstreet if we all know it happened? These site are packaging the data. Reading the Wiki page linked earlier it doesn't seem clear that scraping is always illegal. Edited July 17, 2016 by aman619 JJ-4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lukesaurus Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 So 4 years later have things changed ? Which one do you prefer ? I'm looking for a subscription to either GPA or Go Collect . I used GoCollect and they do offer now sales from ebay and the 3 major auction houses for both CGC and CBCS . I have not used GPA so i am curious what do i get for the extra $5 ? From what i see the only track CGC books . Do they have more sales data than GPA ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidTheDavid Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 2 hours ago, Lukesaurus said: So 4 years later have things changed ? Which one do you prefer ? I'm looking for a subscription to either GPA or Go Collect . I used GoCollect and they do offer now sales from ebay and the 3 major auction houses for both CGC and CBCS . I have not used GPA so i am curious what do i get for the extra $5 ? From what i see the only track CGC books . Do they have more sales data than GPA ? There has been a lot of frustration over changes to the GPA site. See Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thunsicker Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 (edited) @jhm Speaking of changing in 4 years... Can you let us know what sources of data GoCollect uses now? You may have in other threads, but I don’t remember seeing it, and couldn’t find it on your site. Above he says three major auction houses. Which I assume would be Heritage, Comiclink, and Comicconnect, do you have unfettered access to the Comiclink data? Or is it the cherry picked data they offered George? Edited February 25, 2020 by thunsicker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lukesaurus Posted February 26, 2020 Share Posted February 26, 2020 20 hours ago, DavidTheDavid said: There has been a lot of frustration over changes to the GPA site. See i have read that thread but it doesn't answer my questions . Does GPA have more transactions than Go Collect ? Or other special features ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaard Posted February 26, 2020 Share Posted February 26, 2020 I can only comment on my experience. GC is great for SA thru MA, if looking up a book that isn't too uncommon. If needing sales data on GA (or uncommon books) it's kind of hit-n-miss. I do think it's very beneficial that GC supplies pictures ... make things a lot easier for me. Lukesaurus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aman619 Posted February 27, 2020 Share Posted February 27, 2020 good resource for matching comics by using the pics... but too many modern books have no FMV. they should fill these gaps if they want to run a price guide! JJ-4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaard Posted February 27, 2020 Share Posted February 27, 2020 2 hours ago, Aman619 said: good resource for matching comics by using the pics... but too many modern books have no FMV. they should fill these gaps if they want to run a price guide! Agreed. Way too many uses of the word pending. JJ-4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
