Price Per Point is Not a Thing...for Golden Age 5 5

[Robot Man]

1 hour ago, Hudson said:

Join the boat (the boat I am in).  I can't tell you how many of these I passed on thinking another would come along.  I think the ship sailed on this one for me as well.

The one that really kills me was a few years ago at WonderCon a smaller seller had a fair copy missing the centerfold which is common with this book. A decent cover though. He wanted $1,200 for it. I hemmed and hawed, gave it back. I came to my senses a couple minutes later and went back. He was selling it to Ritchie Munchin who trying to get a better price was calling it "half a book". The seller came down to $1,000 and Ritchie bought it. Still just makes me sick...

[Ricksneatstuff]

1 hour ago, skypinkblu said:

Sometimes I just don't want my neighbors to know what i'm spending;) or I want to change an address. Sometimes I get pms asking for time payments. It varies, we need a check list;)

I would say around half the sold via pm sales I do don’t have a lower price than the asking. It is just a privacy issue or a payment arrangement, etc or sometimes just a question about the book but The PM is mentioned in the Take It.  

[ThothAmon]

3 minutes ago, Ricksneatstuff said:

I would say around half the sold via pm sales I do don’t have a lower price than the asking. It is just a privacy issue or a payment arrangement, etc or sometimes just a question about the book but The PM is mentioned in the Take It.  

I usually pay Rick more than he’s asking in my pm’s. 

[Zolnerowich]

1 hour ago, sacentaur said:

It can be quite helpful when prices remain visible after a transaction, but even then we often see "I'll take it per PM". To me, this basically invalidates the asking price - was a trade negotiated via PM, was a discount given via PM, were other extenuating circumstances extended via PM, etc.?

Of course both buyer and seller are entitled to their privacy, and it's good when a deal is struck via PM, but as a reference tool such privately negotiated transactions cannot be used as a reference tool.

#1

[Sqeggs]

3 hours ago, BuscemasAvengers said:

The discussion here has been excellent for both buyers and sellers.  Assurance seems to be the common theme: we want to be able to determine with as much certainty as possible what the price point is for a purchase or sale.  There has to be some sort of baseline data to begin the conversation and, as a minimum, most of us can access that from different sources.  The 'scarcity" thing can be tricky.  The Census can lead us to believe a book is scarce for the simple fact that only a small number of them have been submitted for slabbing.  The reality might be quite different.  Apart from shilling and other corrupt practices which inflate market value, I would hope true sales data of scarce or readily available books is a decent place to start.  Discovering trends in GA books: now there's an art!  Why is it that a genre like GGA books are now collectable? You see it at Heritage, with a higher presence of GGA books in their weekly auctions.  Is the interest 'contrived', or is there something else going on?

I think it's just part of the trend that has led more collectors to seek out truly htf books.  As has pointed out many times, with enough dough you could buy complete collections of SA and later books in an afternoon. Some GA books only come around once every few years.

A lot of GGA is very hard to impossible.  Try putting together the Dizzy Dames run, to choose one of many examples.

[Zolnerowich]

12 minutes ago, Ricksneatstuff said:

I would say around half the sold via pm sales I do don’t have a lower price than the asking. It is just a privacy issue or a payment arrangement, etc or sometimes just a question about the book but The PM is mentioned in the Take It.  

Um, I think this implies that half of your pm sales DO have a lower price than the asking. 

[Ricksneatstuff]

1 minute ago, Zolnerowich said:

Um, I think this implies that half of your pm sales DO have a lower price than the asking. 

Sure. People pm to try to work a deal plenty.  

[Zolnerowich]

12 minutes ago, Ricksneatstuff said:

Sure. People pm to try to work a deal plenty.  

 I should pm you more often!

[AJD]

At the risk of being more of a geek than anyone here (and that's setting the bar pretty high), any curve can be approximated by a straight line if you don't go too far. The 'price per point' will sorta kinda work if the curve is straightish. Here's a curve I interpolated from the Overstreet relative values back when I was trying to work out prices for the 'in between' grades.

As others have said, up until about 6.0 a straight line fit is OK. After that not so much.

[G.A.tor]

59 minutes ago, AJD said:

At the risk of being more of a geek than anyone here (and that's setting the bar pretty high), any curve can be approximated by a straight line if you don't go too far. The 'price per point' will sorta kinda work if the curve is straightish. Here's a curve I interpolated from the Overstreet relative values back when I was trying to work out prices for the 'in between' grades.

As others have said, up until about 6.0 a straight line fit is OK. After that not so much.

I really envisioned it working to about 5.0

[ThothAmon]

1 hour ago, Zolnerowich said:

 I should pm you more often!

Be careful though as so many books don't last but an instant.  My favorite deal with Rick was when I bought one of the books in his tagline and then five months later he bought it back from me for less than he'd sold it for.  And yet he's so nice I still feel good about the deal. 

[Junkdrawer]

I’m almost positive that anyone who has ever priced a 7.0 has taken the prices of the 8.0 and 6.0 and came up somewhere in the middle. No rocket science or anyone taking credit for that formula 

[jhutton2]

Yeah, when you have been looking for a book for a while, sometimes you need to jump on it when it comes available, particularly for many GA titles.  SA and BA you can usually find another pretty quickly for similar pricing assuming it was not a crazy inexpensive deal being offered.

[ThothAmon]

9 minutes ago, Junkdrawer said:

I’m almost positive that anyone who has ever priced a 7.0 has taken the prices of the 8.0 and 6.0 and came up somewhere in the middle. No rocket science or anyone taking credit for that formula 

Wouldn't work so well for Archie 50.  

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Archie-Comics-50-the-Classic-Betty-GGA-cover-FN-cond-/263588006894?autorefresh=true

[G.A.tor]

12 minutes ago, Junkdrawer said:

I’m almost positive that anyone who has ever priced a 7.0 has taken the prices of the 8.0 and 6.0 and came up somewhere in the middle. No rocket science or anyone taking credit for that formula 

That’s old school. I don’t think (admittedly haven’t analyzed ) that formula works these days in general, does it?

[jhutton2]

1 minute ago, G.A.tor said:

That’s old school. I don’t think (admittedly haven’t analyzed ) that formula works these days in general, does it?

Pricing can get even more challenging to calculate when you have even less data points or conversely anything that was even close sold 6 or 7 years ago?   Also when you have the highest graded copy and everything else is at least one full grade away from your copy.   Nice position to be in, but pricing can be a challenge unless you send it off to auction and take your chances and let the buying comic public decide.

 

[Junkdrawer]

41 minutes ago, G.A.tor said:

That’s old school. I don’t think (admittedly haven’t analyzed ) that formula works these days in general, does it?

Pricing books certainly can be a challenge.  Anyone can take a stack of books and throw them in a bin and deem them dollar books. Someone who looks to maximize will utilize a guide of some sort for the common but cheap books to arrive at a prices for their retail outlet. The more Expensive and popular have more resources for price research. However it’s the not so frequently sold books that require a bit of a finger on the pulse to tweak the right number. Let’s face it, GPA is compromised of prices derived from predominantly Auctions. Auctions can produce some of the most outrageous and yet some of the incredible bargains. To say GPA is accurate is nonsensical. 

[Ricksneatstuff]

Most of the best stuff I’ve had that I’ve bought and sold have been private deals for books that have little to no GPA data in the last 8-10 years and obviously these sales don’t contribute to any sense of GPA. I get 3 or 4 requests a month for Cinderella Love 25- That book has virtually no comparables. What we just saw with Seven Seas 4 with a $13k 6.5 copy shows there is a pent up demand with limited supply.  If it were out there what some books trade hands for (even in my little GGA niche world) it would be surprising to many.  I can only imagine what is happening with Centaurs, Fox, Timely and early DC. 

All that was just to say with books that trade as rarely as many of these there is really no way to gauge pricing other than auction I guess. 

[G.A.tor]

37 minutes ago, Junkdrawer said:

Pricing books certainly can be a challenge.  Anyone can take a stack of books and throw them in a bin and deem them dollar books. Someone who looks to maximize will utilize a guide of some sort for the common but cheap books to arrive at a prices for their retail outlet. The more Expensive and popular have more resources for price research. However it’s the not so frequently sold books that require a bit of a finger on the pulse to tweak the right number. Let’s face it, GPA is compromised of prices derived from predominantly Auctions. Auctions can produce some of the most outrageous and yet some of the incredible bargains. To say GPA is accurate is nonsensical. 

Couldn’t agree more 

[Primetime]

12 hours ago, G.A.tor said:

I started the whole “price per Cgc point” as an easy tool to allow me to know when I should buy a SA or BA key book (I didn’t use gpa back then, so it was my cheat sheet method).  

IE if I knew I could sell a Hulk 1 at $x per grade point then it was easy for me to know when to buy, etc

i never used my formula for GA (at least not back then) because there were just too many variables 

 

the entire ppp model that has since grown is not linear by any means 

it generally doesn’t work on entry level or scarce books 

i used it for 2.0 to 5.0 books where the pricing seemed to be linear/arithmetic vs higher grades which are more exponential in nature as the grade improves. 

But the model does work and works well when properly applied

 

Agreed and I believe I remember you having a lengthy conversation with Bob Overstreet at SDCC one year trying to convince him to adjust the guide to reflect a “pp CGC point” at least for low to mid grade tiers.