Are prices still climbing or have they eased up a bit??? 43 43

[F For Fake]

On 5/15/2024 at 4:17 PM, Q.N.S. said:

the book is a GUIDE. It does not present prices chisled in stone. When it lists a book at its cover price, that is meant to be interpreted as "this book has not appreciated in value". when the book has not appreciated in value, it means you get what you can for it. they can't list some books at $2 and others at $1, or 50 cents, all they should do is identify which volumes have not appreciated. 

"Meant to be interpreted" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, as there are a lot of folks throughout time who picked up an Overstreet to price their books, and took what they saw written there to be the exact value. I've bought and sold comics long enough to realize that Overstreet is just another tool in pricing (though one I haven't used in years.) But to the average reader, what they see in the guide is what the book is worth, period. I always enjoyed reading the market reports, and looking at the galleries, in the OSPG. As a comic lover, it's always fun to leaf through them. But as an actual guide, they've never proven valuable to me. YMMV.

[thehumantorch]

On 5/15/2024 at 2:17 PM, Q.N.S. said:

the book is a GUIDE. It does not present prices chisled in stone. When it lists a book at its cover price, that is meant to be interpreted as "this book has not appreciated in value". when the book has not appreciated in value, it means you get what you can for it. they can't list some books at $2 and others at $1, or 50 cents, all they should do is identify which volumes have not appreciated. 

I love Overstreet.  I have pretty well all of them from issue #2 to present.  I'm sure most of us older collectors can remember it as the most important research and pricing tool back in the day. 

But it's data takes 2 years to collate and publish and that just can't compete with instantaneous real time pricing tools like go collect, heritage auctions, GPAnalysis, ebay. key collector etc.  Especially when prices are volatile and changing constantly.  And of course Overstreet ignores the super high grade type of books.  You can't just accurately predict a 9.8 or 9.6 value based on Overstreet's NM price.

And as for books in Overstreet that are valued at cover.  I'm okay with that.  Maybe you can get $2 or $3 for that book or maybe you can't get anything for that book but essentially they ain't worth much.

We can all price and value our books anyway we like but accurate, current, pricing is superior to 2 year old data published in a book format.  

[Q.N.S.]

On 5/15/2024 at 4:27 PM, F For Fake said:

"Meant to be interpreted" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, as there are a lot of folks throughout time who picked up an Overstreet to price their books, and took what they saw written there to be the exact value. I've bought and sold comics long enough to realize that Overstreet is just another tool in pricing (though one I haven't used in years.) But to the average reader, what they see in the guide is what the book is worth, period. I always enjoyed reading the market reports, and looking at the galleries, in the OSPG. As a comic lover, it's always fun to leaf through them. But as an actual guide, they've never proven valuable to me. YMMV.

Well then they won't be around for long and it explains in every volume how it is to be used. If they don't know that the cover price listings are dog books that have not appreciated then I don't know how they got into the secondary and teritary street markets, but at least they have an actual guide, from which haggling can begin, which is better than nothing. They will lower their prices if they don't sell. 

I suppose for books with enough volume GPA and GC and Heritage (big books) are valid to the extent that they show sales data online, if there is enough of it to establish a reasonable value. So it is indeed a tool like Robot Man said, but it can't be the only tool, and for many books it is worthless. 

Consider the variation of prices on Ebay. They reflect all sorts of factors. Dependability and reputation of the seller, the time at which an auction ended, how many people were there, whether an auction slipped through the cracks or got bid up... they use algos also. Their algo is now pushing books higher with more bids, as if that's where you should gravitate. There will always be hamburgers out there. When they throw up a golden age western listing for $50 for .99c ending at 1pm Monday I'll be there. But to think that bears on the actual value of the book is not the truth. Same as when the kids were pushing up prices to insane levels, that's a game, not value. This is how they think because the whole market in stocks and everything has spun off the axles of sanity and fundamental, time-tested and sane methods of asset evaluation which don't depend on what someone will pay or not pay, but on inherent properties thereof.

Edited May 15 by Q.N.S.

[Stefan_W]

On 5/15/2024 at 4:32 PM, thehumantorch said:

I love Overstreet.  I have pretty well all of them from issue #2 to present.  I'm sure most of us older collectors can remember it as the most important research and pricing tool back in the day. 

But it's data takes 2 years to collate and publish and that just can't compete with instantaneous real time pricing tools like go collect, heritage auctions, GPAnalysis, ebay. key collector etc.  Especially when prices are volatile and changing constantly.  And of course Overstreet ignores the super high grade type of books.  You can't just accurately predict a 9.8 or 9.6 value based on Overstreet's NM price.

And as for books in Overstreet that are valued at cover.  I'm okay with that.  Maybe you can get $2 or $3 for that book or maybe you can't get anything for that book but essentially they ain't worth much.

We can all price and value our books anyway we like but accurate, current, pricing is superior to 2 year old data published in a book format.  

I think current data is extremely valuable, but online pricing tools have hidden flaws that people who are not into comics all that much can easily miss. For example, I had a person contact me a couple of days ago trying to sell his collection that he bought mostly in the 90s. He spent hours inputting all of his books into one of those aps, and voila! A valuation of over $3500 came out the other end. However, what these tools do not tell you is low value books are essentially dollar bin books and some of the titles listed for $3 or so by such guides are near unsellable and valueless. I estimate that I could have pulled $1500 out of that collection had I bought it, and that is a generous estimate. The guy was offended when I suggested the pricing was not realistic and decided to trust the ap instead, because the Internet never lies I guess. 

A similar flaw may exist in physical price guides, but I dont remember people buying those just as they are selling their comics. I wasnt really buying collections back in the day so maybe I am out to lunch here, but I think online aps draw a different and more transitory type of crowd than online price guides did in their heyday. 

Edited May 15 by Stefan_W

[jimjum12]

On 5/15/2024 at 5:00 PM, Stefan_W said:

I think current data is extremely valuable, but online pricing tools have hidden flaws that people who are not into comics all that much can easily miss. For example, I had a person contact me a couple of days ago trying to sell his collection that he bought mostly in the 90s. He spent hours inputting all of his books into one of those aps, and voila! A valuation of over $3500 came out the other end. However, what these tools do not tell you is low value books are essentially dollar bin books and some of the titles listed for $3 or so by such guides are near unsellable and valueless. I estimate that I could have pulled $1500 out of that collection had I bought it, and that is a generous estimate. The guy was offended when I suggested the pricing was not up to par and decided to trust the ap instead, because the Internet never lies I guess. 

A similar flaw may exist in physical price guides, but I dont remember people buying those just as they are selling their comics. I wasnt really buying collections back in the day so maybe I am out to lunch here, but I think online aps draw a different and more transitory type of crowd than online price guides did in their heyday. 

There is no easy cliff notes avenue to comic dealing success. Time in the trenches, as you already know, as well as a dependable clientele that you are familiar with is ALL there is. If you go the auction route, you're basically just gambling. I often see cool books, at reasonable prices, that my inner collector would LOVE to have in inventory, until I ask myself Magic Question #1, "Who am I going to sell this to?" You'll go bankrupt waiting for a "new" customer trying to bail you out. Comic success is very case specific, it's usually not falling over backwards into the moolah. People say only keys sell, but I seem to have my best luck with cool affordable run fillers. Sure, you can make your month with one sale using keys only, but you can also go a couple months without a profitable sale, cannibalizing your inventory to keep the lights on. It's not the type of dynamic that lends itself to a monthly press release. I still love the damn things though. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[the blob]

On 5/15/2024 at 3:17 PM, Q.N.S. said:

But the reasons are because of Covid boom. Before this, you the retailer only would knock off 10-30%. There are cases where nothing is marked off, or at least there used to be in HTF's and rare and as market conditions demand. So, I don't blame Overstreet. Noise is just noise. Comics are not supposed to go up and down so much in the course of one year. If they do, we have insufficient methods of tracking them. Cars don't sell for Kelly Blue Book, or even new ones for list price. It used to be that LCS would sell 50-80% price consistently of guide which means they buy for 25-40% of guide unless they know there will be a buyer, it can go higher in those cases. 

Overstreet's prices will settle off and I'd be more interested in a 2024 or 2025 volume than in a 2020-2023 volume. Just because an auction was timed poorly or timed perfectly or hit a book when it was on movie/tv show highs doesn't mean the book is really worth that. It only means someone was willing to pay that much or accept that low in exchange, but it's not the actual value. So much of the comic market is still not data-logged online. This is why I trust the vast network of dealers who contribute to Overstreet. I believe not backing Overstreet's mandate to stay premier and legitimate is a major mistake. 

My old LCS used to regularly give me 50% off guide on almost anything in the store, granted, most of his higher grade books were already gone by then because he had another group of customers that he didn't offer 50% to, but did offer 15-20% off for VF+ and better books. Understood with the offer would be that I would be spending at least $100, which was real $ 25 years ago.

[Bookery]

On 5/15/2024 at 3:52 PM, F For Fake said:

 

Is it still true that Overstreet won't value a book at anything below cover price? I haven't bought one for years, but that was always the biggest issue for me. Prospective sellers would actually bother to look at a guide, and see that their drek books were worth $2-3 each or whatever; then I'd have to tell them that not only is the book not worth that full cover price, but it is, in fact, worthless. So many comics are literally not worth the paper they're printed on. Starting the value as a baseline of "It's worth at least cover price" has always been wrongheaded.  If they no longer do things that way, I retract my grumpiness.

One of the biggest problems with Overstreet is that they list the drek at all.  They are by no means a comprehensive checklist... there are plenty of titles missing... so why list so much modern bin-books?  If you want an updating checklist, there's the Grand Comic Book Database.  Because so much garbage (price-wise, I'm not making content judgments here) the type is now almost microscopically small.  If you're publishing a collector's price guide, you probably shouldn't be including anything less than $10 value (imagine if Holroyd's paperback guide tried to include everything up to last month's new James Patterson releases!).  This would allow for more readable print, also for inclusion of significant variants (which are mostly absent now), and a far more efficient book for the collector.  If I'm a collector, especially a new one, I don't need a list of 97 Spider-man titles that sell for cover or less,  I need a breakdown of the 8 or 10 titles that have issues of above-average value.

[Rip]

The Overstreet has been massively off as long as I can remember collecting comics even back in the 80's and 90's.

I used to use the CBM and enter as many telephone auctions as I could to find out "real" pricing.
After winning a few here and there I would modify a want list often offering 5-30 times guide for various golden age books.
At the same time I knew many dealers that would use the Overstreet as a bible and I'd buy golden age books from them as much as I could. 
On rare occasion I still find collectors pricing their books using Overstreet.

The most valuable things in the Overstreet are the Dealers report, and the various dealer ads.

Edited Wednesday at 05:58 PM by Rip

[thehumantorch]

On 5/15/2024 at 3:00 PM, Stefan_W said:

I think current data is extremely valuable, but online pricing tools have hidden flaws that people who are not into comics all that much can easily miss. For example, I had a person contact me a couple of days ago trying to sell his collection that he bought mostly in the 90s. He spent hours inputting all of his books into one of those aps, and voila! A valuation of over $3500 came out the other end. However, what these tools do not tell you is low value books are essentially dollar bin books and some of the titles listed for $3 or so by such guides are near unsellable and valueless. I estimate that I could have pulled $1500 out of that collection had I bought it, and that is a generous estimate. The guy was offended when I suggested the pricing was not realistic and decided to trust the ap instead, because the Internet never lies I guess. 

A similar flaw may exist in physical price guides, but I dont remember people buying those just as they are selling their comics. I wasnt really buying collections back in the day so maybe I am out to lunch here, but I think online aps draw a different and more transitory type of crowd than online price guides did in their heyday. 

Absolutely.  It's tough to explain that you'd pay 10 cents per book when the App says they're worth $3 each.  If you'd even make an offer on that kind of bulk.  I always try to explain that there are winners and losers and most books have little value and that's somewhat compensated by the winners.  The ASM 300 is very valuable but there's a hundred other books published around the same time that have little demand or value. 

 

[kimik]

On 5/15/2024 at 4:32 PM, thehumantorch said:

Absolutely.  It's tough to explain that you'd pay 10 cents per book when the App says they're worth $3 each.  If you'd even make an offer on that kind of bulk.  I always try to explain that there are winners and losers and most books have little value and that's somewhat compensated by the winners.  The ASM 300 is very valuable but there's a hundred other books published around the same time that have little demand or value. 

 

That's because you only offer 10 cents on ASM 300s, Hulk 181s, AF 15s, etc..........

[LordRahl]

On 5/15/2024 at 12:17 PM, Q.N.S. said:

But the reasons are because of Covid boom. Before this, you the retailer only would knock off 10-30%. There are cases where nothing is marked off, or at least there used to be in HTF's and rare and as market conditions demand. So, I don't blame Overstreet. Noise is just noise. Comics are not supposed to go up and down so much in the course of one year. If they do, we have insufficient methods of tracking them. Cars don't sell for Kelly Blue Book, or even new ones for list price. It used to be that LCS would sell 50-80% price consistently of guide which means they buy for 25-40% of guide unless they know there will be a buyer, it can go higher in those cases. 

Overstreet's prices will settle off and I'd be more interested in a 2024 or 2025 volume than in a 2020-2023 volume. Just because an auction was timed poorly or timed perfectly or hit a book when it was on movie/tv show highs doesn't mean the book is really worth that. It only means someone was willing to pay that much or accept that low in exchange, but it's not the actual value. So much of the comic market is still not data-logged online. This is why I trust the vast network of dealers who contribute to Overstreet. I believe not backing Overstreet's mandate to stay premier and legitimate is a major mistake. 

No. They aren't. Overstreet was irrelevant loooong before the pandemic. The reality of it is, any guide, be it OS, GPA, Ebay sold listings, whatever, is just a guide and people that aren't dealing in comics regularly (whether selling or buying) do not understand how to value comics. Also, there is no such thing as "actual value" of a comic. This is a myth, a fabrication, a puff of smoke. 

[Stefan_W]

On 5/15/2024 at 6:32 PM, thehumantorch said:

Absolutely.  It's tough to explain that you'd pay 10 cents per book when the App says they're worth $3 each.  If you'd even make an offer on that kind of bulk.  I always try to explain that there are winners and losers and most books have little value and that's somewhat compensated by the winners.  The ASM 300 is very valuable but there's a hundred other books published around the same time that have little demand or value. 

 

I tell people that comics are like any other collectable. Most are not worth very much but a select few are. 

[thehumantorch]

On 5/15/2024 at 5:22 PM, kimik said:

That's because you only offer 10 cents on ASM 300s, Hulk 181s, AF 15s, etc..........

I wish.

[Chip Cataldo]

On 5/15/2024 at 3:17 PM, Q.N.S. said:

I believe not backing Overstreet's mandate to stay premier and legitimate is a major mistake. 

"Not backing" Overstreet isn't what did it in...technology did. The Internet is the new Overstreet.

Taking recent auction & buy-it-now results on eBay and averaging them out over the 90 day sold window is a far better guide than Overstreet, and especially so now that eBay is offering a 3-year research tool on pricing.

Overstreet is the old man with a paper coupon. While it's fun to look through and read, the old guide has outlived its usefulness.

[Ryan.]

On 5/15/2024 at 7:22 PM, LordRahl said:

Also, there is no such thing as "actual value" of a comic. This is a myth, a fabrication, a puff of smoke. 

[october]

On 5/15/2024 at 4:41 PM, Bookery said:

One of the biggest problems with Overstreet is that they list the drek at all.  They are by no means a comprehensive checklist... there are plenty of titles missing... so why list so much modern bin-books?  If you want an updating checklist, there's the Grand Comic Book Database.  Because so much garbage (price-wise, I'm not making content judgments here) the type is now almost microscopically small.  If you're publishing a collector's price guide, you probably shouldn't be including anything less than $10 value (imagine if Holroyd's paperback guide tried to include everything up to last month's new James Patterson releases!).  This would allow for more readable print, also for inclusion of significant variants (which are mostly absent now), and a far more efficient book for the collector.  If I'm a collector, especially a new one, I don't need a list of 97 Spider-man titles that sell for cover or less,  I need a breakdown of the 8 or 10 titles that have issues of above-average value.

Good idea. With less content they could also make more of an effort to be at least somewhat correct on the (important) valuations that are left. Their assessments on tons of issues are so laughably awful it's borderline malpractice. 

[Q.N.S.]

On 5/16/2024 at 11:15 AM, Chip Cataldo said:

"Not backing" Overstreet isn't what did it in...technology did. The Internet is the new Overstreet.

Taking recent auction & buy-it-now results on eBay and averaging them out over the 90 day sold window is a far better guide than Overstreet, and especially so now that eBay is offering a 3-year research tool on pricing.

Overstreet is the old man with a paper coupon. While it's fun to look through and read, the old guide has outlived its usefulness.

they are getting with the times and will catch up. and ebay is just a bunch of whack-a-moles. 

https://www.overstreetaccess.com/

Edited May 16 by Q.N.S.

[Q.N.S.]

On 5/15/2024 at 7:22 PM, LordRahl said:

No. They aren't. Overstreet was irrelevant loooong before the pandemic. The reality of it is, any guide, be it OS, GPA, Ebay sold listings, whatever, is just a guide and people that aren't dealing in comics regularly (whether selling or buying) do not understand how to value comics. Also, there is no such thing as "actual value" of a comic. This is a myth, a fabrication, a puff of smoke. 

Seriously, what is this supposed to mean? You're blasting any and all attempts to assign value to a collectible. 

A bit extreme, I would say... 

[ThothAmon]

On 5/15/2024 at 4:59 PM, Q.N.S. said:

Well then they won't be around for long

I read it like spelling bird nerds read the dictionary until issue 32 or so.  Market reports were savored. Loved reading the ads also. The biggest thing was studying comic book titles and dreaming big. 

[Chip Cataldo]

On 5/16/2024 at 3:01 PM, Q.N.S. said:

they are getting with the times and will catch up. and ebay is just a bunch of whack-a-moles. 

https://www.overstreetaccess.com/

No, it's not. It's not for legitimate sales and sellers, and the volume of sales dismisses the amateur garbage auction results and pie-in-the-sky price asks.

Overstreet getting with the times? Will catch up? They had their shot and missed. They're in the rear-view now.

Dylan was an Overstreet advisor, was he not? That's whack-a-mole-ish, yes?