GPA vs. GoCollect 1 1

[ConcreteMob181]

I am sure this question has been asked before but I would be interested in any opinions on which is the “better” subscription and why? Much thanks!

[revat]

Well gpa is more commonly used by the industry for slabbed books

[William-James88]

GPA is the main one used by industry. No dufferent than asking which company is better for slabbing books, CGC or CBCS. 

If your abswer to that is CGC, then the answer to your question is GPA

[FFB]

I have used GPAnalysis almost since the very beginning when George first launched the site.  It is the best, most user-friendly, easiest site to use if you are trying to look up a single CGC graded issue and get accurate information about sales occurring on the specific venues that GPA reports  (but for some reason, Comiclink sales are not reported).  

Early this year, I started using GoCollect when comic shops opened back up again.  For me, it was a game changer in a couple of respects.  I loved the fact that you could pull up an entire series by title and look at the whole list of issues with the GoCollect-provided FMV next to the issue number.  So, if you were looking for the FMV of multiple issues within a given title, you had that at a glance on a single screen.    Very helpful when digging through back issue bins, and not something you can do on GPA.   Plus, ComicLink sales were reported on GoCollect, which was another huge plus.   Clicking deeper into any specific issue provided a direct link to the actual listing where the book sold, in most cases with detailed, archived scans of the books sold. 

On top of that, they had excellent "Hottest Comics" lists for Silver Age, Bronze Age, Copper Age, Modern Age, and "New" books, with books listed in order based on how many copies were selling in the marketplace, and with FMVs listed next to each issue for reference.  

Wonderful!  Innovative!  Useful!    

The only real downsides to GoCollect were:

(1) sometimes a key book with one or more recent sales would not have an FMV reported (it would be listed as "pending"), which could make you miss something while digging through bins.  But the top level series listing of issues (what I called the "Price Guide View" screen that I looked at while digging through back issue bins) also showed how many sales of each issue were reported in GoCollect.  So, if you saw "Pending" for a single issue's FMV but also saw 10+ sales, you could click on that issue to drill down a level of detail and see what the book was selling for in specific instances without too much trouble, and then click back once to be back where you were.  Sometimes, the fact that a specific issue had many more sales than its surrounding issues could signal that it was a hidden key or a hot book, even though the FMV was reported as "Pending."   

(2) sometimes the FMVs on GoCollect made absolutely no sense.  A 9.8 FMV on a book might be $120, even though when you drilled down one level into the sales data, the actual sales of the book showed that it was consistently selling for more than double what the FMV was reporting over multiple sales and over a multi-month period.  Or even more than double, sometimes.  

Other times, the FMV would show a really high 9.8 value with zero 9.8 sales being reported, and when you drilled down, it appeared as though the site was extrapolating the 9.8 FMV based on a single sale of a CGC 9.6 within the last year (sometimes longer) of the same issue for a price that was somewhere around 40-70% less than the 9.8 FMV being reported on GoCollect.  Or sometimes the recent 9.8 sales were there, but simply did not support the high FMV that GoCollect was placing on that issue.  Not as a high price paid, not as an average, not at all.  

These anomalies made it hard to trust the GoCollect FMV methodology, which isn't explained anywhere in the first place.  BUT, the ability to scan through back issue bins and pull hot issues and keys out based on scanning the series list was valuable enough in its own right that it was more than worth it for me to plunk down $90 for an annual Pro subscription.  

(3) As the year wore on, it seemed like GoCollect was getting slower and slower to report new sales data.  Many clearly relevant sales from GoCollect's normal reporting sales venues were just omitted entirely without any reason given.  

 

 

And then two days ago (October 13), GoCollect killed its legacy site in favor of its "new and improved" site.  

Gone is the ability to view a specific comic book series in a list by issue, with FMV alongside.  (What I thought of as the "Price Guide" view, because that's how price guides look - issue # and price, issue # and price, rinse and repeat for the entire series.)  They simply removed this functionality and did not replace it with anything else.    Think about it - they got rid of the one thing that allowed you to use their site as a mobile price guide.  

Gone is the ability to look at the Hottest Comics lists with FMV next to each book.  The Hottest Comics lists are still there, but they just made the covers bigger on each listing and took away the FMV information.  Like I needed a bigger picture of ASM #361 to know what the ing cover looks like, and like I would trade that in exchange for getting rid of the FMV data.    What used to be perhaps the best, most timely "market report" one could imagine was rendered clunkier, less intuitive, and harder to navigate.    

These were the single most valuable things about GoCollect and as of two days ago, they are just gone.  No explanation given at all.  Gone.  

What was an extremely useful tool is now almost completely useless unless I am trying to look up a single issue.  Which is what I already used GPA for in the first place, and GPA's sales data is more complete than GoCollect's - except for the ComicLink thing.  But for the sites that it does report, GPA does not miss very many sales on the venues from which it does report data.  Meanwhile, the quality of GoCollect's reporting data has consistently eroded all year long to the point where it just isn't reliable any more.  The fact that GoCollect reports ComicLink sales makes no difference when sales information isn't being updated on GoCollect from any of its reporting sales sites.  

I tried using GoCollect in a comic shop yesterday while going through back issue bins and I just got frustrated and angry.  It took way too long to look up each and every issue instead of just seeing all of the issues in a given title on a simple list.  

I wound up going to PayPal and cancelling my Pro subscription renewal for GoCollect and sent GoCollect a helpdesk ticket to refund the rest of my annual subscription.  They removed virtually all of the functionality from this tool that caused me to pay the subscription fee in the first place.  If you had asked me a week ago, I would have told you that GoCollect's Pro subscription was a must-have.  Now, two days after the new site launched, I just want my money back and I'm frustrated and extremely disappointed.  

Edited October 15, 2021 by FFB
Added formatting and emojis

[Ed Hanes]

I use both...GPA is a quick reference but GO collect has pics of the actual slabs sold. I don't trust Go Collects algorithm for FMV and prefer to look at the trend of sales myself. Go collect does calculate the trend for an easy reference but it's only useful if the trend is statistically viable. Some sellers try to base their sale on the outlier high sale and push that as FMV...I don't blame them because suckers are born every minute...but if you dont want to lose money on your investment, I would avoid anyone who does that.

 

Edited October 15, 2021 by Ed Hanes

[JollyComics]

On 10/15/2021 at 3:44 PM, Lou Slipper said:

This is 100% Josh's fault. Josh wanted to scam people by only offering a select few (only the best) listings. George said all or nothing so it's nothing.

Well, they are against PayPal, GPA, Credit Cards and all other services. They DON'T want to do anything with any kinds of fees.  They always put 3% fee on the buyers so they don't want to pay the credit card fees.  That was a long time ago. They were ahead of the games before CC, Heritage and all other auction companies recently decided to put 3% fee on the buyer's invoice if they use the credit cards. That was how I learned from Comiclink and I have paid them with my personal checks for over 12 years. Sometimes, I use my credit cards but I still pay 3% charge fee.

[JollyComics]

On 10/15/2021 at 6:08 PM, Lou Slipper said:

The problem was that for many years Clink charged an illegal 3% surcharge. They even encouraged people to use PP Friends and Family to pay with  They finally found the "3% discount for cash" loophole and the "moved our HQ to a different state" loophole.

Not sure what this has to do with submitting completed auctions to GPA? Are you saying Josh wants to get paid for submitting these?

I called and talked with one of GPA reps (my account had an issue) and asked them why Comiclink is not on your list.  They don't want to partner with them.  eBay, Heritage, ComicConnect and all other companies are partners. I believe they are paying them to promote their businesses. You can see the list of the companies - https://comics.gpanalysis.com/partners-and-suppliers/cgc-online-auction  I believe ComicLink preferred not to pay it.  They may be cheap taste.

They still can see GPA for the history sales.

Edited October 15, 2021 by JollyComics

[rexinnih]

On 10/15/2021 at 1:06 PM, FFB said:

I have used GPAnalysis almost since the very beginning when George first launched the site.  It is the best, most user-friendly, easiest site to use if you are trying to look up a single CGC graded issue and get accurate information about sales occurring on the specific venues that GPA reports  (but for some reason, Comiclink sales are not reported).  

Early this year, I started using GoCollect when comic shops opened back up again.  For me, it was a game changer in a couple of respects.  I loved the fact that you could pull up an entire series by title and look at the whole list of issues with the GoCollect-provided FMV next to the issue number.  So, if you were looking for the FMV of multiple issues within a given title, you had that at a glance on a single screen.    Very helpful when digging through back issue bins, and not something you can do on GPA.   Plus, ComicLink sales were reported on GoCollect, which was another huge plus.   Clicking deeper into any specific issue provided a direct link to the actual listing where the book sold, in most cases with detailed, archived scans of the books sold. 

On top of that, they had excellent "Hottest Comics" lists for Silver Age, Bronze Age, Copper Age, Modern Age, and "New" books, with books listed in order based on how many copies were selling in the marketplace, and with FMVs listed next to each issue for reference.  

Wonderful!  Innovative!  Useful!    

The only real downsides to GoCollect were:

(1) sometimes a key book with one or more recent sales would not have an FMV reported (it would be listed as "pending"), which could make you miss something while digging through bins.  But the top level series listing of issues (what I called the "Price Guide View" screen that I looked at while digging through back issue bins) also showed how many sales of each issue were reported in GoCollect.  So, if you saw "Pending" for a single issue's FMV but also saw 10+ sales, you could click on that issue to drill down a level of detail and see what the book was selling for in specific instances without too much trouble, and then click back once to be back where you were.  Sometimes, the fact that a specific issue had many more sales than its surrounding issues could signal that it was a hidden key or a hot book, even though the FMV was reported as "Pending."   

(2) sometimes the FMVs on GoCollect made absolutely no sense.  A 9.8 FMV on a book might be $120, even though when you drilled down one level into the sales data, the actual sales of the book showed that it was consistently selling for more than double what the FMV was reporting over multiple sales and over a multi-month period.  Or even more than double, sometimes.  

Other times, the FMV would show a really high 9.8 value with zero 9.8 sales being reported, and when you drilled down, it appeared as though the site was extrapolating the 9.8 FMV based on a single sale of a CGC 9.6 within the last year (sometimes longer) of the same issue for a price that was somewhere around 40-70% less than the 9.8 FMV being reported on GoCollect.  Or sometimes the recent 9.8 sales were there, but simply did not support the high FMV that GoCollect was placing on that issue.  Not as a high price paid, not as an average, not at all.  

These anomalies made it hard to trust the GoCollect FMV methodology, which isn't explained anywhere in the first place.  BUT, the ability to scan through back issue bins and pull hot issues and keys out based on scanning the series list was valuable enough in its own right that it was more than worth it for me to plunk down $90 for an annual Pro subscription.  

(3) As the year wore on, it seemed like GoCollect was getting slower and slower to report new sales data.  Many clearly relevant sales from GoCollect's normal reporting sales venues were just omitted entirely without any reason given.  

 

 

And then two days ago (October 13), GoCollect killed its legacy site in favor of its "new and improved" site.  

Gone is the ability to view a specific comic book series in a list by issue, with FMV alongside.  (What I thought of as the "Price Guide" view, because that's how price guides look - issue # and price, issue # and price, rinse and repeat for the entire series.)  They simply removed this functionality and did not replace it with anything else.    Think about it - they got rid of the one thing that allowed you to use their site as a mobile price guide.  

Gone is the ability to look at the Hottest Comics lists with FMV next to each book.  The Hottest Comics lists are still there, but they just made the covers bigger on each listing and took away the FMV information.  Like I needed a bigger picture of ASM #361 to know what the ing cover looks like, and like I would trade that in exchange for getting rid of the FMV data.    What used to be perhaps the best, most timely "market report" one could imagine was rendered clunkier, less intuitive, and harder to navigate.    

These were the single most valuable things about GoCollect and as of two days ago, they are just gone.  No explanation given at all.  Gone.  

What was an extremely useful tool is now almost completely useless unless I am trying to look up a single issue.  Which is what I already used GPA for in the first place, and GPA's sales data is more complete than GoCollect's - except for the ComicLink thing.  But for the sites that it does report, GPA does not miss very many sales on the venues from which it does report data.  Meanwhile, the quality of GoCollect's reporting data has consistently eroded all year long to the point where it just isn't reliable any more.  The fact that GoCollect reports ComicLink sales makes no difference when sales information isn't being updated on GoCollect from any of its reporting sales sites.  

I tried using GoCollect in a comic shop yesterday while going through back issue bins and I just got frustrated and angry.  It took way too long to look up each and every issue instead of just seeing all of the issues in a given title on a simple list.  

I wound up going to PayPal and cancelling my Pro subscription renewal for GoCollect and sent GoCollect a helpdesk ticket to refund the rest of my annual subscription.  They removed virtually all of the functionality from this tool that caused me to pay the subscription fee in the first place.  If you had asked me a week ago, I would have told you that GoCollect's Pro subscription was a must-have.  Now, two days after the new site launched, I just want my money back and I'm frustrated and extremely disappointed.  

Thank you for this detailed answer. I was using GPA as a free way to catalogue and track value on my CGC books (Under 500 so could create one list to track). Now that is gone. I was also using the top Hot Comics lists (Silver, Bronze, etc.) to track what's up and down. Finally found it after many clicks on the new site and now that seems to have lost the positions jumped or dropped detail. Just not seeing anything I'd want to plunk down $90 for the year and will probably go back to updating an Excel every month or two. 

[ConcreteMob181]

On 10/15/2021 at 4:06 PM, FFB said:

I have used GPAnalysis almost since the very beginning when George first launched the site.  It is the best, most user-friendly, easiest site to use if you are trying to look up a single CGC graded issue and get accurate information about sales occurring on the specific venues that GPA reports  (but for some reason, Comiclink sales are not reported).  

Early this year, I started using GoCollect when comic shops opened back up again.  For me, it was a game changer in a couple of respects.  I loved the fact that you could pull up an entire series by title and look at the whole list of issues with the GoCollect-provided FMV next to the issue number.  So, if you were looking for the FMV of multiple issues within a given title, you had that at a glance on a single screen.    Very helpful when digging through back issue bins, and not something you can do on GPA.   Plus, ComicLink sales were reported on GoCollect, which was another huge plus.   Clicking deeper into any specific issue provided a direct link to the actual listing where the book sold, in most cases with detailed, archived scans of the books sold. 

On top of that, they had excellent "Hottest Comics" lists for Silver Age, Bronze Age, Copper Age, Modern Age, and "New" books, with books listed in order based on how many copies were selling in the marketplace, and with FMVs listed next to each issue for reference.  

Wonderful!  Innovative!  Useful!    

The only real downsides to GoCollect were:

(1) sometimes a key book with one or more recent sales would not have an FMV reported (it would be listed as "pending"), which could make you miss something while digging through bins.  But the top level series listing of issues (what I called the "Price Guide View" screen that I looked at while digging through back issue bins) also showed how many sales of each issue were reported in GoCollect.  So, if you saw "Pending" for a single issue's FMV but also saw 10+ sales, you could click on that issue to drill down a level of detail and see what the book was selling for in specific instances without too much trouble, and then click back once to be back where you were.  Sometimes, the fact that a specific issue had many more sales than its surrounding issues could signal that it was a hidden key or a hot book, even though the FMV was reported as "Pending."   

(2) sometimes the FMVs on GoCollect made absolutely no sense.  A 9.8 FMV on a book might be $120, even though when you drilled down one level into the sales data, the actual sales of the book showed that it was consistently selling for more than double what the FMV was reporting over multiple sales and over a multi-month period.  Or even more than double, sometimes.  

Other times, the FMV would show a really high 9.8 value with zero 9.8 sales being reported, and when you drilled down, it appeared as though the site was extrapolating the 9.8 FMV based on a single sale of a CGC 9.6 within the last year (sometimes longer) of the same issue for a price that was somewhere around 40-70% less than the 9.8 FMV being reported on GoCollect.  Or sometimes the recent 9.8 sales were there, but simply did not support the high FMV that GoCollect was placing on that issue.  Not as a high price paid, not as an average, not at all.  

These anomalies made it hard to trust the GoCollect FMV methodology, which isn't explained anywhere in the first place.  BUT, the ability to scan through back issue bins and pull hot issues and keys out based on scanning the series list was valuable enough in its own right that it was more than worth it for me to plunk down $90 for an annual Pro subscription.  

(3) As the year wore on, it seemed like GoCollect was getting slower and slower to report new sales data.  Many clearly relevant sales from GoCollect's normal reporting sales venues were just omitted entirely without any reason given.  

 

 

And then two days ago (October 13), GoCollect killed its legacy site in favor of its "new and improved" site.  

Gone is the ability to view a specific comic book series in a list by issue, with FMV alongside.  (What I thought of as the "Price Guide" view, because that's how price guides look - issue # and price, issue # and price, rinse and repeat for the entire series.)  They simply removed this functionality and did not replace it with anything else.    Think about it - they got rid of the one thing that allowed you to use their site as a mobile price guide.  

Gone is the ability to look at the Hottest Comics lists with FMV next to each book.  The Hottest Comics lists are still there, but they just made the covers bigger on each listing and took away the FMV information.  Like I needed a bigger picture of ASM #361 to know what the ing cover looks like, and like I would trade that in exchange for getting rid of the FMV data.    What used to be perhaps the best, most timely "market report" one could imagine was rendered clunkier, less intuitive, and harder to navigate.    

These were the single most valuable things about GoCollect and as of two days ago, they are just gone.  No explanation given at all.  Gone.  

What was an extremely useful tool is now almost completely useless unless I am trying to look up a single issue.  Which is what I already used GPA for in the first place, and GPA's sales data is more complete than GoCollect's - except for the ComicLink thing.  But for the sites that it does report, GPA does not miss very many sales on the venues from which it does report data.  Meanwhile, the quality of GoCollect's reporting data has consistently eroded all year long to the point where it just isn't reliable any more.  The fact that GoCollect reports ComicLink sales makes no difference when sales information isn't being updated on GoCollect from any of its reporting sales sites.  

I tried using GoCollect in a comic shop yesterday while going through back issue bins and I just got frustrated and angry.  It took way too long to look up each and every issue instead of just seeing all of the issues in a given title on a simple list.  

I wound up going to PayPal and cancelling my Pro subscription renewal for GoCollect and sent GoCollect a helpdesk ticket to refund the rest of my annual subscription.  They removed virtually all of the functionality from this tool that caused me to pay the subscription fee in the first place.  If you had asked me a week ago, I would have told you that GoCollect's Pro subscription was a must-have.  Now, two days after the new site launched, I just want my money back and I'm frustrated and extremely disappointed.  

This an incredibly thorough and extremely helpful response. I knew GoGollect was relaunching the site and it's great to have someone break down how it has evolved (clearly, for the worse). I also really appreciated the breakdown of the relative strengths and weaknesses of both sites (prior to relaunch). Thanks so much!

[MAR1979]

Thanks for starting this topic. Seems like what i wanted would have been GoCollect a week ago and earlier, but definitely not now. Will give GPA a try.