Are comic price guides still relevant? 2 2

[Dick Pontoon]

On 6/16/2022 at 7:20 PM, JEFFROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO said:

On 6/16/2022 at 4:17 PM, mintcomics1 said:

Does Overstreet add new blood to their panel of advisors, or is it mostly the same group of people for decades who submit pricing data and write an annual market report? Is there a good balance of fresh talent and innovation in this area?

 

They added many new people over the last few years. The last time I got the guide several years ago I looked over the advisor list and thought to myself, who are all these people?  I still don't know who they are. I'd love to know the criteria they use to pick advisors.

They do add new people. I don't have a current guide but just picked up my 2020-2021 edition, and quickly counted at least a dozen Boardies. Foolkiller was an advisor briefly, I think of him as an excellent choice. After the folks from the Boards, there's a lot of folks that I don't know personally but I know who they are or I've dealt with them before, and then there's also some I'm unfamiliar with. Then there's some folks whose presence leaves me scratching my head, guys who've been banned from the Boards, guys who are a known bad quantity in my book.

[Jeffro.]

On 6/16/2022 at 7:37 PM, PurpleDragon said:

The thing I can't get past with EBay comps is how seemingly easy it would be to manipulate value. A few well placed Buy It Now's, where you end up buying it yourself under a different account, could significantly increase an issues value with a small investment in the EBay fee. A handful of manipulations is all you'd need because there isn't enough volume on any one book to factor it out completely.

I recently saw the $5 blank, white cover of Hulk #1 jump up to something like $50+ on CovrPrice (which appears to only calculate FMV by EBay comps) due to a single $135+ EBay sale of that cover. That sale could NOT have been legit. In that case it was so egregious that it looks like they factored that outlier out, but it got me thinking how easy it would be to do it and how untrustworthy comps can be.

Seems to me, price guides give a bit more of a sanity check on outrageous and unjustified market swings. JMHO

 

That's where the concept of "outlier" comes in. It's easy to disregard outliers. Once you do that, the average becomes more like an accurate average. Of course, nothing is perfect. That goes without saying

[Rob]

On 6/16/2022 at 4:37 PM, PurpleDragon said:

The thing I can't get past with EBay comps is how seemingly easy it would be to manipulate value. A few well placed Buy It Now's, where you end up buying it yourself under a different account, could significantly increase an issues value with a small investment in the EBay fee. A handful of manipulations is all you'd need because there isn't enough volume on any one book to factor it out completely.

I recently saw the $5 blank, white cover of Hulk #1 jump up to something like $50+ on CovrPrice (which appears to only calculate FMV by EBay comps) due to a single $135+ EBay sale of that cover. That sale could NOT have been legit. In that case it was so egregious that it looks like they factored that outlier out, but it got me thinking how easy it would be to do it and how untrustworthy comps can be.

Seems to me, price guides give a bit more of a sanity check on outrageous and unjustified market swings. JMHO

 

I think asking dealers around the country what something is worth is open for manipulation too.  If I bought a warehouse find of 1000 copies of a certain issue, I'm going to tell Overstreet it's worth more than it is.  And the fact that it is a sanity check on outrageous swings is part of its downside.  Try buying an Ultimate Fallout #4 for the price in the latest OPG.  That's just one example.  How about a Hulk 449 now that the Thunderbolts movie was announced.  I don't have an OPG in front of me at the moment, but I'm going to guess it's priced much lower than what you can buy today.