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Overtsreet Guide Pricing Sucks

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Bought the new guide and have read it from cover to cover. When exactly will Gold prices be moved up to where they really sell at? I cant get the books I am looking for because dealers and collectors wont sell at these prices. The whole pricing is basically useless. Also I think its really stupid that in most cases a Golden Age run has few if any issues broken out. The Gerber guide has been out way too long for certain books top be priced correctly in relation to their lesser desired surrounding issues. I dont know of too many collectors who are collecting runs of Gold titles only the key issues and covers.

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You're approaching the Overstreet as though it's a CATALOG, selling available inventory. It's NOT. It's a GUIDE. Nothing more. A good one, loaded with info, but nothing more. You can't PayPal Overstreet and receive one of the listings in the guide, he's NOT a seller. To factor which books are bringing what prices, study Ebay prices. THAT'S the largest, continuous open market in the world for buying and selling comics.

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sigh.... You missed my point. The Overstreet advisors obviously either arent sending in their real sales data or the prices are being kept down year after year on some books while others are artificially high for their own purposes. Where can I buy Catmans in fine at guide? Or most Timely's Or Pep, Hangman, Terrific etc? Whats the point of a guide as a starting point when the real prices are multiples of guide? PS most of the books I am looking for arent on Ebay/Heritage/ etc enough to even guess at prices. I'm not buying GS X-Men 1 where I can see 50 sales in NM 9.4 in the last 5 minutes to see what its bringing. I mean Catman 20 has been selling for anywhere from 5 to 10 times guide for 5 years at least yet it goes up 8% What a joke. Even worse after 33 editions most Gold books are still lumped together .

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Yep, I have been saying this for years too, but I really don't expect any changes - which is why I was so surprised by the optimism in the thread about what everyone expected prices to do in the new guide. Sorry not going to happen.

 

I think even crazier than keeping classic high-demand covers lumped together is the practice od grouping issues by 10s instead of by years.

It could be truly crazy for older monthly titles where there is the potential to have 3 different price brackets during a single calendar year (for example if #40 is January, then 41-50 Feb-Nov and #51 is December). There really is not a good reason to have issues grouped together by 10s - and even though this is the Golden Age thread Spider-man provides the best example of this. There is NO WAY Spidey #30 should be grouped with any of the 20s issues, heck it shouldn't even be worth as much as any of the 30s issues - it's got to be the worst of the first 51 Spideys.

 

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dont get me started on silver/bronze prices. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of the slabbing phenomenon and the sometimes wacked prices it brings we all know Overstreet prices for true NM 9.4 have been obsolete for many years I'm not even sure how they could come up with even ballpark figures with the prices some of those books get slabbed so those I can live with for now till the dust settles. It seems as most books are adjusted up 8 to 10% each year. At least the grades below VF didnt go down again for pre 1960 books. With the Gold books it reminds me of when 10 years ago I was trying to find many Bronze books in NM and no dealer would bother bringing them out to sell. I guess when you can get a $1000 for a slabbed Weird War 1 its worth selling as opposed to the $2 it was at for 25 years

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I agree wholeheartedly... The guide is slightly helpful at best when determining values. However, I really get a kick out of the completeley arbitrary way they present the "percent returns" on the top books. So basically OS is telling me not one of those books went down in value last year???? (...A year which saw all other investments in the market plunge????) Yeah yeah...I've heard the whole story before about how ..."Conventional investors are seeking other avenues to place their money in a down market.. such as collectibles..." I don't buy it for one second. I think comments like this are perpetuated throughout the hobby to infuse some confidence in the collectors that are concerned the bottom might fall out.

 

The list of "percent increases" is completeley useless because THERE IS NOT ONE EXAMPLE OF A DECREASE!!!!! How unrealistic is this??? To estimate the inaccuracy of these figures try making the "10-20%" return (they claim) on any of those books you bought last year! ...Not going to happen. OS is out of touch and out of reality. It has turned into a fun little novelty to check occasionally but something which has no credence whatsoever!

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The list of "percent increases" is completeley useless because THERE IS NOT ONE EXAMPLE OF A DECREASE!!!!! How unrealistic is this??? To estimate the inaccuracy of these figures try making the "10-20%" return (they claim) on any of those books you bought last year! ...Not going to happen. OS is out of touch and out of reality. It has turned into a fun little novelty to check occasionally but something which has no credence whatsoever!
Even though I agree with your point almost in its entirety, there's one bit of credence you have to give it--a lot of people buying books use those prices, so you've got to be aware of Overstreet's pricing to keep in mind what the average person will be willing to pay. And if you've got a hard-to-find high grade book, you can use that Overstreet price as the baseline from which you persuade a buyer to pay a higher price because they're not likely to see your uncommon book for a while if they don't buy it from you now.

 

Whether you agree with the pricing or not, enough people do use it to make knowing what the prices are quite useful.

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So basically OS is telling me not one of those books went down in value last year???? (...A year which saw all other investments in the market plunge????)

 

umm yeah. Collectible comics have experienced very few periods where their values have retreated on a year-by-year basis. Usually after a period of explosive upswings in price. And the percentages listed are the changes in Overstreet's prices. Which is not really the same thing as the actual comic book market. He always lags the market and one way he does this is to consistently increase the prices (or freeze them) rather than try to keep up ON A YEARLY BASIS with sudden trends that may appear from time to time..

 

Collectors and dealers have learned to treat the Overstreet #s as a guide, feeling free to charge more when they feel it is warranted, or buy for less when posible. You may be frustrated with many aspects of his approach, as we all are, but there is no denying that on the whole, it is 'bible' of comics pricing.

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I think I read that in CBG...and frankly, I dont care what he has to say on the matter.

 

For a guy who is "criminally negligent" in his internal grading methods as to sell NM/M books with tape on them (yes, they slip through his 3.25 seconds per book grading 'machine'). Or for that matter to only sell 5 grades of books and lump everything into them: Fr, G, VG, F, NM/M! Really--nothing between F and NM/M ???? It completely ignores the high end of grades and concentrates on the beat-up books, giving them 4 of the 5 possible grades!!

 

That article is just one more example of The World According to Chuck. Try not to be fooled by his "success" and "stature" in the business or folksy tales of organuc farming and Mexican pottery auctions. (See--I have read this stuff)

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Or for that matter to only sell 5 grades of books and lump everything into them: Fr, G, VG, F, NM/M! Really--nothing between F and NM/M ???? It completely ignores the high end of grades and concentrates on the beat-up books, giving them 4 of the 5 possible grades!!
I couldn't agree more about how their grading sucks, but to be fair, he added the VF grade last year at the same time Overstreet did. That point is one of the topics he discusses in that article linked to above.
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but to be fair, he added the VF grade last year at the same time Overstreet did. That point is one of the topics he discusses in that article linked to above.

 

thats a sign of progress, at least. I asked at one time why they had one grade for all higher grade comics and they said that it would be too expensive to try to rewrite all thir online software to add a grade. That made sense...it would be a large job.

 

But it underlined the obvious fact that their approach NEVER was created to accurately grade or even to concentrate on high grade books. If it were, they would have written their program to include VF and VFNM from day one, wouldnt they?

 

The choice made sense I suppose given that the reality of Chuck's "clean out the shows on the last day of conventions of all the boxes of unsold [!@#%^&^] that dealers would rather sell at pennies a book than ship home" program that filled their warehouse with mostly unsellable VG Silver/Bronze commons. All he ever had in inventory was this lower grade stuff, and the unread "file copy" MH2 warehouse, all in NM/M!!

 

Gee, actually thats make perfect (but short-sighted) sense, doesnt it?

Convention [!@#%^&^] somewhere from Fr to Fine.

MH2 books are 'all' NM/M

Who need VF sez charitable Chuck!

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Has it ever occured to anyone that these prices are FOR dealers? Say you're a person who knows nothing about comics, and you found a stack of books in your attic, including a very nice Action #1 unrestored with white pages. You bring them into Dealer X, and they pull out the guide that not only shows the grading scale, but the value of each book. So, if you thought you had a "Perfect" Action No. 1 (I'm sure if I weren't a collector and found a solid Fine or better Action #1 I'd think "For a book from 1938, it's about perfect"...Right?

 

Ok, so then the dealer says, "No, here's a list of defects, and here's what the guide says it is...A Fine 6.0". According to the guide, that's worth $XXXXX.XX (I don't have a 03 guide handy in front of me). So, the dealer pays straight guide or his obligatory 80% of guide on all DC's, and makes out like a bandit when he goes to resell it.

 

 

Doesn't this make sense?

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It doesn't make sense given that the text in the front of the guide states that you can only expect to get about half the listed Guide prices if you sell to a dealer. The purpose you describe is not what Overstreet has ever explicitly had in mind.

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Balderdash. You're assuming a non collector :

 

1. Has a guide.

2. Has read the text at the front.

 

Even if they are a collector, how many times have you bought and sold something and had Overstreet pricing referenced? How many times have you stopped at someone's house who was selling comics and they priced their collection 100 % guide?

 

You cannot tell me dealers do not continually pull out guides to price books "on the fly" at conventions.

 

If Overstreet is way too low in many areas, who benefits? Generally dealers.

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> I think I read that in CBG...and frankly, I dont care what he has to say on the matter.

 

I'd never do business with CR myself for several reasons, including some of those you mention. The reality is, however, that he currently has a lot more influence on the hobby than the rest of us combined (not counting DarthDiesel).

 

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I just reread both of your posts 4 times, and I can't tell exactly what you're asking/proposing. Are you saying Overstreet is perhaps intended to help dealers set the prices they charge, or are you saying it's to help them set the prices they pay for back issue inventory? Or are you saying the primary audience of the guide is dealers and not collectors? I can't tell for sure which of those you're asking about.

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Clarkkentdds,

 

How is this as an example of a decrease? The # 7th ranked Platinum Age book in the 2002 OG is (Buster) Brown's Blue Ribbon Book of Jokes and Jingles nn (#1) from 1904. In 2002, it was listed as $600 G / $2100 F / $3600 VF. Not only does it contain an early appearance of Buster Brown and is the 1st Buster Brown comic premium, but Overstreet notes that it is extremely rare with only 5-6 copies known to exist.This year the price has been sliced in half across the board, allegedly due to feedback from Overstreet advisors. How many of these dealers have ever seen this book, much less from 2002, to be able to comment on it? It is sheer lunacy to drop a 99-year old key book by 50%. This is not a new fad that is here today and gone tomorrow.

 

Maybe Overstreet and Beerbohm are right. The implied thought is that all the Victorian and Platinum Age books are trash and that nobody wants them. As such they are very poor investment vehicles and prices should continue to decline. Perhaps, Overstreet will do me the favor of dropping all pricing on Victorian and Platinum Age books by 90% next year, so that I can hoard all those books for next to nothing.

 

Ted

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Both actually. It's a vehicle for dealers to bring along to a "discovered" collection to pay a percentage of guide for, all while knowing that the true selling price of many issues are undervalued in the guide. On the selling side, a dealer could say "Here's my justification to sell it at 1.50 X guide - "The guide is undervalued, and the true cost is X" of that comic book you're looking to buy.

 

In 2003, Overstreet lists the following books in Fine 6.0:

Archie Comics #1 - $3,700 (ComicLink has a CGC VG/FN for $13,000)

Pep Comics #22 - $3700 (Metropolis has a G- 1.8 for $4000)

 

 

Now, if you had both of those books that you found in your attic, I'm sure any large dealer would offer you 50 to 80 percent of guide for them, right? Again, Overstreet is quite a handy "dealers" guide, on both the selling and buying fronts.

 

Benefits of the guide:

1. Dealers buying from non-collectors

2. Dealers selling to collectors

3. NM price hype for potential investors (i.e. Here's the reason to invest in comics! Look how much some sell for!)

4. Pretty pictures and ads for us, the collector, along with some market information.

 

C'mon, why price Action #1 NM 9.4 for $350,000 when I've seen dealers offer $1 million dollars for that book, all in the pages of the same guide? What's the point?

 

Please keep in mind I've been collecting since 1978, and buying guides since 1984. Also, I have captured 2 + years of EBAY selling prices for the publisher I collect (MLJ) and can show you how far off the guide is on almost everything. Don't get me wrong, some things are way overpriced (I have seen about 30 copies of Shield-Wizard comics #1 sell on EBAY in the last 2 years - why is it so high in the guide? It NEVER fetches guide price, ever. Same with Top-Notch #9)...

 

My .02

 

 

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That's really strange (I have not yet seen the new guide). The few Victorian

keys that have surfaced on eBay in the past year have sold really well. The

Obadiah(sp?) copy brough several thousands ($5K?) and complete "L'il Moe"

copies have done really well too. Sounds bizzare that you'd slash the prices so

dramatically just after someone finally came up with a great reference guide?

This is a big surprise to me...

 

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