Establishing true raw comic values 1 1

[zzutak]

On 3/21/2023 at 1:00 PM, Mokiguy said:

I sure would like to hear what you have to say about my question establishing a raw value.

I think this line from your original post defines your problem.  Very few tangible items in this world have a value.  The Fair Market Value of a specific antique, painting, comic book, trading card, or other collectible is not a single number but a range.  Indeed, not even a common product like Bayer Low Dose Aspirin (81 mg, 300 count) that's available at virtually every pharmacy and/or supermarket has a value.  But you know that, right?  Consider the following fairly typical description from Heritage.  Note that the auction estimates are not single values but a range of values (with the high end being 150~200% of the low end).

One cannot take a price guide like Overstreet literally -- a specific issue in a specific condition grade does not have a single specific FMV.  If you continue to insist that it does or should (and you therefore continue to search for a precise mathematical operation that will yield it), you'll be "tilting at windmills."  Don't be like Don Quixote in this regard. 

If you're collecting DC books from the 1960s, a simple equation like FMV = 0.25 x OPG will give you a very good estimate of value for 95% of the issues of most superhero titles (including Action, Adventure, Superboy, Superman, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Wonder Woman, and World's Finest).  Yeah, the equation would grossly underestimate the value of certain "key" issues and certain high-demand titles.  But DCs are not Marvels, and each of the titles I just listed had no more that a handful of "key" issues during the 1960s.  So the "25% of guide" rule-of-thumb is actually quite useful.   

[Dick Pontoon]

As usual, sound, solid advice from zzutak.

[Mokiguy]

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The Fair Market Value of a specific antique, painting, comic book, trading card, or other collectible is not a single number but a range.

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One cannot take a price guide like Overstreet literally -- a specific issue in a specific condition grade does not have a single specific FMV.  If you continue to insist that it does or should (and you therefore continue to search for a precise mathematical operation that will yield it), you'll be "tilting at windmills."  Don't be like Don Quixote in this regard.

 

No, don't think I was "tilting at nor chasing after windmills", as a matter of fact I thought I had explained that I understood that the idea of any single price not being a be all see all end all value in my original post. Apparently I didn't explain it very well. By me using four different value guides, adding them together, dividing the total and then taking the average, I thought showed I understood the concept of no single price or value explaining true worth. Remember my question was, of the four price guides were Comicbookrealm and Overstreet to high and skewing the average. Now with your 25% of Overstreet estimate, you have taken it to another level entirely and made most DC low to mid range books nearly worthless.

I went back and looked in detail in order to estimate the grade of each of those three Adventure Comics I pictured in my last comment, and all three look to be 3.0 to 5.0 grades, and Overstreet has those books at around $8 to $14 for those grades, which is about what the buyers paid for them, their all in cost including shipping. So if I understand the concept correctly, the value of an item is what people are willing to pay ..... what it sells at not what somebody asks for an item. So if buyers are willing to pay $12 to receive a comic in the mail, then the value of that comic is about $12 whether they paid $1 for the comic and $11 shipping, or they paid $12 for the comic with free shipping. And of course that needs to be more than one sale, an average or median over many sales. At least that's how I see it.

So perhaps the real value is the total paid including shipping, and that seems closer to my average value in my database than your 25% of Overstreet. Actually your 25% of the Overstreet guide seem a tad low. Granted, I'm still fairly new to the hobby, but I don't know of any places selling 55 year old silver age DC's for $2 or $3, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I may be old in years but I'm new to this hobby, and I haven't gone to or been in any brick and mortar comic book shops in my entire life, and every thing I think I know is what I have seen from the vantage point of my Youtube connection and my keyboard, window to the internet.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Mokiguy

[zzutak]

I'm trying to provide you with a simple way of estimating the FMV of the comics you're collecting in the condition range you're collecting.  Are the "Legion" issues from Adventure Comics more popular than nearly all 1960s Jimmy Olsen and/or Lois Lane issues?  Absolutely!    However, if you consider your entire collecting wheelhouse, I believe my 25% of OPG rule-of-thumb will be useful.  Think 25% is too low?  Then bump the reduction factor up to 30% or 40% (or whatever makes you happy).

I'm really just trying to help you avoid the rabbit hole.  Consider, for example, the specific eBaay sales you provided above.  Harvey Doss is a local and a solid grader.  He has a pretty loyal following on eBaay and, as a result, gets a better-than-average return on his offerings.  Could his Adventure #333, 343, 372, and 376 sales be part of a multi-item purchase by a single buyer?  If so, should you be adding $8 to the cost of each item?  And how, exactly, will you account for that possibility going forward, when I'm not around to ask? 

I don't think it's possible to achieve the level of precision you're shooting for.  But even if it is, the effort required will be many, many times greater than just letting FMV ≈ 0.25 x OPG.  Even simpler, just treat the price you actually paid for an item as that item's FMV.  You may be spending too much sometimes, and getting a good deal at others; but I have a notion that you're pretty much "at market" overall. 

[Mokiguy]

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I'm trying to provide you with a simple way of estimating the FMV of the comics you're collecting in the condition range you're collecting.  Are the "Legion" issues from Adventure Comics more popular than nearly all 1960s Jimmy Olsen and/or Lois Lane issues?  Absolutely!    However, if you consider your entire collecting wheelhouse, I believe my 25% of OPG rule-of-thumb will be useful.  Think 25% is too low?  Then bump the reduction factor up to 30% or 40% (or whatever makes you happy).

Look, I really do appreciate you and everyone else that is trying to help ....... and I think many of the ideas mentioned including yours have a lot of comic book collecting wisdom to them. I just thought your 25% was on the low side. And it has absolutely nothing to do with what will make me happy. If I was looking to be happy, I would never have asked and started this thread in the first place. Heck, I could have just used the highest price guide I could find like ComicBookRealm, put those numbers into my data base and patted myself on the back with every comic I bought.

I may be new to comic collecting, but I am not new to collecting. For years I have been collecting Morgan and Peace silver dollars, and since I also mostly bought raw coins, I had the same questions when I first began that endeavor as well. I got quite good at grading and buying at very good prices, and only because I knew what a "good" price for a certain coin in a certain condition ought to sell for, and so always bid and bought for less or let the specimen go. That's all I'm trying to do here.

You Mentioned Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane. Over at the buy part of this site, some member said he was cleaning out his collection and was selling a lot if not all his Jimmy Olsens. And I was looking at what he was asking as well as what many of his books already sold for, and they are mostly 25% to about 50% below the Overstreet value. As I said, I'm only trying to learn and only trying to be as close to FMV as I can be, nothing more, and so perhaps your 25% of Overstreet is a little overkill and maybe 50% is closer.

And as to the part when you said that perhaps these books were bought by one buyer and so maybe $8 shipping wasn't what was actually spent. Perhaps, but you don't know and neither do I, and again that's why I'm trying to figure this all out. I do the same. Only yesterday I bought 45 books from one seller, and my shipping amounted to 33cents a book. I get that, but that was what I did, what others may or may not have done is no more than speculation.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Mokiguy

[zzutak]

On 3/25/2023 at 2:53 PM, Mokiguy said:

And as to the part when you said that perhaps these books were bought by one buyer and so maybe $8 shipping wasn't what was actually spent. Perhaps, but you don't know and neither do I.

True enough!    But my question was still reasonable -- especially in light of the fact that all four books shown were purchased in a span of 2 minutes (between 9:16 and 9:18 PM Pacific, when the traffic on eBaay is relatively light).  If you're going to include the cost of shipping in your price paid matrix, you need to know what that cost really was.  More work for you, and yet another source of potential error.  But I'm confident you're up to the challenge!  Best of luck!    Over and out for now. 

[revat]

Honestly at this point you could just feed your list into chat gpt and probably get an ok estimate 

[Dr. Balls]

Not trying to intentionally muddy the waters here, but there could be other considerations that are variables in raw books, such as visual composition, action vs pose, female vs male. I'm going to disregard the Hirschfeld art because there is a mix of variables here. The male piece has more detail, however, it's smaller than the female drawings, which could affect price. In my experience with OA, you will command a higher price (most of the time) when there is a female subject (unless it's Batman or Wolverine)

The DC books in Zzutak's post are an example of how even at the lower pricing, the compositions could play a part as the go up in sales price. The $3 book is compositionally weaker than the others, despite having Superman in it. The scale of everyone on the cover along with the other backgrounds and word bubbles/boxes leads it to be a very serviceable cover, but weaker in it's visual flow than the other books.

The $4 book has a better scale of Superman, but it's a standard pose without much action. The $5 books both have action, with a better visual flow for the viewer - something that can be seen by a person with an eye for composition, and even noticed subconsciously by those who don't bother with the particulars.

Were these final prices determined by something that specific? We'll never know, because they are low-dollar raws and the final price wasn't driven by a lot of bidders. It could be as simple as someone filling a hole in their run, or it could be someone bidding on some other things and they went after these books because they liked the covers, or perhaps it was sentimentality. I only speak about this because I specifically buy well-composed DC covers from the 20¢ era simply because of the art. I do not collect DC at all, but I am drawn to that era of covers that have great art, balance and color.

My opinion is that raws are hard to determine a value because the value calculations are simply math - comics have a lot of other components to book value beyond the numbers. It doesn't really add definitiveness to this conversation, but I thought it was worth mentioning.