Covrprice Accuracy 1 1

[rlextherobot]

I've been using Covrprice casually for a while, mostly for the purposes of tracking my own collection. I selected it over other services because it integrated with CLZ (highly convenient) and had raw book values, which Gocollect and GPA do not. However I can't for the life of me find a connection between the purported values it assigns to comics, and actual real world sales data. Per their website, "At COVRPRICE we only include real sales for our price tables, collected across a number of trusted online marketplaces. Typically, we bring in about 10,000 sales per day, filter them down to a specific comic, and then determine the condition. As part of the process, we determine if the comic is professionally graded (i.e. “Slabbed”) or not professionally graded (i.e. “Raw”). The result is an easy-to-use price guide, updated multiple times per day."  However most values they give seem to be much higher than any real world sales I can find looking at eBay, or comparing to pricing at mycomicshop and other online sales platforms. Naturally an average sales price could be thrown way off for books without much data, or in a volatile market, but I'm also not sure what the value of their service is if it doesn't reflect what books are actually selling for. Any thoughts from the folks here? 

[Cman429]

I've been using coverprice for awhile now. I find it much better than Gocollect. Their FMV calculations seem a little wonky sometimes but if you click on sales data where they break down all the recent sales in whatever grade, I've found their pretty useful with finding what something is selling for. 

It's weird you mention those other sites because I seldom buy from either of them because they seem to be the ones completely out of touch with reality. Mycomicshop is by far the worst, everything there is priced ridiculous. Ebay is a little better, especially if you have time and patience to search the auctions for deals, but there's still a lot of flippers who bought stuff during the boom who think it's my problem and price like its 2021. 

The best prices I've gotten have been here, IG and FB. 

[Jesse-Lee]

On 8/16/2023 at 1:26 PM, rlextherobot said:

I've been using Covrprice casually for a while, mostly for the purposes of tracking my own collection. I selected it over other services because it integrated with CLZ (highly convenient) and had raw book values, which Gocollect and GPA do not. However I can't for the life of me find a connection between the purported values it assigns to comics, and actual real world sales data. Per their website, "At COVRPRICE we only include real sales for our price tables, collected across a number of trusted online marketplaces. Typically, we bring in about 10,000 sales per day, filter them down to a specific comic, and then determine the condition. As part of the process, we determine if the comic is professionally graded (i.e. “Slabbed”) or not professionally graded (i.e. “Raw”). The result is an easy-to-use price guide, updated multiple times per day."  However most values they give seem to be much higher than any real world sales I can find looking at eBay, or comparing to pricing at mycomicshop and other online sales platforms. Naturally an average sales price could be thrown way off for books without much data, or in a volatile market, but I'm also not sure what the value of their service is if it doesn't reflect what books are actually selling for. Any thoughts from the folks here? 

I use it, and I do like the layout and format - and the new look is nice. Here's my 2 cents:

Pros:

• I like being able to easily sort by a number of factors, and I like having the comic covers as a visual guide
• It's easy to add books and there are plenty of relevant data points you can enter
• I like how they have a "keys" category and they are easily identifiable with icons. Along those same lines, I like the new addition of a "var" variant flag on variant comics, and how they use a light blue banner on the grid listing to denote a slabbed book

Cons:

• Their pricing really isn't all that usable in my opinion. For example, I have a copy of Batman 1 New 52 in a newsstand which I estimate to be an 8.5. According to them, it's worth $700. Spoiler alert - it isn't. I have a 9.6 CGC-graded copy of the exact same book, and they say it's worth $280, which is probably low. Their pricing is all over the place.
• While they do have a large catalog of comics to choose from when adding to your collection, there are some glaring holes. They don't do great with newsstands for example. I have the entire Batman Hush run (608-619) in newsstand, but the option to add your book to your collection as a newsstand "variant" only exists in about four of those books, the rest of the run doesn't have the newsstand listed. This is just one of many cases where the newsstand version is just not there as an option. It can also be tough to find some one-shots or prestige format books.
• Their daily "hot comics" is kind of fun - it shows what they consider the "hot comics" in your collection - but there's no reason or justification given for it. Like today, it says Batman 407, Batman 609 and Spawn 9 are hot comics. Why are they hot right now but weren't yesterday? Added to this, it usually only lists the direct copy as the "hot" copy - for Batman 609, I have both the direct and newsstand copies in my Covrprice collection. Why is only the direct copy hot, but the newsstand isn't listed with it?
• The service is just ok for the cost in my opinion, but I would be better served to just create my own database or spreadsheet, especially since I always still need to look at recent eBay comps anyway when planning to buy or sell, since their prices are so wonky.

 

At the end of the day, I do like the visuals and it gives me a way to quickly look through my collection when I'm bored or can't remember if I have a specific book, or how much I paid for a specific book. But I really should just get my behind in gear and make my own spreadsheet so I can stop paying for yet another service.

[universal soldier]

I think it's a work in progress. When they do have updated pricing, it's more relevant than something like comicpriceguide or other more static guides. I don't like how they default to a sometimes irrelevant grade if there isn't current data.  It jumps around and is a bit wonky sometimes. I also have 200 books in my collection that coverprice has no data for. Some are FCBD issues but there are a number that are a head scratcher.

[circuitryusa]

Interestingly enough, when I use their pricing for auctions, I get beat EVERY SINGLE TIME, telling me for the books I look at, their values are LOW, not HIGH (notice I emphasized the books I look at since I can't possibly be the arbiter of all books for your collections).

There is a pretty popular Ebay Auction seller based out of NY with hundreds of listings every week (I'm sure a lot of you use them or know of them). When I see something I like, I tabulate EVERY book in those runs. Use the FMV, and then bid based on that. 99% of the time, I LOSE, by over 25-40% (sometimes much more)

Only when I have a special "emotional value" that I add to the lots I want, then I get closer, but still usually loose. I often have to bid the "are you f'ing crazy" price to win.

However, on the flip side, when I price my stuff to SELL, I do tend to LOWER my price compared to them, because I look at the recent sales (which are always missing a TON, many of my own) and make my own judgment call to move a book quickly or sit on it until I get what I want.

So, it's a great resource, love the interface, and the new upgrade is "OK". I email them regularly asking for features or changes (or for bug reports), and they are usually very open to hear me and listen to my points.

I recommend them, and like everything else, pros and cons...

gain experience with them before you jump into anything based on their reports. 

 

*** EDITS ***

Just to clarify my experiences... It's the Raw FMVs that I think are lower and the SLABS that I think are Higher (and inconsistent if no data is found) as most alluded to...So, I still recommend them even full-well-knowing this little tidbit of stuff being "off". Your mileage may vary.

Edited August 17, 2023 by circuitryusa

[Telegan]

I'm not sure if you're referring to the price you see in CLZ, but, if so, make sure in CLZ the price you see isn't for another grade.  Sometimes if you have a 4.5 in your collection, it will show the price for an 8.5 or something because that's the last recent sale for that grade (not sure of the exact algorithm), but they do show that the price is for an 8.5, so you don't get confused.  You can also enter your own price in there if you want.

Also, no one pricing site is going to be "perfect" for everything, but for slabs, I probably trust GPA over anybody else.  For example, Thor #134 in CGC 7.0.  On the GPA, they list 2 sales in June and July.  They don't list anything past around May on CovrPrice.  But they do show that the price is over 90 days old on the site.  The problem with using that data is that whatever algorithm they use to arrive at FMV shows the FMV to be $344 for a slabbed 7.0, which is somewhat ridiculous based upon what they're actually selling for this year. lol.  But then you have to also consider people paying crazy prices for different grades and price compression across lower grades would cause some weird numbers and averages for prices to pop up across grades.  You can see some of this in their FMV for a 6.5 currently, which is $119 and the FMV for a 6.0 is $206.  The $206 data is stale.  So there's no reason not to assume in some cases their data for raw comics is incomplete or stale, as well.

For stuff like GA comics, it's not that great since many GA comics don't change hands a lot unless there's a popular comic with a fairly decent-sized census count.  I have a CovrPrice account simply because I like the integration with CLZ, and it usually gives me an idea of what my comics are doing outside of, like I said, GA comics, but when it comes auction time for GA-to-BA, I'm going to be looking at the recent sales for slabs from GPA or something, since I'm still not too trusting of buying many raw comics online.  The pricing doesn't really bother me that much since I don't plan on selling my comics anytime soon.

Each service has their advantages and disadvantages.  GPA has no pics but probably has the best data for CGC, but has no CBCS.  GoCollect also sometimes suffers from incomplete sales coverage but shows pics of the actual comics that sold.  CovrPrice has sometimes incomplete CBCS and CGC data and tries to come up with an FMV for raw comics that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.  I have all 3, but for auctions, I use GPA since I really only deal in slabs on auctions (well, for 99% of purchases).

[valiantman]

On 8/17/2023 at 12:03 AM, Telegan said:

You can see some of this in their FMV for a 6.5 currently, which is $119 and the FMV for a 6.0 is $206.

Is this a real example? 

"Hey boss, how much is this comic?  $206.  OK, what about the better copy of the same issue?  $119."

Boss is off his meds.

[Telegan]

On 8/17/2023 at 12:33 AM, valiantman said:

Is this a real example? 

"Hey boss, how much is this comic?  $206.  OK, what about the better copy of the same issue?  $119."

Boss is off his meds.

lol.  Yes.  I think part of the problem is the last sale they have of the 6.0 is from January when dozens of copies have sold since then and the price has been dropping.  So maybe it's more the actual collection of data rather than whatever algorithm they use for FMV - who knows.  You'll see this often on the site.  FYI : a 4.0 graded FMV is listed as $169 for the same issue.

 

[valiantman]

On 8/17/2023 at 12:42 AM, Telegan said:

lol.  Yes.  I think part of the problem is the last sale they have of the 6.0 is from January when dozens of copies have sold since then and the price has been dropping.  So maybe it's more the actual collection of data rather than whatever algorithm they use for FMV - who knows.  You'll see this often on the site.  FYI : a 4.0 graded FMV is listed as $169 for the same issue.

 

Seems like they could drop the middle column, then, if they're just reporting the most recent sale by grade.  Having the middle column as "Fair Market Value" is pretty ridiculous when there's no way it makes any sense (and their algorithm doesn't fix it).

[oldbsturgeon]

I use it as I like the collection data system, but I do find the valuation to be off. It seems pretty high on raw books. For instance I am working on a batman run currenty. I have 388-713 and then between 300-399 missing 30 books. Now there are some decent books in that run, but I don't know if their value is actually the 3600 the report is showing based on the grades I entered.

I think the books which are the keys are pretty accurate but the random issues that show it to be 11  in a particular grade for example when its more like 3-4, and there are lots of those, inflate the value pretty high.