What if the new Guide really jumped up prices bigtime this year?

[Aman619]

There were many complainers earlier this month stating that since Overstreet did not jump prices in the guide up to or close to what the comics sell for in CGC slabs, that the guide was now 'obsolete" and useless.

 

So, my question is: "what if he DID raise the 9.4 orice all the way up to the average highest few prices realized in 9.4 in the past year? What would be the market's reaction? Would comics now start selling for multiples of the new guide prices???

 

 

[blowout]

what if he DID raise the 9.4 orice all the way up to the average highest few prices realized in 9.4 in the past year?

 

Overstreet just doesn't play that way, and has always been conservative with price increases.

The 9.0 price has been introduced IMO to open up the high grade spread over a number of years, not in one hit.

 

Raising prices to such high levels in one guide could have a negative effect on prices in the long run. Investors / Collectors will see these huge jumps and think 'wow its time sell, my books have doubled/tripled etc in value!" thus creating a glut of demand which could damage long term values.

Who wants to see an Overstreet that see-saws up and down year after year?

 

Maybe Bob is a bit TOO conservative sometimes and lags the market by several years, but the guide has become a more stable/ enduring tool because of this approach..

[blowout]

What would be the market's reaction? Would comics now start selling for multiples of the new guide prices???

 

Just to tag on to this point specifically. I don't actaully think that the CGC market (at least HG) is all that affected by the guide. Smart collectors and dealers are aware of what the market value is for book A at grade X and Ebay and Heritage offer up huge databases of past sales to check prices. This market is so volatile, that the only way to track values is to watch the market online. Guide multiples just don't work consistently.

Overstreet is much more valuable when it comes to buying books below the CGC 9.0 grade, where more stable market conditions occur (usually).

[joe_collector]

Dealers would hold a mass rally, burning copies of Overstreet, while proclaiming Wizard as their new Bible.

 

No dealer wants customers walking in with a collection under one arm and a realistic 2003 price list under the other. Come on.

[Mister_Comics]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like a 10 to 20 percent increase every issue.

 

Has anyone noticed a decline in price in any issues? There usually is, I just haven't looked.

[garthgantu]

I've noticed some prices have dropped in the latest guide, but this seems to be almost exclusively the case for certain "bridge grades," not the upper echelon. I don't think anything in 9.0 or above went down in value. I don't recall seeing any VF prices that were lower than last year's prices. It's the VF-, FN- and VG- grades that in some cases (5-15%?) have come down a little. Also a few VG prices have dropped.

 

As for the effect that listing "accurate" 9.4 or even 9.6 and 9.8 grades would have on the industry as a whole, first you have to consider that for many, many issue #s, there are no examples of 9.8, 9.6 or even 9.4 prices generated in the past 12 months. Heck, there aren't even extant copies of a lot of comics in those grades. So the first thing you'd have in any new columns under the headers "9.6" and above, would be a lot of "???" like you see in the Platinum Age and Victorian Age sections of the guide. I'm not sure this would help clarify things for the average collector/investor.

 

Finally, I'd also suggest that in a lot of other instances, there's just not enough data to work with. Yes, you could give an accurate grade for ASM 25 or Wolverine 1 in NM 9.4, but again you'd have an awful lot of instances where only one such sale occured in the past year.

 

I think Overstreet's been doing this long enough to know that phenomena like slabbed books take time to develop, and should be carefully observed before action is taken.

 

Garthgantu

[aardvark88]

Just like during the CVM hype. Prices on b/w or color independents, variants going up 10-20% avg. every month for at least 6 months in a row.

[Aman619]

I agree with you. the CGC market prices books on their demand/perceived scarcity independently from Overstreet's prices. The percentages of guide are Krause's sole contribution to the game, but even there it's essentially meaningless since when they say 394% of guide, they mean THEIR price guide, not Overstreets!

 

I agree with JC and the others who stated that Had Bob suddenly ditched his established wait-and-see attitude to price increase phenomenona (like CGC) it would destroy his carefully carved position, and lead to lowering prices the following yesr---something he clearly never wants to do.

 

I dont think we heard from any of those who WANTED Overstreet to "catch up". I was wondering how they would argue this.....