Thanks for covering this Mint-Hunter (btw we enjoy your channel!). To your point, dealing with inexperienced sellers is an issue across the industry. We've been live since 2018, and since that time, we've seen A LOT of new collectors overpricing their collections mostly because they don't always know condition and grading. As a seller, the incentive is to charge as much as possible, so naturally, these collectors gravitate towards flashy all-time-high sales for NM+/M pricing. One of the many things that separates us from other price guides is that we generate our Fair Market Values (FMVs) only from REAL sales collected across multiple marketplaces (yes, eBay is one of them). We show sales data for both Raw and Slabbed comics, and we let you dive in to see all the sales for each one. If you look up most of the comics you call out, we're right in the range you said you'd expect to pay. For example, Superman #14 is listed with a raw FMV of $2 on our site ($4 in an NM+). With your great points in mind, we'll produce some articles and content to instruct and inform new users on how to approach pricing their collection. This is a great conversation and a step towards better expectations regarding pricing.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: Let’s say that a seller has an item for sale for $100 on eBay. Let’s also say that a potential buyer sends that seller a message trying to work a deal, or they have that item chilling in their shopping cart, or they’re “watching” that item. At that point a seller can message the buyer with a lower price (let’s say $80) and if the buyer accepts that deal at $80, it will still be shown as selling for $100 under “sold listings.” Trust me. I’ve bought and sold items in which this happens. So, remember that eBay sold listings aren’t always accurate.

Cracked up when you used Pitt #1 as an example of a book that doesn't move. Guy at the last claim sale didn't want it for free! Happy 3rd anniversary! Keep the great videos coming.

I would never use Key Collector for pricing as they do not even keep up to date with sales, they are good for identifying keys though. The two things that everyone forgets to factor in when looking up prices on the pricing platforms is how recent was the sale and how many sales. If you do not factor that in the pricing will be misleading. If the last book sold three years ago at $50 but hasn't sold since then is that $50 price point still valid today? Also if the book was selling at around $10 and then you have one aberration of a sale at $50 that does not mean that the FMV of that book is all of a sudden $50. In fact I just saw an aberration of a sale today on Cover Price where CGC 9.8 copies of Paper Girls #1 have been selling for under $50 consistently for a while now however, the most recent sale was for $329.99. Now why someone paid $329.99 for a copy of Paper Girls #1 when the next prior sale was for $34 just two days prior I do not not pretend to understand. But this high sale definitely does not set a new FMV.

Good topic and much appreciated by a buyer like myself. I always enjoy your channel and congratulations on the 3 year anniversary.

Happy birthday and happy anniversary. Love the channel

Same, CLZ account for my large collection (15k and still have 10 long boxes to scan in) is fantastic.

Very informative. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Nice follow up to that dollar bin video you made, this really clears things up for me.

Been around since the early days and never missed a show! Great work James 🔥

Three year anniversary, your still just a baby! Seriously though, great channel. Always look forward to your videos.

I like using Key Collector as a quick frame of reference in terms of pricing. The important thing to remember is that very few are going to pay that top dollar, if the price listed is in fact the true high end. You always have to consider what folks are willing to pay, and what you may incur in fees if selling online, as it relates to flipping these books.

I agree with eBay SOLD prices as a good gauge of what BV is. As a seller, too, the eBay sold prices can also be a great guage on how much lower you should probably put your "6.0" book as compared to pricing it as a "9.0+". Thanks for the video..nice info!

I focus on a handful of comics for my collecting/flipping, so what I do is source prices from a variety of places, including eBay sold, and come up with an average that I consider to be a good FMV. Also because I focus on a handful of comics at a time, I'll also monitor the eBay sold prices over time so I can account for spikes or drops accordingly, which also helps me decide if it's a good time to buy. It's a slow time consuming process, but I like mathing :P

I use Key Collector to track my keys, but generally speaking I use EBay for price comp.

James, I always appreciate how you price items. Some of your videos where you do this are very instructive as well. I always figure if someone feels like they are getting a deal, they will buy it and keep coming back, spread your good reputation etc... Sure, I could go with $5 for the price but if I do $3 people will scoop them up.

I am an annual subscriber to CovrPrice and I’m glad to see they commented on this. CovrPrice absolutely uses recent sales in their prices. They even give you the dates of the most recent sale so you can determine, 1. Does the book have recent interest, and 2. Was this something that was part of the great comic madness of 2021. The onus is really on the collector to be honest with themselves on the grade of the book when they are using any app to determine value. Don’t say a 4.5 book is an 8.5. Keep the videos like this coming. I love critical thinking and honesty. I detest market manipulation and hype.

Sub. Thx for the info. Just started collecting 3 months ago and have learned a lot from your videos. Thank you

Congratulations on 3 years!!!!

I compare prices with 3 different sources to try 2 get realistic values!

Very sound advice. Key Collector is great for identifying books. Overstreet is great for looking up runs and series that may not be as well known. E- bay is great for seeing actual real time sales. When I buy I am looking for fair market or below. Keep up the good work. Awesome as always.

Despite the pricing information, Key Collector is not a price guide and shouldn't be used as such. If you're using KC to price your comics, you don't know what you're doing and are likely overvaluing or undervaluing your collection. eBay recent sales, with the often inflated sales, is not a good indicator of true current values. However, it can provide a snapshot and maybe be a good starting point or used as a comparison with other price guide sites. CovrPrice is probably the best for raws and GPA for slabs, but both guides have issues with accurate and up-to-date sales since they can only access a limited amount of sales data. But, they both give you a composite of sales from a variety of sources, which is better than looking just at eBay recent sales.

The part that kills me is these books all cost $5 new. But 1 month later most are barely worth a single buck. The 3rd option you didn't mention for knowing a book's value is to be a fan of the material. Besides a seller, I think only a Green Lantern fan would know Larfleez's(?) 1st appearance was worth anything at all.

Excellent video!

The price you're selling also depends on the market you're selling to. If you're trying to sell your comics at eBay prices (international audience) but only bringing them to flea markets that aren't comic specific (micro audience), you're going to have difficult time unloading your stock. eBay can also inflated in price because of the fees involved on the platform.

Happy Birthday, and cheers for 3 years on KZfaq James! Personally i think it boils down to collector and retail value. A retail might charge for a little higher for the dealer to get a small profit. While a collector understands what will and what will not move amd as such will price acordingly. As someone whos been collecting back issues for a decade ive noticed that. Then again ive never really got into the buying and selling scene so i could be off.

Great video. I noticed the same thing a while ago. I use key collector a lot, but it's only good for a rough estimate of value and really only for major and midlevel keys like you said.

Great advice, James. I don’t use Key Collector for any pricing at all. I only use it to help identify keys. “Hmm, what WAS Arm-Fall-Off Boy’s first appearance? Let me check Key Collector!” I use CovrPrice for values, but only as a starting point for deeper research.

Happy birthday and anniversary. Is there an app you'd recommend to catalog your inventory?

Key collector is super cool but I never use it for pricing, happy birthday in advance dude!

Great Vid, which is a topic that really needs to be talked about sensibly more, like you have. I find that the best way to price is from experience. I am not from the US, so the market skewers alittle differently and I do have to price accordingly.

Agreed on Key Collector, kiiiiinda disagree to an extent on Covrprice. I think where a lot of the problem comes in there is that people don't actually know how to read the numbers its giving you. The raw books are in ranges for a price and I'm willing to bet barely anyone trying to move their childhood collection goes in and looks at the actual sales data by grade, so you get a weird aggregate of 3 grades with all the outliers that entails, it can make for some weird FMV coming back. It also has problems when combined with CLZ, cause it will grab the closest value (or most common, I forget) to what you put in, if there is no sales date for your exact entry, which... people will scan right over and just see the big number. Then there's the state where it's a grey number meaning, no sales data within like, 3 months or something, so its stale info.

I have CLZ for my comic inventory. Love it. It does use Cover Price for pricing which is great for current/modern comics, but I will use Overstreet for older ones.

Congrats on the milestone and happy early bday

Ebay complete sales is a good resource.

Very good advice. I would add that if you have a book that you don’t care about you just wanna move even if it does have a five dollar value, put it out of dollar make someone happy and they might even come back and buy more.

One of the things that get me upset is seeing someone on ebay listing there comics as Brand New and when you expand the pictures they look like they been used as a floor mat

Great stuff bro! I agree 100%! We do have to use these apps as a guide! I have comics that don’t have an estimated value at all. At other instances, I would see a lower grade have an estimated value that is higher than the same comic in a high grade. In this second example, the lower grade value was based on a recent sale. However, why is that not used to recalculate the approximate value of the higher grade! As it stands right now in one particular app, the value of a 9.4 sits at $200 (based on a recent sale) and the value of my 9.6 sits at $70 (No recent sales at that grade). Go figure! 🧐

U are correct. Non keys on key collector is 1/2/3

The biggest problem is that there's too many existing guides with conflicting values out there.

Love that Batman 62, Professor Pyg, though.

I get unexperienced sellers attacking me for offers and considering me insulting them because of it. It's a thin line when I do business with anyone. Thanks for putting this out there, because some people need to come back down to Earth.

Also, Key Collector identifies first appearances and this may give some collectors a false sense of importance regarding a particular issue: in the 1970s and 1980s just about every second issue of titles like Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America had a new nemesis for the hero to fight but many of these villains are now forgotten. Just because Key Collector notes an appearance does not make that comic important and therefore particularly valuable.

CLZ is cheap has none of the filler 🤙

My first time using key collector I realized the prices were off. Partly because people on eBay are crazy how they price their books sometimes and partly being that the prices are consistently changing

Happy Birthday and happy anniversary. Thanks again for sharing Your passion and adventures from Toronto Ontario Canada 😀 👍 ❤️ 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 ♥️ 🎉🎉🎉🎉✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️💯💯💯💯💯✨️✨️

AWESOME 🎉🎉!!

I use Key Collector to do just that….collect keys! Most of mine are those small, minor keys that I pick up for a dollar or two, but I did hit what I would consider a big boy book (all be it in a grade of 0.5, but still!) in a dollar bin this past Saturday. I’ll do a video about that on my channel tomorrow.👍

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND ANNIVERSARY!

I find e-bay for comics are often over priced for what they are. I like to use overstreet price guide and use key collector mainly for additional information like minor keys.

Firstly if your birthday is July 1st then it's the same day as mine so happy birthday & secondly one of the books you show when talking about turning a $1 book to a $5 is batman shadow of the bat #1 which I bought recently for 60p UK price so really happy with that

Key Collector is a good guide but is definitely not precise enough for many collectors.

Would you say use the ebay sales data on all collectibles from trading cards, funko pops and other collectibles than the price guides provided?

So what do you suggest for a price guide

ya the behviour comes from resellers not in a community. Like sneaker sellers. They negotiate via the biggest seller sites.

Are you saying that the CovrPrice recently sold are wrong or just the FMV?

Holy crap! A full Batman returns run!!?!? I’m so stoked!!! 😮

The old saying, its only worth what someone is willing to pay. Use price guide as that, a guide. Nothing is in stone. Get what you can or get what you want.

I use comicbookrealm to catalog my collection and although the prices on there are a tad inflated or do not consider signatures or newsstand editions I still use to it to roughly estimate how much my collection is worth. People always have to remember that selling takes time and everyone knows time is money. If you sell your collection in bulk you are 100% going to make less than if you take the time to set everything out and sell individually or as sets. If you get hung up on pricing everything individually you're going to waste time and the buyers time because the price you want is so ridiculously high.

I have a love hate relationship with those apps. I saw this issue of Thor on key collect was about $5 on the high end. The shop had it at $15. I looked it up in two different places, and they had it between $15-$20. In my own opinion key collect isn't very accurate, I still haven't found one that is.

I can't even get my head around the concept of adding up the cover prices and looking for 4times the total worth of a collection ? How can you get to the point of having a huge comic collection and have no idea about how things work ?

Nice! July 1st your B-Day? Me too 🎉 enjoy this weekend! 🥳

It also isn’t great because people will often try and sell a 1 dollar run filler book for 3 because key collector often says 3 dollars for a high grade for all those books with no significance.

After watching several claim sales, I feel like people are hesitant to pay more than 5 bucks for any book they feel that they might still be able to find in the wild at flea markets or dollar bins. ASM/FF/Batman etc. always do well because so many collectors are completing runs. Anything else? Risky business if you're buying something you don't genuinely appreciate for art/story.

This reminds me of the Wizard price guides...

Plus when your buys collections. Your try to make an profit and they need to understand that. Just like pawning items . You wont get the best value ir comic stores. They also need to make an profit of it. Hope you got an great deal off that short box

3:56 Ms. Marvel vibes with the hand magnification

Problem is that non comicbook collectors or new collectors dont know about all this and they go right to check mint slab prizes 😝

Where do you buy comics that are the same price or cheaper then the apps? I look for a comic and it’s always at least 25% more than what they recommend.

I agree, sometimes it's burned me I might have a £10 book all day long, here comes a guy with cvr price this says it's worth 5 your over charging it's only worth 5 this says so

Doesn't' covrprice get its data in the same way that old school guides like Overstreet and CVM - from multiple sources, but now including online sales? I think there's a good deal of local market subjectivity when buying books in person. And even though I agree these tools are rather imperfect, just like the old guides were, I don't think it's unreasonable to use them as an estimate for insurance purposes for the layperson.

Key Collector prices don't seem accurate and are rarely updated to reflect the market. I have an Avengers 8 graded by cgc at 5.0. Key Collector values it at $1200, but ebay sales this year are about half that. It's a fine reference, but determining fair market value takes multiple sources.

Happy Pre-Birthaversary!!

I wish whatnot sellers would watch this video!!

Ultimately, these books are only worth what someone is willing to pay for them. Some people aren't very knowledgeable about actual values on raw books. I have yet to start buying slabbed comics because of the high prices for them.

Honestly I think people who do not use any app or reference and just put a high price on something just because it is old is worse. Had a guy at a flea market selling wolverine 1 in a horrible grade and I mean horrible, it had a torn cover and he wanted 80 dollars and was trying to tell me that older comics cant sell for anything less. Obviously, I walked away from the clown and bid on a higher grade on ebay and paid less.

I also tried HIP comic, they say you take a picture of your book and they "grade" it. But I've done a few to check it out and I don't trust it. I had a shiny copy of ASM and it gave me a 9.0. Definitely wasn't.

Has anyone have any experience with the high priced COMICBASE? Any feedback on whete they get their pricing from? It seems the majority of people use CLZ, but with Coverprice as their paid valuating source, and with Coverprice clearly pushing to merge their pricing database with their own collecting database like CLZ, it can't be long until they cancel their association with CLZ and attempt to become their competitor.

I disagree with using eBay as a standard. Again, people do overpay on eBay and most don't do averages of recent sales. It getting to the point that you have to use multiple sources to get an accurate pricing for comics now.

I miss Wizard magazine😄

I got Ultimate Fallout #4 (variant it’s 3,300$ & Ultimate Fallout #4 news stands it’s 4,000$ but it’s only 1,500 on comic book realm.

Does the artwork mean anything?

your birthday is July 1st? Its my birthday June 29th so we're pretty close 🎂

Not really concerned with sellers that might be unsure of prices. I just try to educate people on the value of their comics using various tools. The real concern is you serious collectors that dont educate people. Instead you look for people to rip off. Its bascially the same thing, but when its the Knowledgeable taking advantage of the uneducated... thats okay???

Stephen: Slab, what price can I get for Turok: Dinosaur Hunter...okay, I'll wait until you stop laughing.

Hey, I tried to email you about the invoice I will get it paid on Thursday 💯

to be fair. i think most of those Metal one shot books had $5 prices of the shelf already. haha doesn't mean theyre worth it but if he bought them new thats a lose for him just right out of the gate there

Maybe it’s a key for not being a key :P

1 million dollars! lol

I dont care for Coverprice or Key Collector I always go with last 5 ebay sales

Don’t agree with Covrprice at all, I have Avengers 11 CGC graded 5.0, go collect has it valued at $400 but according to Covrprice it’s $183. I think it’s rude to ridicule someone on their prices if you don’t like it don’t buy it and move on

Overpricing comics isn't anything new. Overstreet guides and Wizard and the like were always high. I think its to make people believe their collections are worth more than they are and encourages comic book sales.

I like hip it is free

Most modern books aren't worth their cover price.

My birthday is on June 29th. Gonna be 19!!!

I will sell you my collection for 2 million. Est grade 10 😂

books arent actually worth book, this surprises no collector, except the rich weirdos on whatnot

"Promo SM"

I'm no grading expert when it comes to grading any books including my own, that being said...i stopped relying on these apps. Especially K.C. I have even noticed certain books they have on the app are mis leading. for example X-Men (Vol 2 1993) #24, K.C. has it label as "Gambit and Rogue Kiss". I have this book and no where in the book they kiss. I sent K.C. a message regarding this its been 2 yrs and they still have it as their "first kiss". C.P...nothing. again sent them a message and nothing. X-Men #41 is their true first kiss. I use C.P for uploading my collection and of course they don't have all books listed and i'm always sending them links and pics of books they are missing and still not updated. about a year ago I put up my books for sale (9k books at the time) it was estimated at about 75k value but i knew I was not expecting to get that. i did ask for 20k. Every book was on an excel spreadsheet and anyone wanted to take a look i would send them the list. a few ask for photos of books etc. 2 ppl said my value was too high but wanted to take a look. keep in mind all books were bag and boarded and i try to give every detail to each book on the spreadsheet. he came with his friend and we spent about 2 hours looking at the books. there were impress with the books but still thought my value was too high....their counter offer was 2k. 2.5k max. i said really? i understand ppl would like to make a nice investment on their books but I did not expect their offer. Next person came and he had a lower offer. They knew what i had and knew what i was asking for. Well i can say is, i'm glad no one came to make me a good offer and the books has since gone up in value. Sorry for the long rant...lol but always a great show. keep it up.