How do you decide the sale price for your comics?

I'm not asking a technical question about HipComic. I'm asking about what methods and references you use to price out the comic books you list for sale.

I collected comics for about 10 years starting in the late '90s, and it's time to clear out the basement. My online sales experience, though, is with stamps, not comics. I'm trying to figure out what method to use to price my comics for sale. With stamps, I know about the Scott catalogue (or Stanley Gibbons, or Y&T, or ...). I also know that it is common to price at a discount to catalogue. With comics, though, I don't really know anything.

I'm not looking for anyone to divulge their own trade secrets. Mostly, I'm looking to get an idea of whether there is a typical science to how people price their comics. For example, is Overstreet the most-common source for pricing? Are there others? Are the values listed in it realistic, or do people price at a % of it?

Thanks for any insight that you're willing to share.

Comments

  • 8 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • I'd like to know the answer to this as well.
  • well pick up the latest copy of the Overstreet Price Guide at your local comic book store
  • George

    As mentioned above, I am aware of Overstreet. My question is more about whether Overstreet is a reasonable representation of prices, or if it tends to overstate (with dealers typically selling at a percentage of Overstreet).

    Any thoughts you could share about that?

    Thanks

    Rob
  • Well I use CLZ to inventory all my comics it's cheap and effective. On the site for a good number of comics they will give you an idea of price depending on your Guesstimation of what your comic may grade at. It goes through a database by "GoCollect".
    I will also look to see what most people are selling there book for and price some place where I feel comfortable. I don't want to over charge but I don't want to feel like I'm losing money either. If you look at other people's online prices they seem all over the place. I see peoples price ranges with what seems like the same item being sold for $2 to $30 or even more. It makes me wonder wtf? Then I noticed that there are real reasons for that a lot of the time. So make sure if you are scanning online prices it's important to see why a certain book might be priced higher or lower. Sometimes they are signed. Maybe the lower priced book is a facsimile and they don't tell you that until you read the description. Other times it turns out to be a stupid magnate with a copy of the cover on it, but the seller doesn't say that up front. Which may domino to that one guy that matches his book to the price of the guy selling the magnate and brings the price of everyone's books down. If you figure out a good way to do it I wanna know cause selling comics online and being successful at it must have a method. There is a store here on hipcomic and he just priced every book he had listed at $15. I thought about doing something like that too. I have boxes and boxes of comics and I just don't have space for them anymore, so I'm with you on wanting to lighten your load. I started a bunch of auction listings for some of my older books but I've pretty much have had only about 1 person that has viewed any of them. I am starting to think it may be because I am paying for basic and if I want traffic I need to pay hipcomic for a more expensive membership. But you know something?
    What I do want to know about is stamps....now I have thousands of those too. I acquired them awhile back... and untill I know what to do with them I'm afraid to even touch them. Lol
    Well good luck and like I said if you figure out a good way to do it...let me know. CLZ is an app I do highly recommend, and they help a lot with prices.
  • Overstreet is fine, but isn’t too accurate with moderns that are trending up due to MCU rumors or lesser known titles that become hot(Something Is Killing The Children as an example). An easy gauge for books common in the marketplace is to look at 3-6 months worth of sold sales on eBay, not listed or completed sales, but SOLD sales using the “advanced search” option. Throw out the highest/lowest as outliers, also note any differences between auctions and BINs. Also, for CGC books you can look at GPAnalysis or Heritage Auction completed sales as an alternative to eBay.
    That’s a starting point anyways.
  • Overstreet guide or see what it's going for on ebay for that condition
  • Probably Overstreet is a great starting point for any issue that's been out more than 5 years. Overstreet tends to assign cover price to all new issues, but that doesn't mean you can't sell a current hot book for the going eBay price. Even for older books, you could sometimes make more, but the Overstreet price will be fairly reasonable.
  • NerdMelon.com is a good place to check recent comic sale prices.
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