Price Guides

Comic book price guides are generally monthly or yearly publications which detail the changes in the resale value of a comic over a period of time. more...

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Price Guides

Each collector will have his or her own preference regarding which authority to follow, but popular and respected guides currently include The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, Comics Buyer's Guide magazine, Wizard Magazine, the Comics Buyer's Guide Standard Catalog of Comic Books, and Human Computing’s ComicBase, an inventory/databasing software program. Popular online price guides include the largest online price guide comicspriceguide.com (free and paid services), mycomicpile.com (free), and nostomania.com (free). Both the online and print price guides have their own discrepancies, so a combination of both sources may have to be used to arrive at a true value.

Although many price guides come and go, long–standing publications such as Overstreet (which has been running for over 35 years) or the more recent Standard Catalog of Comic Books, have long since become inextricable elements of comic collection history. These guides, in addition to software databases such as ComicBase, the online, non–profit Grand Comics Database, or online resources comicspriceguide.com, mycomicpile.com, and nostomania.com are popular resources for collectors and enthusiasts seeking information on anything from storylines to writers and artists to the original cover price of a comic. Grand Comics Database and comicspriceguide.com, in particular, offer users the ability to quickly search for characters by appearances and deaths. The Big Comic Book DataBase combines a searchable database of per issue character and creator information and a linked price guide.

Price guides are also important tools for collectors looking to sell their collection or determine their collection’s worth for insurance purposes. With the advent of online auctioning services like eBay, price guides such as The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide and Wizard Magazine have seen dramatic declines in sales because their price listings were not reflective of the actual sale prices of comics. Nostomania.com was the first online site to present a price guide generated completely from sales data captured from online sources , and currently provides access to two years worth of online sales. Shortly thereafter, Comics Buyer's Guide magazine and the CBG Standard Catalog of Comic Books started reporting actual completed auction results from eBay, covering periods longer than eBay's results are online. The 2005 edition of the Standard Catalog is 1,624 pages long and reports results back to 2002.

Recently established independent companies, such as Comic Guaranty LLC (CGC) and Professional Grading eXperts LLC (PGX) provide expert third party grading services for comics. Comic books can be sent to these companies for independent, impartial certification, including grading, restoration check and encapsulation within a tamper-evident protective holder.

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