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Hi all,

Sorry if this is in the wrong section. I was wondering if anyone knew of any good comic book price guide apps.

eBay advanced search, only "Sold" listings...
no book or guide is ever going to tell you what a book is actually selling for, and ultimately that's all it's really worth.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

Values have always fluctuated but were somewhat balanced. Nowadays the prices are wildly unstable. A comic can be worth a few bucks one day and the next day they triple or more because of a rumor about a character appearing in a movie or the book itself getting optioned for one.

I used the Overstreet Price Guide for a while but those were obsolete before they were even printed sometimes.

Overstreet recently launched a paid app that claims to be a price guide. I just honestly can't see them doing it well. As previously said, they used to be good for 30+ year old books with stable prices but they really aren't anymore. Both because there aren't stable prices and, frankly, Overstreet is just off the mark in most cases. This isn't helped by their historical refusal to list anything below cover price.

There is an app out there I won't name that basically is for speculators and scalpers. To me, it's the current bane of the industry as it only focuses on "hot" books.

A site I love, leagueofcomicgeeks, recently added a Market feature to aggregate online sales but it's very early days. A few individual books pricing, but not collections. Yet.

So, yeah, the best place to figure out specific issues remains eBay sold listings and there still isn't a good spot for your entire collection.

But keep in mind, those are the prices of you selling to a buyer directly. If you are looking to sell to a shop or some other middle man you can easily cut those prices in half or less.

I once heard that the prices reflected in Overstreet are the the highest price someone will pay for a book. Seems accurate. Whenever a record setting price is paid for a book (usually slabbed, no less) the value in the Guide is matched to reflect that amount. Which isn't what a price guide is supposed to do, which is to reflect the average going rate for things, not to reflect the extreme high or low price.

I still laugh at the prices they state for Walt Disney books, particularly 70's and early 80's books. Nobody is paying $25 for a random Donald Duck comic in NM. Yet, the prices in Overstreet stay the same, unchanged for the last 30 years.

I mean, maybe? But that doesn't explain their grossly understated values for some books. And I don't mean recent "hot" books. I mean, issues that have sold significantly higher than the guide has stated for YEARS.

Their recent Lost Universes guide was a laughable mess. Missing items, mislabeled items, insane pricing in every direction.

My co-owner still uses the guide for quick reference on Silver Age and earlier but I think it's a shaky standard at best.

Just thought about it, there is a site called Nostomania that I use when I'm trying to determine the value of something really old. Gold/Silver mostly, sometimes Bronze. I don't take it as gospel, more like a guessing range if that makes sense. It helps when there is no other record of sold items like eBay or CCL does. Plus, eBay's clear out after a while if I'm not mistaken.

Now that you mention it, I know what you mean. Back in the day I always noticed prices for newer (post 1980 or so) were never updated too often. I always chocked it up to old man Overstreet catering more to the veteran collectors of Golden and Silver Age stuff. Like it was more a Guide for that crowd.

A few years ago, I was trying to insure my collection, and it was a nightmare. The insurance agency wanted, naturally, a value to the books.

I explained that there really wasn't a way to assign a "value" to the books. I explained that there was a printed price guide, but that it was quickly out-of-date, and that it didn't list all the books I had. Last I looked, it didn't have Cherry listed, and those first couple issues, in 1st printings, can be pricy.

I said that there were a couple website I used that proclaimed to be "current" on values, but that the prices were wildly different in some cases. And I explained that, neither the websites or the printed guide every went below cover price, and that a number of the books, filler issues in my runs, were likely to be found in .50 or $1.00 boxes at shows or most stores.

And that, of course, my collection was going to be growing on a weekly basis, and that at any time, a book's value can increase due to speculation or what-not.

After printing off a 500-page listing of my books, I was told they couldn't insure the collection for a bunch of bs reasons.

Oof. I was able to get State Farm to insure it based on my explanation of all the above and said, let's go with a value of cover price to average out the highs and lows.

The policy wouldn't replace the entire collection but I didn't want to pay that much in insurance anyway. This would take care of replacing the highlights.