Comic Book Price Guide

We monitor the fire hose of online comic book sales across various marketplaces and report on the sales of CGC and CBCS graded books in our comics price guide. We only monitor actual sales; not just sale listings. For each sale discovered, we match it to the specific comic in our massive database (which also includes variant covers and printings). As we match the sale we record the comic grading company, holder/label type and the assigned grade. Finally, we gather supportive information about the individual sale including when and where it was sold, how the sale can be identified at the remote venue, the format of the sale (auction, fixed price, etc.), the images that were used for the sale, descriptive sale information (i.e. auction titles) and more.

We employ actual humans...

Although we use API technologies to pull in giant piles of sales data, we employ humans to organize that data and assign it to individual comics in our database. Therefore, mistakes can occasionally occur. For such instances, we've integrated a flagging system. Any member can flag a sale that they feel may have been assigned in error. We'll take a second look at the sales assignment and make corrections as needed.

We follow a strict set of guidelines in order to deliver the best possible comic book values.

Qualifications & Reported Prices

We make every possible effort to only report on the price paid for individual comics. Some examples:

• When more than one comic is offered in a particular listing, the entire sale is disregarded.
• If a comic is purchased for an amount less than it's fixed price (i.e. a "best offer" is accepted) we report the price offered/paid. Our direct data licensing relationships provide this level of insight.
• If the holder/label is damaged the sale is disregarded.
• We do not consider shipping costs in our calculations.
• When a "buyer fee" is involved, it gets added to the sale price.

Value & Trending Calculations

We're often asked how we calculate these values for individual grades. We use a proprietary algorithm that considers the following data points (among others):

• The time frame the user is analyzing (i.e. the past 3 - 24 months).
• The number of sales that have been recorded in that time frame.
• Whether or not the user is allowing "outlier" data to be included in the calculations.
• Peaks and valleys in sales history (i.e. were there certain time frames where the comic was sold more or less often than other time frames).