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stephanm Posts: 35
3/7/2018
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Guys, this is cold...
Just realized that you cut the number of recent price changes a Bronze member can view to a mere 20 ...
Now, fair enough, I am a non-paying Bronze member, and you might point out things like "gift horses" and all that.
However...
... honestly, this is not the way that you will entice Bronze members to upgrade.
The best way to do that is make the higher echelons of your site MORE appealing -- not the lowest rung LESS so.
Stunts like this just make me lose trust.
The main reason why I am not interested in shelling out for Silver or Gold is that your site, while brilliant in many ways, does not, in my humble opinion, succeed in a key function, namely to serve as a tool to catalogue a collection, and in particular, to give it a fair total value.
While I more or less think your NM values are about right, any lower grades for issues where you amended the price over the last year, are severely overpriced (essentially, you are applying the wrong fractions to the NM price)
Just look at, I don't know, Fantastic Four 53 (where the value changed a few days ago):
NM $400 -- OK probably right (odd time to cut the value in half, just after the film hit pay dirt, but it WAS severely overpriced before)
VF $286 -- really?
FN $171 -- seriously???
VG $103 -- Wow! For a VG ???
GD $57 ...
That's SERIOUSLY bloated, and clearly out of line with reality, especially for the mid-grades.
And that's true for all books with recent value changes.
The result of this is, I'm no longer even looking at the total value of my 50 most valuable books I entered as a Bronze member -- I know it's a few thousand dollars off (for example my FF 53, in VG/FN, supposedly went UP in value quite a bit, even though, the NM listing went down from 800 to 400)...
So I need to run an Excel sheet anyway, with realistic fractions of the NM values, to have correct figures for my collection. And if I am running an Excel sheet anyway, clearly I don't need a Gold membership.
So, long story short, if I might make a suggestion, don't take away from us Bronze members, instead make life better for the Silver and Gold members, if you want to increase your paying membership.
Also, don't diss us Bronze members too much.
Admittedly, we're not paying. But in terms of advertising dollars, we are bringing up the numbers (I bet we make up something like 90% of the eyeballs on the site... And I'm guessing you're making a lot more money from advertising than from membership. That's just the way of the internet in general...)
Thanks for listening.
Best, Stephan
PS don't get me wrong... the site is great, and I am glad it exists. But it could be so much better. And I was taken aback by the change to the "Recent Price Change" setting, which is a fun feature
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Ronbatman Administrator Posts: 2530
3/8/2018
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Hey Stephan,
Yes, the recent price changes are limited for bronze members. There was a discussion in our office to completely block bronze members from seeing the price changes but we decided against it. We want to offer bronze members some features to tempt them to become gold members but not a full experience. This is part of that marketing plan. We are grateful for our bronze members and offer a free comic book price guide to them. You can choose to never spend one penny or Euro at Comics Price Guide and we will still provide this service. It's our "gift horse". 
Regarding the pricing issue, we are trying to make price changes every day to correctly report what the market is doing. Sometimes we nail it and sometimes we miss. The market makes quick shifts especially regarding variant covers and movie releases. On the forum, there is a post for reporting discrepancies. https://comicspriceguide.com/forum/topic12031-price-changes-that-you-think-need-to-be-made.aspx
I personally look at it every day and try to investigate any price issue. Here is my email if you ever want to contact me [email protected]
I'm glad you're here,
Ron
edited by ronbatman on 3/8/2018
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stephanm Posts: 35
3/8/2018
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Thanks, Ron, for the quick reply. That's very much appreciated.
Nevertheless, I still think reducing value for Bronze members (after all, up until a few days ago, Bronze members had access to the value changes, without the 20 issue limit) is a short-sighted marketing plan, which might not have the effect you imagine. However, it's your marketing plan and your prerogative to do so, on a free service, so hey ho, I'll stop grumbling.
On the other issue, regarding the pricing errors, I think you misunderstood me. If you re-read my post, I wasn't talking about individual pricing issues. Of course I appreciate that the market is fast moving, that you are not omniscient, and that you can't nail them all.
What I was trying to point out is a pretty massive systemic error.
ALL values except NM on ALL issues where you posted value changes in the last year or so, are not realistic.
The example I gave of FF 53 is just that, an example. The same systematic error (the fractions of NM value applied to the lower grades, are significantly too high) applies across the board. All issues with recent value changes apply the same unrealistic percentages to non-NM grades.
I'll give you a nice, clear example of comics that happen to have a NM value of $100 (because that makes it easy to see the percentages), Avengers 89 and Avengers 96:
Avengers 89 hasn't had a recent value change, and the values you list are as follows:
NM $100
VF $50
FN $18
VG $8
GD $4
That's about right, in line with the market. Perhaps a bit stingy on the lower grades, but not too far off, I guess.
Then let's look at Avengers 96, which DID have a recent value change:
NM: $100
VF: $71
FN: $43
VG: $26
GD: $14
So supposedly both issues have the same NM value, but #89 has a FN value of $18 and #96 has a FN value of $43 ???
That's not realistic. Nobody would buy Avengers 96 in FN for 43% of the NM value, or in GD at 14% of the NM value etc.
As I said, the same applies to, by now, thousands of comics (for anything that had a value change in the last year or so, the same error is perpetuated).
And that's what I meant by the database constantly getting further and further removed from reality.
I made this point before, a number of times, but never got a response (except the very first time, when I got "we are aware of the issue, and it will be dealt with", but it never was).
Maybe you could bring it up with your programmers.
It's not so much a valuation error, but the fact that the wrong formulae for calculating lower grades from the NM valuation is applied.
Thanks for looking into it.
Best, Stephan
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Ronbatman Administrator Posts: 2530
3/9/2018
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Stephan, I understand what you're saying about our values. It's funny someone else on the forum recently complained about the lower grades being worth more than we show. Should we raise them or should we keep them on the old schedule? Before I go into this, I need to apologize for digressing into theory.
Our job as we see it is to report the market not make the market. In years past, certain printed price guides affected the market by speculating and not reporting facts. (Did someone say Wizard? No, not me.) We don't want to guess or speculate that's the collector or investors job.
After researching that specific book the price for mid to low-grade books are in the middle of those two scales.
100
60
35
20
10
Whether I agree or disagree with a vg copy selling for $20 is irrelevant. It happened more than once. We were actually talking about the scales this morning and how they need to change for modern books vs Bronze or other ages. Key books vs normal issues. You will continue to see changes that get closer and closer to the real world pricing with all its quirks.
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stephanm Posts: 35
3/9/2018
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Ron, great to hear that this is finally being looked into.
If you think about it, getting the scales for the mid and low grade books right is at least as important as getting the prime figure (the NM value) right -- for the simple reason that the vast majority of books out there (at least for GA, SA and BA -- MA might be different) are NOT in NM or anywhere near, but spread all over the spectrum.
That there will be progress on this makes me hope that this site is finally on a good trajectory again, after a couple of pretty dire years.
I totally agree that the old schedules for the lower graded books were on the overly conservative side. It's true that especially for older and key books, where lower grades are often the only way people can afford them at all, the true values are more than you show.
It's just that the schedule you've used recently has taken it way over to the other extreme.
So it would be great to see the realistic scales, in line with what you show above, being implemented soon.
(although I have noticed that for your most recent value changes, Marvel Family 1 and 77, you seem to have gone to the other extreme again. But I have to admit that I know little about Golden Age pricing, and this may have to do with the extreme scarcity of high grade Golden Age books)
And no need to apologize for digressing into theory ;-) I think that's the fascinating bit.
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CyberComics Posts: 7
3/18/2018
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As a paying advertiser on the site for the past 2-3 years, I have always wondered why I was only able to receive a bronze membership. I guess you want even more of my $$ to see the recent value changes. I may have to sacrifice my long running ad and put the $ to upgrade my membership?
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Guest
3/19/2018
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I would just like to comment regarding pricing. I understand that guides are never going to be 100% accurate however, one of my qualms about them has always been that they follow the same pattern throughout the various ages. Now in from say the mid 60's to now the formula where NM is X value and the various grades below are a certain percentage mostly works (the exception being maybe the higher priced keys). With older books that formula can be very misleading. While higher grade copies are worth more what can happen is that you have high grade books worth quite a bit more than the lesser grades because of the rarity with which they show up, BUT, and this is important, lesser grades may be quite a bit more valuable than your standard price difference formula.
When I was actively filling out my Wonder Woman Vol.1 collection prices of the issues 39-112 were exceptionally hard to find and most virtually impossible to find in high grade and guides were absolutely useless in representing what the market was like. While the very rare 7.0 and up were always really high value (2-3 time Overstreet or more at the time) a solids VG or FN would be WAAAAAY higher than any guide had recorded and if you knew what the high grades were getting you would see that they were much, much higher percentage of the NM price than a modern book would be. NO this wasn't true for all other titles of that era (mid 40's to 60 or 61) but for tyhe more popular titles it was. It was reflective of how rare solid VG-FN copies were.
Now, I don't know if this is possible but I would almost suggest having an algorithm that might be adjustable as market information comes in on the various titles that way you could have the chance of the lower grades matching the realized values. Not to mention having that algorithm not break every time one of the staff adjusts the values (which is what I think is the underlying issues with the OP's observations).
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Oxbladder Posts: 487
3/19/2018
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And I got booted again 
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