Comic Book Price Guide Secrets

If you are looking for the price of a comic book you have several options. You can opt for print guides, online guides, free guides and pay services. Where should you start?

First, if you don't know anything about comic books you should visit my other lens about comic book values and you will learn the basic steps. Once you do that, or if you have some experience, read on...

The first price source I recommend is the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. This is the industry standard and whenever you talk to collectors or dealers the first words out of their mouth is usually "what's it worth in guide?" The "guide" they are talking about is Overstreet.

The next place you can check is E-bay! The nice thing about E-bay is it's free (bonus!), the pricing is for actual sales, and there are a lot of comics listed. Some would say it's the ultimate free comic book price guide.

Another great place for actual sales is Heritage Auctions. Heritage allows you to search completed auctions to it's a great resource.

Finally we have pay services. The service I recommend is called GPAnalysis. They have a massive database of actual comic book sales prices going back to 2002. It's a must have if you are a serious collector.

Okay, so you have a price guide, but is it really going to show the true price of a comic book? By "true price" I mean something backed up by actual sales. Here are a few tips about the price guides.

The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide is great, especially the digital download version, but there are a few issues that you need to be aware of.

First, like any printed medium, there is a print delay. It takes months to get the book printed and distributed and in that time a lot can change.

Second, the source can be questionable. Although great effort is made to reflect actual sales, comic book dealers have a say in the prices and sometimes they are not completely accurate. To put it bluntly, many of the books don't actually sell for what the guide says (just check E-bay for proof). This can be on both the downside and upside, so be careful.

Okay, let's talk about E-bay. We all know sometimes people don't pay for their auctions, so sales may not have actually taken place. Also, since the auction only runs for a limited amount of time, would the book have sold for more if it ran longer? We'll never know, so it's best to find more than one sale of a comic if at all possible.

The downside with GPAnalysis is that it only has prices for CGC comic books. CGC is a professional grading company that grades and encapsulates comics in a protective, tamper-proof holder. There is a fee for the service. If you are only using GPAnalyis, you are missing out on "raw" or non-professionally graded comic books.

Ideally you will have a combination of three price guides.

First, the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. This is a great place to start and will get you "in the ballpark" of price. You will have a great idea if your comic book is worthless or valuable.

Next, if you have a "raw" or ungraded comic book, check on E-bay (it's free!). This will usually indicate if the Overstreet Guide is high or low. It's a great double check.

Finally, if your comic books are valuable and you are thinking of having them professionally graded by CGC, check GPAnalysis for the latest actual sales figures.

If you take the three steps above, you are well on your way to finding the price of your comic books.