As collectible marketplaces suffer drastic corrections almost every week it is more important than ever for you to have the tools you need to proceed safely as both buyer and seller.

We've seen the numbers ourselves and we've heard you call out for more precision when it comes to pricing your comic books.

Today, GoCollect is very proud to announce that we have stepped up and enhanced one of our most important tools – our Fair Market Value (FMV).

What Exactly Is FMV? And Why Is It Important?

In a nutshell, fair market value is you not overpaying. And never underselling. Fair market value exists to provide you with an equal and stable ground-level approach to collecting and investment. Fair market value means you pay what you should be paying at that moment in time.

With that said, we all know by now that an organic FMV is never stagnant, nor does it rarely sleep. The vast array of collectible marketplaces are ripe at any given moment with a disparate surplus of items in a variety of prices and conditions. Somewhere in the combination of those prime factors lies a fair value for each and every item. It seems easy enough, but doing those computations yourself across years of value fluctuations can be excruciating, and downright exhausting for a person who just wants to buy or sell a few comic books.

You may have heard the phrase 'a collectible is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it'. While this statement may be true, when there is a steady demand for the supply of an item, it's important that you get a reliable number as soon as possible.

With well over a decade of collectibles sales data, GoCollect is in the position to do all of that immediate hard work for you. In fact, if you’re reading this then you probably know by now that we have been doing this for a very long time.

So, Why the Upgrade? Was There Something Wrong?

Perhaps a bit of history on GoCollect and our place in the comic hobby will help better explain the magnitude of this upgrade.

A long time ago GoCollect created an algorithm to monitor and calculate fair market value for graded comic books.

And for quite some time all was well in the comic kingdom. Buyers, sellers, and collectors took notice of our fair site, and we all relished under the warm security of a stable marketplace. Books were traded, deals were cut, collections came and went – and our FMV calculations helped contribute to some of the growth and some of the safety within the graded comic collecting community.

If you followed our FMV in those early years you had a good idea what to expect when a specific book came to market in a specific grade. And, what’s more, we had an uncanny ability at times to predict the value of very rare items in grades that had no realized sales.

That fair market value was calculated through a number of steps that were very relevant to the market at that time, and above all, to the type of books that were initially collected by the creator of our FMV. See, GoCollect was founded as a private tool for the purposes of valuating and obtaining almost exclusively Golden Age comic books.

True story. That’s the simple origin of GoCollect.

But as time went on, and the secondary comic market made moves that distinguished itself as a new force with new players; players who seemed interested in far more than just collecting – we started to realize that our old ways of calculating were in desperate need of a tune-up.

Our FMV began to be tested in new ways as the comic market evolved and became much more volatile; with thousands more sales, and newer and fresher trends emerging yearly that made us adapt and redefine our FMV calculations again and again and again. Ultimately to find ourselves in a position over the years that has dissatisfied a number of our original subscribers and believers.

The market was once again The Wild West, and GoCollect found itself without the means to nurture the newer waves of collectors, such as it had in the past.

The original GoCollect had to adapt because the market that it covered did not exist anymore either. It had evolved. And when we relaunched years ago, we never made the proper changes at the time to our FMV. We knew at times that it was clunky. We knew there was a potential +- deviation from reality on certain items. We saw every single video being made that scrutinized and critiqued our poor old FMV. And it drove us nuts. So, we made smaller, but effective changes around the FMV – things like a 30-day, 90-day, and 1-year average were added so you could cross examine every detail yourself.

We put on patches wherever our FMV was hurting. We felt as if our FMV was no longer being taken seriously. And while we knew there was a reason, we struggled to apply the cure. Because you see, after years of patching our FMV with band-aids, the bruise had become so ingrained on our website that the work necessary to get to the cause of the problem seemed insurmountable.

But With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

A Cutting-Edge Approach To Valuation

And in the world of collectibles, things don’t just get older—they become finer, more valuable, and more sought-after.

At GoCollect, we’re proud to host one of the largest databases and communities of collectors and collectibles on the planet. We understand the weight of this responsibility, which is why we’ve undertaken a comprehensive, internal re-examination of our valuation processes. Our newly refined algorithm takes into account several crucial factors, including:

  • Recency of sales

  • Outliers in the market

  • Relative grades

This multi-faceted approach ensures a more accurate and nuanced reflection of fair market value for the 600,000+ collectibles we track on our website. These numbers matter as much as the items. We want you to get the greatest price on your greatest hunt, and we want you to know the best time to sell.

Hang On! One Burning Question Demands An Answer

What is going to happen to the values in your collection?

And the answer is: nothing at all.

Yes, with this upgrade to our FMV algorithm, there have been some corrections that impact your lists. But those corrections only serve your collections greater as we narrow in on what you are most likely to expect on today's open marketplace. Simply put, if you notice a change in value in your collection as a result of this update - for better or for worse - we feel those new numbers are a closer representation to reality.

Acknowledgments

GoCollect would like to extend our personal thanks to Bryan Gordon at Bry's Comics for collaborating with us by examining our progress and offering specific points of focus along the way. Our community is in a better place overall with your cutthroat commitment to fairness and honesty.

And thank you to all of our subscribers and followers for your continued feedback and support.