I made Wizard's Website Again

[toranoshi]

For the second time in the past couple of week's, I made Wizard's website. I also am now a contributor for Comic Buyer's Guide pricing report:

http://www.wizarduniverse.com/040108mwcomics.html

[pctchuck]

Great news.

But does anyone read Wizard anymore?  I recently picked up an issue at the newstand to browse through, and was shocked, first by the price, and secondly by how small of a magazine it has become.  I quit getting it as a subscriber years ago when they became more of a movie magazine than a comic information source.

It always is fun to flip through their price guide and see how ridiculous some of the values are.  I would sell half my collection in a heartbeat if I could get 75% of some of their high prices.

[toranoshi]

Great news.

But does anyone read Wizard anymore?  I recently picked up an issue at the newstand to browse through, and was shocked, first by the price, and secondly by how small of a magazine it has become.  I quit getting it as a subscriber years ago when they became more of a movie magazine than a comic information source.

It always is fun to flip through their price guide and see how ridiculous some of the values are.  I would sell half my collection in a heartbeat if I could get 75% of some of their high prices.

I get about 3 people a month who come in saying that they saw us in there and did not know we existed before. The price is very high on the book, I used to have a subscription because it was cheaper to buy it that way than as a shop. Now that I am part of the overship program, I do not have to do that. The prices on most of the back issues are extremely high, I only advise them on current prices and trends. For Comic Buyer's Guide it is the same, I only advise on current (past 6 months) prices of "hot" books. Price guides in general, other than Overstreet, are pretty obsolete in thanks to eBay.

[pctchuck]

I counsel a merit badge in Boy Scouts on Collections.  One of the requirements is that the boy use a price guide to get an idea of how to grade and/or rate the item he collects, then determine prices.  I generally suggest that they take a price guide value and half it to get a realistic value for a perfectly mint item.  Anything less than perfect will net them a lot less.
The final thing I try to make them understand is that their collection is worth whatever it would take someone to pay them to actually sell their collection.  I have many items that I have collected that are "priceless" to me, since I simply could not see myself selling them for any amount of money.