Difference Between Price and Value (especially on the Collection Report)

[Steven L. Dasinger]

A question was asked on the ComicBase Live-stream (Sep 4 2024) that was only partially answered.
(I notified Pete to see if he wants to address in next week.)

Price is what the Current Price of an Issue is based on the Condition.

Value (column Value Year 4 if you want to display the Column to View, or column 2024 (or current year) in the grid or ValueYear4 in a Find) is the Near Mint value of an Issue.

One reason they might not match is if the Condition is other than NM.
Another may be a rounding situation. The amount of rounding may be affected by the amount (small dollar values by and large dollar value have a different level of rounding).
Some examples:
     Price     Value Year 4
         2.00          1.95
         4.00          3.99
     385.00      380.00
   1.575.00    1.850.00
26,100.00  23,900.00

One question I have is: Does the Value Year 4 amount change during the year (with the Updates) or is it set at the beginning of each year and doesn't change?

[Steven L. Dasinger]

Actually the information is in the FAQ (as Pete pointed out).

On reports, why are the totals for “Current Value” and “Selling Price” different?

ComicBase calculates the value of a comic strictly, using the grading values table. (You can go to the Setup menu to customize your Grading Setup.)The default price of an issue is rounded to “sensible” values. For instance, a certain very good-condition comic might have a strict value of 88¢, but its default price would be rounded to 90¢. Similarly, a comic with a strict, graded value of $218.25 would be given a default price of $220.

[Timothy S. Kilbreath]

Steven,

When I run the Collection Statistics for my collection, it shows 1 comic with a Total Value of $375 and a Total Price of $3000.  I have not touched the Setup menu to customize the Grading Setup at all. With this difference between the amounts, I'm unsure as to what my comic is worth. This is the case for all of my comics in the Price Range of "Between $250 and $499" and up, where the Total Value and the Total Price are vastly different, with the Total Value being much less than the Total Price.

The $375/$3000 comic I mentioned first is The Amazing Spider-Man (first series), issue 238, with a Condition of CGC 9.8.

In one of the most recent ComicBase podcasts, Pete said that we could run the report, "Most Valuable Comic Books", to give to, say, our insurance company. When I run that report, my highest values top off at $598.50 and go down to $155 (when I have it list the top 25).

Also, when I run Collection Statistics, it shows my collection's Current Value as $65,009.17 while the Asking Price is $80,097.03. (Again, I have not manually set any prices in the database.)

Thus, this shows MY confusion with Price vs. Value.

[Steven L. Dasinger]

There is a FAQ on this (In CB use menu item Help->Frequently Asked Questions. This will take you to the FAQs on CB website.

Under subject 'Comic Pricing' is 'What is the difference between an Issue's Cost, Value, and Selling price? Here is the text:

"The cost of an issue is what you paid for it. As it ships, ComicBase has zeroes for the “quantity in stock” of every issue in its database, and blanks for the cost. If you want to track the cost of your collection, you should fill in the cost fields as you add issues to the database.

An issue’s value is its “guide price”: the estimated price at which it could be reasonably expected to be bought or sold. ComicBase tracks the near-mint values of all its issues for the past four years, from which it can calculate the value of that issue in other conditions (see Grading Setup in the ComicBase user guide).

Finally, an issue’s price or selling price is the price at which you are offering the issue for sale. As ComicBase ships, this is set to its current value, although you are free to set the selling price higher or lower. The default price for an issue that’s not in near mint condition may also differ slightly from its strictly calculated value, due to price rounding (see below)."

As a test, using a new database. I set up the same issue of 'Amazing Spider-Man' #238 with a Qty of 1. NOTE: This is the only 'owned' issue in the entire database to keep things simple.

With Cond set to NM:

Issue grid                 shows:           Price: 250.00 and Value Year 4 (2024):  250.00
Collection Statistics shows: Total Price: 250.00 and Total Value:                 250.00
Collection Report     shows:           Price: 250.00 and Value:                         250.00

With Cond set to CGC 9.8:

Issue grid                  shows:          Price: 3,000.00 and Value Year 4 (2024):  250.00
Collection Statistics shows: Total Price: 3,000.00 and Total Value:              3,000.00
Collection Report      shows:         Price: 3,000.00  and Value:                      3,000.00

Going by this (small) sample, the Value Year 4 (2024) amounts are based on the NM standard condition. This does not change when the issues Condition is changed.
Price is based on the Condition. This will change as the Condition value changes.

Per the FAQ, there is Rounding going on (a small amount on low value issues and a larger amount on higher value issues). I think this rounding applies to both Price and Value Year 4 (2024).

Collection Statistics and Most Valuable Items report are using Price for valuation and is an accurate representation (with some small different due to rounding) for your collection.