It's time for GPA to start reporting Comiclink Focused Auction results 1 1

[adamstrange]

How does GPA get data from eBay then? I`m sure eBay doesn`t report to GPA.

 

EBay probably allows GPA to mine data though, something that CL doesn't.

 

If I remember correctly, and I usually do, the issue was that Josh only wanted to forward "record-breaking sales" to GPA, likely as a form of advertising, but had no interest in allowing ALL ComicLink transactions to be used in GPA.

 

I believe George has covered this multiple times.

I was just talking about CL's auctions, not CL's "regular" listings. But Roy raises a good point, that without being able to see who the winners and underbidders of the auctions are, it'd be risky relying on the CL auction data without verification from CL.

 

What type of verification are you wanting? If you're concerned about this, then you should be concerned about the integrity of the CL auctions, irrespective of providing the data to GPA. Is there an effective mechanism to catch these kinds of problems at other venues like Heritage or Vintage Coll? I really don't see any downside to putting the clink auction numbers into GPA as they don't seem any more or less reliable to me than the other sources.

Beats me. I just assume there's something that Heritage and the others "give" to GPA that goes beyond just some easy data interface. I'm not talking about some sort of guarantee that no shilling took place, as I don't think any auction house could guarantee that. I was more referring to some sort of certification that allows GPA to be confident that a transaction really went through. Bum bidders do happen and no one would be able to tell without the auction house disclosing.

 

I would be interested to hear how submitters handle returns or failed transactions. Is there enough of a lag time in reporting results such that they are inconsequential or is there an ability and interest in reporting a backout?

[VintageComics]

How does GPA get data from eBay then? I`m sure eBay doesn`t report to GPA.

 

George has software that records data. Thing is that Ebay data is easier to corroborate. You can see low feedback bidders, shady sales etc and this is all noted in the GPA sales data. With dealers they are supposed to provide transaction info, not just a price...and Josh likely wants to keep his client base private.

 

George probably does not want to record unsubstantiated sales data.

 

The eBay data is mo more reliable. One has to assume that all of the transaction follow through to completion.

 

Actually, any GPA sales that are questionable are noted as such on GPA.

 

(thumbs u

I can read GPA, Roy.

 

Not every sale that falls through on eBay ends back up for sale on eBay. I have seen items that supposedly sold on eBay turn up on consignment sites. Furthermore, before you call it a flip, there was little or no profit margin involved.

 

All I'm saying is that one is no more unsubstantiated over the other. It's all taken at face value.

 

I suppose there is a little more authenticity in an Ebay buyer with 200 feedback than just a number on a website. George will also correct any data that might seem incorrect...but the guy is human and can't catch everything. I've helped him correct a few bad sales myslef.

 

I'm sure he'll chime in any time now and straighten everything out...he's probably hitting the sack any second now.

 

R.

 

Hey Roy, I had a thought. To carry on with a discussion that we had a while ago...

 

What is to prevent someone from shilling up their auction on eBay with multiple user ids, having one of those multiple ids win the book (thereby setting a GPA recorded sale) and then listing the book on one of the consignment sites, e.g. ComicLink?

 

I guess then it wouldn't be too far fetched for that same person to have more than one account on ComicLink and bid their own listing up to where the next bid would be a bid that's accepted.

 

Of course when the legitimate buyer checks GPA they will find the sale that has been recorded from eBay. Never the wiser...

 

BTW... All you conspiracy theorists can put away your magnifying glasses. This is a conversation with Roy and not some backhanded way of accusing Roy with anything.

 

Doc, as with anything in this world we look for the best info. Nothing is perfect. I think that the info is *more correct* when intersected with other bits of info such as bidder and seller feedback, locations etc. There is no guarantee that any auction is not shill bid but there is less chance of it when contact info is out in the open as apposed to zero feedback or private bidders, right?

 

I mean anyone can privately shill bid a pedigree sale, a heritage auction or a comiclink listing (not accusing anyone, just saying the potential is there).

 

I remember seeing a book listed for ever on comiclink with a bid on it. I bid it up to the next increment and BOOM 1 hour later the seller accepted my bid...like he was waiting for bid. I didn't mind as I got a good book at a good price but it did make me think about it twice....it was almost too automatic....too co-incidental.

 

I'm sure that it happens from time to time. A bud shills a book for another bud.

 

In any case I'm surprised George has not chimed in but I still think GPA is a terrific tool that is very professional and cannot recommend it enough for the collector that buys and sells more tha $50 or $100 comics in a month.

 

R.

 

 

[gpanalysis]

Hi Roy and others. There's no problem in including CL's auction results, in fact the latest focused auction has been recorded and categorized, ready for inclusion in our analysis.

 

What we can't include are the regular consignment style listings which do not have an end date/time and there's no way of checking a finalized result. It's here were I've been hoping CL would report to us, so rather than just us reporting on auctions (which we can collect ourselves), we would have all sales data reported through their site.

 

Some collaboration would also mean that we could be informed of sales that fell through, which means we're in turn better informing our subscribers. For example, Doug at Pedigree Comics automated sales feed to us only includes books that have been physically shipped. With Heritage's auction results, we have automated scripts that check sales a month or so after the initial results, as some of these can fall through, or an offer occurs after the auction. Others let us know from time to time by dropping us an email to inform us of the same.

 

What I like to have is as complete a picture as possible from each contributor so that we're not reporting sales incorrectly, etc. But as I said, the 1600+ sales that just occurred through their (CL's) latest auction are ready to include if we choose to do so. The question is, would you guys be happy that only some of CL's results are included (auction style) and not others (consignment style).

 

George.

[BronzeBruce13]

Another point to consider George is... without Josh's consent/blessing he could choose to make the next focused auction results "invisible" (so to speak) like they were previously (unless you bid on the items) forcing future data capture to be done manually... like I've been doing.

 

To put it simply... without his cooperation it may still prove to be a very difficult task that is problematic in other ways too. Most importantly, there would be no way to know which sales were not consummated and that is an important factor to consider. Also, there would be no reporting from Clink standard listings. They too would have to be manually entered without verification of sales not consummated.

 

Maintaining the "authenticity" of sales is crucial to the data being "trusted"... it's a tough call.

 

I think people should just stand up and make the effort to email Josh and let him know what they think... either way... whether you be for or against the idea.

 

I wish he'd join because I'm developing carpal tunnel from manually inputting hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of sales.

 

 

c'mon Josh... save my "aching" hands

 

[tth2]

What I like to have is as complete a picture as possible from each contributor so that we're not reporting sales incorrectly, etc. But as I said, the 1600+ sales that just occurred through their (CL's) latest auction are ready to include if we choose to do so. The question is, would you guys be happy that only some of CL's results are included (auction style) and not others (consignment style).

Thanks for the insight, George, which is really helpful.

 

I for one think there is a difference between CL regular listings and their auctions, for the reasons that you listed and others. So I think you should definitely list their auction results even if you don't list their regular sales.

 

In fact, is there any possibility you could go back and include some of the auctions from the past year too? Obviously it would be desirable for GPA to incorporate the seismic sales that have happened, such as the 2 AF 15s that broke the $200K mark.

Edited September 1, 2008 by tth2

[skybolt]

What I like to have is as complete a picture as possible from each contributor so that we're not reporting sales incorrectly, etc. But as I said, the 1600+ sales that just occurred through their (CL's) latest auction are ready to include if we choose to do so. The question is, would you guys be happy that only some of CL's results are included (auction style) and not others (consignment style).

Thanks for the insight, George, which is really helpful.

 

I for one think there is a difference between CL regular listings and their auctions, for the reasons that you listed and others. So I think you should definitely list their auction results even if you don't list their regular sales.

 

In fact, is there any possibility you could go back and include some of the auctions from the past year too? Obviously it would be desirable for GPA to incorporate the seismic sales that have happened, such as the 2 AF 15s that broke the $200K mark.

 

I agree with this statement. (thumbs u

[TeddieMercede]

Considering Comiclink is probably the 2nd biggest online comic dealer after ebay right now not having any of their sales for usage on GPA is a huge detriment to your product in my opinion. I would think that the usage of any sales you could get from them would be a step foward to try and keep an accurate account of the current market.

 

Also Josh may get pissed if you take their auction sales data but i find it hard to believe he ll hide the auction results. Leaving these up is probably the best advertisement he could get for his company and the enormous prices being paid for books consigned to their site.

[Ghost Town]

The question is, would you guys be happy that only some of CL's results are included (auction style) and not others (consignment style).

 

George.

Yes. The more results and data, the better.

[CAP Freak]

The question is, would you guys be happy that only some of CL's results are included (auction style) and not others (consignment style).

 

George.

Yes. The more results and data, the better.

[fantastic_four]

What we can't include are the regular consignment style listings which do not have an end date/time and there's no way of checking a finalized result.

 

How is extracting the potentially unfinalized "Sales Pending" items from ComicLink's listings any different from extracting the potentially unfinalized completed auctions from E-Bay? Either of those two could fall through...so why one but not the other?

[Aman619]

I have the same question in regards to Comclinks AUCTIONS compared to regular listsing. Why will GPA go ahead with auction listings w/o permission--- but not the rest?

 

In other words, whats the holdup: permission/cooperation or the idea that some small % of sales pending arent completed/verified. ?

[FatComicMafia]

GPA could easily record at the very least ComicLink's auction results. It's at least a NY state law that an auction firm must make its sales realized public.

 

And at the very least... for a day or two after ComicLink's Auctions, the data is there.

 

These sale prices are more reliable, more so than eBay's shills, sketchy auctions that perform poorly, and mis-listed items

 

To be honest, since GPA doesn't make the effort to monitor ComicLink's sales, they are not doing a full service, and therefore should have a hard time justifying their subscription rate.

 

I'm talking with someone right now in regards to competing with their sorry- monopoly.

[gpanalysis]

GPA could easily record at the very least ComicLink's auction results. It's at least a NY state law that an auction firm must make it's sales realized public.

 

And at the very least... for a day or two after ComicLink's Auctions, the data is there.

 

These sale prices are more reliable, more so than eBay's shills, sketchy auctions that perform poorly, and mis-listed items

 

To be honest, since GPA doesn't make the effort to monitor ComicLink's sales, they are not doing a full service, and therefor should have a hard time justifying their subscription rate.

 

I'm talking with someone right now in regards to competing with their sorry monopoly.

 

I'm not sure if you read through what I wrote above, but it's not a case of sales being reliable with respects to the regular consignment listings. The consignment listings have no set time to end so there is no way to monitor these (there is no "ending time" like an auction). With respects to CL's auctions, for the moment these appears ok to monitor after they end (bacause they have a defined end point). So we'll include these as long as we can see the price realized after auction end.

 

[FatComicMafia]

Thank you for response. Their auctions are vary valuable, hence their 200+K Amazing Fantasy #15 sale, twice !!!

 

Their auctions usually end at night, perfect for you Aussies. All you have to do is record them. They are there for a few days. You don't need their permission. And if you really wanted, you could make them give you results of previous auctions as well. State Law.

 

[fantastic_four]

The consignment listings have no set time to end so there is no way to monitor these (there is no "ending time" like an auction).

 

Not sure why there's no way to automatically collect the normal ComicLink consignments. Here's how a job can do it, and I doubt it's much different than what you're doing for E-Bay:

 

1) Request the ComicLink search page results with no criteria listed. Loop through the pages.

2) On each page, loop through the items. Look for ones that are "Sale Pending".

3) Look up the ComicLink ID for a Sale Pending item. If you don't already have that one saved, save it now.

 

I don't think Josh's site mechanic has changed much, if at all, since he went to the database-driven version of it.

 

Side note -- it's possible that Josh most often just re-lists items that don't sell through and they keep the same ID. To identify sales that fall through, you could check each item ID against what you have saved, and if you find one that's not "Sale Pending" yet it's present in your own database, that means it used to be marked as sold before, but became available again for whatever reason, so you could delete that one to weed out sales that fall through.

 

Coding time estimate: 1 to 2 days.

[gpanalysis]

I understand that, it's not that there is a complexity in automating it or the scripting behind it, but that you would need to hit the site constantly to check on the status of 200 or so pages of CGC lists. You would probably want to do it at least once per day and then make an assumption that the sale pending items would indeed be settled (i.e. the sale was carried through).

[fantastic_four]

you would need to hit the site constantly to check on the status of 200 or so pages of CGC lists. You would probably want to do it at least once per day and then make an assumption that the sale pending items would indeed be settled (i.e. the sale was carried through).

 

Agreed. So I don't understand your assertion in your prior post that there's no way to monitor normal ComicLink consignments. Isn't what you just described similar to, or exactly the same as, as what you do for E-Bay?

[jkrk]

 

These sale prices are more reliable, more so than eBay's shills, sketchy auctions that perform poorly, and mis-listed items

 

 

 

Can you pressent the proof That the CL sales prices are any more reliable than any auction site?

[gpanalysis]

No, ebay auctions have an ending time - we only look at those that have ended, not all the pages of listings. But it's also to do with not knowing whether a sale pending means the result is final or fell through. But we'll keep looking at ways of getting the data. In the meantime we will at the least include the auction results.

[fantastic_four]

No, ebay auctions have an ending time - we only look at those that have ended, not all the pages of listings.

 

Going through all of Josh's listings is probably about 200-400 pages. If the amount of time required to read that many and parse it proves to be like an hour or two, the odds are you can do it less often than once a day, although once a day would obviously give you the best chance of getting 100% of completed sales. Josh's business model usually involves the seller mailing the book to him. In my experience in looking at his site, books stay at "Sale pending" for over a week. I've always assumed he wants it to stay up that long as a sales tool, to parade sales in front of customers. It's possible they just stay for a set period of time, perhaps 2 to 4 weeks, then automatically get de-listed. If you analyzed it a bit, I wouldn't be surprised if you only had to scan the site once a week.

 

But it's also to do with not knowing whether a sale pending means the result is final or fell through.

 

I suspect you could have more reliability with this on ComicLink than with E-Bay. On an E-Bay sale, you will never, ever know if it fell through, unless someone tells you and you manually correct it. On ComicLink if it falls through, and it turns out that Josh most often does just un-flag it as Sale Pending, you can automatically determine it.