Hi Joe!
How is CLZ? I’ve never heard of it until you mentioned it, so I went to their site and it looks very interesting. Can you explain a little about it if you have the time? Is it worth your money?
Thanks!
CLZ is, in my opinion, a required tool for this hobby. It’s an app that I seemingly use every day. I have my entire collection in there. You can pay for just the app (just a few bucks/month) or add in pricing for an upcharge. I have that, too, but I’m not sure if it’s super useful.
But, you can scan in books via the barcode. They just added a feature where you can scan the cover to add the book to your collection. It works incredibly well. 99% of the time, a single cover scan (which takes 1 second) finds the correct book in the database.
I also have a “wanted” list. Every single time you all say, “keep an eye out for XXXXXXX book as it’s warming up”, I add that to my wanted list. Then, when I’m out hunting, I just pull that up and look for recent hot books.
I can’t recommend CLZ enough. It’s really well designed. They do updates frequently to add enhancements. Every new book is added each weds. And, if you find some obscure book that isn’t in the database, you go to their forum, request it, and it’s added like a day later.
5 stars
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The add in pricing is pulled from Covrprice and as long as you have a yearly subscription with Covrprice you can link your CLZ account, no additional fee from CLZ.
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With the caveat that the pricing at Covrprice is a hot mess, so many grains of salt are needed, always check your lasts on eBay.
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Thank you Joe!
Their website is very well done I must say.
I think you just sold me on this…I have my lists which were written on paper for a whole…about a year ago I got tired of losing the paper and typed them in not the notes app on phone…now I have too many unorganized notes…many are likely books no longer hot or I’m looking for. (at least when I lost the paper notes I had to start over, and it kept it manageable in that respect…)
I do hear it a lot from people who are bin diving.
I usually just make a stack of “potential” books when I’m searching, then type them in eBay to confirm/determine thief flip potential…
That takes a lot of time, especially when I have a tendency to fat finger the title…when you’re pressed for time, like me yesterday at Terrificon it limits how many vendors/boxes you can search…so wondering if this can speed it up…
I may have to experiment a bit at the next con/show/new shop.
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Even if you used CLZ just for a “want” list, it’s probably worth it. It’s just really easy to sort and organize, update, delete, etc.
Sounds a lot more useful than KCC.
I’m also pleasantly surprised by the cost:
- $49.90 annually for mobile + web (or $19.95 and $39.95 separately)
- If you’re interested, you can also link it to Covrprice (which requires a separate subscription)
- Comic Database App / Software, catalog your comic collection - CLZ.com
I haven’t done it yet, but I am considering it.
It’s not perfect, and the owner can be somewhat resistant to enhancement suggestions, it has a bit of a learning curve but it is very capable and probably the best tool out there right now. I’m heavily invested in it…
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I only do the mobile app with the Covrprice subscription. I might kill that though, as I just don’t really rely on that at all. eBay listings and prior sales are still the best way to determine price.
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As someone that has a CovrPrice subscription, I will second what Joe says. Their pricing data is fundamentally flawed. They use a last-in system of valuation, the prices they display are in no way, shape or form, fair market value. It is simply last sale data and they hold to the inherently flawed idiom that a book is only worth what someone will pay for it. It can only be used, in the most casual sense, as a guesstimate of actual value.
I have no idea how the Covrprice algorithm works to come up with the prices they get. A few months ago I was looking up prices for GI Joe 252 cover B. On the site it says $4. I know that’s not true because there were multiple sales within the last few months between $75-100 at that time. Somehow the Covrprice algorithm never picked those up. Had I just used that as a price guide it would’ve been $4. Can’t rely on them for pricing, always use ebay sold listings.
That is my exact problem with them, their eBay scrapper seems to miss tons of sales, or they don’t have the manpower to go through the problem hits. I can somewhat live with that part of it, eBay listings are pretty random. The real issue is that I don’t believe they use a algorithm, or it is incredibly basic. As far as I can tell whatever the last sale is, that is what they consider FMV. They don’t even use a basic weighted average. If an AF#15 were to sell on eBay for $5, the FMV on CovrPrice would read $5. Also they don’t have the grades tied to each other at all (a sale of $100 at grade of 9.4 should affect the value of a 9.6 and a 9.8, and an 8.0) but every grade is independant of each other and as such you get very crazy valuations like this for Spawn #1:
By definition, the FMV at Fine and Very Fine are wrong. It cannot be called FMV when a Fine grade is worth more than a Very Fine grade. You cannot use this information for pricing or buying because who would actually seek out the Fine grade when you can get a Very Fine for less?
Sorry, rant off.
I do love the collection side of CovrPrice and their content and the extras, that is why I have a subscription, I just wish they would make some basic changes to their value guide and it would fix 90% of my issues with them.
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I’ve reached out to Matt and pleaded my case as to why the pricing doesn’t work right and all he does is explain how it currently works and has no plans to change it. The FMV prices fluctuate so much that it really cannot be used as a reliable pricing tool for insurance or buying and selling collections.
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I’ve done the same, but to John, even wrote an email and had a video call with him, outlining the problems as I can see. Even tried to explain how a couple of small changes would improve the situation dramatically, because, the frustrating part is that all the data is there. Unfortunately, it falls on deaf ears. I can only assume that the valuation side of their website falls a distant last place in their priorities. It is too bad, I really enjoy everything else that CovrPrice offers.
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I agree 100%…
I have been using this app for many years. I am grandfathered in and get it for free. I don’t see new features like values. Every book I have ever owned, I have cataloged there for easy access and always in my pocket. The mistake I made, is not deleting them when I sold a book that I didn’t buy to flip (doesn’t get entered until it hits a long box). I need to go back and update one day.
I will start damaging my spawn books to get a higher resale value…that’s my take away.
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