Clix Marketplace #1 by ol_Dut

Tired of spending too much money of the clix you need to complete your collection or crush your friends? Are you puzzled and confused by some of the obscenely high or ridiculously low process you’ve seen in the price guides in comics and gaming magazines? Sure, we all are. But what can you do about it? Well, fear not! Here in the first edition of Clix Marketplace, where we’ll take a look at the price of clix in the most popular and accessible “singles” market – the on-line auction arena known as ebay.

(Please click on Comments below to continue...)

If you’re like me, it seems no matter how many boosters you buy, no matter how many trades you undertake, there are always several pieces which seem to be continually elusive. To get them, you grab your wallet (or purse, as the case may be), hit the net and brace for impact. But just how do you know if you’re getting a fair price, the deal of the century, or crossing over the city limits of Suckerville? That’s what we’ll try to figure out.

We’ll start with the some of the must-have uniques from Legacy – the Kingdom Come pieces. Foremost among them is the mighty, mighty Green Lantern. Sales on ebay were heavy, with a whopping 118 out of 121 auctions successfully completed. The highest bid price for a KC GL was an astonishing, perplexing and puzzling $91.99 (not including shipping). I sincerely hope whoever paid that price gets to play KC GL every day for the next four or five months. Twice on Fridays. The lowest ending price was an even $26. All told, an amazing $4,492.87 was spent on the Emerald Avenger between March 6 -27. Not too shabby for a little green bald guy. Other stats of interest are:

Number of completed auctions: 88
Average Auction Price: $37.52 ($37.02 if you exclude the $26 and $91.99 auctions)
Number of completed “Buy-It-Nows”: 30
Average BIN Price: $39.69 (highest $49, lowest $29)
Number of auctions with no bids: 3
Lowest start price of auction with no bids: $39.95

The next most expensive piece to pick up is Flash. 97 out of 100 listings ended successfully, and once again there was a pretty big spread in final price – ranging from a low of $18.01 to a high of $54.02. Of the three auctions that did not end well one failed to sell due to the reserve not being met, the others had high start prices of $34.50 and $39 respectively. I love these transparent figures – they just look so cool, and it doesn’t hurt that this one is pretty effective on the battlefield. The total cash spent on the Crimson Speedster during our review period was a very impressive $3026.80. The rest of the numbers break down like this:

Number of completed auctions: 74
Average Auction Price: $31.28
Number of completed “Buy-It-Nows”: 23
Average BIN Price: $30.96
Number of auctions with no bids: 3
Lowest start price of auction with no bids: $34.50

Next up is everybody’s favorite sidekick all grown-up, Red Robin. Here, finally we have a figure that verges on afford-ability in the secondary market. Sales were a little lighter on Red Robin with 85 of 92 listing ending successfully. While he is a nice piece, it is clear that the demand for him is nowhere near that of Green Lantern or Flash. Red Robin’s price range spread between $9.00 and $21.99, with 85 out of 92 listings ending with a happy new home this little clix. With an average final bid price of $16.03 and an average BIN price of $16.05, players who have to have the piece must ask themselves the question: Buy two boosters and roll the dice, or pick him up on-line? Personally, I’d spend the money on-line and be sure, but that’s just me. I have notoriously bad luck with boosters. Here’s the rest of Red Robin by the numbers:

Number of completed auctions: 60
Average Auction Price: $16.03
Number of completed “Buy-It-Nows”: 25
Average BIN Price: $18.07
Number of auctions with no bids: 7
Lowest start price of auction with no bids: $14.99

Last but not least, we have Hawkman. In my opinion, Hawkman is not only the coolest sculpt of this hot little quartet, but also the easiest one to build a 300pt. team around. By comparison, Hawkman is enormously affordable with an average auction price of $13.66. That’s not much money for a guy with such a big wingspan. At this price, if you can’t live without him and you can’t trade for him, I’d say skip the boosters and pony up the money. Between March 7 and March 27, 79 people did just that, to the tune of $1,124.85 being spent on Hawkman. The rest of him shakes out like this:

Number of completed auctions: 64
Average Auction Price: $13.66
Number of completed “Buy-It-Nows”: 15
Average BIN Price: $16.99
Number of auctions with no bids: 13
Lowest start price of auction with no bids: $9.99

All in all, a grand total of $10,058.16 was spent on this group of uniques during our review period. Pretty darned impressive. (No data on “purple-ringers” was used. Cost of shipping not included.)

Other things I’ll take a look at in future installments include providing a definitive guide for which sets are retired and which aren’t, and which clix products are the biggest movers in comics and games shops nationwide. To that end, if you or someone you know runs a comics or games shop that sells HeroClix and would like to contribute information to upcoming installments of Clix Marketplace, please send me a pm with some contact information. Got some 'Clix you’d like to see reviewed? Drop me a pm! See you again real soon!

Interesting information, thanks for doing all that work! Of course, because one person was willing to pay $91 for KC GL, there will now be a horde of traders and sellers who will use that price as an average benchmark for making deals.

jolt

Those total numbers are amazing, especially considering we are talking only about 4 figs from the current set. Wow.

Well certainly buying singles in the secondary market is the way to go. Unless you're a "completionist", someone that likes to have every figure in the set for the sake of having a complete set. Hence the name. I must admit that I fall into this category. But since HC is all about comics and I love my superheroes and villians, it's not a big price to pay.

But if you look at the cost of say buying a GL. For sake of arguement he sells for $40CDN. And the price of boosters here are $10 on average. He's still a worthwhile investment if you really want that figure and to strengthen the stats if you ONLY want that figure.

For the price of 4 boosters, you may not even get ONE unique! And even then there are 12 uniques in total! Statistically to get every unique once you need to buy at least 72 boosters. The accepted ratio over the last few years in all of WKs booster is 1 to 6. That means for the cost of 4 boosters you can get a GL for sure. It is a price to pay for certainty.

Okay so in 4 boosters you also get 16 figs. But really if those 15 are nons you can easily get them for far less than the avg cost of a figure in a booster $2.50.

So there is NO reason to not buy singles of figures you want. What I would do if I wasn't a completionist is to buy the figures you want first. The ones that help your team dominate the competition. And then buy boosters at marquees or draft or sealed events. That's how I survived this hobby until I got a decent job.

No THIS is a fantastic article. Concise, informative, no superfluous B.S. Very well done, thanks.

Luke B. want's an Ultimates article next so he can sell the U's.

Wow...what a great article. Keep 'em coming! Me likey...

The optimal word here is "current". Wait a few months when another set ot two has been released. eBay prices tend to drop fast due to the buyers' short attention span. There are obviously exceptions to this rule -- Nightcrawler, namely, but most of the remaining uniques drop in cost on eBay after a few months. Here's to patience...

We might almost be calling GL the new C-Note!

There's only one C-Note, baby.

Outstanding!

look forward to seeing more reports from you.

Wow that was a great article, informitive and concise! Great job.

$10,000 spent on 4 KC figures on Ebay in less then a month.....WOW is an apporiate word I think.

excellent article!

Nice article, look forward to more of them.

Very good article! This is information that people are interested in, but which obviously requires a lot of time and research. (Especially since you excluded the Purple ring figs. I didn't even think of those until you mentioned them.)


If you're looking for suggestions, here's a few I'd be interested in reading:

How have some figures retained their value? (Thinking of the top 3 most obvious ones: KC Supes, Nightcrawler, Jane foster.)

And since you mentioned them, anything about the Purple ring figs. I don't really look at them since they're so rare, and technically not tourney legal. But they seem to be making huge waves in the collectors market none-the less.

Thanks for taking the time ol_Dut