New Magazine ACE Wants to Bring Back the Price Guide

ACE magazine cover

In the latest Previews catalog, there’s a new magazine announced. ACE stands for All Comics Evaluated, and the two folks behind the projectComic Book Artist editor Jon B. Cooke and retailer Robert Yeremian (oddly, both names are left out of the catalog ad) — are promising “a thorough and accurate price guide” that will be “amazingly comprehensive and real-world”.

It’s not just about the money, though. They promise to cover the “aesthetic and critical” as well as financial worth of comics, with reviews and interviews on contemporary comics plus coverage of comic-related media projects.

ACE magazine cover

Now I remember the days of Wizard and Hero magazines and how crazy people were to see how much their collection was “worth” — not realizing that those were the prices they’d be asked to buy at, not sell for, since retailers expected to turn a profit by buying lower than guide. Nowadays, I find it more useful to simply do an eBay search on completed sales to see what items are really selling for. As you can see from some of the inflated prices from Amazon third-party sellers in that marketplace, just because someone’s asking $XXX for a graphic novel doesn’t mean anyone’s willing to pay that.

Anyway, the first issue of ACE will be on sale March 18 with it planned to be monthly afterwards. I’m curious to see whether it draws enough of an audience to continue with that plan.



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