98 Ticker — 9.8 Comic Price Tracker

The Real Price of Your Comics,
Right Now

98 Ticker pulls live Buy-It-Now floor prices for 9.8 graded comics directly from eBay — not sold comps, not stale indices. The actual market, as it stands today.

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Free tier permanently available · No credit card required · Built by a collector

9.8
Grade Only
Live
eBay BIN prices
4
Portfolio stages
20+
Years domain expertise

What is 98 Ticker?

Live Floor Prices for 9.8 Collectors

98 Ticker is a real-time market intelligence tool for 9.8 graded comic book collectors and resellers. It pulls live Buy-It-Now asking prices directly from eBay's marketplace — filtered specifically for 9.8 slabs — so you always know the actual floor price of any book you're tracking.

Unlike sold-price databases that show you what a book traded for weeks ago, or opaque pricing indices that hide the underlying listings, 98 Ticker shows you what's actually for sale right now. The Buy-It-Now market on eBay is the live floor price — and that's exactly what 98 Ticker tracks.

Why it matters: A collector deciding whether to buy or sell a 9.8 slab needs to know today's price — not last month's. 98 Ticker closes that gap.

📊

Real-Time Floor Prices

Live BIN prices from eBay, filtered to 9.8 only. See the actual floor the moment you check.

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Full Portfolio System

Track books across up to 7 stages depending on your plan — from Watch List and Spotlights on Free, up to Inventory, For Sale, Sold, Lot Acquisition, and Consignment on Dealer. Gain/loss analytics and selling tools unlock at Pro.

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Price Drop Alerts

Set a target price per book. Get an email when the floor drops below it — real-time or daily digest.

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Price History Charts

Track how a book's floor has moved over time. Compare multiple books on one chart.

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Smart Listing Exclusions

Manually exclude mismatched listings — reprints, wrong covers, foreign editions — so your floor is always clean.

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Variant Isolation

Track Newsstands, Canadian Price Variants (CPVs), Signed/SS, and ratio covers as completely separate entries with their own floor price and price history. For CPV-era books (1982–1988), 98 Ticker surfaces the CPV floor price automatically — no separate entry required. Use + to combine terms: Newsstand + SS matches only listings containing both.

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International Price Flags & Tariff Alerts

Non-US listings show a country flag and original currency. When a Canadian listing sets the floor, a tariff warning flags the potential added cost — and the lowest US-only listing surfaces as the true domestic floor, so you're never comparing apples to oranges.

How It Works

From eBay to Your Portfolio in Seconds

98 Ticker connects to eBay's official Browse API and applies title-matching logic built from two decades of real collecting experience — so you get clean results, not junk listings that pollute the floor.

01

Add a comic

Enter the series, issue number, and year. Optionally specify a variant (Newsstand, Signed, etc.).

02

Hit Refresh

98 Ticker queries eBay live, filters to 9.8 BIN listings, and returns the current floor price.

03

Review listings

See every matched listing. Exclude anything that doesn't belong — reprints, wrong covers, bad grades.

04

Set your target

Enter a target price per book. Get an alert when the floor drops below it.

How We Compare

98 Ticker vs. The Alternatives

Most collectors rely on a patchwork of sold-price databases, eBay searches, and spreadsheets. Here's how 98 Ticker stacks up against the tools you've likely already heard of.

Feature 98 Ticker CovrPrice / GoCollect Manual eBay search
Live Buy-It-Now floor price ✓ Yes ✗ No — sold comps only ~ Manual
9.8 filtering ✓ Automatic ~ Mixed grades ~ Manual
Junk listing exclusion ✓ Built-in + manual ✗ No ✗ No
Portfolio tracking ✓ Up to 7 stages ~ Collection only ✗ No
Gain/loss & P&L tracking ✓ Automatic ✗ No ✗ No
Price drop email alerts ✓ Real-time & digest ✗ No ✗ No
Price history charts ✓ BIN floor history ~ Historical sold avg ✗ No
Data freshness ✓ Real-time ✗ Lagging days/weeks ✓ Real-time
Dealer inventory management ✓ Lot, consignment, stale alerts ✗ No ✗ No
Tax & accounting export ✓ Schedule D CSV, raw CSV ✗ No ✗ No

The Key Difference

How is 98 Ticker Different from CovrPrice or GoCollect?

CovrPrice and GoCollect are sold-price databases. They collect data on completed transactions — what a book actually sold for across eBay, Heritage Auctions, and other platforms — and calculate a Fair Market Value (FMV) average from those sales. That's useful for understanding what a book has been worth historically.

98 Ticker does something different. It tracks the live Buy-It-Now asking prices on eBay right now — what sellers are actually listing their 9.8 slabs for today. That's the floor price, and it's the number that matters when you're deciding whether to buy, sell, or hold.

The simplest way to think about it: CovrPrice and GoCollect tell you what a book sold for in the past. 98 Ticker tells you what you can buy or sell it for right now.

Neither is wrong — they answer different questions. But if you're active in the market, the historical average from a week ago doesn't tell you whether the seller who just listed at $200 below everyone else is an opportunity or a warning sign. The live floor does.

98 Ticker is also built specifically for 9.8 graded slabs traded on eBay — not raw comics, not mixed-grade averages. That focus means tighter filtering, cleaner floor data, and tools (inventory management, P&L tracking, dealer lot tools, tax export) that CovrPrice and GoCollect don't offer at all, because their audience is primarily hobbyist collectors rather than active buyers and sellers.

If you use CovrPrice or GoCollect for historical context and valuation, 98 Ticker sits alongside them naturally — giving you the live market signal that completes the picture.

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Who It's For

Built for Serious 9.8 Collectors

98 Ticker was designed around one specific use case: collectors and resellers who care about 9.8 grades and trade on eBay. If that's you, it fits your workflow exactly.

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Watch List Hunters

Track books you want to buy. Get alerted when the price hits your target.

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Collectors & Inventory Holders

Log what you own, see your cost basis, and know exactly what your slabs are worth today — not six weeks ago. Pro and Dealer tiers add gain/loss tracking and selling tools.

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Dealers & Resellers

Price listings competitively, track days on the market, get stale inventory alerts, and manage lots and consignment — all built into the Dealer tier.

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Portfolio Managers

Track gain/loss across your collection. Move books through Inventory → For Sale → Sold with full realized and unrealized P&L — available on Pro and Dealer plans.

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Price Researchers

Pull a real-time floor price for any 9.8 book in seconds, without manually digging through eBay.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Questions About 98 Ticker

9.8 is the highest common investment-grade tier for modern comics and the most actively traded on eBay. It's the grade where pricing actually matters — a 9.6 and a 9.8 of the same book can differ by thousands of dollars. By focusing exclusively on 9.8, 98 Ticker gives you tighter, cleaner data instead of muddying results with multiple grade tiers.
A sold price tells you what someone paid for a book in the past — it's historical. A Buy-It-Now (BIN) price is what sellers are asking for right now. If you want to buy a book today, the BIN floor is the price that matters. If you want to know if the market is moving up or down, comparing today's BIN floor to last week's BIN floor tells you more than a sold comp from three weeks ago.
Because when you're actually buying or selling, the sold price from three weeks ago isn't what you're transacting at — the current ask is. If you want to buy a 9.8 today, you need to know what sellers are listing it for right now, not what someone paid for one at auction in January. If you're pricing your own listing, you need to know where the floor is sitting so you list competitively. Sold comps are useful context, but they lag the market. A key issue can move 20% in a week on a movie announcement — by the time that sale clears and gets indexed by a sold-price database, the floor has already moved again. 98 Ticker's live BIN floor reflects the market as it actually stands, not as it stood. Tools like CovrPrice and GoCollect do sold-price history well — 98 Ticker is the live signal that tells you what's happening today.
No. 98 Ticker works whether you sell on eBay, at your local comic shop, at conventions, or keep your books in a vault. It's about knowing the market price of your collection — where and how you actually transact is up to you.
Prices are pulled fresh from eBay every time you hit Refresh. Between refreshes, a shared cache keeps your data responsive without burning through API budget. You control when you want live data — just hit Refresh.
Yes — that's exactly what the Watch List is for. Add books you're hunting, watch their floor prices, set a target price, and get an email alert when the price drops to your buy point.
98 Ticker's title-matching logic is tuned to filter out reprints, homage covers, and mismatched listings automatically. For anything that slips through, you can manually exclude individual listings from your floor calculation with one click. Your exclusions persist across sessions.

Yes. Add a pipe and an attribute to any book key to track that variant as its own separate entry with its own floor price and price history. Each variant is fully isolated — excluding a listing in one variant never affects another.

Single attribute: Amazing Spider-Man 252 | Newsstand — tracks Newsstand copies separately from the direct edition.

Combined attributes (AND logic): Use + to require multiple terms. Thor 337 1983 | Newsstand + SS matches only listings containing both "Newsstand" and "SS" — perfect for isolating a Newsstand Signature Series copy from plain Newsstands and plain signed copies.

Canadian Price Variants: Amazing Spider-Man 252 1984 | CPV — tracks the rare Canadian Price Variant separately. For books in the CPV era (Oct 1982–Sep 1988), 98 Ticker also surfaces the CPV floor price automatically in the drawer, even without a separate entry.

You can combine any terms: Signed, Newsstand, CPV, SS, 1:50, Cover B, and more.

When you log a purchase, you record the price you paid. 98 Ticker compares that against the current floor price and calculates your unrealized gain or loss automatically. When you sell, you log the sale price and your realized gain is recorded permanently in your Sold history.
No. 98 Ticker is an independent tool created by LoveLee Media Group, LLC. It uses eBay's official Browse API to retrieve publicly available listing data, but it has no affiliation with eBay Inc., CGC, CBCS, PSA, PGX, Marvel, DC, or any other publisher or grading company.
A free tier is permanently available — no credit card required to sign up. Paid plans (Collector, Pro, Dealer) are launching soon and unlock higher book limits, faster refresh rates, email alerts, gain/loss tracking, and advanced dealer tools. The core tracking functionality will always remain accessible on the Free tier.
Canadian Price Variants (CPVs) are a specific printing of Marvel and DC comics published between October 1982 and September 1988 (Marvel through August 1986, DC through September 1988). Instead of printing a dual US/Canada price on the cover, publishers ran a separate newsstand batch exclusively for Canadian distribution with only the higher Canadian price printed. Because they were sold only at Canadian newsstands — not specialty comic shops — and newsstand sales were already declining, CPVs represent roughly 2–3% of the surviving print run for any given issue. That extreme rarity makes them highly sought by modern collectors and they often command a significant premium over the standard edition. Amazing Spider-Man #252 (first black suit, 1984) is one of the most recognized CPV keys.
Not always. eBay converts international listings to USD automatically, so a Canadian seller listing at CA $600 might appear as $440 USD — but that's the listed price, not the delivered cost. US–Canada tariff rates have been changing frequently, and import fees, brokerage taxes, and shipping delays can substantially raise the real delivered cost beyond what eBay shows. 98 Ticker flags international floor listings with a tariff warning and separately surfaces the lowest US domestic listing so you can compare true acquisition cost. For current tariff rates, see simplyduty.com.
To log a purchase, first add the book to your Watch List using the + Add Comic button — this ensures the book gets a clean, verified title that matches real eBay listings. Once it's on your Watch List, open its card and click + Log Purchase to move it into Inventory with your cost basis, grader, cert number, and target gain %. Alternatively, click + Log Purchase on the Inventory tab to open Add Comic in Inventory mode directly — search and confirm the book, fill in purchase details, and optionally check "Also add to Watch List" if you want live floor tracking. Inventory-only books (not on your Watch List) refresh their floor price once per day rather than on every manual Refresh — keeping your API budget available for Watch List books you're actively monitoring.
The Asking Price Calculator tells you the minimum price you need to list a book at to hit your target net profit after eBay fees. It appears on each Inventory card as a quick chip — "List at $X to net Y%" — based on your cost basis, target gain %, and estimated eBay fee. When you click For Sale on an Inventory card, a full calculator opens inside the modal: adjust cost, target %, and fee % and see the math update live — gross ask, estimated fee, net gain, and how your suggested price compares to the current floor (green if competitive, amber if above market, red if below floor). The calculator is a scratchpad only — it never changes your purchase record. Available on Pro and Dealer plans.
The Flip Calculator models the crack-and-resubmit math before you buy. It's designed for pro hobbyists who buy lower-graded or non-CGC slabs (Raw 9.4, CGC 9.6, CBCS 9.6, CBCS 9.8, PGX 9.8, or PSA 9.8), press and restore them, then resubmit to CGC targeting a 9.8. Enter the book, fetch live CGC 9.8 and 9.6 floors, then input your acquisition cost, all-in flip cost (your labor + materials + CGC submission fee + shipping), and your personal success rate %. The calculator outputs your win scenario (grades CGC 9.8), loss scenario (comes back CGC 9.6), expected value across the risk distribution, and the break-even success rate — the minimum % you need to be right to not lose money. A Go / Borderline / Pass verdict summarizes whether the numbers work. Available on Pro and Dealer plans in the Flip Calc tab.
The Cross-Grade Spread tool lets you compare live floor prices across multiple grade tiers for the same book in a single view — so you can see the premium between a 9.8 and a 9.6, or between CGC and CBCS, without running separate searches. Select up to 24 grade checkboxes (9.8, 9.6, 9.4, 9.2, 9.0, and lower), choose your grader (CGC, CBCS, PGX, or PSA), and the tool fetches each floor in sequence and displays them in a table with the dollar and percentage spread vs 9.8. Available on Pro and Dealer plans in the Tools tab.
The Weekly Floor Report is a Monday morning email that summarizes this week vs last week's floor price for every book you track — Watch List, Inventory, For Sale, and Sold. The email leads with a Top Movers callout (biggest gains and biggest drops) followed by a full table of all books with current floor, prior-week floor, and signed dollar/percentage change. It's both a portfolio performance summary and a market intelligence brief in one. Opt in via Settings → Notifications. Available on the Dealer plan.
On Watch List cards, Pro and Dealer users see a margin chip showing estimated net gain or loss if they were to sell their owned copy at the current floor — after subtracting your cost basis and the estimated eBay fee percentage you've configured. It uses your cheapest owned copy as the cost basis (the most conservative margin signal) and color-codes the result: green if you're up more than 5%, amber if near breakeven, red if the floor has dropped below cost. The chip only appears if you've logged a purchase for that book. Configure your estimated eBay fee % in Settings.
Go to the Summary tab and click Export Data. Three formats are available: a Schedule D CSV (realized gains/losses by tax year, formatted for US capital gains reporting), a Raw CSV (all purchase and sale records with cost basis, proceeds, and gain/loss for each transaction), and a Price History JSON (full floor history for every tracked book). All exports are based on the data you've logged in Inventory and Sold — accuracy depends on what you've recorded. Not a substitute for professional tax advice. Available on Pro and Dealer plans.
The Price List Generator creates a printable or shareable price sheet for your Inventory and For Sale books. It outputs a clean table of each book with your asking price, current floor, and cost basis — useful for convention pricing, consignment agreements, or sharing with buyers. Available in the Summary tab on Pro and Dealer plans.
Yes. When you search for a book and no active 9.8 Buy-It-Now listings are found, 98 Ticker shows a panel explaining the situation and still lets you add the book to your Watch List. Once added, the card shows a "No 9.8 Match" badge. When a BIN listing does appear, the proactive scan cron will detect it and send you an alert — you don't need to manually refresh. This makes 98 Ticker useful for hunting illiquid or rare books where listings appear infrequently.
98 Ticker automatically detects and excludes listings that contain two distinct publication years more than 2 years apart in the title — for example, a listing titled "Amazing Spider-Man 129 (1974) CGC 9.8 2021 Hungarian EDITION." A legitimate original has one publication year; a second year signals a foreign reissue, anniversary edition, or commemorative variant. These listings are silently filtered out of your floor calculation and search results. You don't need to manually exclude them. Signing years (for Signature Series books) are handled separately and are not affected by this filter.
Real-time Floor Drop and Below Target alert emails include the actual listing that set the new floor — not just the price. The email shows the listing thumbnail, title, grader and grade badge, seller name and feedback percentage (color-coded by rating), shipping cost or free shipping indicator, country of origin with a tariff warning for international listings, and how many days ago it was listed. Below that is the market context table: new floor, previous floor, drop amount and percentage, and your price target gap. The Daily Digest includes the same listing card for each book that hit your target overnight. This gives you enough information to decide whether to act directly from your inbox.
98 Ticker was built by LoveLee Media Group, LLC, which has operated a graded comic book store on eBay since 2004 — over two decades of hands-on experience buying, selling, and pricing CGC 9.8 slabs in the actual market. The tool was built because nothing else on the market solved the real problem: knowing what a 9.8 slab is actually worth to buy or sell right now, not what one sold for weeks ago. Every filtering rule, every listing exclusion pattern, and every data decision in 98 Ticker came directly from that domain knowledge — not from software assumptions about how the comic market works. This is a tool built by someone who uses it.

Stop Guessing. Know the Floor.

Live eBay BIN prices for CGC 9.8 slabs — not month-old sold comps. Free tier always available, no credit card required.

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Legal

Disclaimer & Terms

Data accuracy

98 Ticker displays Buy-It-Now pricing data retrieved from eBay's public marketplace via the eBay Browse API. Listings are filtered and matched using automated, algorithmic title analysis. This process is not perfect: it may occasionally include listings that do not match the intended comic, grade, or printing (such as reprints, homage covers, or mislabeled items), and may exclude legitimate listings due to unusual title formatting. Always independently verify any listing — including the seller's photos, item description, and certification number — before making a purchase or valuation decision.

Not financial advice

Prices shown reflect current or recent eBay Buy-It-Now asking prices, not sold prices, appraised value, or guaranteed market value. Nothing in this app constitutes financial, investment, or appraisal advice, and it should not be the sole basis for any purchase, sale, or investment decision.

No affiliation

98 Ticker is an independent tool created by LoveLee Media Group, LLC and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by eBay Inc., Certified Guaranty Company (CGC), Comic Book Certification Service (CBCS), Professional Grading eXperts (PGX), Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), Marvel Comics, DC Comics, or any other publisher or grading company referenced in this app. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are the property of their respective owners.

No warranty

This app and its data are provided "as is," without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to accuracy, completeness, or fitness for a particular purpose. LoveLee Media Group, LLC is not liable for any loss or damages arising from reliance on data displayed in this app.

Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of majority in your jurisdiction, to create an account.

Privacy

Cookies

98 Ticker sets one cookie — a session cookie used only to keep you logged in while you use the app. We don't use tracking cookies, analytics cookies, or third-party advertising cookies of any kind. No data about your visit is sold or shared with advertisers. If that ever changes, this page will be updated first. Full details of what data we collect and how it's used are in our Privacy Policy.