Why don't you cover 2nd Edition / 3rd Edition
/ 4th Edition AD&D
material?
How does the Valuation Board
determine the estimated value for an item?
How much of the Valuation
Board's work is open for public examination?
What are the current scales
& formulas used by the Valuation Board?
Are the sales listed in
the Auction History sections used by the Valuation Board?
Can I submit eBay auction
results to you, for inclusion in your auction histories?
My auction was completed
in British pounds, but all your values are in dollars?
Are you (selling/buying)
any of the items depicted on The Acaeum?
I submitted a (question/submission)
WEEKS ago. When am I going to get a reply?
I noticed different sizes
/ different color shades of a module. Are these separate printings?
Can I use your printing
information on my web site / in my auction?
Do you ever plan on covering
non-TSR material, such as Judges Guild products?
What does "acaeum" mean,
anyway? I looked it up in the dictionary and couldn't find it.
I'm interested in insuring my collection. How should
I go about it?
How on earth do you use this site?
Please see our How To Use This Site essay.
:) I can't find (item name) on the site.
If a search on The Acaeum Search Engine
was negative, then first be sure you've spelled the title correctly.
Also, fewer words in your search will often provide more results; if
you're looking for Queen of
the Demonweb Pits, try searching for just "Queen" rather than
the whole title. Searching for "Queen IN the Demonweb Pits" (an
incorrect title) might result in "no items found". Finally, be
aware that only items produced or distributed by TSR, before 1990, and
that directly interface with the game, are covered on The Acaeum.
To this, you can add items covered by our various subwebs (currently,
only two are online: The Judges Guild
Booty List, which covers every item published by Judges Guild, and
All Things Planar, which covers
all items released for the Planescape campaign setting). By definition,
therefore, we are not currently covering such items as Fez 1: Wizards
Vale (produced by the Role Aids company), The Necromancer's Handbook
(produced after 1990), or the D&D Lunchbox (does not interface with
the D&D game directly).
The Acaeum Wiki
is not directly affiliated with The Acaeum, though it's managed by
several of our forum members; check there for D&D items later than
First Edition, produced by companies other than TSR, or material for other roleplaying systems
entirely. Why don't you cover 2nd Edition / 3rd Edition / 4th
Edition AD&D material? We've chosen to concentrate on 1st Edition (pre-1990) material for a
number of reasons. For one, none of us here collect 2nd-or-later
Edition material, so our knowledge about such items is limited.
While we may consider covering selected later items at some point in
the future, our current workload will keep us busy for quite a while.
Secondly, the site's main purpose is not to be a collectibles price
guide, but to provide information on what constitutes a first (or early)
print of an item. It is VERY unusual for any TSR item produced
after 1990 to have different, distinguishable printings -- or to have
a small print run. By 1990, TSR was a sizeable publisher, cranking
out professional-quality products on big presses. Contrast to
the early 70's, when Gygax and friends were hand-boxing the game in
their living rooms. If an item produced after 1990 is selling
for lots of money, it's generally NOT because it had a small print run,
nor that it's a rare first print of an item -- it's because the item
is popular. If we covered it, it would simply be to show a cover
scan of the item, and give our opinion on its worth. That sort
of coverage is absolutely useless, because YOU could just as easily
look on eBay at any given time and get an even more accurate guess of
the item's worth.
The Acaeum Wiki
is not directly affiliated with The Acaeum, though it's managed by
several of our forum members; check there for D&D items later than
First Edition, produced by companies other than TSR, or material for other roleplaying systems
entirely. What is The Acaeum Valuation Board?
In August 2004, I initiated a change in how items are valued on this
site. The old method -- my personal opinion, coupled with random
eBay searches of completed auctions -- had numerous problems.
For one, I don't have the free time, nor the resources, to comprehensively
track eBay sale prices for every item on the site. Secondly, any
automated software that I might employ would miss a critical factor
in the final price -- condition of the item. Lastly, the
accusation that my valuations were biased was not without merit; while
I endeavored to provide a fair and accurate opinion of what items were
selling for, I also happen to be a collector myself, and not a truly
neutral third party.
Thus, the Valuation Board was born. The Valuation Board is a group
of individuals, selected from the membership of
The Acaeum Forums,
who are charged with monitoring auction sales and adjusting the Estimated
Values for all items on this site. At the moment, the Board consists
of roughly a dozen volunteer people. Each was selected based on
several factors, namely, evident maturity, demonstrated ability to work
well with others, solid grasp of the D&D collectibles market, and enthusiasm
for this hobby. The Board is composed of both active collectors
as well as resellers, hailing from several different countries.
Additional members will be selected in the future, based in large
part on their contributions to the forum, website, and/or hobby as a
whole. Any Acaeum member may volunteer for board membership;
together with the Valuation Board moderator, we'll select the new
membership. Even if you were a past VB member and resigned /
quit / passed out / for whatever reason, you're welcome to apply
again. Clean slate. Our memory of your past performance
on the Board, if any, has been wiped clean.
It should be noted that I have removed myself from the valuation process
completely, aside from the selection of new Board personnel. Therefore,
the Estimated Values you see on the Indexes are completely a product
of the community's most active and respected members. How does the Valuation Board determine the estimated value for
an item?
Largely, based on past auction results. A Board member's most
time-consuming duty is to monitor eBay sales for the items assigned
to him/her -- not only the ending price, but an estimate of the item's
condition. This data is then merged into a master database, which
weights the sales based on the year -- a sale that completed last month
will carry more weight than a sale that completed three years ago.
The sales data is then graphed against a "value curve" -- the composition
of that curve being decided upon by consensus agreement of the Board.
Any discrepancies or aberrations are discussed, and corrected if need
be. The final values are then published. Regardless of how it may look, the process places little weight on personal
opinion. The "value curve", at the moment, is a straight percentage
based scale (see below for specifics). We're considering making
a separate curve for class-5 Rares, but have not implemented such a
scale yet (the theory here being, collectors will typically pay disproportionately
higher amounts for rare items in top condition than they will for common
items in top condition). Additionally, personal opinion is sometimes
needed in order to make determinations on discrepancies and aberrations.
Should a single rare module sale, sold by the module's author and fetching
a ridiculously high sale price (for example), affect the module's estimated
value? Probably not, and that's what the Board is there for. How much of the Valuation Board's work is open for public examination? Open for review: current Board members (viewable from the Usergroups screen in
the Forums) the current modifiers used to calculate values of less-than-near-mint
condition, the current weighting scale applied to the sale year,
and all other necessary formulas used to calculate the estimated
values the site Indexes, of course, showing the final results of those
calculations discussion between Board members, conducted in a private forum individual item sale prices collected by the Board individual item conditions assigned by the Board The reasoning behind what is/is not public is simple. The Valuation
Board is not intended to be a secret cabal, assigning values at whim,
but rather a group of people collecting as much data as possible, applying
standard formulas to come up with average sale prices, and finally applying
a dose of reason and common sense to that result. Their deliberations
should not be open to public scrutiny, else the resultant "noise" would
prohibit any real consensus from being reached. However, utilizing
the formulas provided, you at home could monitor all eBay sales of an
item, apply the formulas, and generally come up with the same values
the Board is getting.
Why not make all the item sales (and conditions) public? The
Acaeum is not a grading service. The Board members take their
best guess at an item's condition, and that guess is based solely on
the scan of the item and the description provided by the seller.
Small differences between the estimate and reality will not have an
impact on an item's average value -- "it all evens out in the end",
as the saying goes. However, if the sales and grades were made
public, people would take that estimate as the official "grade" of their
item, which it's not -- and not intended to be. What are the current scales and formulas used by the Valuation
Board? A complicated question. You can peruse the full-page explanation
here. Are the sales listed in the Auction History sections used by
the Valuation Board? No. These are simply example sales that I have pulled from eBay
over the years, and are more comprehensive for class-5 Rares than for
items of lesser rarity. They are provided for informational purposes
only; these auctions *have* been included by the Valuation Board in
their calculations, but the assignment of condition for those items
is conducted independently by them. My grandmother sold her copy of
ST1 Up the Garden Path to
me for $50,000. Can you include this private sale in your auction
history? With all that said, there are some private sales included on
The Acaeum right now. We've included them only as further auction
history on extremely rare items, and because I know both the buyer and
seller. Of course, this decision is mostly contradictory to all
the reasons listed above, so we may have to rethink this policy in the
future. Can I submit eBay auction results to you, for inclusion in your
auction histories? My auction was completed in British pounds, but all your values
are in dollars? I think your opinion of (item name) being worth $8 is completely
off. I saw it on eBay selling for (50 cents / $80). How does the Board come up with an estimated value for an item
that has little or no auction history? We're very cautious when assigning value to items with absolutely no
public (newsgroup or eBay) sale history. While we're tempted to
assign high values to everything super-rare, we've learned our lesson
with a couple of items, notably
Strategic Review
issues and the First print of
Greyhawk.
There's no earthly reason why Strategic Review issues sell for
$10 apiece, but they regularly do, regardless of our attempts to point
out their rarity and age. When we initially learned of the existence
of the ("true") First print of Greyhawk, we assumed it was super-rare,
and put a fairly high value on it... only to have three copies pop on
eBay and the newsgroup within 24 hours. (Thankfully, those were
the only three copies to turn up for at least a year afterward, so it
really is rare).
Much of the reason for the Board's creation was to make judgement
calls in such situations. The resultant values (again, only for
items with insufficient sales history) is based on group discussion
and vote. Are you (selling/buying) any of the items depicted on The Acaeum? I submitted a (question/submission) WEEKS ago. When am
I going to get a reply? I noticed that my three copies of (module) are slightly different
sizes, and/or they are all slightly different shades of blue.
Are these separate printings? Can I link to your site? Of course. I'm not sure there's any site on the Internet that
would be adverse to someone linking to them. Unfortunately, we
do not have our own banner to provide to you (because we don't host
banners ourselves, we feel it is unfair to ask anyone else to host
ours). Will you link to my site? Depends. If your site falls into the category of
Conventions (any convention
that has an auction, or dealer booths, carrying D&D material),
Resellers (any site providing
D&D material for sale; this includes retailers and resellers), or
Resources (a site that directly
provides a resource for role-playing-game collectors in some fashion),
we will provide a text link and short summary in the appropriate section.
We do not host banners. We also do not provide links to web sites
that fall outside one of these categories; The Acaeum is for collectors
of D&D material. "Outside the categories" includes sites that
exclusively deal with playing D&D, of which there are hundreds. Can I use your cover scans on my web site / in my auction? Can I use your printing information on my web site / in my auction? Yes, but we ask that you credit the source of that info, just like you
would if citing a source in a research paper. A simple "information
courtesy of The Acaeum" will suffice. Note that this does not
give blanket permission to copy large sections of this website for your
own publication -- a run-down of a certain module's printing history
is certainly within the definition of acceptable use, but your own comprehensive
index lifted from this site is not. While the distinction should
be obvious to a reasonable person, if you have a question on your proposed
use of any material, check out our Credits &
Legal page, or ask us first. How far can a halfling toss a dwarf? None of us here have played D&D since probably 1985. Frankly,
we'd be hard-pressed to tell you the difference between a halfling and
a dwarf, let alone how far one could toss the other. There are
a plethora of web sites out there that cover every nuance of how this
game is played; The Acaeum staff is unfortunately only able to answer
questions related to D&D collectibles themselves. Do you plan on offering a disk-based version of The Acaeum? At this time, no. The constant updates, additions, and corrections
to the material on the web site are not conducive to putting on a CD
or DVD, since the information would be at least partially superseded
as soon as you received it. The Internet remains the best medium
for the site, in our opinion. Do you ever plan on covering non-TSR material, such as Judges
Guild products? Funny you should ask! We're now covering Judges Guild, via our
Judges Guild Booty List subweb
(edited and maintained by Plaag),
and the Planescape campaign setting, via our
All Things Planar subweb (edited
and maintained by Azurah).
As far as covering other companies, or various other types of role-playing
games, we've unveiled our
Distributed
Computing Project in an attempt to solicit the public's assistance
in expanding the site. Want to see the Runequest game covered?
Why not join the Project and become the administrator of your own Acaeum
subweb covering it? What does "acaeum" mean, anyway? I looked it up in the
dictionary and couldn't find it. That's because it isn't a word... we made it up. Hopefully, it
conjures images of "lyceum", which is an ancient library. More
deviously, it happens to fall alphabetically before "Advanced Dungeons
& Dragons", so on those web directories that are organized alphabetically,
The Acaeum will be near the top. That is, of course, unless they
alphabetize "The".... How do you pronounce "Acaeum"? What is a "flyleaf", an "endpaper", a "textblock", etc? Please see our reference on Book-Binding
Definitions. What is the TSR Piece Code?
Module Code? Product Number? Please see our reference
on TSR Codes. I'm interested in insuring my collection. How should I
go about it? The main difficulty in insuring a D&D collection
is that most insurance companies require you to show "evidence of value"
before they will insure. Unfortunately, there's a notable lack
of qualified D&D appraisers -- to be officially certified as an appraiser,
you have to have worked professionally in the field of appraising for
a number of years; sort of a chicken-and-egg dilemma. A State
Farm employee had this to say: "Contact a bookstore (preferably a used
bookstore) and tell them that you need to know the estimated value of
the books for insurance purposes. Get something in writing if
you can. According to our claims office, various bookstores have
a system that they use to determine the value of rare and out-of-print
books (because they have to be able to price them for resale in most
cases) and this evidence can be used to support an insurance claim.
At least, it satisfies State Farm." Most likely, the valuation
that the bookstore conducts will be based on either eBay or The Acaeum
-- either way, you'll have what you need. Where is The Acaeum located?
Our new front page depicts the actual Acaeum facility, leading many explorers to try and locate
it. While we'd love to disclose this information so you and your family could visit,
unfortunately, the image was generated by AI software. The REAL location of The Acaeum is on
a boring server farm somewhere in Chicago.
Compiled from several years' worth of questions directed
at The Acaeum's resident Sage.
and
I know you've said that you don't want to cover (item name) since
it was produced after 1990, but I've noticed that it's selling for thousands
of dollars on eBay, and I really think you should cover it.
Not open for review:
We enjoy the security of having publicly-researchable sales (i.e. eBay
auctions) as some sort of proof that we're not just making these values
up. With a private sale, it comes down to hearsay. While
our method of estimating values is certainly far from a scientific approach,
we don't even want to think about the accusations of price-fixing that
would pour in should we include private sales -- "The Acaeum's
in secret collusion with Ed's Comic Shop to drive up prices", etc.
Whose values do we include -- everyone's? Only online dealers?
Which online dealers? An exclusive club? Etcetera.
Another reason to avoid private sales is the lack of competition in
the setting of the price -- maybe Lucy's Games was able to sell
I3 Pharaoh for $90,
but should that idiot buyer affect the market value of the module?
On eBay, at least two idiots have to agree that the price should
go that high.
Almost certainly, the Valuation Board has already seen your auction
and recorded the sale. It may not end up appearing in the Auction
History section of that item's page (since those are sales that I randomly
gather myself), but the Board doesn't miss much. Your best bet
to ensure "maximum exposure" is to post a message in the
Classifieds
forum before the auction is over -- you'll not only attract the notice
of the Valuation Board, but bidders as well.
We convert all currencies to U.S. dollars, to facilitate easy comparison
between markets. We also round off all amounts to the nearest
dollar, so slight discrepancies will disappear anyway.
The site's main purpose is not to be a price guide. We've debated
on whether or not to have the value estimations at all, and ultimately
decided that these estimations do more good than harm. They are
intended to be a guide -- and a guide only -- to help collectors gauge
what an item should fetch at auction. Since eBay is fickle, there's
certainly going to be eBay sales that are way off our estimated value,
in either direction. Those wild values tend to balance themselves
out over time, however, and that balance is what our Estimated Values
hope to reflect.
Unfortunately, we have much less free time to devote to the site now
than we used to. Rest assured that your question or submission
has been received, and we'll get to it as soon as possible.
Yes, they are, but they're not printing differences that we're tracking
on The Acaeum. Over the years, TSR changed printers, or the printers
would change inks/paper stocks, and the size or color of the module
would change slightly. We were going crazy trying to figure out
which module printing came first (and often the difference is in the
eye of the beholder, especially concerning color), so in mid-2001 we
decided to drop sizes and minor color differences. In summary:
size and color shade of the module, for our purposes, do not constitute
separate printings, unless the difference is substantial.
Please see our Credits & Legal page for specifics.
In short, if you wish to use a cover scan for whatever purpose, please
ask us first.
You can view the original, full-color artwork
here.
