COMC Primer

[mjohnatgt]

COMC comes out with modified fee structure. I was consulted on these changes before they were announced; here are my thoughts:
1) Dropping the cashout fee from 20% to 10% has been "demanded" by consignors for years. Now that they're getting it, some are complaining that it will increase the money being taken off the site. Before, people complained their store credit was being "held hostage." Can't have it both ways, people. I haven't moved money onto COMC in years, and have been drawing out $200 a month for the last couple of months. Next year, that will be $225 in my pocket instead.
2) Dropping the eBay/Amazon fee from 20% to 15% has been requested for years. Everyone kind of shrugged it off when COMC started embedding additional shipping costs into the price of cards on those sites, but that embedded shipping allows them to double dip if someone buys multiple cards listed at $25 or more per package. It will take some math (or trial and error) to get cards to show up on eBay at certain prices, if you're anal retentive about doing so. I'll just cut all my prices by 25% on day 1 using the bulk listing tool instead. All the cards I've owned over 3 months have already been run on sales on COMC at up to 65% off, so they're topheavy already. Every other week, I'll plan to reduce the price of all my cards 6%, so all the cards on eBay will notify their watchers that the price has dropped. Instead of running sales, I'll use the Bulk Price Listing Tool to just drop the prices. They'll become competitive over time with me doing the least amount of work; I have like 17,000 cards.
3) Since I don't deal much in cards over $50, I'll probably not even notice the additional storage costs. That seems pretty negligible. They had some other ideas a couple years ago to reduce storage costs, but it doesn't look like any of that is coming to fruition at this point.
4) Biggest harm to COMC users is obviously the 5% fee on any transaction. Flippers will start actually having to pay to use the site, and change their strategies. This won't affect me much, as most of the cards I buy to flip, I immediately triple or quadruple the purchase price; I won't even notice 5%. I'll probably save more over time by no longer running month-long sales which cost $90 plus 3% of all sales.
I regularly shop the sale section browsing the highest percent off sales or buy ports. Port buys (if you research them properly) can be very profitable, where 5% won't really be noticeable either for the amount of profit you're making. Change your strategy; it's good business anyways.
5) COMC says it's going to be making more changes to the site for the user experience to improve. Am cautiously hopeful about those. In the past year, about the only improvements were to the searchability of the site, increasing the quality of the menu bar. Having a live Bulk Price Editor is very useful; hopefully they leave it running. Although they are talking about having ways that your cards will automatically drop in price at set increments if you want.
6) One of my flipping strategies is going to be hit hard; I used to pick up a bunch of nonsports, vintage, and oddball cards that the COMC sellers were not crosslisting on eBay. Especially on modern Marvel cards, I could buy all 10 cards from sellers that didn't cross-post, and slow bleed them for profit to eBay buyers.
7) Looks like 64 cents might be the new 74 cents, because that's the price that should show up as 99 cents on eBay. So when the bulk price editor comes through, all my cards priced at 74 cents or below will now be priced at 64 cents to be the cheapest on eBay.
*Update: it's 39 cents because of the double-shipping embedded costs*

[mjohnatgt]

Grading update:
1) BGS grading has been suspended since their timelines to return cards went from around 2 months to around 12 MONTHS!!!
2) PSA grading is a future capability. COMC has done a trial PSA submission and is trying to work out the kinks before opening it up.
3) COMC Condition Review however has been pretty useful to me, but may bite them in the butt. Bought two awesome looking vintage cards out of the raw bucket, and COMC graded them as GOOD (creases not visible) and VG-EX (loss of surface gloss). COMC took them both as returns since they weren't EX or better, which is what the raw bucket is supposed to have in it. Bought another nice looking vintage card and it got a NM assessment, so I just had it shipped to me and it will be going to PSA soon. Not too bad for a $2 fee and 5 day delay.
4) If you are considering purchasing a card on site, and want to confirm the grade, COMC won't allow you to do a condition review without buying the card first. But if you explain you're considering buying the card, they might go take a look for free and then email you with their assessment of the card. Try to keep it to valuable cards; don't waste their time on $5 items.

[Budler]

Originally Posted by mjohnatgt

COMC comes out with modified fee structure. I was consulted on these changes before they were announced; here are my thoughts:
1) Dropping the cashout fee from 20% to 10% has been "demanded" by consignors for years. Now that they're getting it, some are complaining that it will increase the money being taken off the site. Before, people complained their store credit was being "held hostage." Can't have it both ways, people. I haven't moved money onto COMC in years, and have been drawing out $200 a month for the last couple of months. Next year, that will be $225 in my pocket instead.
2) Dropping the eBay/Amazon fee from 20% to 15% has been requested for years. Everyone kind of shrugged it off when COMC started embedding additional shipping costs into the price of cards on those sites, but that embedded shipping allows them to double dip if someone buys multiple cards listed at $25 or more per package. It will take some math (or trial and error) to get cards to show up on eBay at certain prices, if you're anal retentive about doing so. I'll just cut all my prices by 25% on day 1 using the bulk listing tool instead. All the cards I've owned over 3 months have already been run on sales on COMC at up to 65% off, so they're topheavy already. Every other week, I'll plan to reduce the price of all my cards 6%, so all the cards on eBay will notify their watchers that the price has dropped. Instead of running sales, I'll use the Bulk Price Listing Tool to just drop the prices. They'll become competitive over time with me doing the least amount of work; I have like 17,000 cards.
3) Since I don't deal much in cards over $50, I'll probably not even notice the additional storage costs. That seems pretty negligible. They had some other ideas a couple years ago to reduce storage costs, but it doesn't look like any of that is coming to fruition at this point.
4) Biggest harm to COMC users is obviously the 5% fee on any transaction. Flippers will start actually having to pay to use the site, and change their strategies. This won't affect me much, as most of the cards I buy to flip, I immediately triple or quadruple the purchase price; I won't even notice 5%. I'll probably save more over time by no longer running month-long sales which cost $90 plus 3% of all sales.
I regularly shop the sale section browsing the highest percent off sales or buy ports. Port buys (if you research them properly) can be very profitable, where 5% won't really be noticeable either for the amount of profit you're making. Change your strategy; it's good business anyways.
5) COMC says it's going to be making more changes to the site for the user experience to improve. Am cautiously hopeful about those. In the past year, about the only improvements were to the searchability of the site, increasing the quality of the menu bar. Having a live Bulk Price Editor is very useful; hopefully they leave it running. Although they are talking about having ways that your cards will automatically drop in price at set increments if you want.
6) One of my flipping strategies is going to be hit hard; I used to pick up a bunch of nonsports, vintage, and oddball cards that the COMC sellers were not crosslisting on eBay. Especially on modern Marvel cards, I could buy all 10 cards from sellers that didn't cross-post, and slow bleed them for profit to eBay buyers.
7) Looks like 64 cents might be the new 74 cents, because that's the price that should show up as 99 cents on eBay. So when the bulk price editor comes through, all my cards priced at 74 cents or below will now be priced at 64 cents to be the cheapest on eBay.

As mainly a buyer I have only sent in 2 batches of 100 cards each to sell.
1. I do not cash out so that does not help
2. I sell very few and do not list on E-Bay/Amazon so does me little good.
7. When I started I was buying commons at .44 cards then they when to .54 then .64 and now .74 or 1.00.
I did not do Graded cards so that do not help any

I'm just hoping that it does what some people say. Reduce the overpriced cards and drop the prices here. Most of the cards I buy here are under $5.00 Now just waiting to see if any of my cards sell and what I can buy before the 1st of the year.

[mjohnatgt]

Originally Posted by mjohnatgt

7) Looks like 64 cents might be the new 74 cents, because that's the price that should show up as 99 cents on eBay. So when the bulk price editor comes through, all my cards priced at 74 cents or below will now be priced at 64 cents to be the cheapest on eBay.

Current correction to this. Cards now must be 39 cents to get listed on eBay as 99 cents, because COMC is also embedding an extra quarter into the price as an "expedited shipping fee" for eBay purchases. Plus the 15% buyers premium is *ON TOP* of the embedded shipping charges.
I like these changes less and less over time.
Embedded "Free" shipping of $3.99 is now starting at the $5 card level, not the $25 level like it used to. So they're double and triple dipping eBay/Amazon even worse than they ever had.

[Bowman1951]

Bump for the new year!

[mjohnatgt]

Oh, someone asked me to mention that if you want to remove all the raw Dean's cards from your view, so the black background cards are not clogging up your searches, use "-dcr" in your searches in the top menu bar.

[Bowman1951]

Is there a trick to finding your particular card listed on Amazon?

[mjohnatgt]

I don't believe so. The consignor 3-digit codes don't seem to appear on Amazon.

[pfb11]

Originally Posted by Bowman1951

Is there a trick to finding your particular card listed on Amazon?

Yeah, hope it's serial numbered.

[mjohnatgt]

Originally Posted by mjohnatgt

http://www.watchcount.com/mw2.php?bk...bnp=&bxp=#serp
Then I normally look at the items in the Sale listings on COMC and identify those sellers' 3-digit codes.

Just realized that I didn't have the "Search Descriptions" box checked. You'll get a bunch more hits if you do that as well. I also use it to check my own listings and see which ones would sell if I lower my own price on COMC.

[cardsrus1]

Originally Posted by mjohnatgt

Just realized that I didn't have the "Search Descriptions" box checked. You'll get a bunch more hits if you do that as well. I also use it to check my own listings and see which ones would sell if I lower my own price on COMC.

I believe that will add false positives as it will include sold items. At least that was what I found last year when I researched it on my items. Been a while since I tested it though.

[mjohnatgt]

When I ran it, I had very few false positives. These are mainly cards that got dropdown menu'd and you have to select the specific card in order to watch it. But that means that they're watching my specific cards, which is good. A bunch of them were 1/1 printing plates.

[jadams67]

I am prepping to send in a couple hundred cards within the next couple of weeks. I plan mainly yo use my sales to fund my collecting. Guess it is worth a try, maybe I can even make a few bucks if I work at it a little.

Thanks for the thread. I have heard good and bad about COMC. There are always good and bad sides to everything.

[mjohnatgt]

Bump; changed the first post to reflect the 1/1/19 changes.

[Bowman1951]

You should add the tax information also that went into effect on 4/1.

[jcmel323]

Great thread. Thanks

[salthill]

Great post. Thanks. I’m getting my first submission ready, so the more I know etc...
Didn’t realise there was a Watch List. Off to explore that feature now.

[mjohnatgt]

Bump...

[Rabs]

Good info.

I think you need to update the part about them sending condition note cards back as I thought they now kept them all regardless.

I also still don't understand the benefit of using ARM vs. standard mode when flipping. It doesn't actually save/cost any more or less money in the end right?

[checkoutmydeals]

I also still don't understand the benefit of using ARM vs. standard mode when flipping. It doesn't actually save/cost any more or less money in the end right?

In Advanced Reseller Mode, you pay the base price for the item.

In Simplified Shipping Mode, you pay the base price for the item, plus the handling fee.

This means, for every 100,000 items you purchase to resell, you will be paying $25,000 in handling fees which you will not get back unless you resell the item.

These handling fees do not transfer to other items. So if you paid 25 cents handling fee for item X, you will still have to pay 25 cents to have item Y shipped to you.

Additionally, the math on offers or sales doesn't really make sense unless you are in Advanced Reseller Mode.

The only person I've seen who benefited from Simplified Shipping Mode had a port where the average selling price was around $80 or so, and the port size was less than 100 cards. It was worth it for them to pay 25 cents extra per item so that they could always have their entire port returned for $3.99 shipping.

[RandysHobby]

Originally Posted by checkoutmydeals

I also still don't understand the benefit of using ARM vs. standard mode when flipping. It doesn't actually save/cost any more or less money in the end right?

In Advanced Reseller Mode, you pay the base price for the item.

In Simplified Shipping Mode, you pay the base price for the item, plus the handling fee.

This means, for every 100,000 items you purchase to resell, you will be paying $25,000 in handling fees which you will not get back unless you resell the item.

These handling fees do not transfer to other items. So if you paid 25 cents handling fee for item X, you will still have to pay 25 cents to have item Y shipped to you.

Additionally, the math on offers or sales doesn't really make sense unless you are in Advanced Reseller Mode.

The only person I've seen who benefited from Simplified Shipping Mode had a port where the average selling price was around $80 or so, and the port size was less than 100 cards. It was worth it for them to pay 25 cents extra per item so that they could always have their entire port returned for $3.99 shipping.

So if I flip and buy PC about 50/50 (maybe ship 100 cards every 3 months) what should i do?

[checkoutmydeals]

99% of the time, I would recommend switching to Advanced Reseller's Mode, and never switching back.

However, if paying $28.99 to ship the 100 cards instead of $3.99 will throw you off somehow, then Simplified Shipping Mode might be appropriate for you.

[mjohnatgt]

Originally Posted by Rabs

I think you need to update the part about them sending condition note cards back as I thought they now kept them all regardless.

I also still don't understand the benefit of using ARM vs. standard mode when flipping. It doesn't actually save/cost any more or less money in the end right?

Good point; that's a brand new change. As to Advanced Resellers Mode, it's all about capital. You'll never make a penny off constantly paying and being refunded quarters (embedded shipping fees in basic mode). Instead of paying all those quarters up front, you can use that money to flip additional cards. So your opportunity cost to paying the shipping fees is that you can't use that same amount of store credit to generate additional income.

[Rabs]

Originally Posted by RandysHobby

So if I flip and buy PC about 50/50 (maybe ship 100 cards every 3 months) what should i do?

This is basically where I stand also. I never use ARM and like the fact that when I am at 100 cards I only have to pay $3.99 to have them all shipped to me.

Do some of you switch back and forth between modes depending on whether you are buying or flipping?

[mjohnatgt]

I never switch. Stay in Advanced mode all the time.