CheckOutMyCards.com Questions, Suggestions & Testimonials

[CharlieHustle]

Originally Posted by jefflasvegas

Interesting concept. How would you drive traffic to your site? There are a lot of web pages out there that never get seen. I was pulled to COMC several years ago because it had a rare vintage card that a friend was trying to locate. Ebay and Beckett did not have the card so I did a Google search for it and stumbled onto checkoutmycards in Feb 2009. What kept me there was the user friendliness of the site and the mantra of developing a community of collectors by collectors.

Social media being what it is, I dont think promoting a website is all that difficult these days. Promoting your blog is tough, but promoting an ecommerce site isn't that tricky when word of mouth comes into play. There is a very large and very real demand for sportscards. If a site were to pop up, people would talk about it instantly. Comc didn't have the advantage of what Twitter has become, back in 2007-2009.

[checkoutmydeals]

Dont forget listing fees. That would kill the project almost immediately.
Then, when ebay throws out promotions for 3,000 free listings, etc, people would get mad if I still charged them a monthly listing fee.
I've thought about this before, but couldn't make it work in my head, so I ditched the idea.

eBay listing fees are per listing, not per card. So one thing you could do is bundle the cheaper cards into larger lots and only accept lots of a certain expected value (say $20 or more). An anchor store is $199.95 per month ($179.95 if you have a 12 month contract) and comes with 2500 free listings. Each additional listing is 5 cents. So you could charge 10 cents per month per listing for eBay exposure and come out ahead. You could also make it so that eBay exposure is optional, and people could pick and choose which of their items to cross-post.

The larger point though is that if you have the ability to create thousands of listings and ship thousands of items per month, that is an extremely valuable skill which can be used to great advantage already. I know people who've sold tens of millions of dollars on eBay with consignment auctions. Probstein averages about 650 items sold on eBay per day, and I'm sure they have more than one person working the account.

I don't think you need to reinvent the wheel. You could do very well as a cog in an already existing wheel.

[BBallCT]

Thanks for all your help Moe, all the best.

Nathan, welcome aboard! Could you confirm the timezone listed when I generate sales reports?

Merci

[checkoutmydeals]

Lol. I bet COMC didn't see this thread turning into this. Then again maybe when they see people are actually thinkin about creating a business that would compete with them they'll rethink some of the stuff I've seen mentioned in this thread over and over.

COMC could just as easily implement some of this stuff. Some of it people have been requesting for years. For example, a choice of different fee structures. I don't think they realize how much the 20% cash out fee kills them in terms of A) getting new dealers onto the site and B) encouraging existing sellers to add new money to the site.

COMC would also do great with the want list service, where people can send their cards in after the cards are purchased. They've already tried something like this with a big dealer. This would be a way for small time people to participate as well. And it would save COMC from having to process zillions of commons which will never be shipped off site.

COMC would also do very well if they allowed us to select COMC items which could be cross-posted to eBay. I've removed a lot of my high dollar items from the site, but if I could cross post to eBay through COMC, I'd probably send them all back.

[CharlieHustle]

Originally Posted by checkoutmydeals

eBay listing fees are per listing, not per card. So one thing you could do is bundle the cheaper cards into larger lots and only accept lots of a certain expected value (say $20 or more). An anchor store is $199.95 per month ($179.95 if you have a 12 month contract) and comes with 2500 free listings. Each additional listing is 5 cents. So you could charge 10 cents per month per listing for eBay exposure and come out ahead. You could also make it so that eBay exposure is optional, and people could pick and choose which of their items to cross-post.

The larger point though is that if you have the ability to create thousands of listings and ship thousands of items per month, that is an extremely valuable skill which can be used to great advantage already. I know people who've sold tens of millions of dollars on eBay with consignment auctions. Probstein averages about 650 items sold on eBay per day, and I'm sure they have more than one person working the account.

I don't think you need to reinvent the wheel. You could do very well as a cog in an already existing wheel.

I've already been down this road and it was more miss than hit. I had 11,000 items listed in my store (my own and a small handful from 2 other people) and ebay did a 20,000 free listing promo. BOTH people emailed me and asked why I was charging them for listings when ebay had the free promo. I told them that their items were already listed BEFORE the promo came out, which I had already paid for out of my pocket. It was a heated couple of days where I had 2 different people (who I knew, they weren't strangers) accusing me of trying to rip them off and take their money.
No thanks, I couldn't possibly imagine that x1000 different users.
Adding ebay and amazon cross-promotion is a good idea. I also REALLY love the idea of being able to opt in or out PER CARD. That would be relatively easy to implement, as long as users understood that the free listings don't apply to them. They pay, regardless of which promo ebay is having.

[checkoutmydeals]

I've already been down this road and it was more miss than hit. I had 11,000 items listed in my store (my own and a small handful from 2 other people) and ebay did a 20,000 free listing promo. BOTH people emailed me and asked why I was charging them for listings when ebay had the free promo. I told them that their items were already listed BEFORE the promo came out, which I had already paid for out of my pocket. It was a heated couple of days where I had 2 different people (who I knew, they weren't strangers) accusing me of trying to rip them off and take their money.
No thanks, I couldn't possibly imagine that x1000 different users.

The thing is, that's exactly what will happen to you if you go forward with the COMC competitor idea. A few of your 1,000 customers will get upset that you're not processing fast enough or cheap enough or that you misidentified a card, or that the buyer wants a refund, or the seller wants a do-over or whatever.

The ability to run an eBay store with 11,000 items is a rare talent which few people possess. You could be doing it with $100 auto parts or $1,000 designer dresses. Heck, in Las Vegas you could be doing something with the sort of stuff that casinos throw away, like retired slot machines or used showgirl outfits. Or celebrity autographs. You don't have to be selling 99 cent commons for the ungrateful masses.

If you do work with low dollar items for the ungrateful masses, my suggestion would be to figure out how to get them to do most of the work. When I had a brick and mortar, I would trade for any card worth $1 or more in Beckett. But the customer had to look them up and separate them by price.

When all the smoke clears, you might do much better simply by buying stuff outright and selling it at your own pace on your own terms. Or if you do a consignment, you're selective and set the terms. Most sellers will only deal with consignments when the items are expected to sell for $50 to $100 or more. So if you're willing to deal even in the $2 and $3 and $5 stuff (like COMC originally intended to do), then you'll have a significant advantage.

[DaClyde]

Originally Posted by jbrandonw

Lol. I bet COMC didn't see this thread turning into this. Then again maybe when they see people are actually thinkin about creating a business that would compete with them they'll rethink some of the stuff I've seen mentioned in this thread over and over.

I think it might be time for Blowout to lock this thread where it is and just start a fresh one, re-introducing COMC and moving forward with fresh feedback and questions. Most of the pre-April 2014 posts are irrelevant now, and the several of the current conversations would probably be better served as threads of their own. Any takers?

[CharlieHustle]

Originally Posted by checkoutmydeals

When all the smoke clears, you might do much better simply by buying stuff outright and selling it at your own pace on your own terms. Or if you do a consignment, you're selective and set the terms. Most sellers will only deal with consignments when the items are expected to sell for $50 to $100 or more. So if you're willing to deal even in the $2 and $3 and $5 stuff (like COMC originally intended to do), then you'll have a significant advantage.

Well that's exactly what I'm doing now. I have an Excel program that automatically buys cards from Comc, when a discrepency exists between ebay and Comc. I have it set up by player. So, when I open my Excel file, I type "Masahiro Tanaka" into the search box. It searches Comc for available qty, then compares to projected sales on ebay. When a discrepancy exists (in my favor), it adds the card to my Comc shopping cart. At the end of the session, I log into Comc and pay for whatever is in my shopping cart. If I decided to stop here and make money doing this, I could. The profit is relatively small, as compared to case breaking or liquidating collections, but the work is automated. I've maintained my ebay account since 2013, by only "working" 10 minutes a day or less. The only part I have to manually do, is scan the cards. I stopped doing this for a while because Comc was taking their sweet time shipping cards out and it was messing up my routine on the back end.
The only reason I want to break out of this routine and branch off further, is because I can't deal with ebay and their ever-changing fees. I want to offer all the cards I have in my inventory, for sale. That just can't possibly happen on ebay. I need my own website to do that. This is also why I would steer clear of a "want list" style format. Because I have cards that I want to sell. I want the venue to be a sales venue. I dont mind "doing the work", because most of the work is already done from my past ebay life. The databases already exist. All I need is time to put this data into a website.

[CharlieHustle]

Originally Posted by DaClyde

I think it might be time for Blowout to lock this thread where it is and just start a fresh one, re-introducing COMC and moving forward with fresh feedback and questions. Most of the pre-April 2014 posts are irrelevant now, and the several of the current conversations would probably be better served as threads of their own. Any takers?

A healthier Comc serves everyone better in the end. There's nothing stopping them from taking any of these suggestions and implementing them on their own. Who better to compete with Comc than Comc?

[hundley]

Originally Posted by checkoutmydeals

COMC would also do very well if they allowed us to select COMC items which could be cross-posted to eBay. I've removed a lot of my high dollar items from the site, but if I could cross post to eBay through COMC, I'd probably send them all back.

This. There's a good deal of cards I've resisted sending to COMC at all, and cards I've pulled off the site that would be better sold on ebay, but this would change my tune on this considerably. I'm kinda surprised it's this far into the site and they haven't added this yet. Ebay is still the best place to sell cards quickly, and I can't imagine that it would be a fantastic burden on COMC to create an automated listing method under a COMC ebay profile that works much like the Amazon partnership works. I doubt that would necessarily even need to be a partnership exactly, but rather a COMC account on ebay that lists cards for us. Are there any ebay rules that prohibit something like this?

Certainly there would be some extra fees like we have to pay with Amazon, and you're going to have dilemmas like items needing to be locked on the COMC site while they're up for auction on ebay, as well as potential issues with there being a listing delay between the user making a listing request and the item officially getting an ebay listing, but I don't see these as being serious deterrents for this. I don't know if I necessarily speak for absolutely every seller, but I know I'd definitely use this and be cool with giving COMC a reasonable cut for consigning items for me on ebay. Makes me wonder if there's another larger reason they've resisted running a COMC consignment account on ebay thus far. I'm certain a lot of COMC users would use this, as it lessens the necessity to pull cards off the site to run ebay sales.

And heck, at the end of the day, this actually would have some pretty good marketing benefits for COMC. Being one of the more prolific ebay sellers would certainly get their name out there to people that may not otherwise know them. Before I joined COMC and saw their logo on the dashboard I knew of blowoutcards due to their ebay presence. Made me interested in checking the site out after having a couple positive experiences shopping with them on ebay. It's not as direct a marketing method as buying advertising space in Beckett, but it still gets your name around a little more.

Correct me if I'm off somewhere, but the more I think about this the more I think it's really quite silly that COMC has wholly ignored ebay this long. Certainly a relationship with them is unlikely to turn out as poorly as the Beckett one did, and they somehow still give business to Beckett.

[tamar3504]

Originally Posted by DaClyde

I think it might be time for Blowout to lock this thread where it is and just start a fresh one, re-introducing COMC and moving forward with fresh feedback and questions. Most of the pre-April 2014 posts are irrelevant now, and the several of the current conversations would probably be better served as threads of their own. Any takers?

You are ignoring one of the biggest issues comc users have. The caption contests suck. The chosen caption is never funny. I have watched every episode of Full House, I know funny.

[XL5]

COMC on eBay is a pipe dream. eBay/paypal buyer protection policies ensure that.

If the problem is inability to sell high-end on COMC, there may be a solution but eBay ain't it. The failed Vault attempt at least indicates that COMC recognizes/recognized the need for a higher-end marketplace.

[CharlieHustle]

Originally Posted by hundley

Correct me if I'm off somewhere, but the more I think about this the more I think it's really quite silly that COMC has wholly ignored ebay this long. Certainly a relationship with them is unlikely to turn out as poorly as the Beckett one did, and they somehow still give business to Beckett.

Ultimately, I would think they wanted to be ebay's competition, rather than a funnel for their sales, which is how I would think that Comc Auctions became a thing. That doesn't explain Amazon though, why one and not the other? Briefly looking at the whole scenario, I would think that the fees would be a nightmare to navigate, but that's just a quick go-to answer. The actual file creation/upload to ebay is relatively simple to create, so the only thing that makes sense, is the fees.

[jerryw]

Originally Posted by DaClyde

I think it might be time for Blowout to lock this thread where it is and just start a fresh one, re-introducing COMC and moving forward with fresh feedback and questions. Most of the pre-April 2014 posts are irrelevant now, and the several of the current conversations would probably be better served as threads of their own. Any takers?

comc is nothing without customers....if we all bail they have nothing to keep the lights on...so if they decide to take some of our suggestions and implement them that would be ideal...its never wise to bite the hand that feeds you

[jmscoggin]

Originally Posted by tamar3504

You are ignoring one of the biggest issues comc users have. The caption contests suck. The chosen caption is never funny. I have watched every episode of Full House, I know funny.

Yet you made a Full House joke anyways?

[jmscoggin]

Originally Posted by jerryw

comc is nothing without customers....if we all bail they have nothing to keep the lights on...so if they decide to take some of our suggestions and implement them that would be ideal...its never wise to bite the hand that feeds you

I keep saying this but so many people have a hard time grasping it including COMC themselves. COMC needs us, without us they are nothing and will be kaput. We don't need COMC, there are a ton of different avenues to sell and every single one of them is cheaper than COMC. COMC should be kissing our arses but instead they ignore us and treat us with disdain.

[checkoutmydeals]

I doubt that would necessarily even need to be a partnership exactly, but rather a COMC account on ebay that lists cards for us. Are there any ebay rules that prohibit something like this?

At one time, there was an eBay rule which prohibited watermarks on pics, and at that time, this was the main thing keeping COMC from cross-posting to eBay.

eBay has since changed their watermark policy (you can't have a watermark that says COMC.COM, but you could have something like the COMC shield logo).

The other issue is more of a mental block or philosophical one. A lot of people on COMC "hate" eBay with a burning passion which burns deeply into their soul. Me, I just want to outsource as many of my tasks as possible and concentrate on selling.

Recently, I had a chance to chat with the incoming CEO of eBay and some of his minions. I brought COMC to their attention. They were very polite and seemed perfectly willing to let COMC sell on the site, though I wouldn't wait with sandwiches by the phone waiting for it to ring. Also, their idea of the collectibles market seemed to be people selling Beanie Babies in 1997.

Another site COMC could reach out to is etsy, which apparently has a "vintage" category where you can list anything so long as it's at least 20 years old. I've never personally used the site, but I know some little old ladies who are quite enthusiastic about it.

[JustMoe]

Originally Posted by tamar3504

You are ignoring one of the biggest issues comc users have. The caption contests suck. The chosen caption is never funny. I have watched every episode of Full House, I know funny.

Text deleted.

[DaClyde]

Originally Posted by JustMoe

Yea, the Caption contest was originally my idea...my bad. For the record, I never watched Full House. That may have been the problem...

In the words of Stephanie Tanner, "How rude!"

[NCinCT]

Originally Posted by JustMoe

Yea, the Caption contest was originally my idea...my bad. For the record, I never watched Full House. That may have been the problem...

Was this why most of them were hockey photos?

I won one once - made a Sharknado reference. Can't go wrong with Sharknado.

[JustMoe]

Originally Posted by NCinCT

Was this why most of them were hockey photos?

I won one once - made a Sharknado reference. Can't go wrong with Sharknado.

Text deleted.

[Jonathon M]

Originally Posted by JustMoe

I used NFL photos during football season, then I switched to hockey (since I'm a hockey fan). The plan was to jump to baseball for the spring and summer, but since I'm not in charge of it anymore, who knows what will happen?

Maybe they can use photo's from COMC headquarters and we can caption them.

"Look, I don't care what the customers are saying.... I asked for a report on areas we can introduce new fees or lower existing standards, and when I said I would make an announcement on auctions in March, I meant 2016 dammit!!!! "

[JustMoe]

Originally Posted by Jonathon M

Maybe they can use photo's from COMC headquarters and we can caption them.

"Look, I don't care what the customers are saying.... I asked for a report on areas we can introduce new fees or lower existing standards, and when I said I would make an announcement on auctions in March, I meant 2016 dammit!!!! "

Text deleted.

[berkey33]

hundley, did they ever 'fix' that Bumgarner card ordeal?

[hundley]

Originally Posted by berkey33

hundley, did they ever 'fix' that Bumgarner card ordeal?

Nope, though I never actually contacted COMC directly about the issue, since I had been ignored on those matter so many times previously.

Haven't had them screw with my purchases since(that I've seen anyway), so hopefully that mess underscored the problem for those in charge.