All I want to do is talk about COMC

[scotthenrichs]

Originally Posted by dgrochester55

Convenience is the key. I work full time and live in a place with limited space

Another good point. I don't have to physically sit with the inventory. Over the last few years, I picked out the COMC'able stuff and sent it in, and took the rest and fire-saled it to the LCS and made myself lots of room in the man cave, I can close the closet door now!

Also I should note the 16 week LT doesn't bother me too much. It would if I was sending in lots of new 2022 or 2023 type stuff, but most of my old stuff is 1998-2015 type stuff, and that doesn't change much when it comes to a 16 week wait.

[JustinVerlander07]

Originally Posted by CardGlory

Paying $0.50 per card and waiting four months + huge withdrawal fees, seems insane to me. Can someone explain why people do this? What am I missing?

I sell my $1+ cards on eBay now and that seems light years better. It doesn't cost me anything to list them. I can list them now. The fees are far lower in the end.

I'm tempted to just send in a batch of cards to COMC and wait four months and see for myself because clearly all of the people selling there must understand something that I don't.

I work 45-50 hours a week, I don't feel like listing stuff generally myself. Not all of us work banker hours.

[dustin42]

Originally Posted by JustinVerlander07

I work 45-50 hours a week, I don't feel like listing stuff generally myself. Not all of us work banker hours.

Banker's hours are for schmucks lol. Do what I want, when I want. Come at me Elon.

But seriously, people don't want to spend the time listing, shipping, etc. They pay for the service like door dash

[dustin42]

Originally Posted by CardGlory

Appreciate the responses, I'm definitely reading them and learning a lot.

Simply having someone photograph, list and ship is definitely a big deal. I could see the draw in having all of that taken care of.

You can also cut the selling fee to only 5% if you buy other cards with your credit instead of cashing out. Huge perk

[wubh]

There are scenarios where eBay makes more sense and scenarios where COMC makes more sense. But I think there are lots of sweet spots where COMC can net you greater revenue while decreasing time spent selling.

One thing I love about COMC is the potential increased visibility it can give to some cards such as rookie cards of players that get hot, players who have very few cards or players with lots of cards but very few autos/mem/serial #ed.

On eBay, you have to wade through hundreds of often duplicate listings with pricing that’s all over the place and decide whether to toggle between auction, BIN or both.

As a buyer, I greatly prefer COMC because I find eBay exhausting between all of the listings including ones that are poorly listed, crap photos, most sellers not listing their combined shipping prices (or if they do it at all), waiting out auctions for the mostly low end stuff I want, etc.

On COMC, the interface can sort via player, set, team, decade or card characteristic. And especially if you have the only copy on the site (or one of a few), the chances of the right eyeball finding your card seems increased, even though eBay has way more traffic.

Plus, a non common card has a decent chance of being cross listed to eBay so you might get those eyeballs too.

[theshowandme]

Originally Posted by CardGlory

Paying $0.50 per card and waiting four months + huge withdrawal fees, seems insane to me. Can someone explain why people do this? What am I missing?

I sell my $1+ cards on eBay now and that seems light years better. It doesn't cost me anything to list them. I can list them now. The fees are far lower in the end.

I'm tempted to just send in a batch of cards to COMC and wait four months and see for myself because clearly all of the people selling there must understand something that I don't.

My logic is simple:

1. I work a lot. I’m home very little.

2. Having hundreds of bubble mailers and envelopes sitting in a closet is not appealing.

3. Im not spending time to take pictures, list, print labels, and package. See #1

4. I can move 1000 cards faster on COMC than most people can on eBay.

5. When a port seems stale, I post in the thread for port sales and usually someone answers the mail. Entire ports can be bought out at once.

6. No need to ever cash out, the system is self-sustaining. I’ve bought cards on the site from profit, shipped it to myself, and traded/sold the card for cash at shows. No reason to take the 10% hit

7. You can flip on the site, a lot of people do not send cards in. Again, it’s a self-sustaining system if you’re smart about it.

8. Remove the nagging buyers who were not paid attention to as children so they cause problems for others on eBay. You hit buy, its a completed transaction unless a clear mistake was made.

9. Most cards are cross listed to eBay

10. You can run auctions through eBay from your port and you avoid #2, #3, and #8


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[UCCF]

I want to highlight that I think COMC auctions are the best deal on the site, particularly if you're auctioning cards in the $50 range and up. You pay no fee to send the card in, and a flat $3.50 for the auction up to $100 sales (and $3.50 plus a percentage with a cap if you make any sales over about $1000). For a $100 auction, you're paying $3.50 (leaving you with $96.50), and then 10% if you cash out, which nets you $86.85 on a $100 auction. eBay would take 13.25% + 30 cents on that same auction, which would net you $86.45. And COMC does all the work to boot.

As people have pointed out, if you don't cash out, and you just use COMC as essentially a glorified trade board where you trade the cards that you don't want for cards that you do, the deals are even better. You can auction a $100 card, pay 3.5% in fees, and spend that $96.50 on other cards on site.

Given infinite time and resources, eBay probably does make more sense, particularly for that big bulk of cards down in the $1-$20 or so range. But if you do all that work yourself you're likely working for far less than minimum wage to make it happen. I always figure if the money I'm saving by doing it myself is so little that I could never hire someone at that price to do it for me, then I'm not valuing my own time highly enough.

[Melonhead1991]

Originally Posted by Melonhead1991

How long does it usually take for them to edit a card? Had a Stadium Club Photographer’s Proof listed as a base card. Submitted an edit 11 days ago and they still haven’t changed it

Well, it’s now been 3 weeks this card has been sitting there, I’ve submitted the edit 4 times and they haven’t changed it. It’s getting kinda frustrating. Just has another card added last night that also has the wrong title (Stadium Club Foilboard Auto /10 listed as a base auto). Never had this problem before.

[Boo]

Originally Posted by Melonhead1991

Well, it’s now been 3 weeks this card has been sitting there, I’ve submitted the edit 4 times and they haven’t changed it. It’s getting kinda frustrating. Just has another card added last night that also has the wrong title (Stadium Club Foilboard Auto /10 listed as a base auto). Never had this problem before.

Hit edit at least once a day, it will get fixed eventually.

[Sonnys88]

Originally Posted by Melonhead1991

Well, it’s now been 3 weeks this card has been sitting there, I’ve submitted the edit 4 times and they haven’t changed it. It’s getting kinda frustrating. Just has another card added last night that also has the wrong title (Stadium Club Foilboard Auto /10 listed as a base auto). Never had this problem before.

That is unusual as correction requests rarely take more than 48 hours to be taken care of.

What are you putting in for the correction? For something like your correction, I select "Wrong Set", then type "Photographers Proof Version" in the details.

[mc1]

Originally Posted by Sonnys88

That is unusual as correction requests rarely take more than 48 hours to be taken care of.

What are you putting in for the correction? For something like your correction, I select "Wrong Set", then type "Photographers Proof Version" in the details.

Not true. Sometimes they ignore them and you need to submit a correction request multiple times.

[wubh]

Originally Posted by UCCF

I want to highlight that I think COMC auctions are the best deal on the site, particularly if you're auctioning cards in the $50 range and up. You pay no fee to send the card in, and a flat $3.50 for the auction up to $100 sales (and $3.50 plus a percentage with a cap if you make any sales over about $1000). For a $100 auction, you're paying $3.50 (leaving you with $96.50), and then 10% if you cash out, which nets you $86.85 on a $100 auction. eBay would take 13.25% + 30 cents on that same auction, which would net you $86.45. And COMC does all the work to boot.

As people have pointed out, if you don't cash out, and you just use COMC as essentially a glorified trade board where you trade the cards that you don't want for cards that you do, the deals are even better. You can auction a $100 card, pay 3.5% in fees, and spend that $96.50 on other cards on site.

Given infinite time and resources, eBay probably does make more sense, particularly for that big bulk of cards down in the $1-$20 or so range. But if you do all that work yourself you're likely working for far less than minimum wage to make it happen. I always figure if the money I'm saving by doing it myself is so little that I could never hire someone at that price to do it for me, then I'm not valuing my own time highly enough.

This is a feature I've never used but have been thinking recently about moving some cards that could go in the $150-$500 range but many are in 'niche' collectible spheres or rare (like 1 of 1s).

Can anybody share some advice? I'm imagining it's pretty easy to get a great price for a desirable Wander PSA10 that has a very well establish price range through COMC auctions but what about other stuff?

In particular, I have some non-sport (sketches, rare autos) and MLS soccer.

If I could accurately price these, I probably would have sent it to COMC already but I also know some of these things (especially MLS) can cause major bidding wars on eBay due to scarcity and rabid set/player collectors. Or sell for way less than expected due to poor timing.

[UCCF]

I've auctioned 1-of-1s, I've auctioned more niche stuff - WWE cards, NASCAR, Formula 1, soccer, all of which sold well. I had a tennis auto from Goodwin Champions, that went well.

I do think that auctioning through COMC gets you more visibility on eBay, since you get not only people browsing eBay but also people browsing the auctions where they're listed on COMC.

[papercards]

Originally Posted by wubh

This is a feature I've never used but have been thinking recently about moving some cards that could go in the $150-$500 range but many are in 'niche' collectible spheres or rare (like 1 of 1s).

Can anybody share some advice? I'm imagining it's pretty easy to get a great price for a desirable Wander PSA10 that has a very well establish price range through COMC auctions but what about other stuff?

In particular, I have some non-sport (sketches, rare autos) and MLS soccer.

If I could accurately price these, I probably would have sent it to COMC already but I also know some of these things (especially MLS) can cause major bidding wars on eBay due to scarcity and rabid set/player collectors. Or sell for way less than expected due to poor timing.

You pretty much said it, it can be either or. You don't have any control on when it is going to be listed (time and day) which can hurt sometimes -- ends on a holiday or a Friday night, etc. Some stuff goes way under what the norm is (even pretty liquid items), and then every now and then you can get more than the going rate (in fact last night, I had a Judge PSA 10 Topps rc go for 20% higher than most recent sales.) Also when someone doesn't pay, you have to wait quite awhile for it to be re-listed, and I have had quite a few non-payors.

I think the best thing is to try one or two out, and see how it goes. I wouldn't list a bunch all at once. If you don't really care what something goes for, send any of those. My best advice -- be prepared that an item can go quite a bit under what you would ever expect. I had that experience on a high dollar card, so I am very wary of what I send now. I have a few decent items I wouldn't mind sending myself, but I just can't bring myself to do it after that experience. Since I have the National coming up, I'm going to be bringing some of those to Chicago and go that route.

Overall, it is nice to move some stuff that way, and bring in some extra income in addition to the daily sales on COMC. Definitely worth trying out. I also have seen your name on COMC for years, and I know we have done business quite a few times, so also wanted to officially say hey. Hope it goes well for you!

[mc1]

Originally Posted by UCCF

I've auctioned 1-of-1s, I've auctioned more niche stuff - WWE cards, NASCAR, Formula 1, soccer, all of which sold well. I had a tennis auto from Goodwin Champions, that went well.

I do think that auctioning through COMC gets you more visibility on eBay, since you get not only people browsing eBay but also people browsing the auctions where they're listed on COMC.

Ive only auctioned a few items off and got badly burned. I had a couple of offers for much more than my best item got sold for. This was about two years ago too.

Auctions will always be a big gamble.

[UCCF]

Auctions are always a gamble, it's true. I've done about 250 auctions through COMC now. Maybe 5% of the cards I feel like went for a decent amount below what I expected. But I try to be relatively picky about what I send in. I've also been pleasantly surprised by some auctions that went for well over what I would have listed the card for had I just sent it to COMC.

And you do give up control - you can't pick when they start end (but it always seems to be in the evening, which is good), and once it's posted you can't cancel it, etc. You're stuck with whatever the outcome is.

Non-paying buyers is a pain, but that's always a pain. Overall, I like auctioning stuff that I feel like would either just sit there in my COMC port if I didn't force a sale, or where I don't want to have to field a bunch of offers from people trying to get a relatively popular card for 25% under the going rate.

[mjohnatgt]

I ran about 20 auctions of oddball/rare stuff when they were first doing it on eBay, and those did not go well. Most of them lost compared to what I bought them at intending to flip. I am mostly always doing BINs on COMC now.

[xbignick]

Hit and miss for me with auctions. I had a Josh Allen listed and advertised in the spam section for $110 that went unsold. Pulled in $157.50 at auction. A sketch for $120 that pulled in $208.50. The bad: Had multiples of a card I sold for $70-99 before and after auctions while the auctions themselves ended at $50 each.

Avoiding the $2 fee would be game changer.

[wubh]

Originally Posted by papercards

You pretty much said it, it can be either or. You don't have any control on when it is going to be listed (time and day) which can hurt sometimes -- ends on a holiday or a Friday night, etc. Some stuff goes way under what the norm is (even pretty liquid items), and then every now and then you can get more than the going rate (in fact last night, I had a Judge PSA 10 Topps rc go for 20% higher than most recent sales.) Also when someone doesn't pay, you have to wait quite awhile for it to be re-listed, and I have had quite a few non-payors.

I think the best thing is to try one or two out, and see how it goes. I wouldn't list a bunch all at once. If you don't really care what something goes for, send any of those. My best advice -- be prepared that an item can go quite a bit under what you would ever expect. I had that experience on a high dollar card, so I am very wary of what I send now. I have a few decent items I wouldn't mind sending myself, but I just can't bring myself to do it after that experience. Since I have the National coming up, I'm going to be bringing some of those to Chicago and go that route.

Overall, it is nice to move some stuff that way, and bring in some extra income in addition to the daily sales on COMC. Definitely worth trying out. I also have seen your name on COMC for years, and I know we have done business quite a few times, so also wanted to officially say hey. Hope it goes well for you!

Thanks for those thoughts (and UCCF and mjohnatgt and mc1). I should probably test drive a couple of possible ~$50 items before sending in the couple of specific cards that I had been thinking about.

I bought a pretty decent sized port from you in Oct 2012 and the reason I remember is because I still have a bunch of 1996 Skybox Thunder and Lightnings dupes in my port after a decade with a 10/1/2012 acquisition date.

I have a bad habit of putting things in not priced to sell or ship mode to wait out current copies getting sold (which usually doesn’t happen) and some packrat tendencies that I guess even shows up in a vault setting so those cards get forgotten and are just taking up storage space in those WA warehouses lol.

Kinda wild to think about what COMC was like back then to now and even the hobby itself. Thanks for the reminder and hope you are doing well also!

[boxbuster7]

This is getting annoying when checking offers: "Sorry, The site is a bit overloaded at the moment. Please try back in a few minutes."

[papercards]

Originally Posted by boxbuster7

This is getting annoying when checking offers: "Sorry, The site is a bit overloaded at the moment. Please try back in a few minutes."

I thought it was just me. Seems it is only certain offers too. Very strange.

[chiefs]

Random question for everyone. Does The "top" button at the bottom of the page work for everyone? It has never worked for me but couldn't figure if it's a me problem. Works on eBay so who knows.

Sent from my Pixel 6a using Tapatalk

[mjohnatgt]

Originally Posted by chiefs

Random question for everyone. Does The "top" button at the bottom of the page work for everyone? It has never worked for me but couldn't figure if it's a me problem. Works on eBay so who knows.

Not on Chrome or Edge browsers. So not for me either.

[TheOneRingKing]

Originally Posted by UCCF

I want to highlight that I think COMC auctions are the best deal on the site, particularly if you're auctioning cards in the $50 range and up. You pay no fee to send the card in, and a flat $3.50 for the auction up to $100 sales (and $3.50 plus a percentage with a cap if you make any sales over about $1000). For a $100 auction, you're paying $3.50 (leaving you with $96.50), and then 10% if you cash out, which nets you $86.85 on a $100 auction. eBay would take 13.25% + 30 cents on that same auction, which would net you $86.45. And COMC does all the work to boot.

As people have pointed out, if you don't cash out, and you just use COMC as essentially a glorified trade board where you trade the cards that you don't want for cards that you do, the deals are even better. You can auction a $100 card, pay 3.5% in fees, and spend that $96.50 on other cards on site.

Given infinite time and resources, eBay probably does make more sense, particularly for that big bulk of cards down in the $1-$20 or so range. But if you do all that work yourself you're likely working for far less than minimum wage to make it happen. I always figure if the money I'm saving by doing it myself is so little that I could never hire someone at that price to do it for me, then I'm not valuing my own time highly enough.

I was under the impression I had ot pay a $2 Elite submission fee to auction something whether sending straight to auction or from my port. Very cool I not the case

[UCCF]

Originally Posted by TheOneRingKing

I was under the impression I had ot pay a $2 Elite submission fee to auction something whether sending straight to auction or from my port. Very cool I not the case

If you send it from your port, and it wasn't Elite submitted, then you have to pay a $2 processing fee to make it Elite, and then 0 fee to send it to auction.

If you submit it directly to auction (so it's never really "in" your port), then there's no fee.