Can someone explain the logic at COMC?

There was a card that I was interested in that booked at $6 and a seller had one listed for $3. I made an offer for $1.75, and the next day I got a counter offer for, yup, $3, but now if I didn't accept that offer, the new price would be $5. And that would be more than what a couple other sellers are offering it for. Does the guy want the card to sell or not? It was one of the oldest cards listed and been collecting dust for a few years.

Another gripe on the site is too many sellers are confusing Beckett trade value to what it sells for value. If a card books for $10 and I bought it for $10 and then I sold a different card for the same price, it would basically be an indirect trade. But I'm just a buyer an it makes no sense to buy a card at 5 times what it would sell for on EBAY and such.

FLOUR said:

There was a card that I was interested in that booked at $6 and a seller had one listed for $3. I made an offer for $1.75, and the next day I got a counter offer for, yup, $3, but now if I didn't accept that offer, the new price would be $5. And that would be more than what a couple other sellers are offering it for. Does the guy want the card to sell or not? It was one of the oldest cards listed and been collecting dust for a few years.

Another gripe on the site is too many sellers are confusing Beckett trade value to what it sells for value. If a card books for $10 and I bought it for $10 and then I sold a different card for the same price, it would basically be an indirect trade. But I'm just a buyer an it makes no sense to buy a card at 5 times what it would sell for on EBAY and such.

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I am not a fan of COMC at all.

And as a seller, I don't know how people even make money. That selling structure is horrible for sellers from what I've seen. I will admit that the idea of having them list, store, etc for you is nice-but it comes at a cost.

Some people aren't in desperate need to move their supply and wait for someone(s) with the demmand to come by. Plain and simple.

Well, I would venture a guess that he doesn't want to sell it for less than $2.50 and to prevent you from offering $1.76 or something like that he raised the minimum price to $5.

In reference to your sell value vs. beckett value you have to remember some of these guys have thousands of cards listed that flucuate on a daily basis (on ebay) so they use the beckett value as a strating point. I don't know about you, but I don't go through my collection determing the price of my cards on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis.

FLOUR said:

There was a card that I was interested in that booked at $6 and a seller had one listed for $3. I made an offer for $1.75, and the next day I got a counter offer for, yup, $3, but now if I didn't accept that offer, the new price would be $5. And that would be more than what a couple other sellers are offering it for. Does the guy want the card to sell or not? It was one of the oldest cards listed and been collecting dust for a few years.

Another gripe on the site is too many sellers are confusing Beckett trade value to what it sells for value. If a card books for $10 and I bought it for $10 and then I sold a different card for the same price, it would basically be an indirect trade. But I'm just a buyer an it makes no sense to buy a card at 5 times what it would sell for on EBAY and such.

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Who says they are confused? They dont have to sell to you for the price you want. Thats not their job. They can ask full BV or over BV on a card if they choose to. If you want the card so badly, just pay the price, otherwise, you really dont want it that much. We are talking about less than 5 bucks. If a seller was listing a 750.00 card and wanted 750 when it normally sells for 200, thats different.

Is the sellers name capitalities; this is one of this tactics, I dont even offer on this cards any longer.

I think this very situation is why COMC doesn't allow shoppers to contact sellers. The sheer volume of "but I can get it cheaper on eBay" messages would be enormous. Though maybe they could just have an auto-reply of "So go buy it on eBay!" response....

I still maintain that too many prospective sellers miss the fact that if a seller can submit a card and then sell it for more (sometimes substantially more) than they originally paid for the card, then they made a profit. BV or eBay sell value don't enter into the equation.

As long as sellers are selling and COMC is making money, the site is working just fine. I know it has done great things for my player collections, and my initial $20 submission has long since paid for itself several times over.

hail2thevictors said:

FLOUR said:

There was a card that I was interested in that booked at $6 and a seller had one listed for $3. I made an offer for $1.75, and the next day I got a counter offer for, yup, $3, but now if I didn't accept that offer, the new price would be $5. And that would be more than what a couple other sellers are offering it for. Does the guy want the card to sell or not? It was one of the oldest cards listed and been collecting dust for a few years.

Another gripe on the site is too many sellers are confusing Beckett trade value to what it sells for value. If a card books for $10 and I bought it for $10 and then I sold a different card for the same price, it would basically be an indirect trade. But I'm just a buyer an it makes no sense to buy a card at 5 times what it would sell for on EBAY and such.

Click to expand...

I am not a fan of COMC at all.

And as a seller, I don't know how people even make money. That selling structure is horrible for sellers from what I've seen. I will admit that the idea of having them list, store, etc for you is nice-but it comes at a cost.

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I agree, but my selling aproach is not to sell and cash out. Here is my approach, which works for me.

I send them basically anything that will sell for at least .50 cents, and not more than around $6. This is all the stuff that isn't worth the time or money to attempt to sell on eBay. It is also the stuff that accumulates in boxes overtime that never goes away. I sell all that junk I would normally sit on forever, and then turn around and use that store credit to buy PC items or other higher end cards I can ship home and flip on eBay for a profit.

I made a killing this year on Taijuan Walker stuff I bought with my store credit from hundreds of .50-$1.00 sales. Shipped home and flipped on eBay for a nice payday well above the value of my store credit buy in.

Just my approach to the site.

This is what is happening, I've had to do this 3 or 4 times when some assjack kept offering the same price on a card that I didn't want to sell for his offer. So I raised the price so that if they made an offer of 50% I'd be willing to sell it at that price. My guess is the OP made multiple offers on the card and the seller got tired of him. At least that would be the only time I would do it.

For those that say just keep their money tied up, it's annoying to look at and they can cancel and use it at any time they need that money, it's not like it's locked in.

Fandruw25 said:

Well, I would venture a guess that he doesn't want to sell it for less than $2.50 and to prevent you from offering $1.76 or something like that he raised the minimum price to $5.

In reference to your sell value vs. beckett value you have to remember some of these guys have thousands of cards listed that flucuate on a daily basis (on ebay) so they use the beckett value as a strating point. I don't know about you, but I don't go through my collection determing the price of my cards on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis.

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TwinGnats said:

This is what is happening, I've had to do this 3 or 4 times when some assjack kept offering the same price on a card that I didn't want to sell for his offer. So I raised the price so that if they made an offer of 50% I'd be willing to sell it at that price. My guess is the OP made multiple offers on the card and the seller got tired of him. At least that would be the only time I would do it.

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Is this because of the "auto-accept" feature? That you have it set to automatically accept offers at 50%? I have someone that keeps offering the same 50% of my asking price and I could not figure out why for the life of me.

I agree with Crewfan82. The stuff I send in is just not worth listing on ebay, and if I haven't traded it yet, it's unlikely I ever will. And no one in their right mind would trade me a Pineda auto for the cards I sold on COMC to purchase it, so it's definitely winning for me.

I don't have auto-accept at any price, some cards I would go 50% and some I wouldn't. 99% of the buyers/sellers are cool. It's just every once in awhile you catch someone who is mad they can't get it for the price they want and just annoy you with offers. So I would move my price to double what I would accept for a day and move it back to the original price.

dp33 said:

TwinGnats said:

This is what is happening, I've had to do this 3 or 4 times when some assjack kept offering the same price on a card that I didn't want to sell for his offer. So I raised the price so that if they made an offer of 50% I'd be willing to sell it at that price. My guess is the OP made multiple offers on the card and the seller got tired of him. At least that would be the only time I would do it.

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Is this because of the "auto-accept" feature? That you have it set to automatically accept offers at 50%? I have someone that keeps offering the same 50% of my asking price and I could not figure out why for the life of me.

I agree with Crewfan82. The stuff I send in is just not worth listing on ebay, and if I haven't traded it yet, it's unlikely I ever will. And no one in their right mind would trade me a Pineda auto for the cards I sold on COMC to purchase it, so it's definitely winning for me.

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Fandruw25 said:

Well, I would venture a guess that he doesn't want to sell it for less than $2.50 and to prevent you from offering $1.76 or something like that he raised the minimum price to $5.

In reference to your sell value vs. beckett value you have to remember some of these guys have thousands of cards listed that flucuate on a daily basis (on ebay) so they use the beckett value as a strating point. I don't know about you, but I don't go through my collection determing the price of my cards on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis.

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If he wanted $2.50, he could have simply countered and the transaction probably would have occurred.

I think he realized he had the card priced lower than he wanted once he got the offer, so he rejected the offer and raised the price. Sometimes if you see a good price, it's better to just get it.

Another thing is that I have NEVER made an offer for 50%. I think the lowest I ever went was 55% a couple of times. The problem is that if you make the minimum offer, then sellers would think that you're deliberatly lowballing them though the 50% is the absolute max I would even consider in some cases. Bottom line, I don't even bother. Say a dealer wants $7 for a card that books at $10 and they generally sell for a couple of bucks elsewhere. That's a case I wouldn't even deal with.

Being a purveyor of baseball cards myself, I have thoroughly investigated COMC as an option to liquidate my collection on a gradual basis. Based on my evaluation, this is what I found out:

It would cost ~$21500 just to send my cards to COMC
It would cost ~$500+ a month to store them
It would cost between $100,000 - $250,000 in commissions once I cashed out...

This added together equals too much in fees for me to even consider. I'll take the eBay and ballcardz.com money over that commission structure any day of the week. I'd rather spend $10,000 on GREAT SEO than to give away $300K....

Although, like eBay, COMC is an awesome tool for buyers and is a good measuring stick for the rest of the collectibles community as a whole.

ballcardzdotcom said:

Being a purveyor of baseball cards myself, I have thoroughly investigated COMC as an option to liquidate my collection on a gradual basis. Based on my evaluation, this is what I found out:

It would cost ~$21500 just to send my cards to COMC
It would cost ~$500+ a month to store them
It would cost between $100,000 - $250,000 in commissions once I cashed out...

This added together equals too much in fees for me to even consider. I'll take the eBay and ballcardz.com money over that commission structure any day of the week. I'd rather spend $10,000 on GREAT SEO than to give away $300K....

Although, like eBay, COMC is an awesome tool for buyers and is a good measuring stick for the rest of the collectibles community as a whole.

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just for s&g, what would it cost to put all your cards on ebay?

The cash out fee is what bothers me. I dont want to buy crap on the site because I can get it much cheaper on ebay. That said, I have 871 different nolan ryan cards I could send in to help pay for new purchases. Most of these would be sold for a $1. At their rates I would pay $.20 for insertion and $.20 for cash out. thats a 40% fee on every card. ebay + paypal doesn't even come close to this.

COMC has a very interesting business model and offers a unique service unduplicated. That being said, it is not for everyone. The pros are you send em your stuff and they scan it, price it, and list it for you. They even ship it for you. The problems that many have which was brought up in a previous post, is with the cash out fee (20%). Also, if you need a particular item back, from what I hear it takes 7-10 days for them to ship your item back to you after your request. There are several other minor quams with the site but for the most part, they are gaining popularity partly due to Ebays' total lack of concern for 50 percent of their customer base (their sellers) and their very competitive pricing structure.

The cash out fee is where they make their profit as a company. If I ever cashed out, I understand that is part of the cost of doing business and that they did all the work for me. Frankly, 20 percent may be a bargain considering their services.

And yes, as a seller I try not to have young players on the site, but on occassions -- a player I have placed on the site bubbles up to the surface and does become popular (David Freese, John Mayberry Jr.) --- one of the posters who said, you know if the price is reasonable don't negotiate just grab the card has the correct approach. I know I got an offer after Opening Day for some Mayberry RC's at 1/2 of what I had listed them for (I was already at lo book). If the offer had been close, I would have taken those offers -- instead I reacted the way one of the other posters complained about -- raised the price and about four months later they all sold at the newer higher price. One aspect of this buisness I have learned in 30 plus years, if the deal is good, just take it, asking for more of a break usually stops the deal in the tracks.

There are certain people on the site who consistently offer half of what I have the cards listed for, those are automatic rejects. If your offer is close, I usually just accept the offer and move on.

Rich

bouwob said:

The cash out fee is what bothers me. I dont want to buy crap on the site because I can get it much cheaper on ebay. That said, I have 871 different nolan ryan cards I could send in to help pay for new purchases. Most of these would be sold for a $1. At their rates I would pay $.20 for insertion and $.20 for cash out. thats a 40% fee on every card. ebay + paypal doesn't even come close to this.

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If I offered you $400 for the lot would you take it?

That's why they call it "Check Out My Cards" rather than "Buy My Cards." I don't know, I've bought a couple things off there, otherwise it's pretty stale for what I look for.