All I want to do is talk about COMC

[checkoutmydeals]

I can't think of one thing they are doing well.

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, sales are through the roof right now. It's February 24 and I've already sold more in calendar year 2021 than I sold in calendar years 2015, 2016 or 2017. Granted, I've been aggressively buying, but there's a feedback loop in there. I've been buying in large part because I've been selling.

OTOH, a lot of the problems people are experiencing with COMC, I've been experiencing with a wide variety of entities, both public and private. I've waited over 2 hours on the phone to ask a simple question or to make an appointment (often times the appointment is months from now, and has to be done by phone), and I've been charged as much as $85 for the privilege of making these calls.

I paid $57 to FedEx about 10 pages of legal documents, to be delivered in 3 days and they couldn't guarantee on-time delivery, even for that price.

A friend of mine has a brick and mortar collectibles store, and he tells me that getting anything from a supplier in the Seattle area is like ordering from a black hole. It's not just COMC. It includes Magic cards, Pokemon stuff, Action Figures, Japanese Anime / Manga related items. Pretty much anyone there who has a distribution business, other than Amazon and Costco, who are apparently allowed to go pedal to the metal 24/7.

If you sell or buy on COMC right now, you are taking a risk. My strong recommendation is to not send them anything which would cause you to lose sleep. Don't buy anything if you absolutely need physical delivery within the next few months. Don't submit anything for sale if you absolutely need the money within the next few months.

Near as I can tell, COMC's 3-Week Guarantee service usually takes slightly less time than the Two Weeks To Slow The Spread. But just barely. And maybe not in all cases.

[Swipe79]

I've never understood why they wouldn't pay for tracking when sending the checks - First Class is $3-4. That would eliminate a lot of the CS traffic about check whereabouts.

Originally Posted by Sonnys88

I request a check every month and it typically is sent out within 7 to 10 days after the initial request.

It appears that the delays many are experiencing are due to the USPS. I'm still receiving letter mail that was sent in January - just had a 1099 delivered that was mailed on 1/27 (NC to PA).

If you receive the email that COMC mailed the check, they did, and the rest is in USPS's hands. Not much COMC can do about USPS delays.

[xbignick]

Anyone know the system to use to decide which non-sports card gets cross-listed to eBay? If I have one at $65 and another person has theirs at $75 with similar condition and autograph a little puzzled how system lists the $75.

[Swipe79]

Sales the one thing they have very little direct interaction with - think about how much more would be happening if stuff was processing on time. I have literally thousands of cards on my shelf here ready to send in but I'm not interested in .50 per card because it's not current year.

The market is flooded with new people right now but at some point the influx will peak and things will likely go the opposite direction if they don't get their act together.

COMC has been a staple for me for a long time - gave up briefly for about six months this year but the card build up had me sending stuff again to get rid of it. Now trying to find other ways to sell off the stuff that has accumulated.

Originally Posted by checkoutmydeals

I can't think of one thing they are doing well.

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, sales are through the roof right now. It's February 24 and I've already sold more in calendar year 2021 than I sold in calendar years 2015, 2016 or 2017. Granted, I've been aggressively buying, but there's a feedback loop in there. I've been buying in large part because I've been selling.

OTOH, a lot of the problems people are experiencing with COMC, I've been experiencing with a wide variety of entities, both public and private. I've waited over 2 hours on the phone to ask a simple question or to make an appointment (often times the appointment is months from now, and has to be done by phone), and I've been charged as much as $85 for the privilege of making these calls.

I paid $57 to FedEx about 10 pages of legal documents, to be delivered in 3 days and they couldn't guarantee on-time delivery, even for that price.

A friend of mine has a brick and mortar collectibles store, and he tells me that getting anything from a supplier in the Seattle area is like ordering from a black hole. It's not just COMC. It includes Magic cards, Pokemon stuff, Action Figures, Japanese Anime / Manga related items. Pretty much anyone there who has a distribution business, other than Amazon and Costco, who are apparently allowed to go pedal to the metal 24/7.

If you sell or buy on COMC right now, you are taking a risk. My strong recommendation is to not send them anything which would cause you to lose sleep. Don't buy anything if you absolutely need physical delivery within the next few months. Don't submit anything for sale if you absolutely need the money within the next few months.

Near as I can tell, COMC's 3-Week Guarantee service usually takes slightly less time than the Two Weeks To Slow The Spread. But just barely. And maybe not in all cases.

[Boo]

Originally Posted by Swipe79

Sales the one thing they have very little direct interaction with - think about how much more would be happening if stuff was processing on time. I have literally thousands of cards on my shelf here ready to send in but I'm not interested in .50 per card because it's not current year.

The market is flooded with new people right now but at some point the influx will peak and things will likely go the opposite direction if they don't get their act together.

COMC has been a staple for me for a long time - gave up briefly for about six months this year but the card build up had me sending stuff again to get rid of it. Now trying to find other ways to sell off the stuff that has accumulated.

If they are $1+cards there is no reason to "not be interested" in .50/card unless you are going to list them all on eBay.

[Swipe79]

They are mainly $2-10 cards - not interested in paying the .50 per card to list. If they allow basic back I'm fine with it but over the years they keep increasing the cost and I'm just drawing a line in the proverbial sand.

Maybe I'm just cheap or stubborn but over 100 cards, the extra .15 is $15 more. I figure there's around 4,000 cards boxed up here - which means $600 in extra fees.

Maybe when the shelf collapses or hell freezes over I'll reevaluate my position.

Originally Posted by Boo

If they are $1+cards there is no reason to "not be interested" in .50/card unless you are going to list them all on eBay.

[mjohnatgt]

Originally Posted by xbignick

Anyone know the system to use to decide which non-sports card gets cross-listed to eBay? If I have one at $65 and another person has theirs at $75 with similar condition and autograph a little puzzled how system lists the $75.

I think I've answered this 3 times in the last five pages. But... first one listed almost always gets picked and stays there a few months. If one sells, they randomly pick another.

[Boo]

Originally Posted by Swipe79

They are mainly $2-10 cards - not interested in paying the .50 per card to list. If they allow basic back I'm fine with it but over the years they keep increasing the cost and I'm just drawing a line in the proverbial sand.

Maybe I'm just cheap or stubborn but over 100 cards, the extra .15 is $15 more. I figure there's around 4,000 cards boxed up here - which means $600 in extra fees.

Maybe when the shelf collapses or hell freezes over I'll reevaluate my position.

Yes, hell will freeze over before they bring back basic.

[Swipe79]

I've heard that.

Originally Posted by Boo

Yes, hell will freeze over before they bring back basic.

[frenchquarter]

Originally Posted by Swipe79

I've never understood why they wouldn't pay for tracking when sending the checks - First Class is $3-4. That would eliminate a lot of the CS traffic about check whereabouts.

At the least, they could give you the option to have the $3-$4 deducted from your payout and have your check sent with tracking.

[frenchquarter]

Originally Posted by mjohnatgt

I think I've answered this 3 times in the last five pages. But... first one listed almost always gets picked and stays there a few months. If one sells, they randomly pick another.

When I read through these threads, I notice that the same questions are asked over and over. No one bothers to search the thread or to read the previous 4 or 5 pages to find an answer.

mjohnatgt - just so you know, many of us very much appreciate your research, your responses, and your patience. Thank you for taking the time to answer so many of these threads.

Rick

[Smarti5051]

Originally Posted by frenchquarter

When I read through these threads, I notice that the same questions are asked over and over. No one bothers to search the thread or to read the previous 4 or 5 pages to find an answer.

mjohnatgt - just so you know, many of us very much appreciate your research, your responses, and your patience. Thank you for taking the time to answer so many of these threads.

Rick

At the risk of asking yet another question that has been asked and answered a 1000 times, I am going to pose one that may save me from doing that 100 times in the future. How do you find your search terms within a 2000+ post thread on Blowout? For instance, if I want to find out if anyone has information on how to trade on COMC, I go to Blowout cards, hit Search, then maybe put in: COMC trading. This thread pops up with 100+ pages of posts. I click on page 1, and maybe I see 20 instances of COMC highlighted, all unrelated to trading. Other than clicking page after page to find references to the word "trading," how would I find what I am looking for? I am legitimately asking, because folks far smarter than I must have surely figured out how to do it more efficiently.

[mjohnatgt]

Good question. The search engine on blowout sucks, so your best bet is to go to Google and type in "site:blowoutforums.com COMC trading" and let google find you the most accurate threads.

[aguinness]

For some searches, I've found it useful to go under "Advanced Search" which has an option to show results as threads or posts. If the terms are not generic, showing as posts helps whittle things down.
I'd suspect many of the things that people would ask about COMC, or other platforms, would have too many possible search outcomes to really make it easy, though.

[addiesdaddy]

Gotta love when you can pick up a card for your PC, save money and help a collector put a little coin in his pocket.

Decided to add an Elway Rc to my PC. Cheapest on site was $25 but I liked another copy more that was in the low $30s from a large seller. Made an offer of $22.50. Rejected. Then offered $25. Again rejected with no counter. No worries. His card, his price. Decided to hold off. I check a few minutes later and a collector adds another nice copy for $25. Offer $20 and accepts minutes later. I’ll buy and sell from anybody but it’s just nice to make these deals (including selling items from my port) with the guys that aren’t doing it for a living but just a hobby.

[xbignick]

On the non-sports I was curious because I thought there would be a mechanism to trigger it. I had an alien autograph cross-listed to eBay that I lowered the price on and that price adjustment cancelled the cross-listing and another of the higher priced ones hit eBay instead. I kept on eye on it and raised the price a few days later and that changed the cross-list back to mine.

So say first posted (/selected) within a % of average asking price currently listed. Guess I'm reading too much into it.

[jjj5278]

Originally Posted by xbignick

On the non-sports I was curious because I thought there would be a mechanism to trigger it. I had an alien autograph cross-listed to eBay that I lowered the price on and that price adjustment cancelled the cross-listing and another of the higher priced ones hit eBay instead. I kept on eye on it and raised the price a few days later and that changed the cross-list back to mine.

So say first posted (/selected) within a % of average asking price currently listed. Guess I'm reading too much into it.

It could be bc when you repriced it it basically considered it sold bc it takes it down for a minute to adjust the price. The next one went up automatically in that small time frame. Then when you repriced it again it triggered it as the oldest one and relisted it. Just a guess though.

[Smarti5051]

I am generally enjoying my experience with COMC, so apologies in advance to the angry mob in this thread. But, I do have one pet peeve: the serial number challenges. I love the card number challenges. I think it works out to about $2-3/hr for data entry, but I don't care. It is fun to add a few bucks to my account for "work" that I can do while watching TV (plus, it lets some time pass so I can see a bunch of new posts on Blowout forums when I am done). About 1 out of every 100 cards or so I need to click on the "bigger" picture to make sure the letters/numbers are right, and I miss maybe 1 out of every 500 or so. By contrast, the serial number challenges are absolutely brutal. It is worth the exact same "value" as a card number, but they are 10x harder: (1) they are not in a set location, so it can take 10-20 seconds just to find the number; (2) once you find the number, about 10% of them are buried under the COMC.com watermark, making the number too unclear to safely enter it; (3) assuming I find the number and it is not buried under the watermark, I need to click the "bigger" picture to have any shot at clearly making out the number; and (4) even with the bigger picture, the glare from the metal numbering makes 0,3,6,8,9 indecipherable about 40% of the time. And, the margin for error is not relaxed, so 2 errors and all of the time inputting is wasted (1 error, and I salvage 3 cents for the effort). This is a problem easily solved by simply ignoring the challenges, but I find myself getting suckered in about once a day. By the 5th one in, I am very aware of how stupid I was to start the challenge, but I am now stuck until I finish the block of 50. Am I the only one?

[Melonhead1991]

Anybody know when they’ll switch the current year submission from 2020 to 2021? Hoping to get a submission in before it changes

[thenwhatjk]

Hey guys, first time in this thread

I just bought some stuff on eBay from comc_consignment. I know they have issues with shipping times thru the site but do they get their eBay sales shipped in the same timeframe you and I are expected to ship within or not really?

[jjj5278]

Originally Posted by thenwhatjk

Hey guys, first time in this thread

I just bought some stuff on eBay from comc_consignment. I know they have issues with shipping times thru the site but do they get their eBay sales shipped in the same timeframe you and I are expected to ship within or not really?

It seems they’ve started getting a bunch of negatives recently for slow shipping. I’m not sure what the issue is now, but it makes me consider more and more every day to just have my remaining cards sent home and cash out what’s left over afterwards. But anyway, it’s a toss up really apparently.

[Smarti5051]

What are people's experiences selling higher end cards ($1000-10000) on COMC the past 6 months to a year? I have 7 cards that are likely in this range recently graded from PSA (mostly Kobe rookies, like a PSA 10 Topps base, a PSA 8 Showcase Row 0, and a PSA 8.5 Topps NBA 50). I am fairly new to COMC and have had great success selling raw $2-100 cards (4 weeks on the site and already about 160 sales out of 495 cards). I have used the proceeds to pick up a few nice $100-300 cards on sale that I figured I would mark up to market price (based on Ebay sales) and keep for the PC if they do not sell. So far, no interest (not even an offer). Obviously small sample size, given it has only been a couple weeks and only about 10 cards (which were on sale, suggesting they don't move as frequently). It has me wondering if perhaps there is less of a market for higher priced cards. Frustratingly, many of the cards I really want (PSA graded vintage cards) are priced well above Ebay going rates, but some appear to be in line with Ebay recent sales. If higher priced graded stuff moves well on COMC, I would be tempted to send my graded cards in and use the credit to buy the PC cards I want vs selling on Ebay, dealing with sell fees, shipping, and taxes, only to use whatever is left to buy the same cards on Ebay. Related question: If I send in a card to COMC to be sold on Ebay, do the proceeds of the sale get credited to my COMC account to spend on the site? The COMC credit system is far more appealing, since my end goal is to just convert my collection to the cards I want, rather than profiting from selling them off.

Update: I now see the sales proceeds are credited to your COMC account, but am I understanding the fee structure correctly? It appears if I have a PSA 10 Kobe Topps rookie and they send it to Ebay auction, after it sells and they collect from the buyer (let's say at a final price of $10,000), the only fee COMC charges would be $35, so I would have $9965 credited to my COMC account. Is that right? If so, that is really attractive for my goals (provided COMC auctions do not under-perform the results I would achieve on my own with 500 feedback).

[Swipe79]

There are better places to sell high end than COMC...check out some consignors.

[Smarti5051]

Originally Posted by Swipe79

There are better places to sell high end than COMC...check out some consignors.

Are there other consignors out there that will sell your item, then rather than paying you allow you to exchange for cards you want to add to your PC? I have about $50K in cards I would like to convert into about 10 cards for my PC. If I consign them and receive the proceeds to my bank account/Paypal, the taxes will chew up 40% of it, leaving me with $30K to spend. If I effectively trade $50K in cards for credit which is in turn traded for $50K in cards for my PC, there is at least an argument there would not be an immediate tax consequence (or at least, that is what I am choosing to understand the tax rules to be and do not desire any contrary opinions).

[mc1]

Originally Posted by CheapCards

I requested a fairly large check on 1/31. Got the email saying it was mailed on 2/6. It has not been delivered yet and I am in CA.

I dont believe they mail the check when they say they do. Thats a bit dishonest on their part.

In the past Ive noticed it usually took 17-21 calendar days to receive a check. 10 or so business day they claim for the check to be approved plus another 2-3 business days in the mail.