Quote:
Originally Posted by G1911
COMC has been slow as heck to ship for years now.
I stopped buying from them for a bit after it took 8 months to ship my order; started again once things 'calmed down' and it became more like 2-3 months and I just shifted my mindset. It is by far the best avenue to get 'common' cards that I have found. Stuff .50-$5 is far, far cheaper on COMC with their flat rate shipping than it is elsewhere because of the business model. Filling out my vintage sets, grabbing the cheap modern singles that I like, browsing for minor print defects and variants, I can stack cards over several months from hundreds of different sellers. My last shipment was over 1,500 cards, shipped slowly, but for only $7.99. If I did that on eBay, I'd have paid something like $3,000 in shipping over the course of those 9 months. Makes it a lot easier for me to forgive that slow shipping. I've never paid for expedited because I know it won't be fast.
With an open selling platform and many thousands of sellers there are of course some trimmed cards among them. They've been good at removing things if pointed out in my experience. I don't think I can reasonably expect any open-user platform like eBay, COMC, etc. to never have any altered cards, sadly. I wish there was an effective way to have such a platform, but considering how many hobbyists and members openly support alteration without disclosure (and far more are willing to commit a fraud than will openly advocate it), I don't see any real potential for this problem to decrease. I have yet to see a fake get through myself when browsing, but I'm sure it's happened at least a few times as well.
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That's basically the way I look at them too. Go in with the expectation not to receive your card(s) for at least a month or more and get occasionally surprised at times when they arrive sooner. That's a win for me and, like you said, the shipping fees can't be beat compared to what some sellers (that use global shipping) charge. That, in and of itself, has really deterred me from making purchases from most American sellers anymore. Paying $20+ for shipping on a $20 or less card purchase makes no sense to me.