Questions regarding COMC

[Jim65]

I don't understand overpricing at COMC, they hold your cards so why on earth would you overprice to the point of them not selling?

[swarmee]

Glad you read some of the threads on Blowout. There sure are a bunch of them. I'm mjohnatgt over there.
To the questions posed in this thread:
1) No PayPal fees at any time. On cashout, COMC gets 10% of your store credit funds as part of their consignment fee structure, you get the other $225 as PayPal Friends & Family. On a regular sale, it's all handled in store credit, not through PayPal.
2) Price your cards however you want. People will adjust or they won't. Very regularly, someone will see your common listed for 75 cents, when theirs is listed at $2.50. In that case, they'll either ignore, drop theirs to 74 cents, or buy your card and reprice it at $2.50. ;-) Nobody can bury you or contact you on COMC; that's one of the things a bunch of sellers like about it.
3) The reason a bunch of cards cluster in price around 75 cents and $2.50 are because small buyers pay no storage fees on cards listed at 75 cents each (in Advanced Mode), while larger sellers pay an additional $50 monthly to store all the cards they want at $2.50 or less for "free."
4) Why is the pricing so high? Some people really love running 80 or 90% off sales. So they price their $5 card at $37.50, mark it 90% off, then hope it sells for $3.75! Or they're like those guys in Vegas with a "system" and are waiting for the one specific player's grandson to find the only copy on site and pay up for it. This get a lot of people annoyed because the $37.50 price is what is the base price for the card that shows up on eBay/Amazon, not the sale prices, then marked up $4 for "free shipping" and an additional 15% to cover the eBay/PayPal fees and consignment; so it will show at like $50. Sale prices are only on COMC's website.
5) In order to make offers on site, you add them to your cart and send an offer. Some sellers consider offers down to 50% of list price (not sale price), and some don't consider any offers. Some automatically accept offers of certain percentages, many don't. Cards that are already 50% or more off during sales will not have any additional discount.
6) COMC has restructured their fees on Jan 1, 2019 and made it smarter to lower your base prices instead of running constant high-percent off sales.
7) .75c is 3/4 of a penny, not a dollar. ;-) You're looking for $0.75
8) My standard recommendation is to send in cards worth at least $2 each during your first submission. That way, you're making "profit" on every card you send in. Once you get comfortable selling, send in more batches later on.
9) You don't have to flip the way some of us do in order to make COMC work for you. I enjoy it, and have a bunch of "free" Mickey Mantle cards to show for it, but I do that instead of day-trading stocks.

Feel free to ask more questions; I love COMC even though it has a bunch of faults. Caution on sending any high value cards right now, until you read the "Terms of Service" thread over there. Their terms on insuring your cards in their possession and their FAQ about the TOS are not consistent. Most people still send in cards because otherwise they'd be sitting in a box in the closet collecting dust.

If anyone wants to talk about COMC on the phone, call me at 239-822-5726.

[58pinson]

Thanks again to everyone for weighing in. In particular John for taking the time to offer up his expertise with such an extensive list of points. My plans on COMC are to be strictly a seller. Time has come.

I guess the only way to know if certain types of cards will sell there is to open an account and be able to explore past sales information. For example, the 1992 Gameday football set seems to be lightly populated with decent prices, but if no one is buying it that doesn't seem to count for much.

I'll take John's caution about high value cards to heart and see if I can move some of them here on the BST at a fair price. Most (not all) of my stuff is mid-80's to mid-90's so the $$$ hits are rare, but at least I came out of that era with a decent stash of nicely graded Derek Jeter cards.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

[swarmee]

If you click the histogram icon next to the price of a card, you can see if they regularly sell. If you play a few Challenges to earn history points, you'll also be able to see the highest prices those cards sold for. The larger number of sold cards, the more likely your card will sell if you send it. If there's 5 already on site and only one has sold in the last four years, don't bother.

[Yastrzemski Sports]

What kind of stuff are you going to be posting?

Originally Posted by 58pinson

Thanks again to everyone for weighing in. In particular John for taking the time to offer up his expertise with such an extensive list of points. My plans on COMC are to be strictly a seller. Time has come.

I guess the only way to know if certain types of cards will sell there is to open an account and be able to explore past sales information. For example, the 1992 Gameday football set seems to be lightly populated with decent prices, but if no one is buying it that doesn't seem to count for much.

I'll take John's caution about high value cards to heart and see if I can move some of them here on the BST at a fair price. Most (not all) of my stuff is mid-80's to mid-90's so the $$$ hits are rare, but at least I came out of that era with a decent stash of nicely graded Derek Jeter cards.

Thanks again, much appreciated.