Changes In Store For COMC.com

Recently, COMC released an announcement on their blog about upcoming changes to their pricing.  It seems to benefit those that cash out their accounts but could hurt the community of "flippers" in their membership population.  I wrote my take on it over on Puck Junk.  Take a few minutes and check it out.  Leave a comment with your thoughts.  



Over the last 10+ years, COMC.com (or Check Out My Cards) has been toiling away in the trading card marketplace, striving to become one of, if not THE leader in individual trading card sales. After having evolved from a small web portal known as LowPriceCards.com into the juggernaut that it is in a few years, COMC has emerged with an inventory of over 18.3 Million cards and sells and ships more singles to collectors all over the world than any other service provider.

Read more over on Puck Junk

My COMC Experiment Update

First, I doubt anyone even knew I had a COMC experiment.  But that's neither here nor there.

My experiment was simple enough...take a few cards, turn them into a few more cards, and amass a collection without sending anything to them or purchasing store credit to do so.  Then try to flip as much of the collection to turn a positive sale in order to by more inventory.  My ultimate goal was to increase my $18 investment 10X in a year.

The focus of my collection is on pre-1989 hockey cards, seeing that the overabundance of 1990s stuff was too overproduced and available and the 2000+ stuff was basically too expensive or just didn't sell (although I do have some stuff from those eras).  I had $18 in leftover store credit from a purchase I had made about six months before so I used it to acquire a few decent 1960s and 70s cards.

My experiment started on 8/8/2013 with my first sale of a 1970-71 Topps Pete Mahovlich card with condition sensitivity.  It's still going pretty strong too, albeit not as strongly as in the beginning.

But to date, here are my stats...

• I took an opening balance of      $18
• I purchased a total of                   38   cards for my inventory
• I have sold                                 190   cards from my inventory
• My inventory currently has         457   cards for sale
• My total sales amount is        $240.39

I would say that has been a success, wouldn't you?  I increased my sale to purchase volume by over 13Xs my original investment.  That's pretty good considering the small amount I started with.  I also have quite a few cards in my inventory with values near $1 per card, not bad for mostly pre-1980s stuff.  

I guess the moral of this story is, you can make money on cards if you are patient with the process and aggressive with marketing.  COMC is a good marketplace to buy singles but you won't get rich off selling there, especially after the cash out fees.  But it has been a fun little project to work on a couple times a week and it's always fun to see my Daily Stat that gets emailed to me so I can see what sold.  I have basically turned COMC into my own personal cardboard stock market.

If anyone wonders, my username on there is "dogfacedgremlin" and I generally entertain most offers on cards, as long as they are realistic to what I purchased them for.  I always counter with my lowest price.

My Life As A Flipper (not the Dolphin variety)

Well, not exactly but...

Back in September, I was looking around the universe for places to sell my cards.  I am well aware of all the "regular" haunts for card sellers but I wanted to find something different.  Maybe be introduced to something on the ground floor that as it grew, so could I.  Well, I was unable to find such an animal (with the exception of Collector's Revolution which I haven't decided on a plan for yet).  But in the process, I was reintroduced to Check Out My Cards.

I know everyone knows of, is familiar with, or has used COMC.com.  That's nothing new.  They have been around for I think over 6 years now and are a mainstay at many of the larger shows across North America, promoting their sort-of, kind-of, unique-like consignment website.  I have always thought they were a great place to buy but never had the guts to pack up a 600-count box to send to them.  Instead, I've always searched for singles for my various PCs and sets that I collect (probably like many others out there).

When the light bulb went off in my head, I wasn't sure what I should do.  Usually when it comes to half-baked ideas I get regarding this hobby, I go gung-ho for about 10 minutes until I realize the work involved.  This time, though, it was different.  I decided that I would do what I could to work the system, meaning taking the Wall Street mentality of "Buy Low, Sell High".  Why not?  It works there, why can't it work here on this marketplace.  Ebay is never going to lend itself to that behavior and some of the other sites are just too crowded with competition.  The key was finding something people would want without A) mailing anything to the COMC inventory, B) amassing a large stable of junk wax, and C) spending a lot to make a little.

So I found a niche and for the most part stuck with it.  Pre-1990s hockey cards seemed to be my calling and I slowly began building my inventory.  100, 200, 300 cards...building from the bottom up one at a time using the money from selling to purchase more inventory.  Cashing out account balances on COMC seemed to me to be counter productive so the only choice was adding more inventory.  It has worked out to the tune of about 80 cards being sold since October.  Not much by comparison with the majority of sellers on there but I was pretty proud of that fact since all I was doing was flipping, not providing money, and not sending in inventory.

Now if only parring down my own collection was this easy.  It seems that pointing and clicking is the only way I get rid of anything.  I guess I do have a collecting goal for 2014...get organized.