Author Archives: jeremycomc

Announcing the COMC Mailbox service!

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COMC is proud to announce our latest service to help empower collectors: the COMC Mailbox!  Many folks have asked us over the years if they can buy on other sites or participate in a group break and have the items shipped directly to us to make things simpler and to save money.  Additionally, we’ve talked to international customers who have had difficulty buying from American sites due to the expense of tracking packages across borders.  A number of collectors have been interested in a 3rd party verification service for trades and purchases – a neutral service that can film packages being opened and verify contents.  People running group breaks have noted the potential benefit in shipping one large package full of many different participants’ items to a single address rather than mailing out everything individually.  The COMC Mailbox service is designed to serve all of these needs:
- Purchases from other sites
- Group breaks
- Proxy shipments to international customers
- Forum trades
- Many other potential uses

HOW IT WORKS

Have any package shipped to your COMC Mailbox instead of directly to you.  We’ll open the items in your Mailbox on a monthly basis and put them all into one large batch for you with One Week processing, or you can choose to have them opened and processed at any time.  You save money on shipping fees since you don’t have to pay once for the item to be mailed to you and once more to mail it to COMC, and you save on minimum processing charges by bundling multiple small packages together into one consignment batch.

Ship to:
COMC.com Mailbox
c/o [Your Username]
6727 – 185th Ave NE
Redmond, WA 98052
United States

Cost for a Mailbox: Free!
As an introductory rate, we aren’t charging anything for Mailbox creation or maintenance while we ramp up the service.  There’s no extra step for getting started either – your Mailbox is created automatically when we receive something addressed to your COMC Mailbox.  Additionally, we will never charge for un-used / empty Mailboxes.

Processing Service Levels Available: One Week or One Day ($5 minimum on all services)
When we receive a package, we will send you an email notifying you of your Mailbox delivery. You may either wait for us to process your Mailbox items on our standard monthly basis with One Week service (we will open Mailboxes once a month; at that time we will start to process all items in the Mailbox as One Week items) or you may choose to expedite the due date by responding to the email and indicating One Week or One Day processing for all the contents of that Mailbox. There is no additional cost to opening your Mailbox early, however our standard $5 minimums still apply and the items will be subject to all normal processing costs.  To prevent potential errors, users may not split Mailbox items up into different service levels.

Restrictions

  • Requests for One Day processing of Mailbox items must be received by 11:00am PST of the day before you would like your items uploaded (i.e. if you email us at 3:00pm on Tuesday requesting One Day service for your Mailbox items, we will upload your items by the end of the day on Thursday).
  • This service is currently for cards only, no comics or other memorabilia.
  • We will provide a picture of the package contents, and we will count the number of items in the package, but we are not able to identify any items that have not been processed yet.
  • If there appear to be any irregularities with the order, the user will be responsible for contacting COMC promptly; costs to return items to the original shipper or to return items to the account holder unprocessed will be assumed by the COMC account holder.
  • Other processing service levels beyond One Week and One Day are not available for Mailbox items at this time.
  • Graded cards will not incur an additional $5 minimum fee if they are processed at the same time as standard cards, although they will be billed at the regular oversized item processing rate of $2.00/item for One Week or $3.00/item for One Day.
  • International users of the Mailbox service will be responsible for any duties / border-crossing fees associated with any Mailbox items received.
  • Users should be aware of any external deadlines (ebay return deadlines for example) and proactively request an early open date if package contents need to verify contents by a certain time.

We’re excited to be offering this new service to further improve your collecting experience.  Like many of our great features, this one grew organically from the community.  We’d specifically like to thank cocoscards for engaging with us when we were in Edmonton.  We appreciate our users’ feedback, as your input has led to some of the innovations now available on COMC.com.  Keep following us on the blog, Facebook, Twitter, and our new Google+ page!

New “Submit Items” Process

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Greetings, COMC community!

As many of you have noticed, we have a new way to enter your submission information on the COMC website. Some of you have already started using this new Submit Items process, and we hope that you’ve found it easy to use. For those of you who haven’t checked it out yet, we’d like to use this opportunity to tell you more about it and hopefully answer some of your questions.

Q. Why the new process?

A. As COMC continues to grow, we’ve been actively looking for more opportunities for you to submit your items. We’ve added a second office in Canada, increased the number of shows that we attend so you can drop off submissions in person, and, in the very near future, you’ll even be able to submit items to your COMC account at select local card shops. We want submissions to be easy and convenient; increasing the number of submission services and locations is a big part of that.

As we find new ways to get your items into COMC, however, we do want to standardize the process and the paperwork so that we can receive and process all of your items as accurately and efficiently as possible. As we continue to move into comics, memorabilia, and other new-to-COMC types of collectibles, this standardization will become even more important.

This new Submit Items process is designed to be extremely user-friendly, and will be compatible with all of the product lines that we accept. It enables you to easily print Submission Slips with detailed information and barcodes for each item type and service level. Just print and include one with each portion of your order and we’ll take care of the rest.

Q. Any big changes I should know about?

A. The new Submit Items process still asks you to break down your submission by service level (One Month, One Week, etc.).  You’ll also need to separate your submission by item type, for example:

  • Standard Size Trading Cards
  • Oversized Trading Cards
  • Standard Size Gaming Cards
  • Oversized Gaming Cards

After telling us what types of items you’re sending us and what service level you want, you’ll then tell us how many of each item you’re sending us. You can specify whether your quantity is approximate or exact, and you can break larger quantities down into smaller quantities we’re referring to as Groups. For example, if you’re sending us three smaller card boxes inside a larger mailing box, you’ll want to consider each of the smaller boxes as a separate Group, as if you’re sending three boxes of 400 each rather than one box of 1200. (See the video above for a demonstration.)

You’ll get a Submission Slip for each Group/Item Type/Service Level, which you’ll include with each group of items that you submit. When we process your shipment, each Group will be separated into its own batch and given its own transaction number. So if you send in a shipment comprised of both regular and graded cards, it will be processed as two separate transactions instead of one. Please be aware that just like when you combine service levels within a single shipment, each transaction will be subject to its own minimum batch fee – so you’ll want to make sure that you send enough of each item type to meet each minimum.

There are a few other changes as well:

  • New pricing structure for graded and oversized cards
  • More submission location options, including a list of upcoming shows that we’ll be attending, in case you’d like to drop off your items in person and save shipping costs.

Q. Why has the cost of processing Graded Cards increased for One Month service?

We are laying the groundwork for our new drop-off locations.  All of our non-bulk services factor in the cost of shipping the items to us from a drop-off location.  We decided not to offer a different rate for people mailing One Month items to us instead of dropping them off because we want to encourage them to visit a local drop-off location instead.

We expect to have 10-15 permanent drop-off locations spread across the US and Canada by by the end of this year, and we hope to add hundreds more over the next couple years.

Q. I noticed some new service level options. What are these new “Bulk” services?

Many of you have been asking for additional service level choices that don’t quite fall in line with our normal One Month/One Week/One Day options, and we’re pleased to announce some new options:

Bulk Ten Week offers our lowest processing rates for those of you who value economy over speed (some restrictions apply). Bulk Two Week offers a nice sweet spot between our normal One Month and One Week services – affordable and quick. And we even have a Bulk Two Day service if you need it. Please be aware that all Bulk services have a $100 minimum batch fee, and while they may not fit your needs if you only have a few items to send in, we hope you’ll take advantage of these new services for your larger submissions. Here’s the bulk pricing chart:

BULK TEN WEEK

BULK TWO WEEK

BULK TWO DAY
Standard Size Trading or Gaming Cards

20¢ per item *

35¢ per item

$1.50 per item
Oversize Trading or Gaming Cards

50¢ per item

$1.00 per item

$2.00 per item

These are new, additional options.  Our processing fees have not changed for standard size items. 

So that’s the new Submit Items process. You’ll note in the video that the old method is still active, but we’re phasing that out very soon. If you have any additional questions or thoughts about submitting items, please let us know in the comments below. Thanks!

* The following restrictions apply to the Bulk 10 Week service:
- Items must be grouped in lots of 100 or more items from the exact same set.
- No penny sleeves
- No serial numbered items
- No vintage (pre-1980)

COMC Hot List Special for May 1st – May 15th

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Hello friends and collectors – it’s time to announce the latest COMC Hot List!

As always, these are the players and sets that are currently hot in sports card circles, as determined by COMC users on Facebook and Twitter, as well as the COMC processing team. This latest list includes several baseball players that are making headlines, as well as one of the hottest players in the NBA playoffs.

Tony Cingrani
Nolan Arenado
Bryce Harper
Matt Moore
Stephen Curry
2013 Bowman Baseball (Parallels and Autos only)
2013 Topps Tribute Baseball
2012-13 Fleer Retro Hockey
2012-13 Panini Prizm  – Any Sport (Parallels and Autos only)
2012-13 Panini Preferred Basketball

And our special Hot Theme this time around?

Even though the baseball season is off to a great start, and NBA and NHL playoffs are underway, we know that some of you (and frankly, some of us) still have football on the brain. So in honor of last week’s NFL Draft, any of the new 2013 Football products that have just been released will also be part of this Hot List.

So what does being on the Hot List mean?

COMC wants to encourage our users to get these hot cards into your accounts to offer for sale as quickly as possible, so starting today, any cards from these players or sets will qualify for our “Hot List Special” processing.

With this service, you will receive One Day processing at the One Week price:
$0.50 per raw trading card and $0.75 per graded, encased, or jumbo card.

How to Submit Hot List Items for Consignment:
* Clearly write “Hot List Special” on the outer mailing package and/or the address label.
* $5 minimum batch fee (We recommend submitting 10+ items.)
* 200 item maximum per week
* Must be postmarked by May 15th, 2013
* Must be mailed to our US address (Our Canadian warehouse currently only supports One Month service.)
* Any submissions received on a Friday or Saturday may not be processed until the following Monday.
* Submissions with non-Hot List items mixed in will be downgraded to One Week service.

You are welcome to submit Hot List batches at the same time that you submit other batches with different service levels, even if they’re mailed in the same package, but please make sure that each batch is clearly separated and labeled, and that “Hot List Special” is written on the outside of the mailing package and/or mailing label.

Thanks for your input for this new Hot List, and watch our Facebook page for the call for the next Hot List in a week!

COMC Hot List Special for April 17th – May 1st

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Hot List Special = One Week -> One Day

Starting today, each entry on the new Hot List will qualify for our “Hot List Special” processing. With this service, you will receive One Day processing at the One Week price. That is $0.50 per raw trading card and $0.75 per graded, encased, or jumbo card.

HOT LIST

Carmelo Anthony
Jackie Robinson
Matt Harvey
Tony Cingrani
Mike Zunino
Justin Upton

2012-13 Panini Preferred Basketball
2012-13 Panini Marquee Basketball
2012-13 Panini Select Basketball
2013 Panini Prizm Baseball
2012 Topps Five Star Football
2012 Panini National Treasures Football

Hot Theme: 2013 Football Products.  The NFL draft begins Thursday April 25 (8 p.m. ET), and to celebrate we’re accepting all 2013 football products as eligible for Hot List processing!

How to Submit Hot List Items for Consignment:
* Clearly write “Hot List Special” on the outside of the package, including the outer mailing package.
* $5 minimum batch fee (We recommend submitting 10+ items.)
* 200 item maximum per week
* Must be post marked by May 1st, 2013
* Must be mailed to our US address (Our Canadian warehouse only supports One Month service currently.)
* Submissions with non-Hot List items will be downgraded to One Week service
* Any submissions received on Saturday may not be processed until the following Monday

You are welcome to submit multiple batches with different service levels in the same package, but you must clearly label each service level you would like.

Thanks for your input for this new Hot List, and watch our Facebook page for the call for suggestions for the next Hot List in a week!

-COMC

Canadian Spring Promotion!

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A special promotion designed for our neighbors to the north, this great deal is available for any batch sent to our new Canadian office.

COMC Consignment
4311 Canada Way
Burnaby, BC V5G 1J3
Canada

The Special:
- $0.20 per raw trading or gaming card
- $0.50 per graded, encased, or jumbo card as well as any other supported collectible
- User Account not required to be funded at the time of shipment (account still required to be funded before cards are uploaded)
- Cards in penny sleeves are acceptable
- Cards in toploaders and cards requiring condition notes subject to $0.05 handling fee per card
- Maximum 5000 cards per household
- Minimum 25 cards
- Cards will be live within 10 weeks of receipt of shipment
- All shipments must be postmarked no later than May 31, 2013

Non-Canadians are welcome to use this special but will be responsible for all customs and duties associated with the submission.

Our previous temporary P.O. box address is no longer in use.

Please mark your shipment “Canadian Spring Promotion” and send it to:

COMC Consignment
4311 Canada way
Burnaby BC V5G 1J3
Canada

We welcome drop-offs by appointment only by calling 1-800-517-3540

COMC Canada also continues to support the regular one month service in addition to this special; please mark your packages clearly.  Our Canadian office does not currently support the consignment of comic books, or any of our One Day, One Week, or Hot List processing options.

COMC at Las Vegas Industry Summit

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Later this month COMC will proudly be present at this year’s Industry Summit in Las Vegas.  We’ll have our own booth in the corporate section, and you’ll be able to come meet Tim our CEO, Julia our Director of Business Development, Geoff who manages our shipping department, and Sam Kassam who is a key member of our new COMC Canada team.  We’ll be there from Sunday, March 17th through Wednesday, March 20th, and this year we will be accepting dropoffs for consignment!
Come see us, say hello, and save on your shipping fees by dropping off your items with us in person.  We’ll have free giveaways, first-time seller coupons, and a special show-exclusive bonus we’ll be announcing later.
Tim will be giving a presentation on Monday Morning during the Meet the Industry event.  He will be the third of three speakers, from 8:30 to 9:15AM.

A Towering Achievement

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COMC has crossed the line!  The 10,000,000 item line, that is.  On Friday, February 22nd we uploaded item #10000000 onto the site.  The card featured none other than Marcus Pollard, who played a season for the Seattle Seahawks in 2007 after many successful years with the Indianapolis Colts as a tight end.
The specific card was a 2001 Private Stock Game Worn Gear #68 Marcus Pollard.  2001 was Pollard’s best year with the Colts; he averaged almost 16 yards per catch and scored 8 touchdowns.
With over 2,500 sellers now submitting items to the site we wondered where number 10 mil would come in from, but we couldn’t have been more surprised to learn the consigner was from right in our own backyard!  Seller john316 had dropped off the batch in person, driving down from Everett – just about a half hour away.  We called him up to congratulate him and asked if he would be willing to come down to take some pictures with us.   He graciously agreed, and so we were able to thank him and purchase the card from him personally.

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Tim gives john316 a check for the high book value of the card.  “I never would have gotten that much for it!” quipped john316.  John316 was also awarded $100 in store credit for submitting item #10000000 as the winner of our countdown contest.

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Item #10000000 in all its glory.  The closest guesser in our countdown contest was ivbaseball06 who correctly predicted the sport, and was off on the upload date by just one business day!  Congratulations to ivbaseball06 who also wins $100 of store credit!

Ten million is a huge number and hard to even think about.  It’s amazing to look back on how far we’ve come together from the first few items that Tim uploaded from his personal collection.    Thirty thousand buyer accounts, three offices, and two web address updates later, we still feel as if we’re only getting started.  On March 1st we officially rolled out our second supported item: comic books.  We’ve got even more updates and features in the works that we’re very excited to tell you about, but for now we just want to take a moment to thank everyone who made this milestone possible.  Without the loyal COMC buyers, sellers, traders, and flippers, this simply would not be possible.  Thank you for trusting us to care for your inventory, thank you for giving us constructive feedback to build on, and thank you for believing how big this little idea was capable of becoming.

How much is ten million?  We’ve put together a graphic to illustrate: (click on the image to see a larger version)

scalejpg

A towering achievement indeed, and it’s just the beginning.

You Can’t Spell Comics Without COMC

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Friends, collectors, and citizens of Metropolis – please help us officially welcome comic books to COMC!

Several months ago, as Check Out My Cards became COMC, we launched a Beta program for comics, coins, and other collectibles. It’s been a long time goal of ours to expand our unique consignment model into other areas beyond trading cards, and we are proud to announce that our first group of comics is now live on the site.

Everything that you like about buying and selling cards on COMC will also apply to comics. You’ll still get all of the benefits of the largest and fastest-growing online consignment community, including:

Benefits for buyers:

  • Detailed front & back cover scans of each comic book.
  • The ability to combine multiple orders from multiple sellers into one convenient shipment from our world class shipping department. All comics will be safely shipped with bags and backing boards.
  • The peace of mind of dealing with one established company instead of dealing with auctions and/or unverified vendors.
  • The freedom to make an offer below the asking price.

Benefits for sellers:

  • We do the scanning and listing – all you need to do is set your prices.
  • We handle the packaging and shipping, even to international addresses.
  • Trusted & reliable customer service for you and your customers, during and after every transaction.
  • The option to make your comics also available on Amazon.com, widening your potential customer base by millions.
  • A choice between cashing out your earnings (20% cashout fee) or using your profits to buy other items on the site (no fee!)

Sellers can either ship comics to us or drop them off in person at our secure, climate-controlled Redmond, WA location.
The new Comic Pilot Service has a processing fee of $0.50 per item, and your items will be uploaded to your COMC account within one month.

A few rules for submitting comics:

  • Nothing with explicit content or that has a Parental Advisory label.
  • Nothing with a shipping or address label on it – retail copies only.
  • No graphic novels or trade paperbacks (yet) – single issues only.

Emerald City Comicon

If you’re in the Seattle area and happen to be attending the Emerald City Comicon this weekend, be sure to stop by Booth 1408 and say hello to us. We’d love to tell you more about this new chapter in the COMC saga, as well as get your input about what sort of features you’d like to see in the future.

Vancouver Fan Expo

We will be at the Vancouver Fan Expo April 20-21.  More details to come!

We’re tremendously excited to be joining the comics community, and look forward to working with all the fans and collectors.

Partial Port Sales are here!

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Hello collectors and sellers! Over the past few months we’ve been working hard to introduce and refine new features on the site, many of which have been suggested from COMC users. One of the top items on our “By Request” list is the ability to offer partial port sales, and we’re happy to announce that this feature is now live!

A portfolio sale is when a user sells all of the cards they have listed as “for sale” in their account as a single large transaction, usually at a significant discount. In the past, COMC users have been able to offer port sales through our old Classified Ad feature, but it was an all-or-nothing affair. Until now there hasn’t been an easy way to limit your port sales to individual categories or eras.

Through the Promotion creator, COMC users can now offer port sales that are limited to a particular category, a specific year range, or both. For example, the Port Sales section of our Promotions page currently lists four partial portfolios from user WilliamsCards: 1954-2000 Football, 1936-1956 Baseball, 1957-1970 Baseball, and 1972-2011 Hockey.

pps

Sellers can still offer their entire port for sale if they prefer, but the ability to also define smaller, more specific partial ports will enable them to target collectors of a particular category or era who may not be interested in an entire inventory. Also, while all listed ports will be able to field offers as usual, sellers will now also have the option to include an instant-purchase price.

Promotional Port Sales are now advertised in the Promotions section of the site and are included in the featured Promotions on the main COMC home page. We’ve added some additional port statistics for potential buyers, such as Average Book Value, Average Selling Price, and Highest & Lowest Priced Items. The Promotion approval process is automatic, so no more waiting for your ad to go live! The sales are managed by our system as well, making all

sales instant upon seller approval. In the past, large port sales have slowed down and, in some extreme cases, even stopped the entire site. The ability to now break down large ports into more profitable and manageable partial portfolios will improve everyone’s experience.

We encourage all COMC users to go to the Promotions page and browse some of the new port sales to get an idea of how the new process works. The link to create your own port sale Promotion is in the upper right section of your dashboard’s Manage Inventory page — we’ve tried to make the process as simple and self-explanatory as possible, and we expect to continue to improve it with your help.

We hope you like this new addition to COMC and, as always, we appreciate your feedback.

Hot List Special, 2/20 – 3/6

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Hello sellers and collectors! The time has come to announce the new COMC Hot List, highlighting the players and sets that are Hot right now. We went to you for your input, and checked with the COMC processing team, and together we’ve put together a brand new COMC Hot List (in no particular order):
And, we have our special Hot Theme:
With the Daytona 500 coming up, we’re accepting cards from any 2013 Racing set as part of the Hot List special.
Hot List Special = One Week -> One Day
Starting today, each entry on the Hot List will qualify for our “Hot List Special” processing. With this service, you will receive One Day processing at the One Week price. That is $0.50 per raw trading card and $0.75 per graded, encased, or jumbo card.
How to Submit Hot List Items for Consignment
* Clearly write “Hot List Special” on the outside of the package
* $5 minimum batch fee (We recommend submitting 10+ items.)
* 200 item maximum per week
* Must be post marked by March 6th, 2013
* Must be mailed to our US address (Our Canadian warehouse only supports One Month service currently.)
* Submissions with non-Hot List items will be downgraded to One Week service
You are welcome to submit multiple batches with different service levels in the same package, but you must clearly label each service level you would like.
Thanks for your input for this new Hot List, and watch our Facebook page for the call for the next Hot List in a week!
-COMC