Category Archives: news

Card Pricing & Beckett Book Value Updates

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Over the last few days, you’ve probably noticed a lot of activity on your Dashboard, mostly in regards to prices being removed from your cards. This is happening due to some extensive software updates happening between COMC and Beckett.

In the past, we had developed a system for scheduling updates from Beckett, to ensure the prices we had for our sellers were up to date. However, the algorithm we used might take up to 6 months to catch every update, which meant some prices weren’t as up to date as they could have been. This past weekend, we (with the help of Beckett) changed how we manage the updates, as we move closer to live updates.

This means that all prices for all cards will soon be updated within 24 hours of their change via Beckett. But, unfortunately, when we initiated the change to the live update system, our software detected that many of the prices within our database had not been updated for weeks, or even months.

How Book Price Updates Are Handled

In order to protect against the case where a book price might radically increase while your asking prices might be lower than you had hoped, we will automatically clear those asking prices so that you get a chance to reset the price as you desire.

Our software works like this: if a book price increases and the current asking price is less than 50% of the new book price then the asking price is cleared altogether and the card is brought to the seller’s attention for re-pricing.

Temporary Bug over the Weekend

This past weekend, a lot of data got cleared out, and many people received notices that parts of their inventory needed attention, due to book values changing drastically or being removed. However, that was a software glitch and it has been cleared up, with most people having their original prices restored. Those sellers who started re-pricing their cards noticed (a day later) that their prices were cleared again, due to the book value software updating again. And, for this, we are sorry for your inconvenience.

Status of the Beckett Data Synchronization

Our databases are still working to catch up to Beckett, and we hope to be fully synced with them by the end of this week. When it’s completed, then we’ll be doing smaller updates on a daily basis and your book values will be up to date. However, until the updates have finished, some people are still going to be seeing their prices being deleted. Again, we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

This upgrade to the book value pricing system has been a long time coming, and we’re thankful to Beckett to assisting us in this endeavor. We do this as we strive to make our customer’s experience as positive as possible.  We thank you for your patience and your input, as we work together to make COMC.com the best place for collecting cards.

Exciting news from COMC!

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Everyone who’s been following COMC has noticed a number of changes over the years; we’ve grown in leaps and bounds, offering new and diverse services for our customers on a regular basis. Today we’re happy to announce that COMC is going in another new direction which is creating lots of excitement at COMC headquarters.

COMC is currently making plans to open it’s first “Brick and Mortar” store, as we move beyond the bounds of the internet and start setting up card and collectible shops in neighborhoods across the country and around the world.

Of course, an undertaking like this requires plenty of planning and development, and while something like this is a huge step, CEO Tim Getsch has decided that the company is going to start small. He’s already picked out where our first location will be, and (much to everyone’s surprise) it won’t be located near our main offices in Redmond, Washington. Tim has been scouting locations and determined our first store will be located in Antarctica.

Artist's rendition of COMC"s "eco-friendly" signage for new store location.

Artist’s rendition of COMC”s “eco-friendly” signage for new store location.

When asked about the location, Tim says “It’s prime real estate and it’s selling so cheap, it’s a great opportunity for us to get in on the ground floor of this recently opened territory. We can get ourselves established and there’ll be plenty of room for us to grow and expand as our company needs.” While Tim concedes it may be difficult for some collectors to visit our new store in such a remote location, he’s confident that the local population will be supportive during the new store’s early days.

“Penguins are awesome!” Tim says “They’re natural collectors and they have an abundance of disposible income. I’m really looking forward to working with them, as I’ve always been a fan of penguins. When I was a child, I wanted one for a pet, but my parents said it couldn’t happen. When they said that, I took my brother to the zoo, to try and trade him in for a penguin. My folks got really upset when I did that, because they said he was worth 3 penguins and an otter, at least.”

Tim prepares to meet with the local population, to discuss COMC's expansion into the area.

Tim prepares to meet with the locals, to discuss COMC’s expansion into the area.

There is a little hesitation among the staff, however. Said one employee, who asked to remain anonymous “It’s cool we’re getting a storefront, but no one wants to be chosen as a ‘day manager’ since the days can last up to 24 hours. I mean, how do you schedule breaks on that kind of shift?”

While some logistics are still being worked out, this is a huge development for COMC. Keep checking this blog for further updates and other penguin-related news.

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)

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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.

Holiday Info, Phasing Out Old Site, Canada Opening

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Happy Holidays!  There is a lot of exciting information to share with you regarding the holidays, phasing out our old site, and the opening of our Canadian warehouse!

Holiday Shipping Schedule

In order to get your orders by Christmas, make sure you choose the following shipping options and place your orders by the following corresponding dates:

Priority – order by 11:59 p.m. PST 12/19

Express – order by 1 p.m.  PST 12/21

THIS IS THE LAST 24 HOURS TO ORDER PRIORITY AND GET IT BY CHRISTMAS!  There are still a couple more days to order Express shipping.

Holiday Shipping Special

Now through the end of 2012, order 12 or more items on COMC.com only and receive free shipping! This promotion is not available on CheckOutMyCards.com and is only available on COMC.com in Simplified Shipping Mode, not in Advanced Reselling Mode.

Holiday Customer Service Hours

Customer Service will be closed (phones will be off) for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Upcoming Features

There are a number of exciting features currently being developed that will be released very soon: Promotions, Port Sales & Partial Port Sales through the new Promotion mechanisms, and Featured Items.  Just wanted to give you a heads up, but you will hear and see more very soon.

Phasing Out the Old Site

As we are building upon COMC.com, we anticipate many of our upcoming new offerings, such as comics, coins, etc., will prevent us from hosting two compatible websites simultaneously: the old site and the new site.  Already, the old architecture is holding us back.  We need to start migrating off of it, so we can enable things for the future.  Starting January 1, in order to get to the old site you will be required to log in.  Any anonymous user will only see COMC.com.  As replacements become available on COMC.com, we will be removing more and more features from the old site and eventually replace it completely.   More details will be announced.

New Canadian Office

We signed a lease and moved into our new office!  We apologize that website features have been taking longer than expected because we had a very aggressive timeframe for opening the Canadian office, which unfortunately took longer than predicted.  The good news is that business has begun at the new location, and we are able to send and receive payments in Canadian funds.  Over the weekend, the exchange rate was 1-to-1.  So to our Canadian customers, please send your items and Canadian checks/money orders to our new Canadian warehouse!  The only service we are currently supporting at this location is the one month service.  We will announce the address shortly.  In the meantime, please continue sending items to the PO Box:

COMC
PO Box 50062
South Slope RPO
Burnaby BC V5J 5G3

We are thrilled to end 2012 with so much promise for 2013.  Best wishes and Happy New Year.

10 X the traffic = some site hiccups

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Let’s start with the good news: we are getting TEN TIMES our normal traffic today!

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This means we have the necessary traffic to reach our goal of increasing sales by 10 times (as part of the previously announced “Perfect 10 Black Friday Special”).

As for the not so good news, as you may have noticed, there have been some site issues today.  Please know that we are working very hard to resolve them all and expect to be fully up to speed very soon!

Even so, please don’t hesitate to contact our Customer Relations Department if you need help with anything.  You can reach us until midnight tonight at staff@comc.com or by 1-800-517-3540. Here are our Extended Customer Service Hours. Thank you for your patience!

Extended Customer Service Hours for Black Friday Weekend!

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Our staff at COMC wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, and let you know that our office will be closed for the holiday. Our customer service hours for the rest of the week are as follows:
Thanksgiving Day: Closed
Black Friday: 6 am to 12 midnight PST
Saturday & Sunday: 7 am to 5 pm PST
We are thankful for each one of our buyers, sellers, consignors, and fans.  Without you, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do at this company.  See you on Friday for the start of our big Black Friday Weekend sale!

Welcome to COMC Canada & Black Friday

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Let the countdown begin! We are weeks away from a significant advance in the North American card collecting experience.

Over the next couple months we will be rolling out services that make it safe & easy to buy & sell items between the US and Canada. No more hassling with customs forms.

We are essentially creating a private shipping service between our Seattle area warehouse and our new Vancouver area warehouse. We will electronically file all the necessary paperwork to transfer items to and from Canada. No more worrying about items getting hung up at the border!

Sam, Barry & Julia

Barry Mah & Sam Kassam at the Vancouver Fanfest

New Canadian Warehouse
Assuming things continue to go according to plan, we will announce the address of our new location in about 2 weeks. It will be in Burnaby, near Vancouver, and will be available for dropping off consignment submissions and picking up orders. Everyone in Canada wanting to consign items online will now be able to simply ship to our Canadian address instead of dealing with customs forms when shipping to the states.

Geoff HollandAccepting Submissions at the Toronto Expo!
November 9th-11th we will be at the Sportcard and Memorabilia Expo in Toronto. Come meet the head of our shipping department, Geoff Holland, and the two newest members of our Canadian team, Sam Kassam & Barry Mah.

Processing Special: Canadian Pilot
Until we are fully operational, we will only be accepting one processing service in Canada. We are calling it our “Canadian Pilot” service, and it is only 20¢ per card. We guarantee items will be deposited by December 31st.

Canadian Pilot Details
- Raw trading & gaming cards cost $0.20 per card
- Graded, encased or jumbo cards & other supported collectible costs $0.50 per item
- 5,000 item limit
- $5 minimum processing fee
- 5¢ fee per toploader we have to remove
- No condition note fees
- No batch fees
- Must be postmarked from Canada no later than December 1st

Bring your consignment submissions to the Toronto Expo. We will be giving out $20 off coupons for first time sellers, and we will ship your submissions back to Vancouver for you. This allows you to submit your first 100 cards without any processing fees or any burden of packaging or shipping the items.

Those of you in Canada are welcome to continue shipping items to our US warehouse if you would like our faster services.

What about our US customers?
In order to use the Canadian Pilot service the items must be submitted at the Toronto Expo or shipped from a Canadian address to our Canadian warehouse. We encourage those of you in the US to use our Black Friday processing special.

Black Friday Processing Special: 2 Week Service
We are 4 weeks away from Black Friday, and we will be running some significant promotions to attract buyers. To help get your items on the site in time for the promotions, we are offering a 2 Week processing service for only $0.25 per item. This is the same as our One Month service in less than half the time, but you must write “Black Friday” on your submission to get the increased speed.

Details
- Raw trading & gaming cards cost $0.25 per card
- Graded, encased or jumbo cards & other supported collectible costs $0.50 per item
- 5,000 item limit
- $5 minimum processing fee
- 5¢ fee per toploader we have to remove
- No condition note fees
- No batch fees
- Must be postmarked no later than November 13th
- Must be received by November 8th to guarantee that the items will be live by Black Friday

Lots more news to come
We are excited about all the new offerings we will be rolling out over the next several months. Keep an eye out for more news, Eh!

COMC @ Vancouver Sports & Retro Collectors Show

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Things are moving at a blazing pace here at COMC. We have so much exciting news to share that it is hard to keep you up on everything. Here is a quick update with a teaser of more to come.

Card Show This Weekend
COMC will have a booth set up at the Vancouver Sports & Retro Collectors Show this weekend. The show is at the Langley Events Centre Friday October 19th through Sunday October 21st. Stop by and say hello! Our CEO, Tim Getsch, will be available for questions. You WILL be allowed to drop off consignment submissions. Details below.

2010 Playoff National Treasures Timeline Materials Signature Player Name Prime #4 - Warren Moon/5 - Courtesy of COMC.com
Autograph Guests
– Warren Moon
– John Garrett
– Cliff Ronning
– Ryan Kesler
– Jack Mcilhargey
– Gary Valk
– Darcy Rota

Canadian Warehouse
More news about the new Canadian warehouse will be announced shortly, but the quick version is that we are accepting Canadian consignment submissions and job applications.

Submission guidelines for our Canadian Warehouse Pilot Program:
– 20¢ per raw trading or gaming card (No $3 batch fee!)
– 50¢ per graded, encased, or jumbo card as well as any other supported collectibles
– 5,000 card limit per household (Please, no toploaders)
– Cards will be live by December 31st
– $20 first-time seller discount is applicable

Please note we will be accepting submissions only for the pilot Program at this time. All other submissions must be shipped to our Redmond, WA address.

FREE SWAG!
Swing by our booth to pick up the following FREE gifts
– $20 off, first-time seller coupons
– Mouse Pads
– 550ct boxes
– COMC Stickers

As always, thank you for making our service possible. We’re very excited to be visiting Vancouver, and hope to see some of you there!

Workin’ Hard & Settin’ Records

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Today our Identification team broke a record that was nearly 2 years old, and they didn’t just barely break it. They smashed it by more than 35%!

Before yesterday, we had never identified 30,000 cards in one day, and yesterday we identified more than 40,000 cards. Then to show their ultimate dedication to our customers, half of the identification team continued to stay here and pull an all-nighter. Several of them are still hard at work as I am writing this. A few of them are taking naps on their office floor.

Our team is literally doing everything they can to make as many happy customers as possible. I am so proud of every person on our team. We have been growing so fast, and everyone is working really well together. Our administration staff has done a phenomenal job of finding and hiring talented people that are gelling so quickly with the rest of the team.

Today we hired our 55th employee, and I spent the last 5 hours reviewing possible locations for the Canadian office we hope to launch this fall. The fun just never stops.