Monthly Archives: January 2008

Counteroffers are Live!

Posted on by

I finally got an opportunity this weekend to polish off the counteroffer functionality and push it live. It was an immediate hit. This has nearly eliminated the rejected offers, and it seems to have increased the total number of offers. Maybe people aren’t as shy about making offers if they know that the offers can be countered?

Today there was a perfect example of your site enabling collectors to do what they love… haggling over prices.
🙂

GrahamsCards sent a $47.50 offer for 35 cards in my LowPriceCards account. The original asking price was right around $90. I countered by asking just under $70. GrahamsCards countered my proposal by offering $60. I countered again with a $65 proposal, and GrahamsCards accepted my proposal.

Here are a couple of the cards that were included in the transaction.
2007 SAGE National Convention National Heroes Jerseys #NH2 - Adrian Peterson - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com
2004 National Trading Card Day #PP6 - Eli Manning - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com 2007 Topps #287 - Brady Quinn RC (Rookie Card) - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

To my knowledge, COMC.com is the only site that allows buyers to make a single offer on multiple cards and let the buyer and seller haggle back and forth over the price. This was truly a beautify interaction to watch. This is only a small taste of the many innovations that COMC.com will be bringing to the online sports card community in the near future.

New Record: 16 Sellers with 1 Purchase

Posted on by

On Thursday James from Fargo, ND set a COMC.com record by placing one order that spanned 16 different sellers. He only had to pay $20 for shipping because we house all of the cards on the site and we do all the shipping at once.

Here are a couple of the cards that were purchased.
1993-94 Upper Deck Triple Double #TD2 - Michael Jordan - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

1989 Donruss #33 - Ken Griffey Jr. RC (Rookie Card) - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

Blake Hoffarber makes SportsCenter… again

Posted on by

Tonight you may have seen some clips of Blake Hoffarber on ESPN’s SportsCenter. Blake is the guy that hit the insane shot while lying on his back to force double OT in the Minnesota state high school championship three years ago. He was a sophomore at Hopkins High School at the time and won an ESPY for play of the year. I was fortunate enough to be in town for that state championship game and witnessed the shot first hand. I even got a chance to congratulate Blake and Coach Novak, his uncle, after the game.

Blake receives the ball Blake shoots Everyone watches in disbelief Blake scores
Watch a video of the Most Amazing Basketball Shot Ever

Now he is a freshman at the University of Minnesota. Both of these schools are my alma maters. I was a sophomore at Hopkins back in 1993 when Blake was only five years old and one of our ball boys. I remember watching him run around and help get rebounds during warm-ups. I don’t recall for sure when he started to hit three pointers, but and I can remember watching him heave the ball from behind the three point line. He could barely make it to the rim, but he would put his whole body into it.

Now Blake leads the Big Ten in three-point field goal percentage and has a shot at setting a Gopher’s record for most threes in a season. In tonight’s nationally televised game against #9 ranked Indiana he went 2-3 behind the arc including a 4-point play to make his percentage for the season an even 50%.

Great article on ESPN.com published earlier today:
There’s more to Minnesota’s Blake Hoffarber than just trick shot

Blake is a great kid that has put in a lot of hard work. It is nice to see him get rewarded for it. Blake won the 2007 Mr. Basketball award in Minnesota, and he helped Hopkins win two state championships. There were even points in the season last year where Hopkins was ranked in the top 5 teams in the nation according to MaxPreps.com. I see that Hopkins is currently ranked #1 in the state again.

Go Royals and Go Gophers!

Third photo courtesy of Tom Dahlin

Great post on the Microsoft Access team blog

Posted on by

Here is a great post on a handy trick I told some buddies at Microsoft.
http://blogs.msdn.com/access/archive/2008/01/14/easy-drill-through-with-macros.aspx

Here is a screen shot of one of the many places we use this technique in the inventory tracking system we use for managing the data behind CheckOutMyCards.com.
Hyperlink Example

As a front-end development tool, Microsoft Access provides an incredible balance of power and rapid development that allows us to move quickly with changing demands. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is currently our back-end database for both our in house inventory management system and our ASP.net web site.

Picked up by KillerStartup.com

Posted on by

I just got a notification that our site has been reviewed on KillerStartup.com. I don’t know who wrote up the review, but they did a great job.

Here is their take on why we might be a killer startup.

The site gives card collectors and sellers a great opportunity to facilitate the buying, selling, and looking process. There are tons of rare cards, so it’s a great first place to search for that card you’ve been dying to get your hands on for years. It’s a great alternative to looking for cards on ebay and has the potential to become a favorite site for sports enthusiasts.

Here is their overview of the site.

CheckOutMyCards is a way to buy and sell sports cards. Offering baseball, basketball, football, golf, hockey, racing, and even poker cards, it’s a one stop shop for sports card enthusiasts. With those who have an extensive collection of cards and want to make some money, they have the ability to purchase store credit, send them to CheckOutMyCards, letting them do all the research to find their true worth. The seller then sets prices for the cards and they are in turn displayed on the website for purchase. For avid collectors, there are thousands of cards available and you can search for them based on player, set, card, and year. You can filter your search according to age, book value, etc. Cards are scanned in high quality resolution, both front and back, so you know exactly what the card looks like and what condition it’s in before you buy it.

Here is the full post.
http://www.killerstartup.com/eCommerce/Checkoutmycardscom—Buy-and-Sell-Sports-Cards/

I guess you can go to the site and flag us as a killer startup. This is the first I have heard of this site, but I am pretty impressed so far.

SteveSC passes $1,000 in sales!

Posted on by

Last week SteveSC became the first seller other than me to surpass $1,000 in sales. Steve is a local dealer here in the Seattle area, and he was one of the first people to start beta testing our consignment service last summer. He has been extremely pleased with the sales and service proviced by our new website.

2004 Timeless Treasures HOF Materials Bat #10 - Eddie Murray/25 - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com
Top Sellers

SteveSC is currently the #2 seller on COMC.com behind only LowPriceCards, but that isn’t really fair because LowPriceCards is the account used by my previous website, LowPriceCards.com. All of that site’s inventory was moved into this account when we re-branded LowPriceCards.com as the consignment website COMC.com. So, technically SteveSC is the #1 consignment seller on the site, but that that is soon to change because we have a couple other sellers that are making strong bids to take over that spot.

eaglescards and gooddeal have each given us around $15K – $25K worth of cards that we are currently processing. Over the next few weeks, a ton of great cards will be added to the site, and all will be at amazing prices!
1996-97 SkyBox Premium Emerald Autographs #E1 - Ray Allen - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com 2003 Sweet Spot Classics Pinstripes #JD - Joe DiMaggio SP - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

Another seller to keep a close eye on is prestongillespie. He has only been selling on the site for 1 week and has already sold 300+ cards for more than $700.
2007 Topps Triple Threads Framed Printing Plates Yellow #24 - Troy Glaus/1 - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com