And the winners are…

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Here are the results from the 8 auctions we have run to date.

First Ever Silent Auction ($10,000+ BV from sidelinecardz)
Jag @ $1,530.00

$7,000+ BV, Primarily Football Cards from GridironHerosAndGreats
JoelsHitShow @ $700.60

Nearly $3,000 BV Baseball Cards from DKSchultz
EELindy @ $284.00

$2,500+ BV Basketball Cards from DKSchultz
adam2033 @ $210.00

$7,000+ BV Football Cards from DKSchultz
manning99 @ $587.88

Nearly $3,000 BV Hockey Cards from DKSchultz
ScoreboardEh @ $307.03

$6,000 BV, 11 different 2006 Topps Rookie of the Week Baseball Cards
johnhungerford @ $313.01

$1,200+ BV Sports Cards from DKSchultz
phleagles112 @ $101.00

8 thoughts on “And the winners are…”

  1. Hi Tim:
    You described the sellers as winners, but judging from the prices that they got I’d say that the winners were the buyers … 10 – 15% of “book” is not a victory for the sellers!

    • I was thinking of the buyers as the winners because the sellers were already announced when the auctions were listed.

      That said… 10-15% of book value for random lots of a few hundred to a few thousand cards is actually pretty strong. Similar auctions listed on other auction sites would likely fetch 2-5% of book value.

      This is however still rather low for what sellers typically fetch on our site, so we plan to revise how we approach selling auctions & lots on our site. This is a good learning experience.

  2. If you look at these sales from a straight business perspective, they likely made a lot more off these cards than they originally paid, so if they made a profit, they’re definitely winners. If I have 10 cards that book for $100, but I only paid $3.50 for, I’d be more than happy with getting $10-15 for them. This is another area where book value tends to put blinders on people when dealing in cards.

  3. I inquired about posting my portfolio for auction and was told you were being selective on your auctions and certain criteria on them but yet 5 are from the SAME seller????????

    • Rather than putting the entire seller’s portfolio in one auction, we opted to experiment with splitting it up into independent auctions. For now, we are holding off on doing more auctions until we figure out how we want them to work. CheckOutMyDeals has some great suggestions. We will see.

    • Hey Lee, I totally agree with u on this one. I have been trying for many weeks now via e-mail phone and any other way to sell my basketball port witch has a bv of more then 15000 and i keep getting the runaround and it is really starting to piss me off. Hopefully when someone gets this post they will get back to me in a professional manner.

  4. CONGRATULATIONS!

    I’d say that the winner was the marketplace – all participants – buyers, sellers, and COMC.

    A price is just somebody’s opinion. If you think it’s too high, sell. If you think it’s too low, buy. COMC gives people the opportunity to do either, or both. They’ve created a marketplace where sports cards have liquidity, which is a stunning achievement by itself.

    With these auctions, it can now be truly said that absolutely everything will sell on COMC. You can offer your cards for sale at a normal price and have a steady stream of sales, and if you ever want to get rid of the pile or scrounge up a bunch of cash in a hurry, you can always sell the entire port. That is a very liberating concept, and it can help to create all sorts of business models which were previously impossible or at least impractical.

    I would suggest that the whole process would be a lot smoother if sellers could just put a “buy port” button on their listings, and could make the asking price a percentage of their total asking price. The auctions would also be improved if the seller could opt to have the high bid (or possibly the 2nd high bid) visible to other bidders, or if bidders were allowed to know if they had been outbid while the auction was running.

  5. Well said, having said that, in addition to separating sport, you also want to make your lots all different cards (no dupes). This maximizes auction price. I cleaned up at 6% because of extreme duplication. Am I “stuck” with legal reprints of the 52 topps mantle? Ha! just haven’t shipped them yet. The other thing is 30 day lists for the auction, more “eyes on the prize” plus time to restructure finances(and buy wife a nice hand bag) while mulling over their best price. The double fee structure seems excessive. Make the auction a free bonus to good clients, still have to pay the 20%. Auctions can create a buzz, draw traffic.

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