In our continuing effort to provide the best service possible for our fellow collectors, we have come up with some new service offerings and changes. None of these are set in stone, so we would like to get your feedback. Please let us know if you have any objections or suggestions.
Potential Changes
New Overnight Processing Service
– $3 per batch + $2 per card (any size cards)
– Added to your account the day after the package arrives
– Must say “Overnight Processing” on the outside of the package
New Bulk Processing Service
– The $50 flat rate special is a beta test of a bulk processing service
– If it goes well, this could be added as a permanent offering
New Premium Seller Accounts
– Costs $100 per month
– Increases free storage from $0.25 to $1.00
– Additional seller options (e.g. adjustable minimum offer percentage & auto-accept offer percentage)
– Monthly coupon for $100 worth of Express or Overnight processing
Graded, Encased & Jumbo Card Changes
– We will begin referring to these as “Special Sized Cards”
– Processing fees will be cut in half for “Special Sized Cards”
– Processing decreased from $1 to $0.50 for Standard
– Processing decreased from $2 to $1 for Priority
– Processing decreased from $3 to $1.50 for Express
– Shipping decreased from $1 extra to $0.75 extra for Standard
– Shipping decreased from $1 extra to $0.50 extra for Bulk
– Coins will start being considered part of “Special Sized Cards”
Game Used & Autographed Card Changes
– We will be adding the ability for the site to easily search for game used and/or autographed cards.
– These cards take a lot longer for us to process, and they require additional care because they are easier to damage. Rather than cutting corners to reduce costs, we want to add a $0.10 surcharge that will cover the additional labor required to properly handle these cards and add the additional metadata required to make them searchable as game used and/or autographed cards.
– The $0.10 processing surcharge per game used or autographed card would affect any cards that are postmarked November 1st or later
Cash-Out Fee Change
– Check fee decreased from $3 to $2 for US checks and from $10 to $9 for international checks.
– Any cash-out request for less than $200 cash will be considered a “small cash-out” and subject to the $1 “small cash-out fee”. This is an increase from the current $20 boundary.
– These changes are to combat the $0.40-$1.00 PayPal fees that we have to pay when sending cash-outs as mass payments to avoid additional fees on your end.
they all seem ok, but the game used and auto fee seem pretty high, dont think that will be very popular for those who send in lots of autos and game used
I sincerely hope you don’t implement a processing surcharge for autographed and memorabilia cards. With the emphasis on these cards in today’s marketplace, it makes better sense to offer a discount. It seems you would want to encourage sellers to send in these cards; not discourage them. In the end, we’ll all lose.
Hitting on a topic here, rewards for volume.
rewards for sales volume that is…each sale by definition has delighted a customer even if it was 25 cents. The potential “Goodwill” value of providing the last card(or replacing one the dog chewed) of a 1999 metal basketball set, could be hundreds of dollars. Especially if that customer has deep pockets or the “gift of gab” and tells everybody he knows about the site.
I completely agree with casebreaker. I am one of those many users that send in a lot of Game-Used and Autographed cards. Maybe reduce it to $.5 if not free.
checkoutmyaccount at
http://www.checkoutmycards.com/Users/Sanj52
thanks!!
Yeah the auto/memorabilia is kind of harsh, but other than that it is good policy.
A few thoughts about the bulk processing option:
I understand that you are targeting bigger sellers which is fine, but I would like to see the bulk processing option made a little more friendly for smaller sellers. If you changed the number of products per box from 5 to 10, it would help *a lot* and it would not add much processing time. I am really struggling trying to work my shipments into the current promotion. Also, I would like to see this changed to a price per card (9 or 10 cents) rather than having to jam as many cards as I can into a 550 box.
Thank you for the suggestions. These are some good ideas.
I don’t mind paying the 10-cent game used/auto fee, because the improved search functionality means more people will find the cards more quickly, which means they will sell for more money. The only loser is the bargain hunter, and that’s fine with me.
I just listed a Tebow/McCoy Topps RPA /25 on eBay. I’d have preferred to have shipped it to you guys for $5 to sell here. Good work on this. This removes the barrier to having higher end newly released cards on COMC.
Other suggestions seem fine. Will chime in on others’ comments below if I think of something else.
If you’re going to have a meta data column, would it be possible for COMC users to tag the product? If we could tag a set as “memorabilia” or “auto” that would take the pressure off you guys to do it. You could also have tags for “Hall Of Fame” or “500 Home Run Club” that could go with a player. Individual cards might also be tagged with the team information.
Tim, a suggestion i would like to see, is some sort of message board, or a way for me to tell other buyers and sellers that i am having a sale or going to be accepting all my offers, i usually make a large sum of my sales by doing these kinds of sales on other message boards.
Also i am starting to like the overnight processing even more. it makes it nice if you want to get something in when certain cards are hot!
Thanks
We are actually considering adding a feature where sellers could advertise promotions that they are running. We won’t likely do this through a generic message board that could end up being flooded with spam. Instead it would be baked into the site and something that would stay clean and should generate a lot of traffic.
Tread lightly here, but I like the way you think here, Tim. There’s no shortage of message boards out there that talk about COMC. Take a look at what enabling comments has done to the news stories on Yahoo!. Kinda scary.
One possible solution would be if sellers could add a short message of maybe 50 to 80 characters which would appear next to their user id somewhere on the site – possibly next to their cards, or possibly on a “specials” page.
One feature I’d like to see is the ability for sellers to opt out of the best offer feature and for their cards to be identified with a “FIRM” icon. Then those sellers could list their rock-bottom price and not be bothered with offers.
Possibly you could combine the two – say I will accept 50% offers on all of my cards for the next 2 days. Say I have a card marked $2. That card could have the regular price of $2 crossed out with $1 in red and a “FIRM” icon next to the price.
These suggestions are exactly in line with the kind of services we want to provide with the “Premium Seller” option.
raising the price of a standard jersey card from $0.15 to $0.25 (plus the 20% cashout) will decrease the amount of cards sent in, because i think many of the smaller sellers will just try their luck with the ebay promotional listings, thus limiting growth of the site…many sellers left ebay to come here because of the ease of listing and ebay constantly raising fees…if fees continue to rise here itll just cause another site to start up offering lower fees, perhaps following this model
I understand the “special handling” for GU/Autos but have you evaluated processing non-GU/Autos? Did that cost go down and if so, maybe only add $0.05 instead of $0.10. Sometimes it is easier to combat higher fees if you can show you took the time to see if related charges can be reduced. I know I RAN here from the auction site because of the lower fees here so overall I am not thrilled, but I understand business too.
Fewer cards being sent in means higher selling prices for the rest of us. The ratio of sellers to buyers is only increasing, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about.
which squeezes out the small time sellers
So is the reason I fell in love with this site going to be extinct? When I found COMC, I thought it was great to send in some cards and see what happened and if they could sell, great. I am a small collector that only has a few thousand cards in my collection. I have just over a thousand cards on the site. Is COMC becomming tailored to the “big time” collectors who make a living at card collecting? If so, fine, but please be up front and tell us. I’d still like to think that I can send in 50 or 100 cards from time to time and enjoy following the cards to see what is selling, play with prices, flip some cards etc. But if the “Mom and Pop” shops (small collectors) are gonna be devoured by the “Big Box” stores (store owners, brokers, major collectors), please tell us now. Here’s hoping COMC is still a safe and happy place for the “small fish in the big pond”.
Well said ….HabsFan24 …..ditto for me!!!
I don’t think the site can become profitable if it does not cater to the large sellers. I don’t see why you can’t keep doing what you’re doing here, though. There are so many measures in place that keep the playing field level. There is so much money to be made by flipping cards that people blindly mark down 90%.
I really like the ideas except for the extra fees for GU/Auto cards. You’ve managed to carve a nice niche with the site here and I think that one idea may not be the best idea.
Realistically… people are looking for players or sets. They aren’t collecting just GU cards or just autos. It’s looking for a prospect, a star player etc.
The Bulk Processing idea is a nice idea. I’ll probably send in more now because of that one.
I am also liking the Premium seller account option. As I continue to add cards, this could be a great option for me.
I agree. I am filling my player and team collections personally when I buy with my sale proceeds. I would rather have team meta-data than gu/auto by far! (That is the uniform that are picture in, not that they are currently with – That would be beyond challenging)
i hope the price increase on the game used and autograph cards does not happen. it would definitely reduce the amount of them that i send in, it is a large jump interms of percentage of increase. also i don’t understand the difference in difficulty between caring for a regular card and that of an autographed of game used. it will also make figuring out what i owe on my batches more difficult. i understand a higher processing cost on oversized cards, but i think that this change would cause alot of desirable cards to not be sent in due to the cost of processing. i hope you guys reconsider.
Adding 10 cents per card for relic/autograph cards is simply put a horrendous idea. 95% or more of these would require no additional handling than any other card, and for the 5% that fall outside of this range (super thick cards, booklets, etc) you could simply process those under the ‘special size’ rate that you propose.
Having Relic/Autographs categorized to be searchable seems like it should be an extremely simple matter of adding an extra column to your data entry and using a special 2-3 letter tag. Seems like it should add maybe an extra 2-3 seconds… certainly not enough to warrant an 66% increase in processing fees for standard rate processing. The last time this idea was proposed it was almost unanimously rejected by the sellers on the site. I don’t see that being any different now.
Honestly, I’d just as soon not see these types of cards categorized and searchable if it means such a substantial increase in standard processing fees. If these extra fees are truly needed to cover the added costs of this kind of categorization then my advice would be to scrap the idea. While it would be nice to have these be seachable, they sell just fine as it is, and the enhancement just doesn’t add enough value for sellers to justify the fee hike.
I am intrigued by a ‘premium seller’ account, and could see how that would be beneficial, but I’d hope that this is completely optional for the sellers that wish to upgrade regardless of their sales level. Forcing an extra $100 a month on sellers that don’t like this idea simply because they sell a lot or have a lot of inventory is the quickest way to drive your top sellers off the site. I think if you confirm that this is an optional upgrade, it would ease several sellers minds.
Just my 2 cents.
make that 4 cents
I like the prices cuts for graded card processing. I would like the ability to quickly search for GU/AU cards.
I would like to see shorter turnaround times on cards and the processing fees at least stay the same. Instead of .25 per card for 3 weeks, how about .25 for 1 week turnaround.
I’d also like to see the cash out fee % be reduced. Even with the option of buying a blowoutcards gift certificate, some sellers don’t always want to buy more cards with their earnings, but would rather have the cash. The option for them right now is to pay the 20% fee.
I agree with ohiomike. Raising gu/auto’s by 10 cents doesn’t seem warranted. He brings up good points so I would make some specific call outs and say things like any triple threads books or sweet spot baseball swatches might be part of your special sized cards. But more and more auto cards now are just a plain card with an auto. Obviously I dont know how your backend is set up on here but Im not sure why this would take too much longer to process. And I would think this would reduce the amount of them being sent in which hurts buyers and sellers.
As per the other options I dont personally see myself ever using the overnight but I could see where it might be a nice option for some people. Also, I cant see right now where the bulk option makes sense for myself because I dont want to send in that many ‘common’ cards, but I like the thought of it.
Overall the changes make sense with the exception of the gu/auto piece. I don’t think the price increase warrants a change to make them searchable.
when will they be better rates for buyers that take cards IN HAND(delivered)? Capping charges at $20 or $30- etc. Not really fun paying $100+ for shipping. Right now the shipping rates eliminate lower end cards from being purchased, example: Card Cost 0.25 shipping 0.25, Sellers dont understand the low offers from buyers needing to work the $0.25 for shipping.
The bulk shipping option that is available the last 7 days of every month helps cut the shipping costs down to $0.15/card for large quantities. Other than that, we have run some periodic specials, but we don’t have any other plans.
As far as this round of fee/service changes, we are focusing them on seller specific services.
Speaking as a seller, some of us understand just fine, but when you offer me 10 cents for a $3 card I have listed for 20 cents, there is no reason for me to accept it when I paid 15 cents for the card to be listed in the first place. Of course this is a generalization, but please understand it has nothing to do with not understanding why you’re offering what you are.
What? Take a look at what i purchase. I dont think i offered you anything. i average $13.92 book average on cards purchased.
Anything under $10 book value are for flippers that dont take delivery. Why would anyone pay $0.15 to list a $3 card anyway?????
If by any chance i offer you anything for you over $10 BV cards, just ignore it. i put in 1000’s of offers and dont look at the sellers id in general. But if you think i am not worthy of you $3 cards, ignore or flat out reject the offer.
I really like the enhancements. I hope these take place. Reducing the cost of encased/graded cards will cause me to send in quite a few that have been gathering dust. Could you also make it easier to search for graded cards, like it will be for game used? There are a lot of people that make psa vintage sets and I love to have this site become the “go to” place for that.
After my next batches posts, I will have as many GU/Autos as anybody on here and I am not bothered by the extra $0.10 as long as it is easy to search for them. I know I would buy a lot more on here if it was easy to search for GU/Autos and I think the increased sales would more than justify the expense. Maybe a compromise could be to require processing for GU/Autos at the three week level or faster with no additional costs per card.
I think that the sorting of autos/jersey cards is the next evolution on the site. when i first starting cruising the site, i could look at all the new fball cards nitely that were loaded that day. those days are over, there are so many cards on the site, i dont have time to look thru everything.
in terms of raising the processing fee, that extra 10 cents will just be passed on to the buyer just like the 15 or 25 cents is now. we all factor that processing or shipping fee into every card we buy or sell.
I like a lot of the changes but the additional fee for GU/Auto would really make me re-evaluate what I send. I think a better and more logical fee increase would be based on card thickness but I’m not sure I could get behind a fee raise on any additional “special case” cards right now.
I like the idea of allowing sellers to have special promotions, but most of the guys I see promoting on your Facebook page and other sites have their cards priced at a level where even a 50% (minimum) offer is well above market value. It seems allowing guys like this the opportunity to get more hits would be counter-productive.
As a buyer, I would like the ability to make offers below the 50% threshold but as a seller I recognize that would open up the floodgates of low balling that already is annoying. Would it be possible to install some sort of system where any buyer gets perhaps 10 offers at any price percentage per month?
Considering that fewer GU cards can go in the $50 flat rate special because they are thicker, perhaps the extra fee for GU cards is unnecessary, although this fee does not apply for flat rate boxes anyway.
Keeping the below-50-percent offer option with buyers would be better, because I don’t want to compete with sellers that allow 90% off book offers to be made. It means I have to do it too, and I don’t want to get 500 80% off offers/day.
I have an algorithm to determine whether I accept an offer. A lot has to do with whether I added the card to the site or whether I am flipping one I bought from someone else on the site. Seeing “Acquisition Price” on the offer screen is very helpful for me! It would be nice if I could give my algorithm to COMC, and then every offer sent in would automatically either be accepted or rejected.
I love your auto-accept algorithm idea. You should send me an email with the details.
I was always under the impression that autos & jersey cards were required to be sent under the 25 cent priority rate. So as long as I can send them in under the 15 cent standard rate the surcharge wouldn’t really bother me.
Id be interested in the premium if it offered free storage for cards under a sale price of 3 bucks or book value of 5 dollars. Not sure the extra money would be worth it for me otherwise.
As others have said, the 10 cent fee on GU/autos is unwarranted. It’s real simple – when you add a new product to the DB, you have all these various subsets. At that point, you denote if cards in those subsets are GU/auto/both/none. That way when you process a card (like you currently do) and give it the proper subset it beongs to, it’s already known if the card is a GU/auto. There is no per-card determination to be done.
While we are discussing possible changes, how about the powers that be spend some of the $$$ they are getting in fees from us sellers to buy some advertising and get us some new customers? Maybe if we felt that the increased fees we are asked to pay went towards getting a larger audience for our cards instead of some fabricated “extra handling and cataloging”, there wouldn’t be this big of a backlash against these changes…
I don’t sense an abnormally high backlash to these changes. People always complain about change whether it’s a website policy or a new law that was just passed.
I don’t want money being spent on advertising because it will result in higher fees. As long as the site is growing, there is no need to buy keywords/make banner ads/produce a Super Bowl ad. It’s not like people are going somewhere else because of an ad they saw. If Sportlots starts advertising, then that’s another story.
Sportlots does advertise with key words, banners and an affiliate program. A few years ago they took out ads in Tuff Stuff and the site really tiik iff after that.
I’m not lashing out against any of these changes, but I do agree with the idea that COMC would be well served if it were to do some advertising. I only found out about the site by pure luck. I own a brick and mortar collectibles store, and I haven’t met a single person in real life – dealer or collector – who knew about CheckOutMyCards before I told them about it.
COMC could run a Facebook ad campaign for as little as $2 per day which would bring thousands of new eyeballs to the site. There really isn’t any reason for COMC to not to advertise. They’ll pack up a chunk of staff and set up at the National on the opposite side of the country, just to advertise the site. So why not other advertising?
I am not opposed to advertising, but our theory has been that we should grow relative to the satisfaction of our current customer base. If we can keep our current customers happy, they will spread the word, and we should be able to handle the growth they generate. Our business is very labor intensive, if an ad campaign tripled our business, we would need to triple our work force. And we can’t just hire random people that need jobs. We run a consignment service that has lots of liabilities. All of our employees need to be highly trusted and trained. We have grown from about 10 to 15 full-time employees just in the last 6 months. This is about as fast as I feel comfortable with.
The last time we ran significant keyword ads was about 2.5 years ago. At the time we were spending $1,500/month. We stopped doing it because it only generated 5% of our traffic. Today we have 5x the traffic that we had then, so I would expect that it would cost at least $5,000/month to increase our traffic by 5%. That said, we are investigating the costs of running a facebook ad campaign.
Ok i do like the next day and, flat rate. But The GU/Auto fee is a bit much i like to send in auto’s and GU and the 10 cents will add up fast i understand you want to make it easier to find them . Maybe a .25 Fee to every order with auto’s or gu it will add up fast. The Premium Seller Accounts the 100 a month Fee i think is a bit high is there a way to do it by levels? Like
Gold Lvl 100
Silver Lvl 50.00
Bronze Lvl 25.00
Where each lvl gets some different options? Also make it a quarterly option instead of monthly.
Also i do like the lower fee’s on graded cards But what about a bulk discount on graded cards say 25 or more gets a 10 percent discount? PSA people will flock here more if they know they can find the cards they want.
This reminds me of the Beckett memberships. I remember paying for a platinum membership and getting free BoGuS gradings and subscriptions to a bunch of their rags. I even got my membership card slabbed at a Tristar show.
Overall, I think the $100 per month for premium membership is a bit high, though it is nice that it’s offset by a $100 per month coupon for Express / Overnight processing.
The problem is, I rarely, if ever, use Overnight or Express processing. Would it be possible to extend the $100 per month coupon to Priority processing, and/or to a monthly shipment of x number of cards? Or, give an option to forget the $100 certificate and pay a lower price for the service?
eBay charges $50 per month for a Premium store. Amazon charges $40 per month to be a Pro Merchant. Some sort of service in that price range would be more palatable, IMO.
It would be greatly appreciated if you guys would offer some type of deal for guys sending in random cards in general. Much like the Flat Rate Special, can there be a type where it doesn’t have to be x amount of sets? Can it just be say 100 cards from any sets? It would allow for more cards to be added to the site, and much less base. Even if it was just a 6 week deal instead of 8 weeks, something would be great.
Everything else seems pretty nice aside from the aforementioned auto and jersey surcharge. I know I personally would avoid sending in any more. Even at the lowest service thats .25 to have it listed then, plus the shipping to have the cards sent in. Thats a large % on those who send in $1-$2 jersey and auto cards.
I like the idea of a premium level that would reduce storage charges for cards under $1, but I think you ought to consider the likely consequences. I list a high number of cards at a quarter to avoid storage charges, even though I would prefer to charge more. I also buy a fair number of cards listed at a quarter or less. I think this is an attractive part of the marketplace, particularly if you are looking for cards to flip.
But if large dealers can cherry-pick small collectors who want to avoid storage fees and then routinely re-sell them at higher prices without the same storage burden, that seems slightly unfair.
I would rather see you raise the no-storage limit, perhaps to 50 cents, to allow small operators to manage their cards more easily and reap more of the games, while also providing a flat-rate premium level that would alleviate the storage concerns of larger dealers. I’m sure you have the capacity to determine how many dealers would benefit from this arrangement based on their current listings, and how many more dealers might increase their inventory with flat-rate processing.
Because so many of the cards on this site are available in huge quantity — some recent cards are available in quantities approaching 100 or more — I’d also like to see an incentive-based program for cards that are not already listed. Say you ship 500 cards for processing and 50 of them are not already listed. Perhaps you could provide a coupon good for a discount on the next processing charge based on the number of new cards that are listed.
Overall, I think you guys are doing a terrific job at adapting as the site grow, and the changes you have outlined show that you’re thinking ahead. Well done.
This is my favorite post so far. Discouraging people from sending in what there is already 100 of and encouraging people to be the first to send something in are both excellent ideas to add variety to the site. In addition, letting large sellers raid smaller sellers’ inventories does not seem like a good idea, but perhaps some small sellers should talk about this. Maybe they would want this because they’d be rid of the cards. In a vacuum, it seems that the 25-cent no-fee rule, even if it becomes something else (50 cents, etc.), should be an across-the-board metric, if the goal of the site is to maintain having a level playing field.
I daresay most “small” sellers would love to have their inventories “raided.”
Also, even small collectors can manage the premium service. they may have to buy cards for resale for the first time in their lives, but the final cost should be less then zero.(small profit from churning card to use up credit)
It is fairly easy to search for autos, gu/jersey etc. I did it when I was looking for stuff to send to blowout for their purchasing special. All you need to do it use the search box when you are in the set/year/whatever and use the variations that beckett has in the data base (auto/autograph/gu/jsy/jersey. etc) this worked out fairly well, and then you can even dig deeper by sorting by price/discount after that so the actual cards show up better as opposed to some of the sets that have any of those in the names. No need to place an additional charge to list just to get another sort that may or may not be used. Also don’t most autos and gu go near the top of most searches anyway since they are normally the higher priced cards? I have to think that the majority of cards coming in are autos, gu, and rookies and a combination of all 3.
I like the idea of cutting the cost of the oversized/special cards. I just had a few shipped out to me and I really didn’t even know that SK’s were normal sized, they are just in a top loader and it cost me $1 more per card just because of this.
I’m no case breaker or dealer or shop owner and I do see some of the points from the guys here that this may be going towards an ebay type system which does not work anymore and the little guy is getting pushed out. I know choices are hard and there is little that ebay hasn’t done that others have tried and failed but I do appreciate that you take our advice and come to us before making any changes. I’ve taken in over $3k in sales and I know I never would have done this with out COMC. You can’t make everyone happy but meeting 1/2 way or tweaking what is already there can’t hurt too much.
I do not agree with adding an extra ten cents to every Game-Used and Autograph Card. Making them easier to find on the site is not only a benefit to us ( The Sellers ) but it also benefits you as an organization. The quicker these “Hits” get sent in and sold, the more willing people will be to send in their more valuable cards.
The other new features are fine, but I doubt I would ever use any of these personally. I mentioned this before but here are some of the features I would really like to see added to your website.
– More In-Depth Profiles
– A Message Board ( I know you would like to avoid spam, and that is why there could be moderators to delete any obscene or unwarranted posts.
-Group Box/Case Breaks, This is one of the most popular ways for people to get their cards now, and it would be very innovative if COMC could host these group breaks.(You are affiliated with blowout cards so I am sure you could some kind of discount for frequent orders)
There should not be an extra fee for jersey cards and autograph cards! A lot of jersey and autograph cards (especially commons) sell for less than $2. So if we are paying 25 cents to put the card on the site, then the 20% comminision, if a jersey card sell for $1, then then we would make 55 cents profit assuming that it sells within the first three months. We all know that we could get almost $1 for each jersey card if we sell them in a lot on ebay, I like COMC much better than ebay, but an extra 10 cents to a 500 card shipment is $50 extra dollars. I don’t like the 10 cents at all. Oh, and I forgot, since it would cost an extra $50 to send a shipment, prices will go up, not good. All in all, the site is awesome, just don’t want to pay the extra money.
I only buy GU and auto cards. Therefore, I would love to see a search function that allows me to filter out base cards to leave me with just the GU and auto cards. Currently, typing in “jersey” (or something similar) doesn’t work because a lot of GU cards are listed as “material”, “swatch” or “memorabilia”. It’s difficult to search for the cards that interest me. If it costs sellers an extra $0.10, then so be it. Surely it’s worth it, since it will increase the ability of buyers to search for such products?
for another bulk suggestion, instead of doing a 550 box of 5 products, maybe you could do something for a 550 box with 5 players? i know i have a ton of inserts of a variety of players that dont make it in simply because of the current listing cost…this would probably increase the number of ‘base’ cards of superstars, or oddball things of players…
There is no real time savings if they are not in the same set.
The bulk processing fee is fine but should be tailored to the amount of cards. I have cards from the 50’s and 60’s but are not complete sets. Possibly increments of 100 cards per batch? I am also a “small fish in a big pond” and I we were buying, sellling and “trading” cards but the only cards available are the big ticket, high dollar items. Back when you had the special for pre-1976 Topps cards I sent in about 1000 cards and the average sale per card is about $0.65. I used most of my sales to buy new cards to fill my sets. Common players are hard to come by since it is not worth sending them in. How about raising the storage fee from $0.25 to $0.50? I’m not trying to compete with the “major players” but I would like my fair share of the pie.
Ogisan
Overall you guys do a great job on the site. I like the fact you are trying to grow. I dislike the fact you would charge extra for gu/auto cards. I personally would have to send in much smaller number of cards to the site. GU/Auto cards that have a “book value of $5 to $10 dollars really only sell for for a couple bucks in most cases. If you are going to charge an extra $0.25 for each one that comes in it limits the ability to send those cards in and still make a profit. IF I am getting $2 for a card I can’t afford to pay fees of 40 cents processing, 40 cents cashout and around 10 cents to ship the card to you guys. That would be 90 cents total cost to sell a $2 card. I really don’t think adding a search function would increase sales enough to justify this. One search function I wish the site did have is the ability to to search by team. I would love to be able to enter my favorite team into the search box and have a list of them come up. I would also be in favor of any idea that would allow for more base cards to be listed on your site. Right now it is hard to justify sending in card below sertain dollar values. I would be in favor of a lower listing fee option for cards with les value. Even if this meant stock photos for base cards or longer processing times for designated batches of base cards. I do like the premium seller option. I would however not sign up for this if I already to sped my extra money to list jersesy/auto cards. Thanks again for the great site and forward thinking.
i can understand the extra .10 per card because a lot of them are thick and require special handling and if you can’t add .10 to the cost of an autograph maybe it isn’t worth selling because you would think any auto could bring 1.50 to 2.00 and a 3 week listing is already .25, but it doesn’t pay me to have the premium account i would need 40 one hundred dollar cards a month to make it break even(20.00 a month for storage now) on top of cash out fees it seems heavily weighted in favor of the top 10 again. i actually don’t mind the .25 cent rule because it probably creates discount sales business that leads people in to buy a few big cards and then there is the shipping business you will lose on all those .25 cent cards so now the .25 sellers will be picking up the costs of the premium sellers who won’t be carrying your shipping business. ebay made the same mistake when they drove away all the small card buyers and sellers and the post office whacked them again when they doubled their baseball card shipping rates several years ago. now ebay does not have that steady stream of people coming in to look at cheap cards and buying other higher priced cards and they make all their money on paypal and internet phone business. i don’t see any advantage in raising the no storage fee to a dollar since other sellers probably will keep their multples at .25 anyways and the higher priced cards will just sit there taking up space.
It seems to me that ALL of these proposed changes are geared toward the big sellers here and not the majority.Increasing fees on GU and Autos will decrease send ins on these cards because anyone heavy into collecting has no use for the tons of low end game used and autos being put into product.Most all of my low end game used that I pull goes right into my dollar box and pretty much takes up space because I can’t move it for even a dollar.By the time I would pay the extra fees and considering postage and for what I could sell the card for it’s a wash so why even send them in? Also the $50 box special is great for store owners and dealers but theres no way I could fill a 550ct box from only 5 products with cards that would actually sell unless I wanted to send .10 cent commons.I have a very large collection and even for me to do this is next to impossible to come up with enough decent booking cards from five products to fill the box.I want to sell not sit on inventory.
think search option for team or college would be awesome too, know you can do pro team on beckett.
I suggested the overnight special almost a year ago when I first joined the site, I love that addition.
The cash out fee should be 2.00 per check(several times I’ve been hit with 2 cashouts in a two week period, resulting in 6.00 fees but only received one check with the combined amount.
Also, I don’t like the small cash-out fee of a 1.00. Why isn’t the dollar just simply added to each paypal transaction if that’s why your adding the fee. You are charging a cashout fee for checks based on “your fees” so why not charge people who take paypal transactions and add to their fees. Ill share later on some of the other stuff when I have more time.
First off I want to start by saying you guys run the best Sportscard site on the planet! The fact that you even run these ideas by us before implementing them, tells it all… Your changes/improvements are made based on what your customers say, and thats awesome! Not to many business’ can say that…
As for the “Potential Changes” I think majority of them are spot on… and would actually benefit the site as a whole and moving forward! However, Im gonna have to agree with Terry Wickstrom on this one, One thing this site has made possible for collectors is to find that “steal” of a deal… With the system the way it is now, lets say hypathetically speaking you send in 200 cards of these “GU/Autos” via the standard processing… .15 ea. for processing + .01 ea batch fee, your at roughly .16 ea per card… lets say you discount these cards which we all know you have to do if you want to actually sell them… So these cards are consistantly selling for $1 buck each. Cash out fee of 20% is another .20 some cents on that buck, to the original .16 processing makin it basically .36 cents to list a card that sells for a buck. and now your talkin about adding another .10 cents to the .36 makin it .46 cents to sell a card for a buck!!
Now granted theres ways around it, if your buying other cards instead of cashing out, etc.. but thats not the point. The point being, we all left “FeeBay” for basically this single reason! Not to mention this site has been an outlit for cards that probably would have never made it to other collectionss through other sites… (i.e. cards that sell for under a buck) You would be eliminating alot of that… I like how Habsfan put it too,… Its like if you get bigtime and run all the little guys out, your not exactly achieving the business you invisioned.
I personally love this site, I feel its Great just the way it is! I just dont want changes to be made just for the sake of change! Cause if it hurts the group moving forward, its not gonna be worth it, both for Comc and Us as Collectors
i’am only coming up with 19,000 autograph cards on the site so thats only 1900.00 extra total, the jersey cards are not big sellers however and would seem to be tougher to move, i’am assuming there are 50 or 60,000 jersey cards because i can’t seem to bring them all up, but they don’t even compare to autograph sales. i can see why you want a club like deal to keep people sending in cards every month but its too much for most, maybe a 25.00 a month club membership and a 50 and a 100 for different size sellers.
I totally agree with Habsfan as well. I fell in love with this site a yr ago and have sent a great number of people to it. I have no problem with change either as long as the little guy can still survive. People have told me the card collecting thing has been long gone and I have totally disagreed with them all because of you guys. I know you all will do whats best for all. Thanks for including us!
Agree also ….little guys and big guys ….it’s what make’s it happen ….
but please, remember the little guy
Andre, I love your comment about this site’s affect on card collection. This has been my goal from day 1. I am also glad that you guys appreciate being involved. I have read every comment very carefully, and I like the passion. We are listening and we will adapt to the feedback.
Tim,
I’ve had a few cards on here in the past. I see your needed work and care for this hobby/business.
In your best interest, you definitely want to minimize the storage fees for the smaller guys to allow them to stay around.
Don’t charge $0.10 for game used and autographs as you’ll again remove many lower end sellers.
I say do have an extra fee for the gu/auto “booking” say $20 and up. That would be fair as you’re most careful with these.
Come up with a flat rate package with a certain number of cards, from all sets, all values, and perhaps load them at an expediated time period.
I’ve messed around on the site in the past, not much recently, and you have a good thing in place to move sports cards ahead!!!
Brian
I would also like to see the Game Used/Auto listing prices to stay the same. I am concerned that the surcharge would cause a drop in the number of these cards submitted. They are a key part of my sales and buying. With a typical $2-$4 selling price range they provide a much better 20% commission for COMC than $.25 selling price cards from bulk submissions.
A $100 per month for the bulk seller program does not seem to have enough return for me for the cost. I love the associated seller upgrades, but wonder if there a cheaper program (say $25 per month) would be possible?
You’re operating under the assumption that COMC makes 20% on every card. They’ve said it’s roughly half that.
I agree that the 100 per month bulk seller program is not worth it. Maybe if the bulk sellers get cards added “as they are done”. So that if I send in 1,000 cards and you are 25% done, I can get 250 of my cards ready for sale right away, even though the rest will continue to take time just as normal. So as the cards become fully ready, then that will allow them to have a faster turnover and resulting in more inventory moving through COMC
The 10 cent GU/AUTO fee is NOT gonna be cool! I have 4,000 cards that I have sent you that I would just sell on ebay instead just because of this fee. If you are having a problem processing the cards maybe think outside the box a little and….
Create a reward system and let users who are very active on your site (bigger sellers) start tagging or sorting the cards for you in exchange for some sort of COMC credit to be used for future items. This way we have the ability to help you process cards and get rewarded for doing so.
really? take 4000 cards and list them on ebay, as a lot or each individually? thats the biggest laugh all day. or you want your cards listed as completed or you will take your .10 cents elsewhere? tag and sort cards for future credit so you can be rewarded for it? how do they pay the help with cards? maybe you should try ebay again if you ever did and see the costs and work involved in being an ebay slave without benefits.
SportsCardGirl, Thanks for your feedback. I hear your concerns and like your creativity. Sounds like you appreciate faster listing times. We will see if there is some way we can incorporate that into our changes.
It is a proven fact the higher the prices go the less people spend. If you have to raise prices whether to cover a loss or make a profit I hope you factor in the the lost sales into that price increase. If you don’t you will fall victim to what has happened to the post office. Their failure to understand the effect of price increases has caused them to have to raise prices every year, each time further pricing themselves out of the market.
I have no problem with a price increase if you feel it is warranted as only you see the bottom line, please just make sure it is enough to ride you through a wave of reduced transactions. I would hate to see you have to keep introducing frequent price increases.
Some of you are misreading the proposed changes. They are not going to require you to send in cards in 550 count batches that only include five sets. For those of you who balk at the idea of change, you can keep sending them in the same way you always have. However, since it is easier for them to list a bunch of cards from the same sets, they are offering a way to pass those savings on to us if we choose to send them in that way. Good job COMC. Thank you.
Same thing with the $100 premium seller accounts. If it doesn’t work for you, then don’t do it. If you like the site the way it is, it will continue that way for you. If you are worried about the “big sellers” coming in and buying all your $0.25 cards, aren’t those cards on the site because you want to sell them? Didn’t you set the price?
I still disagree with the majority that the increased $0.10 would be more than offset by the increased sales. I went to the National with about 4000 game used/autos that I bought mostly not from COMC. If there had been an easy way to find cheap GU/Autos without having to do 12 different searches for every possible keyword and then sorting by price, I would have bought many of them here instead of paying the 20% cashout on my account. I think there would be a lot more sales if they were easily searchable.
Lets not forget that COMC is going to have to go back and recategorize the 80,000 or so GU/Autos already on the site.
my biggest problem here is that other sites have collectors going on forums saying we are overpriced on our cards for some reason because when i go on other sites or look at ebay i see the same cards listed for more and all our cards have a price offer where you can offer 50 percent off. i don’t see where we are perceived correctly in the marketplace and complicating it with all these different tiers of sellers probably will not help the image. you should do whatever you are going to do and apply it equally across all sellers or its only going to confuse things. kiss. keep it simple stupid.
and if you really want to improve the selling experience here on comc then get rid of the beckett price next to every card so people can buy and sell without worrying what the beckett says, they are always behind the curve and rarely upgrade their price guides to reflect real card prices anyways. and if you have a hot card they are forever behind and beckett is a conflict of interest in that he is buying and selling and grading cards too and therefore couldn’t possibly be objective. some guys wash right out of the pros and yet their rookie card prices hang like they were on the all star team every year its a joke, let the buyers and sellers decide what they want to sell for or offer for a card without their outer space concocted lo and hi price.
ahhhh ….every time I do a trade …..Beckett Value is the main or big concern ….I have yet to do a trade/sale without someone asking “What’s the BV?” ….then we take it from there.
From what I see …..people need a guide line somewhere …..and BV, just “gives” an idea mainly. Running on plain old ….here’s my card, what do you have to offer ….don’t cut it (1990 Donruss for a 50’s…example), will get you laughed at.
Naaaa ….Beckett Value is good ….it just gives an idea on the price of the card, that way, a trade/sales can be hashed out.
The question is, when does the sales data COMC is providing to Beckett actually start to impact their price guide numbers? Isn’t that part of the whole point of having the partnership with them anyway? COMC gets BV information, and Beckett gets better input for their valuation of cards in their guides. When will we actually start seeing all those unrealistic GU prices start falling? Or ANY movement on some of the stuff that hasn’t changed in Beckett in years?
Thanks for the feedback, but this isn’t relevant to the current discussion. The quick answer is that Beckett has our data, but I can’t really speak to how it impacts their price guide.
I agree with many of the postings expressing concern about the little guys and gals. One of the reasons I liked your site is that everyone was equal and there was no preference for the big dealers. And although there will always be bottom feeders, at least you could avoid them better on COC than on ebay. I’m afraid the preferred sellers option will change all that.
I also hear the anger about big sellers raiding smaller collectors. You can always deny their offers. As a rule, I almost never accept offers because my card prices are fair. That’s it, in a nutshell. Most of us just want to buy cards for a fair price.
As for storage fees, I think that if somone buys a card and then relists it, they should pay a 5 cent fee, or at least a storage fee. That would discourage some of the bottom feeders and still allow reputable deaers to make a profit.
Some features I am waiting for: the ability to sell complete sets, the ability to sell panels (Hostess mainly), and want lists.
Some features I like: your great customer service, your fair shipping charges, and the ability to buy those few cards I need to complete sets. ( I am a set builder, not a rookie fan or a mint freak.) Thanks.
Jane
I don’t think calling flippers ( people who buy cards, then turn around and sell them. ) bottom feeders is appropriate. I fall into that category personally, I have purchased all of my cards that I currently have for sale here on COMC, and if you think about it every card in existence was purchased at one time. Whether it be from a Box (Ridiculous Price Per Card Ratio), Ebay ( Love paying 2-3$ for shipping on every card, and sometimes have them sent mispackaged or damaged ), or COMC ( A very user friendly,seller friendly, and buyer friendly website. Where you know your purchase is helping a COMC pier interested in the betterment of this website. I have thousands of cards I am waiting to send in ( When I save enough money ), so I personally don’t appreciate being called a bottom feeder, nor agree with your suggestion to charge people just to buy something, then sell it.
On a more positive note I have noticed a big increase in sales now that the NFL season has kicked off. Lets just hope and prey next year at this time we can be enjoying NFL football as well, for those of you who don’t know the Owners are threatening to not set up a new labor agreement to pay the players more money. Which would result in a lockout next year, which means no NFL football all year.
I think a lot of people have a negative opinion of the guys who make a business out of flipping on here because what a lot of them do is “gouge”. I have flipped some on here so I’m not going characterize any group with the actions of a few. Bottom line, whatever you call them, the guys that flip on COMC are not looked upon with admiration, to say the least.
Even as a seller I think flippers are a good thing. Some cards I would like to sell without a long wait and if if the buying marked increases from people who want the card to people who will buy and relist the card then it will be allot easier to sell cards I really want to move. If you sell a card for a value you accept why should you care if someone tries to resell it? I have gladly sold cards to people who try to flip them, I get the money while they have to wait for who know how long to get a higher price.
If your cards are being successfully “flipped” then you must not have understood the market for the card. Don’t get mad at those that have a better feel for what something can/will sell for. I’ve successfully flipped 1000’s of cards on here (and have probably 4 times that many that I have bought but haven’t sold – yet). If you got a price you were happy with, who really cares what the next owner does with it. Also, the only person you will be hurting if you penalize the “flippers/bottomfeeders” is yourself. Make it more expensive to flip and 20%+ of the sales on this site go away.
I am very glad that we will be able to search for game used and autos!!! This has been far and away my largest complaint about the site, that and sometimes the sort not working 100% correct, but I can handle that!!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
The surcharge for jersey/autographed cards is way out of line. Calling coins special size cards is nuts since they are easier to store and ship than coins. If you start these practices you will drive people to Sportlots.
Currently we only have a few hundred coins on the site, so I don’t think any decision here will significantly affect the site, but they do happen to be significantly more expensive than you may imagine. We have to put each coin into a holder and staple it. We then have to be careful to not damage any other cards due to impressions from the staples. They are more difficult to store and to ship than normal cards.
and to think, i figured people had the decency to put them in holders and staple them up before sending them in. I just got done doing that with a couple hundred coins i was going to send in. If they are already in a holder and stapled what would the price for submission be?
I agree with most of the other comments. I like the bulk processing but please make it 10 – 15 different brands and not just 5. This is really hard on the ones that do not own a sports card store. Also you should not mess with the game used or the auto’s. I buy alot of this because the price is right. If you raise the price then the seller will need to do the same and then I will just buy these on E-bay because of the price.
Keep up the great work that your people provide.
I understand from a business prospective you offer the discount because the batch can be processed more effeciently due to the small number of brands.
Perhaps you add the option of an increase of half a cent per card over entire batch for each additional brand up a mixumum of 15 brands.
Based on average of 500 cards for $50.00.
5 brands = 10.0, $50.00
6 brands = 10.5, $52.50
7 brands = 11.0, $55.00
8 brands = 11.5, $57.50
9 brands = 12.0, $60.00
10 brands = 12.5, $62.50
11 brands = 13.0, $65.00
12 brands = 13.5, $67.50
13 brands = 14.0, $70.00
14 brands = 14.5, $72.50
15 brands = 15.0, $75.00
Your Advantages:
Cover your costs of production
Receive more bulk orders
Customer Advantages:
Options. Customers like flexability.
Great prices, even at 10 brands the price is cheaper than standard option.
Quicker turnaround, 5 weeks vs 8 weeks for standard
I like the idea of the overnight processing for high-end. The comment that JoelShitShow made about getting a high value recent card HERE first instead of eBay is right on point about where this gives COMC a nice advantage.
As far as the GU and auto fees? Eh, not really sure. I could see that being an added charge for express or priority listings, but maybe not for standard.
The bulk option is one that could be a BIG success for COMC, however as a collector that has amassed thousands of cards from hundreds of different sets throughout the years, I’m not sure that I’d be able to break down 5 products to get 550 cards in a box. If there was no limit to the number of sets that could be thrown in the 550 count box, I’d already have about 10 of them sent your way, but since I can’t do it with the 5 sets, I’m kind of at a disadvantage and have to send in smaller batches at a time.
I’m glad that you are taking comments on this and I am also glad that there are so many people that are chiming in. Thanks!
Maxxx
maybe instead of using the game used/auto fee, just give the option to the seller to “check” a box and make the as “auto” or “game used” cards, and then have then searchable as is. that way if the seller wants exposure to the card, they can do it themselves. It might be a hassel for those who have alot, but more people would pefer this over an extra fee.
Although im not a registered seller on your site i’ll leave feedback anyway. in my opinion game used memorabilia cards and autographs, at least in my experiences on this site and at hobby shops, are high sellers and i’m not certain raising fees on those cards would be wise as you run the risk of alienating some sellers. while on the surface it seems a small increase, but who doesnt grumble and groan when some dumbass tax increases just a little and our paycheck is that much smaller every week? im not privy to your income/expenses but to me you shouldnt fix what isnt broke. this site kicks ass and it seems hundreds if not thousands would agree with me. keep up the great work.
a 10 cent additional surcharge per Game-Used/autographed card is fairly high. This alone may discourage me from continuing to send my game0used and autographed card to COMC. Is it possible for COMC to take 10 cents after a card is sold? I would be more willing to give the additional 10 cents if I can actually sell the Game-Used/Autograph card first.
Better bulk shipping!!! There needs to be a better cap, especially for sellers who have a bunch of cards just sitting there wasting space and money that could be sent back & sold on ebay as a lot auction.
Sellers do have a $25 cap on shipping of cards being returned.
I think Im going along with the majority…
I love the bulk shipping, but I have a hard time with 5 types of cards per box, I also know that I just sent in six 550ct boxes with a mixture of jersey/auto cards and could only get 150-250 cards in per box, and when I send in “normal” cards (from the 50’s or 60’s) I get 300-400cards in a 550ct box because of the penny loaders…
I like the expedited insert price for new cards, because we all know the price drops the moment the first pack gets opened, so the faster we get them up the better…
Im totally against the Game used/jersey/auto price increase… I think the idea of adding something that we as the seller can check off is a good idea, I just think that you start fooling with the pricing youre going to shoot yourself in the foot…remember there are a lot of us that came over from fleabay to get rid of the headaches and the high prices…we are already paying an insert fee, a storage fee and an extra 20 % which I think is pretty stiff, but you guys offer a good service, so…
If anything try to go against what fleabay did and actually look out for the sellers…
I fail to see how sending in a high end card would actually be of benefit to a seller. Yes the inital fee is $5.00 to get it listed overnight. Then say you actually sell it, because lets face it there aren’t a ton of high end cards moving on this site, you get to deal with 20% of fees which is almost double what you’ll incur on ebay/paypal.
I really like the ideas and think it is great that you ask the users for their input.
Would it be possible to opt in and out of being a Premium Seller?
How about a relisting fee of say 1 cent per card (or whatever price makes sense for the work involved) that would reassign a new number to the card. This would generate some additional revenue for the site at I would suspect a pretty minimal cost. For the sellers it would allow some cards that have been on the site for a long time to be looked at again as if just listed.
Keep up the great work.
Man talk about expensive and confusing it’s cheaper and easier to sell on Ebay.COMC needs to quit beeing greedy and come down to earth and quits nickle and diming their customers who make it possible for you to exist. The fact that you have the nerve to charge more to process auto’s and game used cards while providing a lame excuse is a joke all cards should be treated with the same respects wether it be a base, gu or auto. No wonder I hear such negative things about this place; A fee for this and a fee to get this and a fee to get your money and fee fee fee I guess COMC is the new FEEBAY
If this were remotely close to the truth, I would probably have deleted this comment. But since I know that we are not motivated by greed, I don’t mind letting people express their opinions. It is good for us to hear what the perceptions are. I was hoping it would be more evident that the suggestions for fee changes were balanced, and we were trying to reflect our cost of operations. We are not proposing across the board increases. Many of our suggestions are significant decreases in fees.
LOL!!! I have never heard a bad comment or rip on this great new portal to sports card collecting site. Andrew u need to stop being so cheap and go to ebay if this site is not right for u. I just want to chime in a say thanks to Tim and company for the great job u do every day. U guys really make sports card collection fun and keep up all the new ideas,change is not a bad thing if it is the right change 🙂
Wow, Andrew, I don’t know what to say. Easier to use eBay? Been hearing negative things about COMC? I think a bridge is missing its troll.
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