Hello COMC Nation. On Tuesday, July 9th, Beckett book values became no longer available for free on COMC.com. For the last 6 years, Beckett has been gracious in allowing us to provide their data to you, but the time has come where they are no longer able to extend this service through COMC. Because we realize this tool is valuable to many of our users, we designed the ability to purchase Beckett subscriptions using COMC Store Credit, allowing our users to continue viewing book values while browsing items on the site. Additionally, we are branching into offering our own COMC sales history as an added benefit. As always, we are listening to you, your feedback, and truly care about you and the hobby. While we are a business, we are also collectors, and we are passionate about building an awesome space for buyers, sellers, and flippers.
Learning From Our Mistakes
Through this, we realize an area in which we can improve as a company is communication, and we have taken steps to do that. In this case, we should have communicated more clearly and repeatedly with you about these impending changes, and we apologize for that oversight. Going forward, we now have a plan to build into every new site feature when and how we will communicate changes to our customers. In the haste of making this necessary change to the site, we overlooked ensuring we communicated it well to you. We’re very sorry, will do better next time, and have already altered our system to do so.
Sales History
The loss of free book values on the site is, understandably, going to be a somewhat difficult transition for many users. However, we are committed to our customers, and are working to provide a tool to aid you in your purchases and sales. We are in the process of launching a new tool that will display historical sales data of actual sales on our site. With access to this information, we believe that you will be able to even more accurately see what your cards are worth on the market.
This new tool is in its beta stages and we want your input on this new service. For the time being, when you click on the asking price of a card, you can spend a History Point to see the historical data of the item. Right now, this includes how many are currently on the site, how many have sold on COMC, and the highest price the card has ever sold and shipped for.
Why Do I Have To Answer Questions to Get History Points?
One of the first questions we were asked about the Sales History tool was why a user needed to answer questions in order to earn historical data points. As some of you have guessed, one of the reasons Beckett has decided to no longer provide book values on COMC for free is because our site could be scraped for that data by various programs and that data could be used and sold to other sites.
The Sales History that we provide to our users falls under a similar category. If the data is simply provided on the site, it can be scraped and that data sold. In order to protect this data, our initial method is the COMC IQ Test, a sort of CAPTCHA which proves that the user is human and allows them to earn the credit needed to conduct healthy buying and selling practices.
How can we make Sales History better?
We want to make this feature available as quickly as possible and we want it to provide the value our customers need. To do that, we need the help of our most important partners: you. Our site exists to encourage users to enjoy collecting, easily sell items, and flip items to make money and have fun.
Please, tell us how we can make our new Sales History tool better for you. We need to protect this information, but we want it to be more accessible and useful to our users. What other sorts of information should be displayed? Do you have a good idea for where the data should be displayed to make it easier for you to utilize it? Is there an easier better way for us to protect this data while still making it more easily accessible?
Flippers
We understand this change is having a big impact on you, but we are not abandoning you. Flipping is one of the unique things about COMC, and you are in important part of our ecosystem. In light of this change, we are brainstorming ways to support you and give you the tools you need to do what you do. In considering our new Sales History tool, what information and functionality could best help you get the job done?
New Cost
We are committed to making COMC an enjoyable place to buy and sell collectibles online. We always strive to keep costs down for our customers. Some issues, such as the loss of Beckett book values, are out of our control. We designed a way for our users to link their Beckett OPG accounts and purchase subscriptions with Store Credit to provide our users with the option of viewing book values while browsing COMC. We’re working hard to find creative ways to adjust to the loss of book values on the site and your input and ideas are invaluable as we continue to do so.
We Are In This Together
We eagerly look forward to your ideas on how to make this tool easier to use. Please leave your thoughts in the comments below or send your suggestions to our Customer Service team. As a final note, if you send us an email within the next 24 hours with the subject “Discussions with Tim,” concerning your thoughts on either the Beckett Subscription feature or our Sales History feature, your feedback may be featured in Tim’s upcoming video.
Most importantly, however, we want to take this opportunity to express our dedication to you: our buyers, sellers, and flippers. COMC is nothing without you. We are constantly seeking new and innovative ways to improve the experience of buying and selling collectibles for all of our users. Whatever direction we take, or obstacle we face, we will never compromise our commitment to you.
Moving forward, we hope you will continue to give us your input, ideas, and concerns. We’re fortunate to have customers who are as passionate about COMC as we are. Our service is only great because of you and will only get better with you by our side.
Thank you for partnering with us for 6 amazing years.
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With respect to the historical data, I’d like to see:
A certain number of free history points daily or monthly so that I don’t have to do a lot of clicking. Or also make it more keyboard friendly.
A number (say 10) of the last transactions.
I’d also like to see the dates of the transactions. It may make a difference to me if the transaction took place yesterday or a year ago.
Hello JTCards,
These are a couple of interesting notions, and I have forwarded them along to our Web Development Team for consideration. If you have other ideas for how we can improve Sales History, don’t hesitate to send them our way.
Regards,
Mark M.
As far as Sales History goes, it would be helpful to distinguish between items that have been sold and
taken delivery of vs “flipped”.
For example, there are lots of times when I will buy a card that is underpriced relative to others on the site. if someone saw that price that I bought it for, they may think they should be able to buy it for that ( or near that ) so that may skew the data.
As people have mentioned before, cards can be bought to shore up the market if they are undervalued and may not reflect what the card really would sell for to someone taking possession of it.
Hey Rookies_n_Jerseys,
I want to clarify that we do not show the price a card sold for on the site unless it has shipped. So if you buy a card to flip, the price you purchased it for is not made public.
Grant
Great – thanks for the clarification
I can deal with the history point item, but a lot of times the card numbers don’t work or cards literally don’t have a number. Either way its easy to skip em and get points. I got over 1,500 points in about 20 – 30 minutes. This i can deal with.
The historical sales data is pretty weak though. Just because you show only the highest + shipping and a number of total sold means that these prices can be very unreliable. So if I buy 1 card and ship it, add the shipping fees and say the card shows $3.5, but in reality it was only a $.25 sale.
I would like to see a low, a high, and most importantly an average price. I would also like to see it with or without shipping, but the most useful item is missing, Flipping data. Since the only thing that is being shown is the cards that are shipped, what if the card has been flipped 100 times and just sits on the site. I wanna know what the Latest sale amount was, not what the card sold for 4 years ago because that was the last time it was shipped.
As it stands now the data is sorta useless for flipping. Some cards show $3+ as it was a single card shipped while a very similar card of the same value shows $.75 I know these are small numbers, but as a flipper where do i price it? $1 or $4? I don’t know what it really sold for or how much of that cost is shipping. One could be a lot shipped another a single card shipped. I have no clue on what it typically sales for just that say 10 cards sold and 3$+ was the highest amount. Maybe 9 out of 10 sold for a quarter but cause someone decidide just to ship a single card to themselves it shows as 3$+
I agree with the community that beckett is just off the mark, but at least it is consitantly off the mark, this new sales data seems to be missing the bulk of the info and only giving a skewed variabiable amount that can’t be trusted.
IMO there should NOT be a low price. It will discourage buyers from getting a card from below the low point. It will diminish sales, plain and simple.
Hello TheFioreCollection,
There are several very good points in your reply. Over time, we hope that these cards without data will fill in and the Sales History will become more valuable to our users over time. In the meantime though, are there some other types of Sales History statistics that as a user would be of benefit to you?
Regards,
Mark M.
I have been a member for three years and have still been waiting for two key SEARCH features you still haven’t implemented:
1. The ability to save searches as a buyer and having a menu or email notification that shows me when items that match my search criteria have been added to the site. This would be a huge time saver for your buyers instead of having to manually input the search periodically — what if I miss the window to acquire a certain card in between my searches?
2. Display search results by showing how many are held by specific sellers. For example, if I enter a search for “Bo Jackson” and JTCards has far more if these cards than other sellers then a buyer would easily have the option add cards from this seller to their cart to make single offer on a bulk lot of cards — this feature is available on the Beckett Marketplace.
I love COMC but adding these features would make the buying experience perfect!
Same here, I’m also waiting on the same 2 issues, COMC would be a huge improvement when putting this to work.
These two would be great and also . . . I read years ago about a plan to add some sort of a buyer “wish list” feature so buyers can let sellers know the cards they are looking for, I never heard anything about it again after that. Seems like it would be useful to buyers and sellers. I would even be willing to state what I would be willing tp pay for such a card assuming the condition of the card was NM-M+.
Also the ability to search for college teams.
What a bunch of crap. This site is as bad as fee bay. I knew the fees would grow on every thing. I have scaled back the volume of cards the last few months. This is the reason why. Let the comments flow but they don’t care the just want your store credit. The will make everything easy to get you to use it. They don’t care if we profit just as long as they do. They have forgotten that they don’t have a site with out us.
well thank you and maybe a bit of a knee jerk on my part ……on the plus side I think that my have been the most posted on blog you have every released at least people read it..lol
The loss of Becket does not bother me. I sell cards here mainly so I can attain ones I want. I do think that many of my soccer submissions were not accepted because they are not in Becket. Either that or COMC could not or did not want to take the time to look it up. If anything I would like to see improved is a quicker turn around on letting me know why some cards were not accepted. Returning the cards using the present policy is fine but it would be nice to know why some were not accepted quicker.
Thanks,
Gunny
I’ve been a vocal member over the last 24 hours when it comes to COMC’s integrity, and I’d like to retract that. VERY few companies will have the guts to apologize, but it still goes a long way in my book. Communication is very important and could have solved a lot of issues, as you stated. Secondly, nobody likes to be talked to like a fool. Telling us that this news was “exciting” really rubbed me and several others the wrong way. Tone down the arrogance a bit and understand that we’re not idiots. In my experience, many collectors are above average in intelligence which seems to come with the nature of this hobby (i.e. constantly dealing with numbers, weighing odds, organizing, statistics, etc.).
Thank you again for making this post, I’m again confident that COMC DOES care about me and everyone else who uses this site. Every growing company hits its bumps.
Thank you, Concerned. I appreciate that. Our integrity is vitally important to us; it is the foundation of our business. I hear what you’re saying about the original post, which is why we edited it. That was our mistake. We never thought our users are idiots and regret we came across that way.
PLEASE RESPOND
Julia: Since your integrity is vitally important to you (as it is to everyone on the planet), and is the foundation of your business, please tell me why the transition to no Beckett BV rolled out yesterday with no specific prior notification of when this would occur.
This is the fourth time I’ve asked for the answer to this question.
The reason I keep pressing on this is that it was such a dramatic deviation from comc’s prior performance or policies. The content of the post under the smokescreen of “exciting news” indicates there’s much more to the story — and I don’t think it’s, “Opps! We forgot.”
This is a real good way to help your dissatisfied customers lets call them an idiot.
For the Sales History, it’s sounds like you are already planning improvements, but seeing the highest price one sold for is not very usefull all by itself. For cards that were way hotter in the past, say for instance a Eric Hosmer, the highest historical sale is ridiculous compared to current prices. I looked at 2011 Bowman Chrome Base and refractors as an example. I agree that the lowest prices sold for should not be displayed, but say for instance the highest price, 5 most recent sales, and the average price sold for over the last 6 months.
Hello darin2200,
Thank you very much for your thoughts. These are definitely things that are being discussed as possible additions to the Sales History. If you have any other things that you feel may be of use, feel free to pass those along as well.
Regards,
Mark M.
It really comes down to you guys needing to lessen fees now that Beckett values aren’t readily available for everyone to use without the added fee. This was an option over Ebay because it was cheaper. Now its to the point where it is more expensive and there is zero incentive to send things in, especially since I can flip hotter and high end cards much quicker on Ebay.
I totally agree with you. Flipping cards on ebay is a much better option now because of the fees. I hated ebay but what other choice is there? I’ve made almost no money in the past year on COMC and I’ve been trying to flip the entire time. The BV thing puts the icing on the cake. I regret sending in the cards I put in the mail earlier in the week.
I like the historical data and am more than willing to see how well it serves me as a flipper. It’s a generous offer for the users and I appreciate it.
I wonder about alternatives for IQ test system and perhaps an opportunity for COMC. Hopefully, the historical data will at least rival, if not surpass, Beckett’s values and the data clearly has some monetary data.
Why not, as an alternative, offer users the ability to pay for it rather than just us the history points? The user can chose whether or not to pay for it or find it via the IQ test. And even by charging some dirt cheap fees (say 1 cent for each historical data look up), COMC can ideally position itself for a better future… Perhaps even refund the 1 cent fee for looking up the historical data should the look up result in a purchase of a card.
(I also see backlash should the historical data every transition from completely free to a fee service – it would probably be an easier transition if there is already some fee structure in place)
Now, as another alternative for the IQ test, since it is slightly annoying and doesn’t exactly live up to its name, there could be history points awarded for: purchasing an item outright, making an offer on an item, making the first counteroffer on an item and agreeing to a counteroffer. Perhaps have a limit on the number of points one user can accumulate – say 250.
That system offers a tiny incentive for engaging in a possible sale, which is never a bad thing.
In all, I really do appreciate the efforts by COMC, despite a few bumps in the road the past few days. I want to continue flipping cards, while I recognize the needs of COMC as a growing business with complicated partnerships and trying to keep everyone satisfied.
PS. I’m sure it’s another issue altogether, but I’d love to see an iPhone app. 🙂
Hello aguinness,
These are some very interesting notions. I have forwarded these along to our Web Design Team for consideration. Thank you for your contribution, and if you have any other ideas, please feel free to share them.
Regards,
Mark M.
*/Does this mean that when I am consigning new cards, I will not have access to Beckett as an aid in pricing the cards ? I mean yesterday an email from Mark said: /*
*Consignors*
*Finally, to all our consignors don’t worry. You still have the ability to see Beckett book values for items you submitted to COMC as it’s built into the cost of our processing services.*
We’re really excited about this ability to offer you price guide options, and we’re not done yet. We have something else waiting in the on-deck circle that we’re just about ready to announce, which we think is also pretty cool. Stay tuned for details, and in the meantime, feel free to leave us your thoughts in the comments below and stay in touch by following us on Facebook , Twitter , and Google+ .
*mark@comc * | July 9, 2013 at 2:50 pm |*/
Please clarify into a black or white answer as I have to know if we can move forward or must find an alternative of some kind.
Max Americana Sports Gallery
/*
Hey Max,
Sellers will continue to receive Beckett book values for all items consigned. Thanks.
Grant
I just bought a test card to flip. I am unable to see the Beckett Value for this card. I can see the value of my prior inventory but not this new purchase. Is there a delay between you purchase and when you can see the BV? I have other questions about historical data but I will continue reading to see if they have been addressed,
PLEASE RESPOND
I still don’t understand. Please explain why book value does not follow the card like shipping or the scans do. If someone pays for a service they would expect to keep that service. I pay you $.25 for a card to be processed and its been stated that book value is covered in that. If it is covered it was already paid for with the processing fee. Meaning you can not continue to charge the next guy the same fee it is already paid for. As for the cards on the site prior to 7/9/2013 these cards are already bought and paid for. If this fee is truly in the processing fee and comc is not following the rules they setup then I want a refund of the percentage of my processing fee that is not being used. I would also like to opt out of book values in the future so that should give me lower processing fees. Correct?
This apology was not needed.. What happened here was a rational business decision based on the corner Beckett backed you into. We were warned months ago.
On the plus I have found the staff at COMC to be courteous and have always had the time to listen to my questions.
Hello Cardko,
Thanks for contacting us. When a user consigns their items to us, part of the processing fee is used to cover the cost of identifying the item. This information is then provided to the consignor so that they have a guidepost from which they then set their prices on their item.
However, as this is Beckett’s data, we do not have permission to give that data away after the first user has been given access to it, as the consignor is the one that paid for the use of that information, not the buyer of the item. I hope this alleviates some confusion.
Regards,
Mark M.
It does help. Still is COMC not paying for beckett to give you the right to that price? If so you cats need to check with beckett seems your getting screwed, if you are buying that price you should be able to keep it. No different than me going to my organizer and printing out a list of cards that are in there. I have that hard copy until I decide to update it with new pricing. Also maybe you could tell use why having Beckett as a partner is so important to COMC? Where I have a issue is you guys have hurt the little guy the common collector who buys 10-20 cards a month is not going to pay $31 a month to beckett (If I had to guess half of it is going in COMC’s pocket) and the fact that you have made to classes, one that can afford the price guide and ones that can’t. I would guess the ones that can have a advantage in flipping cards which doesn’t seem like something COMC would support. Thats why I ask why Beckett is so important can’t you just scratch them. I’m sure if you decided to do that, those cats at Beckett would come back with a better deal. My thought it doesn’t represent everyone but just me as far as I no.
This is terrible! Paying $31 a month for the beckett ALL cards OPG isn’t the end of the world for sellers. But let’s say you’re a collector who comes to COMC just to buy a few cards, are you telling me that that person is going to have to purchase a subscription just to get the BV on the few cards they’re interested in. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT! What you’re telling buyers is that they have to PAY A PRICE TO SEE WHAT THE PRICE IS! I can’t think of any other business in the world that works like that. You’ve got to find a better solution because buyers, especially new ones to the site, will be disgusted and just leave. I love this site. I appreciate how you guys always keep us in the loop on plans for the site and I want this site to continue to grow and reach it’s full potential, but you’ve just got the find a better way than this.
I just tried this feature on a card that has many many graded copies. The list of graded cards is so long that the raw information is cut off at the top of my browser (I’m on Chrome). As is, I am not able to scroll up without making the pop-up disappear.
NYSPORTSFAN:
I find this to be frustrating. I subscribed to the Beckett package and still the book values are not there. As I said before one solution would be to get rid of storage fees that total under the $31 a month Beckett fee. I am willing to be patient and I hope COMC can come up with something that helps them, the seller and the consumer.
Well better (assuming this is implemented) but… A) Is it really that hard to prevent data from being “scraped”? Surely anything that prevents automation like hidden characters or image display would suffice. and B) Are people honestly grabbing that kind of data at a financial loss to Beckett? Seems to me they’re using that as a rather flimsy excuse to milk subscriptions. As for the answering questions/historical price thing. I get what you’re saying.. but really.. there’s got to be a better way..
Frankly, I can see how Beckett is potentially losing money in this way. However, I’m also thinking this is analogous to the decline of newspapers in recent years, where the papers have not been able to find a way to monetize their content as easily during the “information revolution.” Beckett, whose publications aren’t much of a stone’s throw away from a traditional newspaper, must be facing the same predicament.
Unfortunately, since many of these traditional print media outlets have been unable to figure out a viable answer, they look to pushing costs more on the end users, which never goes over well.
Hello Marcus,
As this feature is very new, we realize that it is likely going to change over time. We would like to make this tool easier to use and as effective at protecting the data. Our Team is working out a few different methods to improve this, but we are open to suggestions our users have as well.
Regards,
Mark M.
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The historical data is actually much more useful than you might realize. Potentially it is much more powerful than the Beckett data that everyone is concerned about. Some thoughts:
* If the captcha is to prevent scraping, I should automatically have access to historical data from any card which I have in my dashboard. The only way a bot could scrape that data would be to purchase every card on the site. In which case, I say let them have the data.
* If someone makes an offer on one of my cards, I should have access to the historical data from that card, automatically. Just don’t charge a history point to my account.
* I should accumulate “history points” simply by buying and selling on the site, or by submitting cards, and the “history points” should be retroactive. Ideally, I should have at least 100,000 history points in my account right now.
* A standard statistical technique, if there’s enough data, is to throw out a certain number of the top and bottom results and average the items in the middle. So, if a card has had 20 sales, you might discard the highest 2 sales and the lowest 2 sales, then work with the average.
* For cards which have had a certain number of sales, I’d like to be able to see the average sale price from a certain number of past sales (the most recent 5 or 10, for example), or from a certain period of time (3 months / 6 months / 1 year).
* I’d like to be able to filter a site-wide search for just those cards where the number of cards sold on the site is higher than the number of cards currently on the site. Also, I’d like to filter those cards which are being offered for a substantial discount the average sales price. Also, I’d like to filter for cards whose recent sales average is much higher than the all-time average. This would help to identify “hot” cards and “undervalued” cards much better than the standard “percentage off Beckett” search.
* If you’re going to use interactive games like the card identification game, then they should actually accomplish something for the site. For example, when I play that game, I see hundreds of interesting cards. Some of which I might want to purchase. But I can’t click on a link in the game that takes me to that card for sale. It would be nice if the game also showed the year, player, price, etc, and had a link to the card being sold. Then the game wouldn’t seem like such a waste of time. It would be more like digging through a box of cards at a show or store.
* It would also be nice if the game could be customized. Like if someone loves Yankees cards, the game would just show them Yankees cards. Then, again, the game would be more like fun than work.
* The number sold could also be used to create best-seller lists. Imagine if someone could search for the 100 most popular Michael Jordan cards or the 100 most popular Boston Red Sox cards, either all-time or from the past month or so. THAT would be a “hot list”, and that sort of data would give people a reason to go to COMC on a regular basis.
* Now that I’m paying $31 per month for a Beckett subscription through COMC, I’d like to be able to make checklists, want lists, etc. I should be able to look, not just at cards which are on COMC, but cards which are NOT on COMC. That would be especially useful when submitting cards.
Looks like my cards are stuck on the site till I sell them COMC (Nathan), is not willing to give sellers a way out. So basically if you want a card I have send me a offer. Just type in cardko.net to your browser. Thanks for your help in advance for helping me get rid of these.
Maybe it’s time for an “open source” approach to this problem.
Put COMC at the fore front of a sports card revolution!
COMC has its historical data, you can get data from ebay and if you can get a few others on board, I don’t see why you could not start to form a true to life “online value” price guide.
This may not be something you would give away for free, but for $10 a month, I think lots of people would sign up for a true to life price guide that is based on real sales data.
As a casual buyer I would not pay $10 a month. That’s $10 a month I couldn’t use to buy cards. I probably spend about $500 to a $1000 a year. $120 (12 month at $10) is 12 to 15% of my annual budget. Forget it!
Hello COMC Nation,
We are sincerely thankful to you all for your ideas and suggestions regarding Sales History. This is a tool that we really want to make to fit your needs, so please keep these notions coming. Please don’t forget to email us with the subject “Discussions with Tim,” so that our upcoming video can address as many of your questions as possible.
Thank you all again and I wish you all a very good night!
Regards,
Mark m.
Here’s a idea get your historical data project done, before taking away our BV.
I agree with John 100%, how about an ACCURATE price guide. Also, when is the APP COMING>>>?
So I just tried to hunt down a card or two to flip, clicking on a moronic quiz to get points is a total waste of time, not to mention repetitive and boring regardless of the quiz question asked (I can find better things to do), then just to give it a shot I tried to look at sales data on a card to possibly flip and there is no link to look at it(I tried several different cards) Do you have to own the card to see the historical sales data or am I missing something here? The points are ridiculous so I’m pretty sure I am done buying on here other than a card or two a month for my PC where I used to buy a a hundred or so a month to try to flip. Its more of a chore now than it is fun to find “flipping” cards. Oh well, I can still sell submitted cards if people continue to buy. I just feel like the site took a 3 year leap backwards. Of course I could shell out $31 a month to look for cards to flip and know the bv and asking prices immediately, but at the small amounts to be made after flipping I’d have to spend $800 a month to barely cover the $31. Also, what about port sales? Will we be able to see BV on those cards bought as Mark stated yesterday that BV would still be seen for any cards that you add to the site, there was no mention if the same were true for cards or ports bought.
To see the sales data, you need to click on the price of the card.
Thanks for that tip! That knocks off one of the questions that had me stumped.
POrt sales are the same as regular sales. You get to look at values for the cards you sub only not for ones you buy . Unless you pay beckett the outrageous Subscription fee .
The lack of historical data was the biggest reason why I did not want to jump on the bandwagon and start selling at a serious level so thank you for taking the first step to make this data available. The IQ test I have no issue with but maybe there’s a less painful way. As for the historical data, my biggest concern in the past was knowing how many particular cards sold which seems to have been taken care of. As for the sales data, I agree with many others, leave shipping out of the equation as it has nothing to do with the value of the card. I think a simple high and low figure and average price would be good enough (maybe an up or down arrow to indicate recent price trending for this item)
My biggest advice would be to tread carefully with Beckett, on one side they are your partners but on the other side they also compete with you on their marketplace and they just showed you how ruthless they can be with this whole data fiasco. In my opinion I would distance myself from Beckett. The grading service you are offering is great but I would find multiple partner like PSA, SGC and have them compete for our business…this would have the added benefit of keeping BGS in check so they don’t make you dependant on them.
Finally thank you for the apology and we users also need to realize that COMC is a business and must stay viable so they can pay their staff and keep innovating. All this innovation is not cheap..
dh_hockey_cards
I agree with this poster. I am most interested in the total number of cards that sold and were shipped. It affects any decision to buy cards to flip or to send in additional cards. Also, the average sale price would be valuable information. Finally, I understand the concept of the history points but would like to see something given to each buyer/seller based on total items or dollars purchased, sold or volume of items on the site. This would seem to prevent scraping of data while recognizing those who contribute income to the site.
I got myself a bunch of History Points and I played around with the new tool and I think it’s a great start. I’m actually having fun going through cards and seeing what they’ve gone for. It could certainly use some tweaking but I think it’s an excellent alternative to Beckett for flippers who use this site.
I realize the tool will be improving but I got at least five answers wrong trying to get to 10. One card didn’t have a number. Another card had a hyphen in the number, I realized through trial and error that if you leave the entry box blank it just skips that card. It would be nice if the IQ tool listed some tips for accurately entering a card number and lets the user now they can skip a card if the number isn’t easy to find (or doesn’t exist). If a card number is HM-GP is the card number (letters) case sensitive? Should I include the hyphen? Maybe you should limit the cards in the IQ tester to pre-1990 so the cards actually have real numbers on them most of the time.
Historical data is a great tool. Much more useful than Beckett or Ebay pricing.
COMC- How do I link my Beckett print subscription to get to see values on your site? If only tied to online subscription, why? I can look up the prices in my print subscription just as well. Thanks in advance.
This is a good start but a couple of things I think should be considered:
1. Please remove the shipping costs as part of the card value for historical sales. This really has nothing to do with a card’s value and really skews the data, particularly for lower price cards.
2. The IQ test thing is kind of annoying, but I understand why you are doing it and I’m sure you guys will come up with something easier.
3. I like that you included a comment about when the highest price was paid for the card, but there really should be an average price paid as well. I agree with the other comments about leaving the low price paid out.
4. As other’s have mentioned before, you really should re-evaluate the relationship with Beckett. They clearly need you more than you need them. In fact, they should be paying you for the historical sales data in order to get a semi-accurate price guide. However, they clearly have no intention, nor do they really care, about how out of touch the price guide really is. It’s business as usual for Beckett. They are not good for the hobby and the more options you consider (PSA, SGC, etc) I think the better off COMC is in the long run. I understand they were rather instrumental in helping get COMC going but the time to cut the cord is long overdue.
I don’t mind the IQ quiz. You get to look at cards!
Couple of more suggestions for the historical data:
Add a separate link or button to see the data… it is not currently intuitive to click on the price… and/or add hover text when hovering over the sales price to let the user know that historical sales data is available. Since this is a new feature, users aren’t aware that it is there or how to use it and it also wouldn’t be intuitive to new users coming to the site.
To all you flippers there’s a LOOPHOLE in all this if you want out of COMC. All cards purchased recently can be returned. As far as I no COMC return policy has not changed. I am in the process of starting this process, so I can update you how it goes.
That is a classless act that will burn bridges with other sellers you might deal with elsewhere… The only thing worse than doing it is announcing your intent to do it…and COMC has already stated they will have zero tolerance for abusers of the return policy.. so you might find yourself suspended and forced to pay full boat to return more cards than you want to have shipped.
It’s not going to work for me anyway haven’t bought anything in a while. But for others I would take advantage of this free service.
Tony- flippers on this site that probably bought many of your cards are taking a big hit. Do u not believe that this group of people should get every advantage to move on as possible. I gain nothing by putting this statement out there but to make my buyers aware that I am willing to support them even when COMC has turned there back on them. Remeber these are the same people that are responsible for at least 50% of your sales.
On another subject…I would like to see bloggers here be required to register with some sort of identifiable information most likely their on site username. That way you won’t get people hiding behind their anonymous names slinging insults with virtually no accountability. When I compliment..or complain I put my name and my business name…actually my facebook page to every post. There should be accountability for what is said here.
Yes and please also indicate if you are on COMC’s payroll. This would also be helpful.
I believe COMC employees all identify themselves as such…
To your other point…What you are talking about doing is classless and unethical and all it will do is get people suspended and require them to get their entire inventory shipped.
Sorry… no matter how wronged I felt a site did me I would not breach my morals in an attempt to get away with something.. I would bit the bullet…pay to get my cards back and walk away with my integrity.
And that being said I am walking away but not with my cards. I have to wait for them to sell. That’s the difference here there’s people who can afford to have all cards shipped to them and some that can’t lose that money and the money they put into processing. There no reason for anyone including myself to have anymore post or comments about this. Comc has chosen this path we can follow or leave end of story. All I would like is a chance to get my cards not yet processed back with a refund. I really don’t think that is to much to ask for.
It would be nice if you search for a 1989 Upper Deck Keb Griffey Jr. Rookie that it would say “did you mean 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr.? or just automatically reroute you to the right search. Also, someone mentioned also -saved searches and also when you go to look at the cards if the search field remained with your search in it instead of going blank you could go up to the search and maybe just change a name or number or color instead of having to rewrite the entire search.
I would like to thank the moderators and company representatives for making this post. It is clear they did read legitimate complaints and concerns over the last two days. While my stance hasn’t changed, the courtesy is respected.
The launch of sales history and the elimination of Beckett was planned backwards.
Sales history should have been launched 1-2 months before finally pulling Beckett.
Backwards timing. Announce the good before the bad. The old good news vs. bad news.
And if they announced Sales history first, the Beckett news wouldn’t even have been bad.
A suggestion for sales data: if no sales have been made (such as base commons), show the ave. sale for cards in that set. I just started putting a set together and rather see N/A, I would like to know if commons are going for 60 cents or $4 each.
As for computing sale price, I prefer the way you have it now with shipping figured into the sale price. Granted the data will be skewed if there are only a few sales of a card but if its aggregated with the rest of the set, it will give a better picture.
I’ve been on this site for four years and hope to be on it for another forty. Let’s do what we can to continue to make this the best community based card site on the net.
TL;DR – You’re not a pricing guide service, there’s no need to function as one and you’re not even positioned to function as an accurate pricing service. If you want to help sellers, just offer them a “suggested price” using your data when first listing items. For flippers, just automatically suggest a price .01 higher than what they purchased the item for.
Long Version – You guys are making some really poor choices that you obviously haven’t thought out that are simply very bad for card collectors.
Historical pricing is a poor idea at best and it’s a hobby killer at worst. You guys have a clear supply vs demand problem that’s demonstrated in your rapidly growing inventory numbers in sections that aren’t releasing new products (ex.: 4000+ new cards in 2012 football with no new products). This is going to cause a classic “race to the bottom” pricing war by sellers to get their products sold which is going to devalue the entire industry if you your site continues to attract people from the hobby. The above is already happening in collectible sets for collectible players with many sellers and cannot be disputed. Within your inventory your supply curve is rapidly shifting outward with demand not shifting nearly as quickly which will drive prices down. Everyone loses in this scenario – both buyer and seller as the seller is forced to continue to lower prices and buyers see their purchases devalued over time.
Historical pricing is going to kill your flipping business and it’s clear from your above post that you have no idea how to salvage this part of your business model. I also don’t see how you can read the above and not conclude that this will hurt the overall sales at your site – buyers end up spending less money, flippers won’t buy as much store credit with less flipping opportunities, etc.
The solution is simple – do not show historical pricing. Instead, to continue to make listing new items easy for the seller, use your historical data to give them a “suggested listing price”. Your pricing involvement should cease there. For flippers, just give them a “suggested listing price” of .01 higher since that will be the lowest they would ever re-list an item for. “Sales” or discounts by sellers would just show a % off the original listing price and not off some pricing guide.
If you had a greater buyer base, then yes this is something that you could implement; however, simple supply numbers at this site are growing at a rate that this site doesn’t have the demand to even come close to supporting. Until that time offering historical pricing is an extremely dangerous solution to implement for the hobby and for your site.
I like your …..“suggested listing price” ……great idea ……. 🙂 that would be the next thing to “BV” if listed next to a card and collectors could go with percentage off / sales prices from there.
On the subject of communication…
Have you ever considered an option that would allow us to link social media accounts or additional information with our COMC username? Basically, what I was thinking was that the “My Port” page could have a little bit more about the seller besides just their COMC username. I always wondered why the “Profile & Options” page has fields for Favorite Teams, Players, Sets, Etc., what is this for? Perhaps if you click on someone’s username and are then brought to their port page, it could have links to their twitter, facebook, blowout forum, or whatever else. Of course, this would be voluntary, and you can always block somebody on if they harass you about an offer. Another option would be if COMC had some sort of message service. If the Favorite Teams, Players, Sets information was visible, people could message one another and arrange possible trades. Also, if you send someone an offer, you could add a short blurb, this of course could be optional and the seller could choose to allow messaging or not.
Maybe this sounds ridiculous but I have actually sold several cards on COMC via twitter. I once posted my COMC promotion on blowout in their “Spam your COMC/eBay listings here” thread, and added a link to my twitter handle in the thread. I was then contacted on twitter and made several sales on COMC this way. I have also sold cards just tweeting about a promotion with a link to my port, and I don’t even have very many followers. Just throwing this idea out there, I think the “My Port” could be a little more personal and have more to it.
This won’t kill flipping at all. Smart flippers are going to take advantage of the new system, just like they took advantage of the last major changes COMC implemented. Being one of those flippers, I think that the last changes made the site stronger, and I am finding the historical pricing way more useful than the stupid Beckett pricing.
I do have a suggestion: Could outliers somehow be fixed in the pricing history? I found it hard to believe that a 1992 UD Wayne Gretzky once went for like $3.62, but then I thought of something.
You once performed a customer service for me, refunding me by buying back the card from my port at a very relatively high price. I checked the sales history of that card and yep, the high is about the same price as when you bought it back from me. This obviously skews things considerably. Could this be eliminated? Maybe you could exempt the in-house COMC accounts that buy/sell cards for customer-service reasons from that data?
It’s great – because you can invent something new with situation like this! There could be something like “average price” based on the sales for every item on your page, plus information about how much transaction was there for this one item in specified time frame – one year, half year or so.
Also there could be “average price” per category, I think for example if some player had many similar cards per season just with different sets by one company, you can give average trade price for all of them. For example if there is about dozen different Brandon Knight not numbered sticker autos from dozen 2012-2013 Panini sets. It’s about dozen different cards, but it’s something like one category. My imagination just going on this way.
You can also diferentiate average listing price and final trade price by statistic.
Beckett prices was something like “benchmark” for every item, but you can create your own measure, what is opportunity.
I know usefull things must be easy to use, those are only ideas I get on mind.
Ok done ranting ill try to be helpful now.
Is there not a way to have a suggested retail price like others have talked about. This price would say suggested retail value but would be the Beckett price. Of course this would have to be manually typed in not using becketts checklist. Basically what I’m saying is Tim pays $31 a month to Beckett then take there info but use it in a different way. This would not be as easy for the processing to have to jump between programs, but would work.
I’ll post more details at another point, but COMC was correct in why they did what they did. However, for now — this is sufficient
Just my opinion but all of us were spoiled by a product that was never intended to be used in the way that it was.
What other e-commerce site had the feature of Beckett pricing built in as a comparison? Even the Beckett Marketplace until very recently didn’t have that info available, and my company has sold quite a few cards there over the years without the need for Beckett prices.
While this was a competitive advantage for COMC, I never viewed it as a primary one as there is so much more that makes this site unique and a positive and unique experience for both buyer and seller.
Tim and his company are in the solution business. Having the ability to creates goods and services that create solutions for all parties and as it stands in this business he’s still in the lead for a sizable portion of the buyers and sellers in this category. It’s a testament to COMC that NOBODY else has attempted to come in and replicate what he does at a better price point, as in my opinion it simply isn’t possible.
What’s truly important to the buyer is seeing the actual card, a competitive pricing selection on every card they desire, the peace of mind of the company they’re dealing with, Beckett’s nomenclature, and the ability to be able to pay with funds that were derived from excess cards they sold. These factors are what sets the company apart.
After reading these boards it’s no wonder nobody else would want to attempt this, who needs the grief.
In all honesty COMC should have its own pricing if they really have 1/4 of all cards they are plenty big enough to have there own pricing. Beckett is no longer needed. What’s fustrating is that customer A gets bv and customer b doesn’t. IDEA– Maybe a option in the sellers menu that allows a seller to turn off beckett value. So if I don’t want my buyers to see beckett value I would turn this option on. That way COMC could gauge weather it is nessesary to keep paying beckett for out of touch pricing. I mean if someone could just tell me how you make money off dollar cards that would be awesome? But if you have a card under a dollar you can make .75 on it. How is this possible. I no others have noticed this that cards under a dollar with no book price sells higher then a one that is a dollar. This proves to me that no bv is better. I continue to ask why is Beckett so important to COMC? PLEASE ANSWER THIS QUESTION. If its as simple is there giving you free ad space to promote there product then just tell us. To me Beckett is dragging this site down with beckett. I do understand you think you need there checklist, but i’m sure there checklist is coming from panini or topps or whoever, why are we not kissing the ass of the manufactors for this info. Beckett is getting these checklist from somewhere, why cant COMC do the same? COMC is so so so much better then beckett will ever be thats why i’m wondering why we are catering to them. Boycott Beckett is my attitude.
So you want Beckett prices but you want to boycott Beckett at the same time?
Full disclosure… you are already getting your Beckett pricing via your Beckett Marketplace store Accelerator….decimator….obliviator or whatever it is called these days.
That I do agree with you that the sense of entitlement that many seem to have here is ridiculous..
Above post was directed at Burbank Sportscards….
seriously, why worry about anyone scraping your value data? as for beckett they should be paying COMC for a partnership for value data already as you are one of the top 3 online sales markets for cards. Honestly you guys NEED Beckett values listed again, with added sales history also, with both of those it would Benefit everyone, COMC included.
I want fair pricing for all Jon either do away with it or make it free for all. As we no free is not reality anymore so yes get rid of it.
I don’t see offering a linked subscription as being unfair. If you bought a Beckett online sub then you would be going back and forth looking at prices and then buying. As a service COMC has it built in for those who want it.. Choices are a good thing. I am glad to have the choice to not pay for something I don’t want.
Maybe we should have a option for scans to. Do you not believe that cards with pictures do not sell better. This is the same. It won’t be long and topps and panini will try to own the rights of the pictures. Our we then going to make pictures optional. The people without pictures will most certainly not sell cards.
A couple random thoughts . . .
I collect (almost exclusively) from one set and have kept an Excel file for about six years – every time a card is sold on eBay, I enter a line of data, so I’ve got about 5,000 lines right now. I realize that I am probably in a vast minority here (and this doesn’t really help the sellers on the site), but I can quickly figure out what a good price is and how high I’m willing to go, from the data that I have assembled. eBay keeps a history of completed auctions for something like 3 months (although they recently stopped showing the sale prices of “best offer” sales). Why not add a comments box for each listed card on your site, where people can paste a link to completed eBay sales and see for themselves what cards are selling for?
Also – I like the idea of an average price, maybe a list of the 5 or 10 most recent sales for each card – but if you are collecting data like this, I think the most useful way of looking at it would be via a histogram of all sale prices.
Can we now drop the requirement that offers be at least 50% of the asking price? I have no idea why you would want to limit the top end of my sales and keep from selling off other stuff cheaply. Let sellers pick the % they want to see.
Please make this happen…offer as low as you want!
Thanks for the openness… Tim and crew will continue to do what it takes to provide us with a great offering at a reasonable price. They can’t design a pricing and price guide structure that will make everyone happy, so let’s assume positive intent and keep the comments constructive. We were spoiled by having Beckett BV in there (whether you like Beckett or not) and while some people complained about fee changes, I don’t recall hearing people placing a value on having Beckett BV built in. So, why should we complain when it’s taken away?
It took me 1 minute of playing that game to accumulate 15 “History Points”. At that pace, I it would take me approximately 2,080 hours to look up every card on the site. That’s the equivalent of 40 hours per week for 52 weeks.
I’m starting to really love the historical data, but I really want more. A recent average of the past 5 or 10 sales, or the past year, would be a more useful metric than the highest price ever paid. Of the numbers you list, the number sold compared to the number on the site seems to be the most useful.
As an example, 2010 Bowman Chrome Prospects #BCP1 – Stephen Strasburg. You sold 87 for up to $90.34, and there are 134 on the site for as low as $4.94. But the $90.34 doesn’t tell me if $4.94 is a good price. An average of the last 5 or 10 sales would be more useful.
It would also be useful to see how many of those 87 cards sold in the last month / year vs all time. If possible, it would also be useful to see how long, on average, a particular card is on the site before it sells (or a half-life – the average amount of time for 50% of that card to sell). This metric could be used to calculate “relative strength” of certain cards / players / sets – those which are most likely to sell, and those which are most likely to sit.
If the sales history data could be incorporated into the inventory manager, that would be useful as well. Especially if there was an option in “Show Items”: “All cards priced higher than the highest price the card has ever fetched”, or some such wording.
I generally like the fact that the postage and handling charges are included with the price, and that the price shown is just of the cards which have actually shipped. It gives the prices some wiggle room, yet it’s also reflective of the actual price that someone paid to get the card. Retail buyers like to purchase at a discount to some sort of reference value.
However, there are instances where the raw price would be more useful. For example, when submitting cards to sell on the site, I’d be more interested in the price I’m likely to get. When selling a card, I’d like my asking price to be in line with the likely selling price of the card.
If feasible, I’d suggest a way for sellers to set their preferences to which price they see, similar to the way that we can toggle between “Simplified Shipping Mode” and “Advanced Reseller Mode”.
I have a problem linking up with becke t BV pricing. I could not finish registration and get registered because ever time I tried to scroll down on application it and clicked the up/down bar it would close off and now I ended up with two baseball one month fees and 1 football. Something is wrong with the software tgrying to register with becket. I woul like a refund for the (3) applications I tried to register for at $9.00 apiece and put back into my account untile this is fixed. I only wanted one baseball and (1) football BV hooked up with becket but would also like to have a password and user name to log in which I cannot do because could n ot finish applying on registration form.????
Hi rpodgu2419. I’ve forwarded your request to customer service and they should be able to help you get this resolved.
Thanks for letting us know about the issue.
Jeremy
Weird thing happening with the IQ Test. If a card has a number like GJ-12, I am told I answered incorrectly no matter what I put in. What is the correct format for hyphenated cards?
It’s less time consuming to hit enter and skip the hyphenated cards.
The missing BV is really bad. REALLY REALLY bad. I’ve been buying/selling on your site for 2+ years, and I’ve loved it!! I’m here every day, usually several times a day. I was thinking about possibly purchasing the subscription, but then I thought it wouldn’t make a difference to me at all when I’m selling cards. And THAT’s when having the BV is most useful. Potential buyers seeing how much of a BV discount they’re getting when purchasing is what makes this site work. It would make more sense if a seller could purchase the ability to have buyers see the BV on their cards for sale. It would still suck to have to pay for that, but it would make more sense.
I truly hope this issue isn’t closed in your eyes and something can be worked out. The price to subscribe to Beckett is ridiculous. There’s no way I would pay $30/month to have it, and I know most of your members feel the same way. Look at your membership. There are a handful of BIG sellers and then a bunch of smalltime collectors like me who just like to buy and sell and support their personal collections. WE are the consumers who made this site successful!!
The big VS small sellers thing I am not sure has anything to do with this situation. I consider myself a “big seller” though much of my inventory is elsewhere. Small collectors and have been getting prices one way or another on other sites for years. Either you buy the magazine, pay for the subscription online or you do as I do and use common sense…and not worry about a book price.
Besides…why aren’t you guys on the Beckett forums screaming on them? ..Or are you? I haven’t checked. I am sure the complaining to Beckett by the Rockstars of the marketplace about COMC having pricing, banners on the Beckett site etc put pressure on Beckett Management to put the screws to COMC since this site is kicking butt. No….it is never going to have the selection of 1988 Donruss commons that Beckett has… but when it comes to pricing and quality…this place was running away with it even before several Beckett dealers saw the light and started listing here.
For those of you choosing to leave… good luck. Give Bill Sutherland at Beckett a call. I am sure they would be glad to have you join Rockstar and pay $250 a month to get inventory tools and pricing. Included in that price you’ll also get to read some interesting manifestos telling you why as a small seller you don’t belong there and are only bringing the hobby down…
So the grass is not greener elsewhere…
I agree there really is no other place to sell your cards. I’ve played with Ebay even have done some work with craigslist and facebook selling sites. Nothing lives up to COMC. But that doesn’t mean that there’s not a limit to what I will pay. I’ve come to the realization over the last couple days that buying and selling cards is coming to a end for me. While I love this hobby I will still collect Packers and Badgers stuff but as far as buying to sell I think its time to walk away for me. I have stuff that is being proccessed by COMC as I speak and also have one more shipment for them, to clean out the remander of my cards. Trust me when I tell you I have explored every option for selling cards (even built my own website) and by far COMC is the very best place to sell cards. The reason I tell all of you this, is I do have a few loyal customers and I want to give them a heads up. Plus if COMC ok’s it I will be selling the cardko.net name and cardko account on COMC along with all the cards in it (Once all cards are on the site). It’s been a pleasure to work with everyone and to get to no some of you. It has been a great ride.
The cards in my account are selling cheap but please remember it cost me $.25 to list them and if there newer it probably cost me $.50 to list them. But please send offers. If interested in the Cardko name you can find me on FB.
P.S. You guys take it easy on Tony hes a nice guy.
Cardko thank you for the last sentence… Some folks on the BMP would (and do) disagree with you but they have their hole to crawl in and I am good with that. We have a limit to what we would pay to….and they are 5 cents away from that. If listing fees ever got above 30 cents then it would become cheaper for us to do it ourselves. Even if that happened though…I wouldn’t bail on what I already have listed… At this point the fees to get those cards up have already been paid. So what is the rush to remove them? Plus I would still continue to buy/flip when good deals were found.
?. Now, we made a choice to never keep more than 1000 cards here at a time so my perspective is going to be different from those who have thousands listed. We use COMC to liquidate inventory we can’t sell elsewhere. Others probably rely on it full time. But whatever the use I would caution against jumping ship 2 days after a change is made. I’d give it at least 3 months to see how things shake out. I can understand not sending any more cards in… we are going to scale back our submissions (though we will send some in on Monday) but we are going to continue to do business here. Personally I think this place will keep rocking. And hell…I put up with Beckett for nearly 8 years before I finally took the 400,000 cards and the years of work off of it. So it take a lot for me to walk away.
Thanks Tony
I’m sure i’ll be around for a while and will also be sending a few cards over to my personal account so I can make some money to buy my pc stuff. But for the most part I just need out all this juggling puts strain on me and my family and its just getting to be to much. I guess you would need some background to understand. I’m a stay at home father of a 3 year old and a 1 year old so I do this on the side for some extra cash over the last year I have been buying huge collections and then trying to flip them by sending them into COMC and using ebay a little. So for me all this business is really not a business but time away from my kids. As things get more complicated with fees and new features I just can’t keep up. Scaling down the new features would be a suggestion that I would have its kind of overwhelming or maybe some how to videos for idiots like me. I will defently still be buying on COMC with my personal account. Thabks for everything Tony and COMC.
what happen COMC, what happen? Its so bad that i am not even pricing my latest cards that went live . there was a time i couldnt wait to log in to COMC every few hours(years ago). now, i fear logging in.
Put it this way I’ve been selling for three years now on COMC but in the past year they have alienated the casual seller. I’m pretty much moving on. It is terrible to see something this promising go like this. The fees are extremely high for a base card so ebay has become the cheaper option (if you put them in a big lot). I never thought I would say that.
I think Sportlots is a better place for those cheap base cards. This site was never going to be viable for those…even with the 20 cent “bulk” option
Other than not knowing if Sportlots is going to charge you 3 cents or 20 cents for an 18 cent sale on a card and being unable to have anyone from their company respond to repeated emails over six months they’re fine for low end items as long as you’re one of the 10 biggest dealers there, which means you need to have at least half a million cards listed. Otherwise your inventory gets swallowed up because everyone on there is at the absolute floor they can charge, which last I checked was 18 cents.
Digger I find their percentages easy to understand on Sportlots. They are based on what you sell. Sure trying to sell 1988 Donruss isn’t going to work anywhere..not California, not Ebay, not here. Those are only good for making your inventory numbers more impressive if your business is based on bragging about such things. We use it for their auctions and to list cheap inserts and they sell well in the 40-50 cent range.
I do have an issue i can’t see BV for any card in my port . I thought cards we submitted were shown for us?
Please update the Bulk Price Editor if at all possible. This is a tool I use frequently. Thank you!
Hello Shamrockcards,
We are currently working to get this tool back up and running. We will try to get this functionality back up as quickly as possible.
Regards,
Mark M.
I’m staying to see what happens ……loved the Beckett Value (that’s what brought me here) ….but almost forgot about the site I used before I decided to send cards to this site ……it gives you real time pricing (that clicking about card numbers for points is for the birds….this is easlier) whether from Beckett, Ebay or whomever else it’s out there putting a price on cards (shoot it even list Beckett Prices on some when it dones a search for you) …..monthly fees are $4.99 all sports and they give you a trail period yet to see if you like them …..maybe COMC should hook up with them ….not pushing this site or anything but their motto is “Break Away from the Price Guides” …..don’t know if I can put their name up, but “lizard” is in their name …. it’s a great site for “real time pricing on cards” …..got back to using them to price cards and been selling cards here. Hope this helps somebody.
So what is going on? What is BV? I am lost.
BV …..Beckett Value …..or can be Book Value
Am I imagining things, or did the first draft of this blog mention how points could be build up by purchasing cards? (1 point per 10 cents spent) I’m almost positive I read that. Now it doesn’t appear to be here anymore, nor is it happening when purchases are made. That seemed like a great idea to let people build points naturally by using COMC. I understand the need for a CAPTCHA-like system, but how if earning points per purchase going to effect that? I hope this feature comes back soon. I don’t mind doing the IQ test occasionally, but would rather accumulate points for being an active buyer on the site.
Hi Mike! It’s not mentioned in the blog post, but if you follow the “History Points” link, it’ll take you to the page on COMC.com that discusses how you can earn History Points.
https://www.comc.com/manage/HistoryPoints.aspx
Like the page says, you aren’t buying points directly, but earning them with every purchase of COMC Store Credit. I hope this clears up any confusion.
thanks,
-Moe
Thanks Moe! I knew I read that somewhere. I thought something had changed because I didn’t see it here, and the reason I looked is because I purchased ~$20 worth of cards last night, and expected my points to go up to around 200 because of it. But I didn’t receive any points for my purchases. Are the points for buying not automatically applied? How long is the wait? Its not a big deal, just trying to figure the new system out.
Also, how often does the Historical price data change? Reason I ask that, is that I sold a card yesterday that had a ‘high historical price’ of less than $3, and I sold the card for $4-something. Out of curiosity, I looked today, and noticed my sale hadn’t yet been reflected in the historical pricing data. Just curious how often the numbers will update.
Hi Mike, You don’t get history points for purchasing cards. You get points for deposits onto the site. As for historical data, the data won’t be updated until the person who bought it requests for it to be shipped. I had a card sell for $2 yesterday. Today I looked at the historical data and shows a sale price of $2.85 ($2 for the card plus a prorated 85 cents in shipping). I hope that helps.
Jeff (from the outside looking in).
Hey Mike; you only receive points if you purchase Store Credit, not when you buy cards. Sorry for the confusion there.
And, the historical data is based on cards that are sold *and* shipped out to their buyers. So, there’s a few reasons why that historical data hasn’t been updated – the card buyer may be fliping the card, it might have been bought via Amazon, or they bought it but haven’t requested it to be shipped to them yet, so it’s still waiting in their account.
Thanks for asking!
–moe
Hi guys,
This may have already been ask and answered, this page is too busy to read everything, is there a way to search for sales history on a set/card that is NOT currently listed on COMC?
Phill
Hey Phil! Right now, you can only see the sales history for a card that’s listed for sale on COMC.com. I’ll pass your suggestion on, and see if there are any plans to allow for searches for cards not currently available through COMC.com. Thanks!
– id like an iphone app, or at least a mobile site that has access to the site and our accounts with easy search functions.
-i really like the sale history function, im able to click and see that i’m the lowest or close to the lowest price on the site as opposed to opening every item individually. however, i would really like it if there were some indication that the “lowest” price currently on the site isnt really the lowest listed price, but actually because the user had a sale going on.
not sure why it couldn’t it just say book value? Does Beckett have pricing on cards cornered? If it just said book value and COMC had a Beckett subscription like i already do, then why can’t you say what the value is as long as you don’t say it’s the “Beckett” book value ? Or does COMC get commissions on all referred subscriptions to Beckett?
I am very disappointed with the current changes. But to be honest, COMC has top notch customer service. COMC, your CS is second to none .
I enjoy this new Historical Data. Just had some fun punching in card numbers. Saw some cards I wanted! HA!
That being said, and it was already mentioned, how do we know what to ask for a card? 2008 Bowman Chrome Clayton Kershaw rookies have [105 up to $6.98]. Is that the highest price the card has sold for? That doesn’t help me as a seller, or a buyer. That just tells me ONE person overpaid for a card. It also says there were 129 other on-site transactions. Why do I care about that if I can’t see what they’re actually selling for? It’s a good introduction, but there’s a lot left to be desired.
This has probably already been said, but as a flipper, I would love to see the low and average sales on COMC instead of just the high. Would help not only me, but buyers as well. Might just be what I happen to have in my port right now, but I haven’t had any sales since the switch
If you are no longer using Beckett BV why do I keep getting price changes in BV?
That is a bug. We have 6 years worth of features that need to be updated to reflect the change, and I haven’t gotten to this one yet. It will eventually be adapted.
Is there a way to just “gift” a card to someone? if i want to give a card as a birthday gift and just transport the card to that persons Port? thanks
I don’t know why everyone gives a crap about Beckett prices. The real value is what it sells for and most cards go from 20%-90% below Beckett anyways. Cards are only worth what someone will pay. Beckett is trash.
My personal view is that Beckett BV is over valued and overrated. Yes, it is nice seeing the BV posted next to the price listed for comparison but I also noticed all the BV’s were saying they were from 2006, 2008, 2010, etc…. What good is having a 3 or 7 year old BV anyway? Beckett BV is just the highest someone paid for that card at one of their polled cards shops.
Example: Beckett had a card listed for $25 HBV. A card shop that reports to Beckett saw the new price in the latest Beckett and decided they’d mark theirs as $40. Some poor sap walked in and saw that (insert player name here) card and decided they just MUST have it. Either by being completely clueless or by the person behind the counter telling them how “hot” the card is they forked over say…. $32 and thought they got an awesome deal.
It’s a piece of cardboard. It’s based on what value I give it and what value the seller gives it and where we can meet in the middle. I don’t base any of my purchases on the highest price some person paid on impulse in a card store. Don’t get the wrong idea; I love card stores. Wish I had some around me but when I walk into a store or even at a flea market and ask about a card and the first thing they do is whip out a Beckett and quote me the HBV I just roll my eyes.
I feel like I’m rambling though so; I’ll miss the BV merely as a convenience but won’t be subscribing since that’s money I could use to purchase cards. I look at actual sold prices from other places to base what I offer. I don’t sell anything so I can’t speak for how it affects them. Beckett needs COMC more than you need them.
The history points system is ok for now and getting points for buying store credit is fine. I tried the “game” and doubt I’ll do that much. I used to play a Facebook game a couple years ago and honestly that’s what the history point thing reminds me of. I quit FB because I found I was just wasting time and accomplishing nothing just so I could get some virtual points that didn’t benefit my real life in any way. That plus some of the cards giving me an incorrect answer (even though my answer was correct) so I felt like I was wasting my time when I could’ve been looking for cards to make an offer on. I agree that there should be some more detail. Lowest price paid, highest price paid, average price, price chart over the last month, 3 months, 6 months, 1yr, 2yr,etc… Basically a stock ticker historical chart that will popup.
I would like to see an option to turn on BV for a whole list though. 1 card at a time isn’t that bad but I build sets so when I’m looking at an insert or parallel set of 10 or 50 or 200 cards having a 1 click option to activate would be speedier. While I’m thinking about it having a wanted list that would alert me when a card gets listed would save considerable time.