Hello COMC Nation! It’s almost here – the 35th annual National Sports Collectors Convention is just around the corner and we’re pretty excited to see as many people as we can during the week. We’ve got a few, last-minute announcements to make before we head to the airport, that we wanted to share with everyone.
We are accepting submissions!
It’s not a big surprise, sure, but we wanted to assure everyone that we will be accepting card submissions in Cleveland, including cards/boxes that qualify for this year’s “Lucky 7” National Special. We’ll have our computers set up and our team will be able to walk you through the submission process – why carry those boxes of cards around when you can drop them off with us, right?
Free History Points!
With fewer COMC Challenges available, we know it’s been harder for members of the COMC Nation to earn history points – but, if you drop by our booth (#459 in the Corporate Area) and say “Hello!” (Or “Hi!”, or “What’s up?”…we’re flexible), we’ll have a sign up sheet where you can write down your COMC username and earn 1000 points…just for being social. Doesn’t get much easier than that, right?
Suggested List Prices
This has been such a hot button topic for awhile now…the COMC Suggested List Price Feature. Tim first introduced it at the Industry Summit in Las Vegas, last March.
We’re ready to introduce a beta version of the Suggested List Pricing Feature in time for the National show, and we’ll be giving demonstrations of how this great, new feature will work for our users. Be sure to drop by and see how we’re ready to shape the future of the hobby.
Note: As of Monday afternoon, Tim started running the code that activates the SLP feature, and some of our users will notice that the asking prices on some of their cards have been deleted, as a result. We apologize for any inconvenience in this.
Shift in Customer Service Capacity
Since Steve and Moe are going to Cleveland this year, we’re leaving Norbert to occupy the COMC Customer Service office by himself for 4 days. We’re pretty confident that Norbert is up to the challenge, but if you get our voice mail or a slower than usual response to your email, please be patient – For a few days, Norbert’s going to be busier than a 1-eyed cat watching 2 mouse holes.
A new member of the COMC Social Media family
It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve finally got our Instagram account up and running – you can follow us for all kinds of great and occasionally candid pics of the COMC team, in Cleveland and after! And, as well, you can also check out our Facebook and Twitter for #NSCC2014 updates all week long!
Can you share a video of the SLP demo? (Is it “SLP” now instead of “SRP”?) As much as I enjoy the $49.75-related passive-aggressive comments in the blog, I’d love to see more about SLP and when it will go live so I can reprice my cards more accurately. Thanks!
Joel, this is disingenuous. You’ve been studying pricing since you were 10 years old as you stated in a previous blog post but you need to be told that 1980s commons sell for $.25 and not $49.75? Just admit the obvious; you’re gaming the system. That at least makes sense in a selfish, tragedy-of-the-commons way. Your “poor me, I have no idea how to price cards” stance is ridiculous.
Spiffy Joel has a reputation that goes well beyond this bit of nonsense… but he is not the only one without brains or ethics that are doing the same thing. Sadly there will always be people without integrity who will take advantage of any loophole given to them. We can only hope COMC closes them and in the meantime, those sellers are just causing themselves self inflicted wounds and costing themselves business because I for one will pay a higher price to avoid certain sellers who have played the “raise the price after an offer game” or price things for no other purpose but to get on the leaderboards.
Can you provide a link? I’ve never been one to study pricing. I didn’t even buy my first Beckett until I was 11 (you never forget), although I don’t think I would have shared that kind of information in the first place. (It’s not really private, but it’s a little self-indulgent, don’t you think? Why would anyone care?)
I have to price thousands of cards every month. It is much faster for me to price cards with BVs. I would rather stick a placeholder on it to get the card out of my queue. That’s all it is. How is it gaming the system? They’re my cards. I want people to check them out. Or at least under the site’s old name I did. Now I want them to, er, “com” “see” them.
Joel, I misremembered the bit about studying pricing. Your comment was as follows:
“joelshitshow says:
December 31, 2013 at 2:48 pm
Sounds like a logical next step to me!
I bought my first price guide at 11 and was a math major till I was a sophomore in college. In a lot of ways, you’re doing the same things I didn’t have the discipline to pursue. So I’m quite excited to hear about this.”
If you’re using the $49.75 as a placeholder only, why not try, say, $1.75, which is still a great profit if your card sells? This frustrates me because you sometimes appear to have the interests of the overall site at heart, but sometimes not. I’m a small volume seller and not at all your direct competition, but I really don’t want people to see wildly overpriced items on their first visit to the site and never return, and I worry that that happens.
I think I see what you’re getting at. It sounds like you’re saying, “they’re all commons, so why not pick a lower price?” Is that right? The issue is they’re not all commons. The only things they have in, um, common are that they’re unique to the site and have no BV. Also, some of them are PC cards. COM see my cards at COMC and all that jazz. This site wasn’t always about buying and selling first. I don’t always use it that way.
As far as people explicitly finding my mispriced cards and leaving the site? I think if it were happening there would either be a policy change, or someone at COMC would approach me about it. Ultimately, it hurts COMC the most.
And as far as the price guide goes, that was pretty self-indulgent 🙁 Judging by the timestamp I must have started my NYE drinking early.
I think I have finally found someone who makes me laugh more than the guy who owns Burbank Sportscards. Until now he was by far the most delusional person I might have ever had the misfortune of interacting with in my life. Then again… Joel is by far not the worst offender in this instance as this example will show… and the offender here has a port full of such “show cards” http://www.comc.com/Cards/Baseball/1990/Donruss/548/Charlie_Hayes/1972775
We’ll be discussing the Suggested List Price feature while we’re in Cleveland – when we get back to Washington, we’ll try and put together something for everyone who didn’t make it to the National. Thanks!
See you guys there!
Hopefully the “suggested” price will be a guide for those who like to make themselves and the site look foolish by charging $49.98 for generic donruss commons and the like…
Not to steal the thunder of this SLP system, but does the removal of the coins menu with the coming soon dropdown mean COMC is not going to venture into that arena?
Hey Cousin Jimmy,
No, we just rearranged the menu to include categories of items we currently support on the site.
Couple comments and suggestions:
1) I’m a big fan of the feature to see cards that are sold out. Great to see what you have listed, even if they’re no longer for sale.
2) The “view sold out” feature only shows one picture, even if several copies of a card have sold. This is one thing is the card is a mass-produced common, but for rarer cards, it would be nice to see what copies you have sold. For example, I was just looking at a Jonny Gomes card /27, of which about 10 are accounted for (that I know of). While you have sold two copies, only one is pictured; it would be nice to see what serial number the other card has.
3) Along those lines, are there any ideas and/or plans to put in place a system to let users make offers on already sold cards (with COMC as middleman to the original buyers)?
4) The idea of using the COMC challenges to catalog cameos was brought up, I think by Moe, some number of months ago. Is this still in the works, and if so, any idea on timing?
Thanks!
Please tell me that the minimum price based on percentage is going to go away on the SRP/SLP catalog. I believe there should be a cap at the other end (with exceptions allowed as long as a seller can show reasonable evidence that a card should be priced above SRP) – however those of us who are trying to sell cards for less than 10% of SRP for whatever reason need to be able to price competitively and for the market.
I have a card listed at .11 right now – would like to drop it to .10. However, this isn’t allowed currently. The odd thing is that the SWP is .08 – shouldn’t I be able to at least price it at the SWP?
It’s only been a few days. I’m sure they’ll figure it out. That’s why it’s a beta 🙂
I like the idea of points to be given at the show; however, will you be putting forth any opportunities for those of us who couldnt make it?
Hi from Cleveland! And, to answer your question, Tim’s working on some options for earning/getting history points in the very near future. We’ll be making announcements on that soon!
I don’t know about anyone else but I am growing really tired of this site/service. I sent in 150 items in April and it wasn’t completed until late July with zero emails or explanation until I sent an email and got the typical response (poor us we got hosed by Beckett and we are building the catalog). Personally I bought the listing service to get cards with SRPs that are based on BV. I got a small discount on the listing charge but no where near where it should have been, given it took 3 1/2 months to list these cards. Mysteriously in mid July it said I have 14 items remaining to list then 1 card was added to my inventory for me to price and the remaining number went down to 1 and now it reads zero without anything added to my inventory. It has been so long I have no idea what is potentially missing or if anything really is missing. Unlike others who are serious sellers on here I send cards to sell and then use the money to buy other cards for my PC. In this latest round it took 8 days for the shipment of my purchases to be processed. Anyone else having similar issues?
I’ve waited a while too for a shipment. Used to be out the door in two days. Now its five or more days minimum. Service has definitely gone down. And the prices for some of the cards? Wow, COMC needs to reign that in somehow. Some people will show up here for the first time and see $25 commons and get scared off. Wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not coming back.
The shipping delay is due to the enormous popularity of our free promotions and free shipping special in combination with the being slightly short handed for the National. We are now back to full strength and expect to get back to regular shipping times by next week.
Regarding the overpriced commons, that is one of the goals of the SRP. As we refine the SRP, we will be able to use it to bound what people can set as an asking price.