Advice on COMC

[Yzerfan]

Hey all,

I am thinking of sending a bunch of cards to COMC. My life has become so hectic that I don't really have time to make deals, and look through buckets, and package envelopes and etc. so I am thinking of going the consignment route to stay in the hobby. My question is, has anybody dealt with this site? What are some of the Pros and Cons? I know that it is 0.25 cents per listing and I am not looking to make a bunch of cash or anything, it is mostly just to acquire new cards so the 20% cash out fee doesn't really apply to me. Any advice would be helpful.

[30ranfordfan]

I sent 500 cards to them back in August. It was a lot of stuff I would consider to be low to mid end. Some GU, Autos, Parallels, RCs, Inserts. They were priced anywhere from 50 cents to 15 dollars.

I've sold close to 50 of them, and have made back all the money I spent listing & shipping, plus a bit extra (cost me about $100, all in, and I've done about $120 in sales).

The site is incredibly easy to use (IMO) and they do a very nice job with scanning everything and getting it into your inventory. In 500 cards I think they made one listing error with my cards. I flagged it, and it was corrected in less than an hour. Their customer service (responding to emails, questions I've had) is VERY quick.

I sent them a lot of stuff that I felt I could not move in trade (here, or other sites) and was not worth the effort to try and sell on eBay. So my expectations of quick sales on their site were pretty minimal.... I mean, there's a reason why I have a whole bunch of parallels sitting in a box that I don't want, and have trouble trying to move. Same with the $5 autos. The ability to buy cards from multiple sellers, and get that single flat rate $3 shipping means that those 50 cent cards are very sellable though, if there is someone to buy it. I sold a Doug Lynch RC from 2003 Pacific (50 cents) the other day. What are the chances I could have done that here? I think zero.

So - my advice: It's a great site, but temper your expectations. There's a very good chance that you'll send them cards that will still be in your inventory a year later. I would be willing to bet that a large percentage of them will be (unless you're sending them all higher end, easy to move stuff).

The fees though, IMO, are very reasonable. You can list for about 20 cents per card (depending on which option you take). They get a quarter per card on the sale.... but that's worked right into your selling price. When you fill it in, you have the blank text box to put your price, and it's got "+ $0.25" written right beside it. They are very transparent. Shipping 500 card to them cost me something like $20, so have to factor that in too. I believe that all cards over 75 cents in listing price will cost you 1 cent, per month, to keep in your inventory after the first three months.


Even the 20% cash out fee, when you consider how much time / effort would go into an eBay listing... and how much you lose in eBay / paypal fees: 20% isn't bad at all. As of yet, I have not done a cash out, just spent my earnings on cards I wanted for my collection.

Only con to using the site: You no longer have the cards in hand. You can't trade, sell, whatever. They're gone. You could asked to have them shipped back to you (of course) but I have no idea what the turn around time would be on something like that.

I've been happy enough with them that I dropped off another 1000 cards @ the Expo. Will still pay the listing fees, but it saved me the shipping costs.

[Yzerfan]

Thank you for your input! I think I am going to send them 100 cards to start and see what happens. I am going to keep a bunch of my 'easy to move' stuff in my possession but for the rest of it I will send to COMC. The fees are extremely reasonable and I feel like they are better than ebay for moving set killers and lower end autos and such. Thanks again for the advice, you said what I needed to hear.