Tuesday, January 20, 2015

I'm kinda killing this COMC thing (some tips and some cards I bought with the spoils)

So it took a while - several years in fact (I think I've been a seller on the site since 2011 at the earliest), but I am finally pretty good at selling on COMC.  I sent in 100 cards a while back for like $35 and added $10 to it later, so that was my initial investment.  I now sit at $193.74 in my COMC account, plus 64 cards with an asking price of $170 (realistically I can get $42 for them) bringing me around a net of $235.  All that plus I bought tons of Shyrone Stith cards for me (with more on the way) plus I bought some random cards I liked, plus I bought cards for a few bloggers...it's really all so good.

Anyways, how am I doing it?  Here's a few tips I'd offer:
1. Flipping is awesome - I think a lot of people agree that COMC is a big place for flipping cards, but really I didn't sell a lot until I found my niche as a flipper.  I am a guy who buys low and sells higher...but not highest.  Like I might see a 10 cent card, buy it, price it at 35 cents, and then sell it to a guy who prices it at 75.  It's nickel and diming at times...but those nickel and dimes add up.

2. When you get tired of flipping small time, go port sales - I found a guy who will buy my ports, every time, at 25% of my asking price.  This is huge...then I can just find crazy underpriced cards (which isn't so hard with sales and whatnot), price them closer to the regular price (but still lowest on the site) and then sell the whole port to this guy for a profit.  So finding someone who will buy your ports is a very easy way to get money...makes the process a lot quicker for sure.

3. Accept (or counter) every offer - Yeah some schmoes will offer diddlysquat for your awesome cards...but the more you accept or counter the more rep you build with certain sellers.  I know a few guys who regularly check my port now "just in case" because we built up a good relationship.  Works in the real world, works in the COMC world too.

4. Advertise - I do this on Blowout forums in their spam section, and it helps a lot.  Also doesn't hurt to throw the words auto accept in there...then people know they can offer less and that your port will automatically accept it - like how mine currently accepts 50% off offers automatically, which is nice.

So there's a few tips.  But on to the cardboard portion of this post - here's two cards I grabbed recently to reach 30 cards shipped for the New Year's shipping credit.  Both are really random, but both are also fairly epic...especially the first one.

This first card only cost me $2.26 shipped.  I was originally going to try to flip it for more...but the longer it sat in my port the more I grew to appreciate it.  It's not every day you can find a patch auto /50 of a 1st round pick (even of the bust variety) that cheap:
Yes, it's Peter Warrick, and yes, his signature leaves a little something to be desired, but otherwise isn't this a pretty awesome card?  One heck of a patch, cool die cut window, nice coloring, random auto there...I really dig it.  The back is cool too:
Anytime a company uses a picture of "the actual jersey this piece came from," I basically have to have that card.  It doesn't mention the auto...which is weird...but Beckett and other sites back up that there should be one there, so that made me feel fine about it.

I wonder what this card sold for when it was new?  I could picture this being like a $100 card easy back in the day.  Now it's nothing...but I love it.  On a random note, I bought a JaMarcus Russell auto /100 for like $3.50 around the same time and almost kept that too - but it was just the auto, no patch, so I moved it at a profit lol.

The other card I grabbed is more random to you but less random to me.  It's a Madden '04 guy - Trung Canidate:
Love that late Pacific stuff.  Even though this is probably from a store bought jersey and was never game worn, it is still a neat patch of a guy with a short lived career.
Numbered to just /275 which is also cool.  Canidate was CRAZY fast coming out of the draft, and Madden reflected that with a 96 speed rating in their game, which was one of the tops in the game.  So I used him sometimes..but he was also so fast that it sort of made it unfair to have him on your team, so I often traded to make him some other team's starter.  After all he was never going to start for the Rams, as Marshall Faulk is like a 98 in the game and Lamar Gordon somehow always won the computer's third down back job.

IRL, Canidate spent three years in St. Louis where he didn't do much, and then was traded to Washington and started ten games before Clinton Portis came to town.  Not awful, but definitely not as great as some of his Madden '04 exploits.

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