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Completely fascinating that they can make money with a very human intensive business. I know companies have tried this way if selling with clothes, but none have succeeded. It must be the way they can store millions of cards in a relatively small space.
I did a little digging and found out they have three warehouse facilities, one in Texas, one in Canada, one in Seattle and over 200,000 square feet of space.
I’m a little surprised this isn’t as widely done in other niches. Maybe it is and I just don’t know about it. I guess selling Amazon FBA is the same kind of concept.
There are other consignment card sellers (lots of them, its really common in the hobby because it goes hand in hand with online box breaks) and other big sellers who have a vault model. But COMC does a little bit of everything well. Even with their flaws.
COMC has made a lot of smart partnerships too. For as long as I’ve used their site, you can cash out your store credit (with little to no fees) for gift certificates at one of the biggest online card wholesalers. so you can sell your “extra” cards over time and just keep the ones you want. Then last year, they partnered with a few of the big grading companies. So now you can get any card in your COMC port graded by PSA or CGC. Of course, it takes longer and costs more than if you did it on your own or through a bulk grader. But you can’t beat the convenience.
COMC ran a promotion late last year until the end of January where you could submit any item in your port to auction for $0.75. No minimum fvf, when their normal minimum is $3.50. The math only makes sense for COMC because their eBay fees are cheaper than ours due to volume. Enterprise level, I think its called.
If COMC allowed for customization of their listings, I’m not sure it would make sense to sell cards on eBay. Maybe only the time-sensitive cards where if you wait even until next week the price would change. But for now (and probably forever), that’s a fantasy. And there are a lot of arbitrage opportunities between the two platforms. This weekend I have been finding steals left and right on the COMC platform after barely buying anything there for the last month. And a lot of those cards will sell for a little higher prices, or sell a little faster, on eBay. Scavenging can be funny like that. It’s important to come up with new plans for your business always, but it’s also important to remain open to the opportunities in front of you instead of rigidly sticking with something that’s less profitable. Sometimes deals present themselves and it pays off to jump on them.
Sorry the sale was mostly (?) a weird bust. Cool painting at least. I see those pre-sales where they prices things higher sometimes with the library sales I go to. I don’t really understand the rationale of one price the first day, a different price the next day. Especially when most of these sales are amateur hour. And a lot of them have a half-price day on the last day of their sales. Just price the stuff to sell quickly and raise funds for your organization. Stop putting papers with printouts of eBay listings on stuff or coming up with all these weird price schemes. /rant
On the bright side, you should do really well with those curtains if Terapeak has anything to say about it!
Jay, I wrote a long reply to your post but got swallowed up in the forum. Tried again after some editing and the same thing happened. I saved the post, so if you can’t dig it out from wherever it’s buried in WordPress, let me know and I’ll email it to you.
Quiet in here this week. I hope everyone is enjoying the first days of spring weather.
New Jersey has had plenty of rain over the last week, and I’ve used that time to plan out a spring cleaning. After a couple rounds of auctions over the last few months, my eBay inventory is down to barebones and I will whittle it down even more when I go through the listings again tonight, in preparation of The Philly Show this weekend, where I will drop off a few large boxes of cards at the booth of the consignment company I use.
I have gotten pretty organized with my remaining card inventory with the plan of keeping things sorted into four buckets going forward:
1. individual cards to list in my eBay store
When I started selling full-time a few years ago, this was 90 to 100% of my inventory. I expect it to be roughly 20 to 30% going forward. Maybe slightly higher at certain busy times (World Series, Super Bowl) or if I have a pile of cards which are easy sellers. Sometimes I can acquire 10 or 20 copies of the same card and I like having those in my store inventory because they’re easy to relist.
2. cards for my curated 10 and 20 card lots organized by team
For the next few months, this will be my easiest path to consistently churn out new listings. I have gotten this inventory pretty well organized over the last few months, so it’s just a matter of scanning the lots and making the new listings. I’ve listed at least 3 or 4 of these lots every other week for the last year and they have a decent sell-through rate, so hopefully I can up that to 10+ lots every single week. Some teams I can barely keep in stock, others are slow movers, but maybe consistency in listing will lead to more sales. My net profit on these lots is usually around $10, a little lower than I would like, but the fast sellers make it worth my time — especially with my store so lean.
3. cards to ship to the consignment company
This includes basically all of my new inventory purchases as well as anything I find in my boxes which might sell in the $5 range. At my peak buying, I was sending a box into consignment every week . I am down to one large (500+ cards) box every 2-3 weeks. The processing fees add up as COMC starts putting cards from these shipments into my inventory ($0.50 at the 4 month processing level, $1 at the two week level, extra for graded cards and oversized cards) and they take a cut from every sale, but it’s such a time saver compared to selling on my own. COMC has a lot of different levers you can pull to stimulate sales, like live eBay auctions, regular $0.99 7 day eBay auctions, and sales on your port on their website. I am hoping that they run a nice promotion in April since this is the slow time of the year for selling online. But I know from the last two years that sales will really pick up from October-January.
4. everything else
Inevitably with all my wheeling and dealing, I’ve ended up with boxes full of cards which don’t fit neatly in any of these groups. My team lots need current and/or famous players to sell consistently, junk cards will drop the demand very quickly. There are countless ultra modern graded/autographed/serial numbered/rookie cards which don’t sell for more than a buck or two because the player’s not very good, or the set isn’t collectible, or the card itself isn’t one that someone would want for a personal collection or for its flipping potential
So I’m going to make some flat rate boxes with 500+ cards, sorted by sport, price them in the $300 range and see how well they sell. I listed maybe 5 or 6 boxes like this last year, and they all sold for slightly higher than expected. Can I make 5 or 6 boxes in the next month? I hope so!
Once I have made some progress with all this, and maybe in the moments in between, I will start to tackle a few shelves worth of other random items. Some of it sports related, some not. Probably going to be a lot of donation trips and bulk lots! I don’t really have the physical space or interest in listing $10 items. But I love those $50 and $100 listings.
This is an exciting time for me as it’s cashing in on the many, many hours I spent buying and selling and building my reselling business during the pandemic. I have built up enough of a financial buffer from the last few months (mostly focused on monthly eBay auctions and my consignment sales) that I am able to shift focus like this. It’s hard to project exactly how sales will go since this is new experimental territory, but it should be a profitable couple of months. After that? Who knows what’s in store…
2/25/2024 to 3/2/2024
Items in store: 197
Items sold: 18 — 12 via best offer, 3 via seller initiated offer, 11 via promoted listings
I know it’s “only” 18 items but I’m thrilled that this many items sold with such a small inventory and maybe 10% of those listings at “museum” prices or very long-tail.
Gross sales: $912.19 (down 61% from one year ago)
Net sales: $506.17 (down 68% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $50.68 (up 3% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $126.49— Ethan Salas 2023 Panini National Treasures 1/1 printing plate patch card
Modern cards in a nutshell — Ethan Salas is a 17 year old catcher for the San Diego Padres, signed at age 16 from Venezuela, the #8 top prospect in baseball. His first autographs finally hit the market last month, and even the unnumbered autos from less desirable sets go for $50 to $100. His rare refractor autos from the historically significant and popular Bowman Chrome set sell for $500+ into the thousands of dollars.
I know it sounds crazy, but really it also makes perfect sense. Who knows how good Salas might be in five years…or ten…or fifteen? Then think about the massive increase in card prices over the last fifteen years. Who knows what the card market might swell to by 2030 or 2040? If you’re into flipping, you can convince yourself anything is possible if you understand what makes items valuable. That doesn’t mean you should convince yourself that you’re sitting on piles of money, but lots of people do.
Not me though. I sold this 1/1 printing plate with a piece of Salas jersey for $150. Based on what I know of the Salas market, I think the buyer got a good deal. But I take my profits where I can. This is a newer set, so this was a quick flip. I paid $45 on January 22 from an eBay auction. Knowing the market for these types of cards, I didn’t expect to win that auction, but that’s how bidding goes sometimes. It’s why I will keep riding the cards wave. This was an easy flip and it went almost exactly how I expect.
One of the things I like most about going over the numbers like we do is that it reminds me what sells and what doesn’t. I’ll spend a little extra time over the next week tracking Salas cards and put a little extra thought into his market over the next few months, the next year or two. I might find some great deals but probably not. I don’t know whether he’s going to be the next great player. But it’s a numbers game, and you play the game by buying and selling. It can be very easy to focus on the inventory we currently have and why isn’t it selling yet, damn it, but there is a limitless amount of potential inventory available if you look for it and (this is important) you can make the math work for your life.
Lowest price sold (net): $4.56 — Liberation of Kuwait 1990s board game
I went over this whole saga in Sale of the week thread. Any profit I might have made on this couple dollars thrift store find was swallowed up in undercharging the shipping and all the time I spent packing the thing. But I built a big box from two small boxes and sold a random weird item, saving it from the garbage! Someday I will make more profit from these kinds of items. What a life.
@retro-treasures-wv Hell yeah I am into the food talk!!! I will add that to my list of Philly spots to try. I also need to try Doro Bet (ethiopian fried chicken) and Krispy Krunchy Chicken which is a gas station chain (love weird spots like this). This spring/summer for sure!
My #1 favorite Philly tourist spot to recommend is Reading Terminal Market, basically a huge food hall in Center City on the border of Chinatown. The kind of place everyone should visit once, it’s an experience. There is a good chicken place there called Dienner’s but a little too inconsistent to be the absolute best. Once I try the other spots I will give you the definitive rankings
Try posting the article link:
into 12ft.io
There is a special place in hell for the figures who’ve created paywalls in journalism, and the people in the upper administration of that library can join them there. It’s all so short-sighted.
The Ugg bubble has popped. Price those at the lower end of comps to ensure a quicker sale.
This is one of those “tricks” I have only started to learn recently. But it feels like one of the most important lessons especially for someone moving from part-time to full-time. It’s not that the fast nickel is always better than the slow dime, it’s that sometimes the choice is between a fast nickel and a slow nickel that’s actually a slow penny and you don’t realize it. Sometimes it’s sell it now or the thing is going to sit forever because there’s too much competition and everyone is undercutting each other. That might be a business model that works for some, but not for a scavenger. That’s not our game.
I looked on Terapeak for your ball band duck boots because I got curious what they looked like and you are right, not much info out there at all. And it sounds like your pair are higher quality than anything I could find, too. To the moon!
Those Tony Lama boots must look really neat. I’m a suburban kid and it makes me want to move out to the country. Couple more years of city adjacent living to get out of my system first…
Everyone should read your post because there are some great points in there about shipping volume and finding the balance that works for your business and end/sell similar.
But I am also here for the mice update.
My war on the mice is going well. I’ve caught 4 so far. I’m also making good progress clearing out the death pile I built on my weight lifting platform since I got sick in 2021. I can’t wait to get back to using that area! The mice won’t be getting free reign of that area anymore.
I have my home gym in my office space too. I like having them next to each other. I would not want to share that territory with mice either. I wish you good fortune in the wars to come.
Congrats on the new addition to the family! Amazing!! It is always so inspiring to read your posts and see everything that you accomplish with a full-time job and large family. No doubt you are setting a tremendous example for your kids in so many ways! Plus giving them a lot of great memories and opportunities, all created (in part) by your eBay business.
What was your favorite part of your vacation with your wife?
I learned a new term from your post, sandwich generation. I don’t have kids but have dealt with that type of situation at various points in my life (lots of illness/mental illness in my family) and I hope you’re able to find the time between all of these responsibilities (and eBay) to get the support you need and practice self-care. Always so important!
One of my favorite things about selling on eBay is that you can still keep things moving in your store even if you basically take time off. Find ten minutes and end/sell similar on your oldest 50 listings, or maybe only do 25 but fiddle with the prices and offer settings. That never feels like work, but it almost always leads to a sale or two in the next few days and it’s something that’s been very helpful for me in the last year during periods of little time or motivation for eBay.
@Christine
The live sales you’re describing remind me of Binging with Babish and Chef John. (Yes, I am trying to make this forum into food talk.) I bet the reason some live sellers do that is because it keeps the focus on the items. That is the setup that some card breakers and streamers have too, though many of them are personality-driven and SO over the top like I’m sure a lot of Whatnot is.
It is crazy to me how many young kids (like pre-teen) were at the National card show last year carrying out fancy briefcases full of expensive ($100 and up resale value) cards. I’m a 90s kid and $20 bought a lot of cool cards in my day. Get off my lawn! It is kind of cool (talk about getting a hands-on lesson in about money and finances early) but also bleak and depressing if I think about it too much. At least I know the hobby’s not dying anytime soon!
I have noticed this trend a lot with cards, definitely with box breaks which is this whole weird cards/gambling/entertainment subculture within the card flipping and collecting world that is not for me. Recently I have started submitting some of my cards to sell through my consignor’s live auctions, which you can find a few days a week on the eBay app if you go into live auctions and look for COMC. I am learning every week what sells well there and what doesn’t. There are times where cards will sell for much higher than I expect, even at times higher than another copy of the same exact card for sale on the COMC site or on eBay. Another unusual trend is that cards will sell for much higher than Terapeak selling history, which is typically a great barometer for a card’s value. I’ve noticed it most often with rare cards with a low individual serial number (like xx/10) and cards of very famous or popular players, and this is true across all different sports.
I think FOMO is part of it and I have been thinking these live auctions attract a different crowd entirely than collectors (our ideal eBay customers as long as they’re not too picky) or flippers (maybe not the ideal customer, but I’ll take a flipper’s money any day). It’s like buying from live auctions makes the item inherently more valuable to people in this group, whether it’s to flip or keep for their collection. Maybe it’s just to brag about how they bought this from this Whatnot seller or that live auction?
Anyone have any ideas for what to name this group? The anti-scavengers?
Ebaymom, I do a ton of sniping and I wanted to let you know about the sniping software Gixen. I have no personal relationship with the product, just a long-time very happy user. There is a free version and a paid version for something like $8/year. Basically you provide your login info and copy/paste the item number and your high bid at any point before the auction ends, and the software places your snipe in the last few seconds of the auction. The developer is really responsive to any errors or problems, but they are very rare. It’s probably the best value add for my business in terms of value/$$ except for the quarterly eBay shipping supplies coupon, depending on if we consider those supplies free or not.
