Sunday Seller Recap - something for Night Owl and Dodger fans!

COMC Weekly Stats

My Current Port: http://www.comc.com/Users/SpastikMooss,sh

Cards Sold in the last week: 82
Total money earned from those sales: 62.47
Profit made on those sales (sale cost-initial cost of purchase): 5.71
Cards bought in the last week: 87
Total price paid for those cards: 85.08
Total net credit for the week (Total money earned - Total price paid): -22.61
Net Credit since I began this blog segment: $49.46
Most Recent Sale: 2013 Chrome Francisco Liriano, bought for 11 cents, sold for 12 cents

A decent net loss this week, but that always happens after a port sale - you then have to spend money to refill the port!  I bought a lot of big ticket items this week and already sold a few, so hopefully when even more sell I'll end up with some nice profits!

Best Sales of the Week

3rd most profit: Bought a bunch of autos for 50 cents recently.  This Olsen was one of them, and it sold this morning for a cool $1.20.  70 cents in profit!

2nd most profit: I took a chance on some pricey cards this week, one of which was a Giancarlo Stanton Auto at $22.28.  I noticed that one guy had like 12 of them all $15 higher, so I messaged him about buying mine and he agreed to for $23.75.  So a $1.47 profit!

Most profit made on a single card: The winner of the week is definitely a Derek Jeter RC I bought though.  I got it for $7.50 in a sale, it sold for $9.21.  All told, a $1.71 profit.

How did last week's focus cards do?

I sold them all except one Soler.  Only about 20 cents in profit, which is okay but no great shakes.  Hopefully the other Soler gets me a little more.

Focus cards for this week

I spent way too much on this Don Sutton auto /10...but I think it's beautiful

And I grabbed a few Andre Ellington Score RCs.  He's banged up this week but in the future I expect big things

COMC Overall Stats

Current Cards for Sale: 109 cards, 100 distinct

Total Asking Price: $144.05

Total SRP (their version of Book Value): $107.00 (72 cards still need to be priced)

September 2014 Sales: 58 cards for $37.49

2014 in general: 3,002 cards for $975.94

Sunday Seller Recap: PORT SALE!

COMC Weekly Stats

My Current Port: http://www.comc.com/Users/SpastikMooss,sh

Cards Sold in the last week: 180
Total money earned from those sales: 75.67
Profit made on those sales (sale cost-initial cost of purchase): -32.89
Cards bought in the last week: 100
Total price paid for those cards: 28.28
Total net credit for the week (Total money earned - Total price paid): 47.39
Net Credit since I began this blog segment: $72.07
Most Recent Sale: 2013 Chrome Tyler Eifert, bought for 8 cents, sold for 9 cents

If you've never heard of a Port Sale on COMC before, they're pretty easy to do, and a great way to get a lot of credit quick.  Basically you up and sell all of your stuff in one fell swoop.  Typically you have to list your port on the site to do so (and pay $10 each week its listed as you take offers), but this week I just sold direct to a guy on Blowout.  Technically I lost out in money as I undersold on a lot of cards - but it let me grab a lot of new stuff which should sell even better - so I‘m happy with the influx of credit, especially since it let me make yet another 50% off purchase from Ajax1723!

Best Sales of the Week

3rd most profit: So obviously everything sold in the port sale.  Everything ends up with weird prices when it all sells at once, but when all was said and done this Felipe Rivero #'d jersey made the most profit, selling at $1 after I bought it for 68 cents.  So a 32 cent profit!

2nd most profit: The best two sales in my port this week both came on Griffey cards from the same set, and both came since the Port Sale.  This Griffey is #100 from 1998 Finest - I bought it for 24 cents and sold it for 74 cents - a tidy little 50 cent profit!

Most profit made on a single card: The other Griffey is #101 from 1999 Finest.  I don't know what makes it different (aside from the year) but it was also bought for 24 cents and then sold for $1.22.  So 98 cents all told in profit.

How did last week's focus cards do?

Well I sold them all - so that's neat.

Focus cards for this week

I tend to try and buy hot players all the time.  Griffey, Trout, guys like that.  This week I bought a few Jorge Solers and expect them to sell fairly quickly.

I also grabbed some weird 1995 Ultra Marvel cards.  They're the Marvel Superheros, but on Spring Break.  The two I bought are Storm and Rogue.  No idea how they'll sell, but they were really cheap and I think they're kinda neat - so here's to hoping they make me a little profit!

COMC Overall Stats

Current Cards for Sale: 100 cards, 93 distinct

Total Asking Price: $88.80

Total SRP (their version of Book Value): $115.00 (68 cards still need to be priced)

August 2014 Sales: 596 cards for $185.76

2014 in general: 2,921 cards for $913.57

Sunday Seller Recap - Making bank last minute

This week's sales were plodding along for the majority of the week, so I posted a forum on Blowout saying I was hoping to make one sale to at least break even.  Next thing I knew I was well in the green, which made me all:

What a week it was for COMC!

COMC Weekly Stats

My Current Port: http://www.comc.com/Users/SpastikMooss,sh

Cards Sold in the last week: 97
Total money earned from those sales: 32.39
Profit made on those sales (sale cost-initial cost of purchase): 7.75
Cards bought in the last week: 58
Total price paid for those cards: 21.49
Total net credit for the week (Total money earned - Total price paid): 10.90
Net Credit since I began this blog segment: $24.68
Most Recent Sale: 2012 Bowman Hunter Pence Blue Border /500 (Bought for 10 cents, sold for 15 cents)

I was basically sitting at even numbers with a day left - about $15 in sales, maybe.  But I posted that thread and people came running - made lots of good prospect sales, auto sales, sold all my highest profits of the week - it was awesome.  I even made enough to buy some stuff from Ajax1723, who is accepting all offers (even 50% off) through midnight tonight.  So I got a ton of good stuff to resell, and if you guys are interested in flipping or just finding stuff for your collection, I advise you check him out and make some offers!

Best Sales of the Week

3rd most profit: My third most profit spot is a tie.  I bought a Wade Townsend (misnamed Wayne Tolleson, but it doesn't really matter) auto for 10 cents from Ooosh that sold for 40 cents, and a Kevin Boss auto for 60 cents that later sold for 90.  In the end, both sold at a 30 cent profit.

2nd most profit: My 2nd biggest profit is actually my first sale of a focus card!  I bought that Scott Milanovich XFL relic thinking I could make some coin on it, and I did.  Purchased at $1.50, sold at $2, for a 50 cent profit!

Most profit made on a single card: My biggest sale of the week is one of my best profits yet.  Earlier this week I bought a David DeCastro auto, #'d 1/49, for just $1.19.  I figured it'd do well - he's a decent active Steeler with few autographs to his name, and this one was numbered 1/xx, which doesn't mean much to me, but does mean much to some.

I figured I'd accept an offer on it or something, but instead someone bought it at my price of $4.50, leading to a profit of $3.31.  So definitely a good find with this card!

How did last week's focus cards do?

Last week I mentioned the Milanovich card (which sold) along with a Ricky Stanzi auto and a Doug Martin auto.  I figured I'd have to wait on the Stanzi and the Martin, and that has proven true as they still sit in my port.  I haven't sold any of my other focus cards yet either...but again that's mostly because they're cards that take time to flip.

The only exception are my Thaddeus Lewis autos - he's losing the battle for Bills backup QB and might get cut, which means those cards could end up becoming losses unless they end up in my PC.  I thought Lewis had a chance for a while, but Jeff Tuel has looked a lot better, and Lewis didn't even play in the Bills' most recent preseason game, which does not bode well at all.

Focus cards for this week

I mentioned that I bought a few cards from AJax this week, and so I figured I'd use a few of those as my focus cards this week.  My main stuff I bought from him was prospect focused - first a nice auto of a Fangraphs favorite that I snatched up very cheap.

I don't know how many of you guys know about Jace Peterson, but he's hitting .269/.377/.438 at AAA for the Padres this year.  Granted it's in the PCL, so those numbers are inflated a bit, but it's not like Jedd Gyorko and Everth Cabrera aren't surpassable with a little more seasoning for Peterson.

I also grabbed a Giovani Bernard cards, as I expect him to have a HUGE year in Cincinnati.

And then two Francisco Lindor cards - odds are he'll be a September call up for the Indians and then a probable SS starter in 2015, so these cards could see an uptick in sales price.  The blue is /500.

I'll throw one last focus card in here too.  AJax had a Keenan Allen RC for sale at a price that looked decent to me.  I looked to see what other cards like it priced like, and found most close but then the lowest priced card was at 25 cents.  That's an easy buy at that price, and while I now have it over $2 (still lowest on the site), I expect to get something in the 50-75 cent range when it's all said and done.

COMC Overall Stats

Current Cards for Sale: 170 total, 140 distinct

Total Asking Price: $228.53

Total SRP (their version of Book Value): $561.00 (130 cards still need to be priced)

August 2014 Sales: 414 cards for $110.01

2014 in general: 2,739 cards for $837.82

Seller Sunday Recap - Finding the Non-Sale Sale

So you may have noticed there was no buyer recap this week.  That's because no new cards made their way into my possession (sad face).  It's okay, this will happen a lot until my teaching paychecks start coming in in a few weeks.  And even then they might happen a lot anyways since I collect such a small variety of cards.

BUT FRET NOT!  THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A SELLER SUNDAY!

COMC Weekly Stats

My Current Port: http://www.comc.com/Users/SpastikMooss,sh

Cards Sold in the last week: 164
Total money earned from those sales: $31.59
Profit made on those sales (sale cost-initial cost of purchase): $5.30
Most Recent Sale: 1991 X-Force #60 Deadpool, bought for 23 cents, sold for 16 cents (really sold as part of a 45 card lot where I profited...but when you sell 45 cards at once COMC sets all cards at a certain price based on overall discount).
Cards bought in the last week: 121
Total price paid for those cards: 36.80
Total net credit for the week (Total money earned - Total price paid): -$5.21
Net Credit since I began this blog segment: $13.78

So this is the first week of this COMC Weekly thing where I go negative.  I'm not really all that concerned about it, especially because I know I grabbed some great stuff this week that might take a little longer to sell, but which will definitely move in time at a bigger profit!   Gotta spend money to make money and  all that jazz yadda yadda yadda...

I also bought a ton of cards for resale this week at nice prices.  My favorite actually occurred this morning, as seller Ooosh (a Blowout Forums legend) put her cards for sale without having a sale.  When I say that, I mean she drastically cut her prices on everything to the point that it acted like a sale.  The only way to really find these sales is to check COMC's inventory by lowest price and find a card lower than 9 cents (anything 8 cents and under typically gets bought within the hour).  I noticed a bunch of 5 cent cards and that led me to Ooosh and some quick profits, as well as some cool stuff like a few nice autos for under $1.

I've found like 3 or 4 of those sales before, and they're always nice.  I got some $4 cards for 15 cents, grabbed an Andre Johnson jersey card for a quarter - stuff like that.  So if you see some really cheap/sub 9 cent cards, never be afraid to go into the seller's port and see what they have priced a little higher.  You might just find some crazy deals!

Best Sales of the Week

3rd most profit: This month's third most profitable sale came on a Bob Gibson Sepia card /525 that I sold to a flipper.  I bought it originally for 23 cents, and he bought it for 38 from me.  So a grand total profit of 15 cents.

2nd most profit: The next card was also sold to a flipper, who I may have a good thing going with in the future.  He bought this card from me for 30 cents, and when I thanked him for buying it on Blowout, he messaged back saying he would always snatch up "cards like this."  By "cards like this," he meant cards with a ton of profit room - so like this one I grabbed at 13 cents and listed at 30, but the next lowest price on the site was like $1.50.  So I make a little profit (specifically 17 cents here), he has potential for much more.  Works for me!

Most profit made on a single card: My best sale went to a non-flipper, as they tend to.  I mentioned last week that I was high on Corey Kluber and that I bought up a few of his cards on the cheap.  Well this week I sold, surprisingly, his Topps Update 2013 base card, at 72 cents.  I bought it for just 17 cents, so that's a swell little 55 cent flip!

How did last week's focus cards do?

Last week I mentioned a Josh Reddick Autograph, a Marvin Harrison Parallel, and a Solomon Bates Patch/Auto, all of which I still own.  I also mentioned Kluber's blue parallel of the Update card and in passing mentioned the base) so if you count that I sold one of those cards!

I'm also still sitting on the Colin Moran and Eduardo Rodriguez autos from two weeks ago.  Moran is doing quite nicely in AA for the Astros, while Rodriguez has a 1.04 ERA in 3 starts for Boston's AA Portland Sea Dogs.  So I think their hype can build up and get those cards sold, which was the plan all along.

Focus cards for this week

I know the jerseys/relics from 2001 Topps XFL can be kind of hard to come by, so when I saw this Scott Milanovich football piece in a sale, I had to grab it.  I repriced it to $4, which is the cheapest of any XFL relic on the site:

I also had to grab this Ricky Stanzi manufactured auto.  I know he's a backup (for the Jags of all teams) who might not even make the roster, but he has somewhat of a college following and this is actually the parallel auto /299 (the base version is a black helmet).  So I grabbed it and mine is currently priced at $14 (next highest on site is $29.55).

Finally we get to my biggest purchase price-wise...a Doug Martin Sage Next Auto.  If he can bounce back this year, this card should sell VERY well, considering it's #'d out of 10.  I'm envisioning an Amazon sale with this one, and currently have it priced at $30:

COMC Overall Stats

Current Cards for Sale: 208 total, 171 distinct

Total Asking Price: $296.60

Total SRP (their version of Book Value): $617.25 (130 cards still need to be priced)

August 2014 Sales: 317 cards for $77.57

2014 in general: 2,642 cards for $805.38

Sunday Seller Recap - Why Promoting Helps

Now that I have a target date from my last COMC post, I can note how I've done saleswise in the past 7 days.  I thought this would be fun to track, so I'll add some weekly stats to these posts now too!   We'll see how it changes especially when I can't buy as much come the school year.

COMC Weekly Stats

Cards Sold in the last week: 137
Total money earned from those sales: $43.78
Profit made on those sales (sale cost-initial cost of purchase): $9.23
Most Recent Sale: 1990 Post Mark McGwire, bought for 10 cents, sold for 23 cents
Cards bought in the last week: 82
Total price paid for those cards: 24.79
Total net credit for the week (Total money earned - Total price paid): $18.99

So not a bad little week at all.  Around 80 of those sales came from one flipper I ran into through Blowout.  I had noticed he would buy cards of mine every now and then to flip, so I sent him (and a few other guys) a message saying I dropped some prices and they were welcome to buy some flips if they wanted.  A few guys nibbled, but this one guy just went in and bought everything that seemingly wasn't nailed down, including most all of my Tom Glavines.  And all it took was me sending a message of "Hey, feel free to buy my stuff."

Best Sales of the Week

3rd most profit: My third most profitable sale of the week came, once again, thanks to some self-promotion.  I mentioned on COMC that I was auto-accepting 50% off any half off offers, and someone sent me one for my Chris Roberson auto /1200.  I bought it for 38 cents, they bought it for 83 cents, meaning I made a $0.43 profit.

2nd most profit: My 2nd most profitable card of the week came thanks to some ingenuity and Amazon.  On COMC you have the option to also list your cards on Amazon, though Amazon then gets a 20% cut of your sale price.  I have the option selected and I see a lot of cards sell there for great prices.  Well I recently bought three Jake Arrieta cards on the site that seemed really cheap.  It was his 2007 Tristar card, and I spent $0.69 for all three cards.  I re-priced them all in the $1.10-$1.20 range.

Well someone on Amazon, likely loving his Cubs success, bought one.  My end sales price was $1 after the percentage, so I netted a profit of $0.77 on the Arrieta.

Most profit made on a single card: My best flip of the week was actually sold right after I posted my first Seller Recap.  I bought up a Justin Smith PressPass auto a while back, because it was only $1.58 which seemed crazy cheap for the autograph of an occasional All-Pro.  I had it listed North of $5, but a guy offered me $2.75, and I accepted.  That brought me a profit of $1.17, easily the best single card profit of the week!

How did last week's focus cards do?

Last week I mentioned a few cards that I bought to flip, including two trade deadline related autographs (Colin Moran and Eduardo Rodriguez) along with two distinct (four cards total) Thaddeus Lewis autographs.  All six of those cards are still in my possession, so a week out this flip hasn't gained me any extra coin.  There's plenty of time for that to change!

Focus cards for this week

I was actually having a pretty quiet buying week until I noticed a sale from jmash24 on Friday night.  It was something like 80% off and the cards were CHEAP!  I ended up buying 26 cards from him in a little over 10 minutes, most of which was small, but which also included the two cards below that I really liked:

This Josh Reddick Auto was stupid cheap, and has previously sold as high as $35.  I have it listed at $20 right now.

This really beautiful Marvin Harrison "New Age" insert just was too cool not to get, even if Mr. Harrison doesn't sell too well typically.  This set does okay on Ebay though, so I have mine listed at $4.50.

I also grabbed a few cards that I previously sold in a port sale (lol).  A fellow Blowout user bought my entire port (twice actually), and in the port were some Corey Kluber cards, as I love his rise to excellence and think he should sell better than he does.  The guy got a little restless with his current port and drastically dropped prices, so I re-grabbed his 2013 Topps Update Blue Parallel (along with a 2014 Topps Gold and an Update base) and listed it at $1.20 for now:

My final focus card this week is me taking a (semi-) plunge into non-MLB prospecting.  I found a sale that had a 2012 Panini USA baseball two-color patch/autograph /35 of Solomon Bates for fairly cheap.  I took a peak at his stats and the guy, although he's still in high school, looks to have some real dynamite stuff.  So I figured it was worth the gamble and dropped a few bucks on him.  It's now listed at $20 and we'll see if he can gain some hype and gain me some profit!

That'll do it for this week's seller recap!  As usual I'll leave you with the net sales for the year - when there are EBay or other sales to recap I'll throw those down here as well.

COMC Overall Stats

Current Cards for Sale: 254 total, 207 distinct

Total Asking Price: 282.64

Total SRP (their version of Book Value): 624.25 (with 162 cards yet to price)

August 2014 Sales: 146 items for $45.99

2014 in general: 2,471 items for $773.80

Sunday Seller Recap - Let's get this started!

So I'm not totally sure how I'll format the posts for any of these days yet, so we'll kind of figure it out together as we go.  Sound good?  Good!  Today's seller recap will be all COMC based with a sprinkle of Sportlots thrown in, as I haven't touched Ebay in a good long while.

I'll start with Sportlots. 

I actually sold three cards on Sportlots within 24 hours of listing my account.  They were three Tony Cingrani cards and the total sales price was under $1.  I then never saw another sale for the next few months.  So if you look under my name on Sportlots today, you will see 0 cards listed for sale.  I think it's a great place to sell cards for guys with a lot of cards from certain sets, especially vintage sets, but for someone like me with a lot of assorted 90's junk, it wasn't any good.

So if you have like 300 1978 Topps cards lying around, think about Sportlots.

If you have 3 1995 Topps cards and 4 XFL cards and 2 Power Rangers cards...don't.

So on to COMC...first I need an obligatory

I believe I mentioned it before, but for those not in the know, COMC's past 4 months of missing information and slowed processing times all comes back to Beckett.  In a nutshell, Beckett tried to buy COMC outright, and COMC said no.  Beckett then did the equivalent of a 4 year old toddler tantrum by bringing charges against COMC and requiring that they stop using Beckett's pricing and Beckett's checklist almost immediately.  Which is pretty insane...the pricing was semi-expected and a lot of people use other means (like most recent Ebay completed sales) as their source for prices anyways, but the Beckett checklist is THE checklist for cardboard today.  Odds are if you collect a set, or player, or team, you've taken a peek at Beckett's checklist to see what cards you needed.  So now COMC has been making their own checklist from scratch with user help...it's been a long tedious process but it's kind of neat to watch them rebuild themselves from the scrapheap up.

Anyways, this is a seller post, so I'll refocus.  I sent in 100 cards to COMC in February, and most were uploaded by April, the 8 week date (some took a little longer since that's when everything went to poop regarding Beckett).  I also bought some cards to "flip" and have since gotten pretty good at it.  All those cards sold, 9 "premium" cards sold (you send them in for a $1 each and they all post within a week), and I've since pretty much just gone to flipping.  I'd highly suggest some of you guys try it if you haven't.  Essentially you look for a card on the site that is underpriced (usually in a sale), like this Sean Lee:

I bought it for $0.17 in a sale.  The next highest price on the site was $0.70, so I repriced mine at $0.65.

Then today a guy offered me a 50% off offer and I accepted, netting me $0.33 and an overall profit of 16 cents.

I had the card for about 5 days, and I've been fairly successful at these little flips time and again.  It actually got me from an initial payment of about $45 to start (processing, shipping, flips I bought) up to $107 after my last port sale.  Maybe only like $15-20 a month in the end but it's kind of neat to experience this part of the hobby!

I'd like to make more money faster though, so I'm starting to press my luck with bigger purchases.  Some of my more recent purchases, all of which are a little knee-jerk esque following the MLB trade deadline, include:

This Colin Moran Autograph

Moran was a Marlins top prospect, but they traded them to Houston in the Jared Cosart deal.  The Astros don't really have a good 3B and Moran could rise quick, so I think this card should net me a few bucks!

I also added this Eduardo Rodriguez card after the Orioles shipped him to the Red Sox:

Similar situation of a guy going to a new market, and with the Red Sox it's one of the bigger card markets.  The downside is both cards are Leaf autographs, and Leaf doesn't do nearly as well as your Topps or Panini or even Upper Deck typically.  But I had a few dollars of room so I'm thinking I'll at least get a decent offer on these guys.

Finally, it's really hard for me to completely separate collecting from flipping.  I'll often buy stuff to flip that I also wouldn't mind keeping if it never sold.  Such is the case with a few Thad "The Champ" Lewis cards I got.  Right now he's battling for the Bills backup job, but after some nice spot starts last year he could be an E.J. Manuel injury away from some playing time.  I grabbed three of his Sage Hit autos (one I bought for 80 cents!):

And then also snagged a copy of his PressPass Portraint Edition auto:

If they don't sell...well then I guess I got myself a new PC.

I'll round the post up there today...we'll see in the future if I follow more of a set format or if these things will always just kind of be stream of consciousness.  I will add a recap though of sales figures, just so you guys can have an idea of how my sales are going on COMC!  I'll add Ebay ones when I make them too.

COMC Stats

Current Cards for Sale: 279 total, 236 distinct

Total Asking Price: $251.5

Total SRP (their version of Book Value): $305.75 (with 173 cards left to be priced)

Most Recent Sale: Sean Lee Playoff Prestige - 33 cents, 17 cent profit

August 2014 Sales: 9 items for $2.22

July 2014 Sales: 963 items for $313.42

2014 in general: 2,334 items for $730.03