Tuesday, August 22, 2017

So I Finally Decided To "Check Out My Cards"

I didn't just join the hobby and I haven't been living under a rock. Fact of the matter is, I live in Canada and I don't like buying credit before a purchase. Those two sticking points prevented me from using COMC for all these years. I have had an account for a very long time and did nothing with it. When I wanted new cards, I would trade, use Hobby Insider, LCS, Twitter or eBay and that always seemed to cover my needs. However, I have a number of partially finished sets and for my birthday I got a little coin so I decided what the heck, lets check this out!


Based on the amount of money I was given, I set up two goals. I wanted to finish my 77-78 Topps and my 79-80 Topps sets. I needed 18 cards for the '77 set and 9 for the complete '79 set. Thankfully there were plenty of options for nearly ALL the cards I needed and I could look at scan after scan and get the quality of card I wanted. In my case the both sets I wanted them to be as close to mint as I could find. I do say nearly all because there was one card I needed and there was only one available and man oh man did they price it that way too. All the cards I needed I got for very great prices except one 79-80 Topps Stan Mikita. The card was clearly an ungraded NrMt-Mt for sure and would probably book in the 2-3 dollar range given the quality. The ask, 15 dollars!!!!! I couldn't believe it. I wanted to finish these sets and when you factor in all the cards I needed, this was a huge barrier. I went on eBay and there were none too. What to do??

Thankfully I had a number of other cards from this buyer in my basket and they allowed you to make an offer. I made one and they countered and finally they accepted and left me with room to go beyond my goal which was nice. I also picked up another card which I will share in a different post.

Here is a look at some of the cards I needed.
When the cards arrived, they were in great condition much like their scans indicated and while I didn't pay for any extra packaging the cards were well packaged and exactly as expected. In all it was an amazing success and I definitely would consider using check out my cards again. My next two posts will be about my completed sets!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoy the next two posts!

5 comments:

  1. Welcome to the COMC club! It took me a while to catch on to it too, but now I cant imagine my collection without it.

    I thought I had the Mikita you needed but I checked my star base box and it's the 78-79 Topps. Dang..sorry I couldnt help!

    Looking forward to your next post!

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  2. I think as a buyer there were more bargains earlier on but I've always had good experiences with COMC. It's kind of fun if have a bit of credit available to quickly buy a card you've just become aware of (say on someone else's blog). I've done that.

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  3. I'm a huge convert to COMC. To me it's the best thing for card buying to come along in years. I usually save up some money and do most of my shopping when they do two huge sales pushes, in May and November. I actually enjoyed it so much I sold some duplicates on there, despite having been a very strict no-selling collector for my first 28 years in the hobby. Some sellers definitely charge too much...there's somebody with a NASCAR card I need to complete a set, the card should be under a dollar but they list all their cards at $2.75, and don't ever put them on sale. COMC has a Canadian office/branch to make it easier for you folks north of our borders.

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  4. Glad your first COMC experience was positive. I've recently started scaling back my COMC purchases, but I absolutely love their search engine and best offer option.

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  5. Thanks guys!!! Yeah I definitely enjoyed it and would consider looking there again in the future when I have the time and resources to do digging and make a purchase. I love the quality of the scans because you know what you're getting but I don't like the money up front part that is the only con but I get why they do it.

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