Chronological? Alphabetical? - No...Autobiographical...

  One of my favorite flicks High Fidelity features a scene where a down in the dumps Rob Gordon (played by John Cusack) is reorganizing his record collection. His friend/employee Dick (Todd Louiso) stops by and finds the mess.

  He proceeds to ask Rob how he is organizing things...chronoligical...not alphabetical... Rob finally chimes in that he is reorganizing it autobiographically...Dick replies no f***ing way.

  Rob's record collection looks like most baseball card collections I have seen. Stacks, piles, boxes, and more stacks. Inspiration strikes at odd times. I was up last night working on a little project and thought it would be fun to create an autobiographical set for myself. So, without further ado...

1979 - My Rookie Year - I consider this the iconic card of available 1979 issues (sorry Mr. Gretzky). Ozzie went on to a HOF career with the Cardinals and was a fan favorite that I enjoyed seeing play in the 1980s.

 
1980 - I was introduced to baseball at an early age. Some of my fondest memories involve baseball diamonds. The Yankees were the team my dad followed and so I began to root for them to. We made many treks to the old Kingdome in Seattle to root for the away team.

1981 - I couldn't afford a Rickey Henderson rookie card as a kid, but I was able to trade for a couple of copies of his second year card. The Man of Steal played for my Yankees for a while and even after he left for Oakland (and a few other teams) I still enjoyed watching him play.

1982 - One of my absolute favorite non-Yankees players was Cal Ripken who graced a number of different cards in 1982. His Donruss issue is my favorite one. I just never cared for the guy alone on a field photo Fleer used or the limelight sharing issue that Topps passed out.

 1983 - I discovered Star Wars right around the age of four and begged and pleaded every birthday and holiday for the plastic recreations from the screen. I was always more of a Han Solo guy than Luke...he seemed to whine too much.

1984 - My favorite player for a long was Donnie Baseball. I traded for and hoarded any cards of his I could find. Of his three rookie cards his Topps issue is my favorite.

1985 - I started paying attention to football around the age of six. My dad seemed really into it, so I would sit and watch with him every Sunday. This was the face of the franchise my dad adored...I rooted alongside him until my conversion.

1986 - One day my dad came home with these huge boxes of cards from the thrift store. Inside were rows and rows of 1986 Topps cards. I had a ton of these beauties. When Cecil Fielder became a huge power source upon his return from Japan, the price of his rookies soared. This was probably the first card I had that I realized was worth something. I had around twenty five copies of this card and made some great trades.

1987 - My baseball card collecting really took off this year. I remember walking down to the IGA near my house every Saturday with my allowance and buying as many packs as I could afford. When  I received a twenty dollar bill for my birthday, I took it over to Bi-Mart and cleaned out the rack packs. This was one of the cards I was always after.

1988 - One of the first players I remember seeing play and one of the first minor league team sets I remember having. Bob Hamelin had a short career with the Royals, but made a big impression on me with his play for the Eugene Emeralds. It was a lot of fun watching him hit and seeing him do the splits to make plays at first.

1989 - One Friday, my dad came home with a couple of boxes of cards from the baseball card store in town. It was a new product that put the Donruss, Fleer, and Topps I had known to shame. I remember opening those foil packs and being so excited about every card I pulled. I was a convert at that point and pretty much spent most of my money on Upper Deck products. Upper Deck's iconic issue and iconic card.

1990 - My dad was pretty good about including me as he chased his Topps Yankees team sets, but also realized I was interested in more than just the few cards of guys in pinstripes every year. One of the first sets he ordered for me was the 1990 Topps Traded Football issue. When it arrived, I remember diligently going through and placing each card in a binder for safe keeping. One of the best cards in the set was this one.

1991 - I spent may hours watching the show and playing with the figures. When I started seeing the cards come out, I went into collector mode and found ways to acquire them. I never completed the set, but this card depicts one of my favorite characters.

1992 - An iconic card of my short career as a basketball fan. I had acquired a number of these awesome cards over the year. Unfortunately, the memory that sticks out the most has to be the time that one was stolen from me at school during an after school card trading club event.

Stay tuned to this blog channel for more fun soon! I will be posting part two of my autobiographical set in the next few days.

Been Living Half My Life Living in a Flipper's Paradise...

Wow...almost six months since my last post. It's not for a lack of post worthy events or happenings. I've just been too darn busy at work and home to be able to sit down and do this on a regular basis. 

 

I have a little time tonight, so I thought I'd talk about flipping on COMC. Hopefully you caught the musical reference in the post title...and hopefully by now your humming that catchy Coolio hit from the 1990s.

 

One thing I have been doing a lot lately is buying cards on COMC with the sole intent of "flipping" or selling for a profit. Here is a recent example of a nice flip I made:

 

I picked this one up for $9.00 after doing a little research on sales. It's a gorgeous patch and a decent prospect. I thought it was well worth the risk. Three days later I sold it for $14.87, a nice $5.87 profit. Not all the flips work that well, but I find nice deals like this and see room for profit a few times a week. I always get pumped when it works out like this.

 

Flipping on the site is the easiest transaction, but I also buy cards to ship from COMC to sell myself. In the last two weeks, I picked up a handful of cards and realized the following successes;

 

Card A - Purchased for $15.00 sold for $25.00

 

Card B - Purchased for $15.00 sold for $30.00

 

Card C - Purchased for $8.50 sold for $14.99

 

Card D - Purchased for $6.67 sold for $18.00

 

I still have a small bunch of cards from that group up for sale - shouldn't have a problem moving them with Spring Training in it's early stages.

My tips for flipping:

 

1 - Do a little research before you buy. Sometimes I get all excited about a low numbered parallel or autograph of a minor star. A quick check on sale prices and you may see that there is little interest in the player. So you may end up with a dud that sits in your port and you eventual have to sell off for a loss.

 

2 - Be patient. Some cards sell very quickly and others need a little more time before you realize a profit.

 

3 - Popular players and sets are great targets. Everyone loves certain sets and certain players sell no matter what (Jeter, Trout, etc.)

 

4 - Make sure you are in Advanced Mode as a buyer/seller on COMC (under your Profile & Options category in the dashboard). Going to advanced mode means you don't pay the shipping (.25) on cards you plan to flip.

 

Hopefully the next post comes sooner than my last one!

Treasure Hunting on COMC!

   It's been a while since my last post - just a whole lot on my personal/professional plate at the moment. Hopefully once a week is a rate I can maintain on the blog.

   The good news is that I've recently come across a number of very cool sets that I didn't even know existed in my lurkings on COMC. Most of these I discovered while browsing sales looking for flips.

   1999 Stadium Club Triumvirate Luminous Set - The example below of "Juan Gone" shows just part of the story. Apparently there are three cards in each minor group which interlock to make a larger card. I'll try and post an example if I complete one of the mini-groups. Love the design and creativity of the set.

 

   Another really neat set I ran across is the 2000 Skybox Metal Hit Machines die cuts. I was able to get the complete set on COMC for $9.06 with Jeter and Griffey being half of that amount. I don't think these are super rare or a tough pull, but I like the look of the set for sure.

 

 

   I've got a few other sets to show off, but it would be great if I could get them in hand and give a complete scan before I do that.

Holy Ripping Ginter Batman!

   I ran across a decently priced box of 2014 Allen and Ginter on eBay recently, so I picked it up. I figure it was an early birthday present that I paid for with some of the money I've been making lately selling off junk from around the house.

   That box came in yesterday and yielded two of the best hits I've had in a long while. The first hit is a pair of guys well known to me as a Yankee fan. It came three packs into the box and I was absolutely thrilled when I pulled it. I didn't think anything else in the box mattered at this point.

Say hello to Yogi!

 

 Say hello to Whitey!

 

After I calmed down a little, my son and I resumed opening up the rest of the packs. About eight packs further in, I pulled a Miguel Cabrera bat card. Nice looking card of a really great player, but nothing out of the ordinary...until I looked at the mini card sitting behind it.

A quick peek at the back shows it as a true 1/1 and Freeman is a great young player!

I am almost hesitant to sell these, as they are really neat cards. However, I don't collect Freddie Freeman and while I am a Yankees fan, the rip card isn't really something I see as a PC item for me. Both have been listed on my eBay account (shameless self promotion there), but feel free to contact me about them if you are interested!

Getting Started as a Seller on COMC

   When people ask about COMC, the biggest question they have is how selling works on the site. I've answered this question for people in forum threads, private messages, e-mails, and in person. I thought I would use this blog post as an opportunity to give people an idea of how to get started.

Your Port

   Your port, in the most basic terms, is where your cards are located. Your port is your storefront or display case for any cards you have for sale. Your port is also where any cards your purchase end up when you are shopping/buying on the site, as well as a resting place for any cards you are holding back from sale for any reason. There are three ways you can add cards to your port.

Submit Items for Processing

    This is the primary method I use for populating my port with good stuff for all you lucky buyers. This method involves selecting cards you have at your location, packing them up into a box, and mailing them to COMC. 

 

   COMC charges .25 per single for the basic processing service and $1.00 for the premium processing service. Basic is the most cost effective way to get cards added, but it is also the slowest as the process can take 2-8 weeks. Generally, you'll see most of the cards go live within a 2-6 week window, with only the most difficult to identify cards taking the full eight weeks. Premium processing is fast...like usually the next day fast. This service covers the higher end material and oversized cards that you may want to submit. Processing time is stated as 1-3 days. 

 

   You can find out more about submission fees here. There is more to submitting that I will cover later - selecting cards, shipping methods, etc.

 

Purchasing Other Ports

   This is the most cost effective way I have found to get inventory for your port. Basically you are buying up all of the cards in someone else's port (usually for a hefty discount). The good news is that there is usually plenty of room for profit on the higher end stuff as long as it was priced decently to begin with. The bad news is that you are buying everything that was in the port - good, bad, and ugly. 

   It's important to be thorough when you are looking through the port determining it's worthiness and also whether you can get it for a price you can deal with. Some unscrupulous people will hide cards in the middle of a port - assuming that you will only check the highest and lowest priced items - that are over-priced, garbage, or both. Remember that you are getting the best and worst out of each port you buy, which means you will end up with some awful stuff that will likely sit in your port for infinity and beyond.

   Another thing to keep an eye on are the cards from non-major sports, especially racing. A quick check on eBay will reveal a truer idea of a card's value than relying on someone's price in their port. Just do your homework and make a reasonable offer and you should do fine! You can check out COMC ports for sale here.

 

 

Buying Individual Cards (Flipping)

   The final way to add cards to your port is also the easiest and in my experience the most efficient way. Flipping occurs when you snap up a card from another seller and then deftly re-price it for an amount that was higher than the previous owner's listing price. 

 

The reason I call this the most efficient way? 

1 - The cards are already listed, which means no waiting period - which beats processing.

2 - You are hand picking the cards you flip - obviously the more popular the player, the more likely a card will sell - which beats bulk port buying.

3 - If you do your homework, you are buying something that was either under-priced or on sale for a considerable discount from it's true market value.

   There are sellers who use flipping as their bread and butter method. Including this guy who I know as SpastikMooss on the Blowout Forums. His COMC account is chock full of cards he has purchased and is flipping for a profit.

 

   When you look for flips - try and find newly listed items, items that are on sale, or you can even resort to prospecting a little and buying low on guys you think are going to sell big at a later date (my biggest success was Manny Machado using this method). You also want to make sure you can make a profit if you sell this card - my general rule is that I want to double my money, but I'll accept any offer where I make money.

 

  One final note, is to make sure you are in Advanced Re-Seller Mode on your COMC account before you start flipping. In Basic Buyer Mode, you have a .25 shipping fee attached to the card, which is removed in Advanced. You can check which mode you are in under your user settings.

 

  My most purchases for flipping? Here you go:

 

 

 

Steal of a Deal!

   I haven't posted for a few days, mostly due to that whole real life thing that is always getting in the way of my creative writing. School starts in about three weeks, so we've been busy buzzing around town getting uniform shirts for my son, school supplies, and I'm on the lookout for some classroom supplies I need for the year. That being said, not a lot of hobby time for me...though I was pretty pleased to find a pretty good deal on what I think is a really cool looking card just a little bit ago.

Just grabbed this one from a guy running a pretty nice port sale - Greatvintage - check it out if you have the time.

 

 

   I paid $2.45 on this bad boy, which is really good considering recent sales on eBay in the $7-10 range. Love finding great cards like this for a good deal. It is the Lou Gehrig edition of the 1998 Gallery of Heroes insert from last year's Topps Archives offering. That may be one of the only products I haven't opened any packs of from last year. Maybe I should take another look at that set.

 

   I'm working on the first how to/tips post for COMC - look for it to be popping up tomorrow sometime depending on how the day goes.

I Can't Believe No One's Bought It!

Our next installment of our regularly scheduled program features this majestic beauty:

 

 This card is from the 2004 Leaf Exhibits Set - numbered 16/46.

Very cool old school black and white card featuring Chipper.

Ask price is $3.74, but with my discount you'd be looking at a cool $3.00 to make it yours. That's a really good price on a Chipper that's numbered out of less than 50 copies!