eBay vs. Amazon vs. COMC -- your thoughts? Plus a contest!

[DougLaurieSports]

We have more than 19,000 listings in our eBay store, and we do very good business through it. With the new pricing structure and some analysis of our numbers, however, it appears we are wasting our time selling cards under a certain value, given the number of listings we pay for each month, the amount eBay and PayPal take, etc.

We're considering drastically reducing our listings on eBay (down to perhaps 5K) and moving the rest somewhere else. I've looked at both Amazon and Check Out My Cards, and I see advantages and drawbacks to both.

For Amazon, I think not having a Best Offer function is the biggest downside. I believe buyers are so used to being able to haggle on eBay that it can't be easy for them to just hit the BIN and pay the full pop. For COMC, it's not having the inventory to take out to shows or have people shop in the store.

As positives, Amazon has a very fresh and different customer base, and I'm sure we are going to list at least our high-end autographs and cards through it. It also has NO PAYPAL, which is tantalizing in and of itself.

COMC has the advantage of doing all the work for us, from scanning to fulfillment. Plus, I just plain like Tim Getsch. He's a good guy and I want to do more business with him.

I'm curious about your experiences and/or thoughts. Do you now have a value below which you no longer list? Do you make lots out of that stuff (low-tier jerseys, auto, etc.)? Just not buy it any more?

Your help is appreciated, and to make it worth your time, I'll pick someone at random out of the responses I deem worthy (yes or no won't cut it, sorry) to receive a couple autographed 8x10s from signings we have done.

Thanks in advance, and I'll draw for the winner on May 15th to allow for plenty of time for people to respond.

 

[FrenchConnection]

Been thinking about a lot of the same things! Much smaller scale, but I am taking steps to getting down to maximun 500 listings, which is what I can get at no additional cost based on my subscription effective today. Will be at about 750 as of Friday down from almost 3000 listings a few months ago. I really do think Amazon is the way to go, and will be moving some things there soon. I'm thinking 'team oriented" will be the way to go there for people looking for gifts, but I really don't have much to base that on. As for COMC, I do think it's a viable option if you want to price agressively! my 2 cents!

Mark

 

[steveottfan]

To start, I'm purely a buyer and not a seller. Because of my unique collection I buy quite a few low end cards. I'll buy 50 1-2$ cards vs 1 or 2 high value cards in a week. Since you have so much inventory I'm guessing the bulk of it is mid-lower end value cards. I've been slowly moving away from ebay and buying more from COMC. The flat shipping rate is what draws me to COMC. With the recent postage increase ebay is becoming too expensive. I'll gladly pay a bit more on COMC for a low end card because in the end I'll save the difference in shipping.

In my opinion you should leave the high value cards on ebay, move the lower value stuff to COMC and just stay away from Amazon as I for one have not had much luck with it.

 

[cujofan2000]

I have recently found a pretty cool site called ecrater.com , you can open up your own free online store. I have just started a store not much in it right now: http://cohoscards.ecrater.com/ it is really easy to use. It might be a bit time consuming at first to list all of your cards but the few cards I have listed so far (I was just trying it out) were very easy to list. Paypal is the method of payment (there are a few other methods as well but not ones I am familar with, one being google wallet or something?). No best offer option but people can contact you and I am sure you could even put that in certain listings that you are willing to negotiate/take offers. You might have to do some self advertising to get people to your store but the way the card community is it might not take long for word to get out. I was thinking these ecrater stores might be a great way to deal with lower end cards. Here is another ecrater sportscard store that I think is very well done: http://stlsportscards.ecrater.com/ the guy has some really nice cards too and you can see how there is a feedback system for the seller (read any listing for his card and see the feedback score near the top of the listing).

Cheers
Connie

 

[Steen10]

I don't know a lot about this site yet , but thought might be something for you to consider as well . http://www.sportscarddirect.com/

Amazon no haggle option does kinda suck , unless your pricing is can't pass up prices lol

COMC , i don't know much about , but not having your inventory for shows or in store doesn't sound to great .

Ebay , high traffic and fees and really where everybody goes

 

[timber09]

Plus, I just plain like Tim Getsch. He's a good guy and I want to do more business with him.

This is a big thing for me and a reason I am packing up a bunch of stuff to send over COMCs way again. I have a couple thousand cards over there and sales have been fine but it makes it so easy to drop them off (big benefit to me as they are local), wait for uploading, price, and then just sit back and wait for a sale.

Many complain about the fees at COMC however I find that there are many cards there that sell for a little bit more than other sites, you can list cards under $1, and (in the end) it all seems to come out real close to the same cost percentage plus the seller doesn't have to scan, list, ship, deal with meatballs, etc.

AMAZON - I have no experience with them at all however if you list on COMC you have the option of cross-selling on Amazon as well.

Found these guys on twitter a while back and have thrown a couple items up but haven't gotten any offers or any traffic that I know about - very new site but there are some features there that really make it attractive should they be able to generate any traffic at all.

http://www.collectorrevolution.com/

 

[arashikag3]

i don't know about amazon, wayne. that's not exactly the first place i'd think to go to look for cards. sure, the low fees and not having to go through paypal is great, but at the risk of exposure.

we all know about ebay so i won't discuss much.

comc is pretty good from what i've seen so far. i have used it to buy but not to sell but from what i hear, it's pretty easy to use.

 

[Nicktron]

I'll start off by saying I'm purely a buyer. I do most of my transactions here, on eBay and COMC to a lesser extent as I've only been using it for over a year.

I really like the setup on COMC, there's a lot of great cards on there that you just don't see on eBay. I really like the fact that as a buyer, shipping fees are minimized because all the cards come from one place. I also like that the site is very well organized. When you search out a subset, you know you're going to get the correct year/set the first time.

For me, the biggest downside the COMC is that if you want to make a best offer on a card, you have to top up your store credit. Being a guy on a budget, I don't like "freezing" funds in the event an offer isn't accepted.

I've also found with eBay, as everyone else has also seen, that sellers are really dinging buyers on their shipping costs. I recently purchased an $80 card and shipping was $25. The worst part was that even though it was supposedly tracked, it took 3 weeks to be delivered and no signature confirmation was needed. In my opinion, when you spend $25 on shipping, you darn well better be signing for it somewhere no matter what the cost of the card is.

In my opinion, I would seriously consider COMC for its ease of listing alone. Send it and forget it

Thanks,
Nick

 

[99goals]

First of all we are looking at this from the microcosm of sports cards. That in of itself presents a whole new level of complexity. For the novel i wrote below, please approach it from a general point of view and I am basing it on my years of service in the tech/advertsing/digital industry.

Here is where both Amazon and eBay are on equal footing.
->Traffic
->Ease of use ( You can argue this all day but the statistics show most people like what they have done with their platforms. I am in the same mindframe, they have pushed the envelope of what can be done on their front ends. It's friggin amazing)
->Market penetration
->Demographic penetration.
->Search
->Search optimization
->Targeted Search (Contextual search)
->Consumer Loyalty
->cross platform reach (not even a topic worth mentioning these days)
-> Digital platform reach.

Advantage Amazon
Powerful search optimization and transactional processing. They are market innovators and leaders in this area

Advantage eBay
Paypal, arguably the worlds most popular payment service.

You really can't say which one is better. They all excel at very much the same thing yet achieve it in a slightly different way. It is as simple as saying one is red and the other is blue but in the end they are both variants of the color wheel.


Disadvantage to both
Point of sale financial transactions.
eBay uses paypal and nothing else. They hitched their line to the one stop payment option and it is working for them. More and more people are converging and converting to using this system. Now you can even buy movie tickets with paypal along with other things.

Amazon uses what everyone in the world uses which are mostly credit cards. This prevents alienating users who not comfortable using online banking systems that are not accredited banks themselves. This is mostly the plus 50 crowd.

The real question here is not which option to use. It is how many options I can use to maximize my sales. The answer is to use all of them. The trade off is time and money. I am not talking about physical costs up front to use a particular online technology/platform. I am talking about overhead of hiring talent to help you drive each vehicle to drive sales.

The truest way to win it all is to figure out a successful means to segment your inventory and expose yourself to the biggest audience.

In my case, I chose to stay with eBay because I would like to master one domain instead of managing several domains. Secondly I do this for fun, so my time is valuable. Wherein you have a business, opens the door considerably to additional avenues for sales. I would sit down with a pen and paper and figure out how to maximize your reach. This is not an easy task and I have done this with many people (clients via consultation) and it can take weeks to figure out. But once you have done it once, it is easier and easier to do based on metrics that you gather via your ROI.

I wrote a lot. Sorry, but this is an area that I love and study. I have used many avenues to expand my reach but I do it with careful consideration of my time and effort. Right now, eBay is my temple.

Okay you can all wake up now, I am done.

 

[99goals]

I forgot to add one more thing. Don't afraid to try something new. You never know when something will take off. Thats the best position to be in.

 

[99goals]

This is a big thing for me and a reason I am packing up a bunch of stuff to send over COMCs way again. I have a couple thousand cards over there and sales have been fine but it makes it so easy to drop them off (big benefit to me as they are local), wait for uploading, price, and then just sit back and wait for a sale.

Many complain about the fees at COMC however I find that there are many cards there that sell for a little bit more than other sites, you can list cards under $1, and (in the end) it all seems to come out real close to the same cost percentage plus the seller doesn't have to scan, list, ship, deal with meatballs, etc.

AMAZON - I have no experience with them at all however if you list on COMC you have the option of cross-selling on Amazon as well.

Found these guys on twitter a while back and have thrown a couple items up but haven't gotten any offers or any traffic that I know about - very new site but there are some features there that really make it attractive should they be able to generate any traffic at all.

http://www.collectorrevolution.com/

^ here is a perfect example of what I was trying to highlight. Joe has expanded his reach and is on top of trying new things and figuring how what works best for him. I wish I had the time and effort to do what he does and that is why he is so successful at it.

 

[Fritz]

I forgot to add one more thing. Don't afraid to try something new. You never know when something will take off. Thats the best position to be in.

truth right there, when I first heard of comc I thought "yeah people send you their cards then you pay after they sell? no way that will ever fly"

I was wrooooooong

 

[quincy]

COMC is the more rapidly growing site, and yet they take painstaking care in correctly indexing and listing what they have for sale. Compare with amazon's dreadful signal-to-noise ratio.

 

[99goals]

COMC is the more rapidly growing site, and yet they take painstaking care in correctly indexing and listing what they have for sale. Compare with amazon's dreadful signal-to-noise ratio.

After expo, I am going to get a hold of their metrics to see how they have done the last 2 years.. should be interesting.

 

[neilnijjar]

the way I see it is simple - where will most of your customers be coming from would be the best place to list

seems like eBay is on a slight decline - new fee structure, paypal, shipping fees, buyers not paying, buyers not "recieving items"

whereas COMC seems as if it is heading in the other direction - fairly new - expanding to include more than just sportscards (comics, coins, non-sport) and they seem to be everywhere - showing up at multiple shows, opening a Canadian office, etc..

so to me it seems as if you may see more and more people head to COMC for making a purchase as their inventory grows so will interest. Plus cant beat great shipping rates + clear scans (front and back) of each listed item - I only see COMC expanding compared to eBay taking a hit

as for Amazon - never even crossed my mind to look for cards there (gonna do it now)

for your issue of not having physical inventory in house for the stuff you send to COMC you probably have a good idea of what moves in store and for shows compared to stuff that just sits and sits - also if someone does have something they need and you have it on COMC - simple set up a computer - get them to login and buy it then and there - if they dont have an account it gives them a reason to make one/im sure you could pull the item or get it sent to you to sell in store

 

[odjickfan]

To start, I'm purely a buyer and not a seller. Because of my unique collection I buy quite a few low end cards. I'll buy 50 1-2$ cards vs 1 or 2 high value cards in a week. Since you have so much inventory I'm guessing the bulk of it is mid-lower end value cards. I've been slowly moving away from ebay and buying more from COMC. The flat shipping rate is what draws me to COMC. With the recent postage increase ebay is becoming too expensive. I'll gladly pay a bit more on COMC for a low end card because in the end I'll save the difference in shipping.

In my opinion you should leave the high value cards on ebay, move the lower value stuff to COMC and just stay away from Amazon as I for one have not had much luck with it.

My opinion too.

 

[BleedxBlue]

To start, I'm purely a buyer and not a seller. Because of my unique collection I buy quite a few low end cards. I'll buy 50 1-2$ cards vs 1 or 2 high value cards in a week. Since you have so much inventory I'm guessing the bulk of it is mid-lower end value cards. I've been slowly moving away from ebay and buying more from COMC. The flat shipping rate is what draws me to COMC. With the recent postage increase ebay is becoming too expensive. I'll gladly pay a bit more on COMC for a low end card because in the end I'll save the difference in shipping.

In my opinion you should leave the high value cards on ebay, move the lower value stuff to COMC and just stay away from Amazon as I for one have not had much luck with it.

Yup high-end eBay, low end COMC!

 

[djsports]

I sell on two of the three platforms. The reason why I do not sell on COMC is #1, I do not like it when my inventory is not physically here and #2 the pricing structure to add a card to the inventory is not cost effective for my business.

We all know the advantages/disadvantages of Ebay so I will not go into details about that one, but I feel like I can add a few points about Amazon.

I have over 300,000 cards listed on Amazon and the initial cost is $40.00 a month. This is by far the best "value" around when it comes to listing your cards on the three sites we are comparing. It is google friendly but Ebay is catching up in that category as well.

I have had some HUGE sales over at Amazon. $800 Alex Rodriguez Moments and Milestone Autograph, $500.00 ITG Heroes and Prospects Made to Order...cards that would have never sold on Ebay because of the mentality of people over there.

The biggest disadvantage to Amazon is the FVF of $1.00 on all items, not just transactions. If I sell 10 base cards over there I get hit with $10.00 in FVF. It is not that big of a deal, because I start my pricing at $1.50 for each item since the initial cost is so low. I am thinking about doing what most people seem to do on Amazon which is start their prices at .25 or .50 and charge $4.99 for shipping per item.

The other small complaint I have with Amazon is that there is no real seller protection, you thought Ebay was bad...there is nothing you can do as a seller to block/dispute/fight a moronic buyer on Amazon. I received Negative feedback because I didn't provide my own COA with a 2000-01 BAP Signature Series Autograph card. I asked the buyer to look at the back of the card because that was the COA.

I think my future plans will include listing in much smaller amounts to Ebay and spend more time energy and effort on promoting my storefront by sending out mailing lists and the such. I much rather sell a card on my site for .25 then list it on Ebay for $1.00. I am also going to get back into the Sportlots game, there was time when SL was out preforming my Marketplace store 2-1 some months when my inventory was 100% accurate over there.

 

[ncm7772]

I've never sold on COMC, but I've sold on Amazon in the past. Electronics, college texts, etc. I now have a new name for them: "Scamazon". Their fees are high, the customer service for sellers is terrible, the list goes on. Have heard nothing but good things about selling on COMC.

 

[lucscaps]

about to use COMC for the first time. Found a low end card on there that has elluded me forever. I've seen it once on the bay and it was BIN'd before I could do it.

I didn't know that I have to pre-load if I want to do a best offer on there though.