COMC Bonanza Part 4: The End...and the Beginning?

Editorial Note: I wrote this post up back in June, but with all the stuff that's gone on- my remote hard drive crashing, the huge NASCAR gift, continual health problems, deaths of family and friends, and neighbors causing trouble, I just have not been in the mood to write or even post out of my completed drafts, of which I have more than 20 posts ready to go.  I need to force myself to post or else it will just slip away from me so here you go. I sure wish more of the things going on were good things like the NASCAR gift...

This is the final post in the COMC Bonanza series, and also shifting a MAJOR stance on something that has held true for some 28 years. Read on...

Here are the first three posts. 

While the first post showed cards that were needed to complete sets, the second post showed SN, AU and Relic cards, the 3rd post showed the sets and people I added to my collection...this post is going to show the other cards that don't fit those above categories, cards I just liked and wanted to have as part of my collection...and then the change.

 I was 5 cards short on the Die Cut parallel of 2001 Trackside, and I got 4 of them. (Not shown: The censored cards of Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr.). The last card I need is Dale Jarrett's car, but the one on COMC was ridiculously overpriced- I think he wanted $18 for it, or maybe it was just $8. The card shouldn't even cost $1, so I left it.

 Card #100 from 2010 Premium, showing the 2010 Daytona 500 victory celebration.

 The short prints in 2010 Press Pass are a pain in the butt. I got two (Not shown: Juan Pablo Montoya) and still have 2 left to hunt down, to complete the set.

 This is the Salute to Dale card I mentioned in post #1. It was a three card set, of which I pulled multiple copies of each of the first two cards, but this one was short printed.

I discovered that COMC has Racing Champions cards! I didn't expect that (most people ignore them, because they did not come in packs) and they actually had three I needed. This Stock Rod, I don't even know what SET it goes to. That's surprising, as I worked for almost 25 years to get every Racing Champions issue I could. The last time I found a set I didn't know existed was probably 1999. Not trying to brag but RC was my specialty. I have since found out they were exclusive to stores that were either not in my area or that we didn't go to. The TRU promo is neon by the way!

And now...a major change for me. I've been in this hobby since 1988. I was 4 years old, and I've never stopped collecting. Even when I was mostly out of it in 2007 and 2008, I was still in a little bit...I've always considered myself a collector, even if I wasn't able to add to my collection.

In that time I've never sold a single card. Not one. I've given away thousands, traded away thousands more, but I've never sold one....until now. I had a lot of fun going through COMC and picking out cards. Most of which you've now seen over the last 4 posts. It proved to be immensely fun for me. I spent $200 and I got 144 cards, 139 of which were new, and the others replaced cards that were damaged, including two of the worst from my flood of 2/5/15. It took me about 5 hours to create the order of cards, and they have given me literally days of enjoyment. I got the order on June 22nd and I'm STILL working on them now, and enjoying every minute of it.

It got me to thinking. I've been adding cards to my collection non-stop for years. I viewed it as something to be proud of that I've never sold any cards. But I got to rethinking that. Seeing how much enjoyment it gave me to hunt down these cards- most of them that I got were common cards, to fill sets, even ones I wasn't able to complete- it gave me great joy. What if my duplicates that I've been storing all this time could bring somebody else that same feeling of joy? So,  I started to dig into my duplicate stash, which is extensive, but not as extensive as it could be, as I've given away lots of cards. I selected a random assortment of cards (mostly random, anyway) that were duplicates, and which I had not entered into my tradelist on the Trading Card Database, and selected 100 cards, which is the minimum that COMC requires. By the time this post gets published (I usually write up posts several days in advance- to be honest all the posts in this COMC bonanza series were written on the same day) my first shipment of cards for sale on COMC will be in possession of the USPS en route to COMC. There's nothing too spectacular there- I made sure to put in a couple of Jordan, Kobe and LeBron, but all college sets. And one thing for sure is that they are all duplicates. A card I only have one copy of is still going to be part of my collection as if my life depended on it! 

I don't know how it will work out. I hope it will work out well, but I'm not going to be asking for much on these. I am planning to ask for 30 cents a card for base cards, most of which they are, 40 cents for parallels and 50 cents for inserts- regardless of player or card subject. I wouldn't even ask that much if COMC didn't charge 25 cents per card, to be honest.  I'm aware that if all 100 cards sell, which I think is unlikely, that would give me a profit of ....wait for it....Five dollars. It's not a lot, but it's $5 more I have to spend on cards than I have right now. (A little more, actually, as there are some non-base, but you get my drift)

One of the reasons I've decided to do it is that I don't have anywhere near as much money to spend in the hobby that I once did, or would like to have. There are lots of cards I want- thousands upon thousands- but can't afford. I'm specifically targeting a card from Panini Eminence. The cheapest one on there is $150. The most I'll spend on a single card is $20...maybe $25. If I can come anywhere close to that, to me mentally I could justify it because it wouldn't really be spending $150...it would be trading a bunch of cards and then adding some cash to the deal...even though I don't know who the cards will be going to. It works for me, mentally.

I do have some trepidation. This is a major change from the stance I have held pretty much my entire life. I'm not going to be selling cards on Cardboard History (though a link to my COMC listings WILL appear, when it's ready) nor on Ebay or the Facebook groups, but I will no longer be able to say I'm solely a buyer. 

The other possible con I can think of is that, if it works well and I end up funneling most of my duplicates to them, I won't have anything new to trade, or to fill out random trades with new people I meet. I just "met" a collector through the Database and I've sent him about 350-400 cards...cards that, otherwise, would have been in line to eventually get to COMC...if I like doing it. 

Pros are that I won't have to store the dang things anymore. I have somewhere north of 150,000 cards in my possession, and that's not even counting the ones that are too badly damaged to list on my tradelist or offer up on COMC or elsewhere, which outnumber my tradeable duplicates by about 2 or 3-1. And I keep finding cards I didn't even remember having in my storage units, of which we have 3. (Some of which were duplicates and are now headed to COMC!) 

Another pro is that it opens up a wide variety of people I would not have access to otherwise. I basically know only a handful of people in the hobby...it's not like it was back in the early 2000s when Trader Retreat was going strong. Most of the NASCAR collectors I know already have everything I've got to offer, so hopefully the NASCAR collectors perusing COMC will be people I don't know who want my cards.  

The biggest pro, though, is that I should be able to turn some of my duplicates, of which I really have no need, into cards I DO need, so in a way it's really like just trading them. As I stated my goal is to get a Eminence card, but that is not something likely to happen this year....especially as I'm starting out small with the very minimum COMC allows a seller to send in. And, knowing myself, I'll spend it on the first serially numbered Elton Brand I see anyway.


Here is a photo of the cards I selected, most of them chosen simply because there were easily accessible, IE, the Donruss cards, which all were duplicates out of a blaster my mom bought me last week.  

after taking this picture, I put the cards in the penny sleeves that my COMC order of 6/22/16 arrived in!

 With the $25 minimum it would take me a while to send them all my duplicates...I literally could not afford to pay the fees required to list them, which is humorous in a way. 
I have to admit, I selected a lot of college cards because I had no intention of ever listing most of them on my Tradelist on the Database. Let them deal with them, LOL.  I won't be sending in anything on my tradelist currently either, it was way too much work to get them listed so they are going to stay there until I trade them all away. (IE, never)

I hope it's a success, so I can turn these duplicates into new cards for my collection!  

Editorial Note Part 2:The "last week" I mention in relation to the blaster of Donruss is now over a month ago. I finally got the cards into the mail today, July 30th, even though I printed out the shipping slip on June 28th. Over a month...tells you a little about my mindset right now, but I will keep going forward.