quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

quote:

Originally posted by X:
I agree Raven, some very overpriced stuff on there but no different to eBay in that regard.

I would find COMC even more useful if more people used it, so collectors have more variety and choice. I think it is the first legitimate competitor to eBay for cards and I am really struggling to see any negatives to using them.

Well some research has to be done, more so for sellers probably. I believe they are acting as a middle man, so you have to physically send your cards to them if you want to put them up for sell. For buyers, they are holding your cards until you want shipment. So the greatest risk would be that it closes up and everything goes "poof". I'm not at all saying that would happen, its just different from eBay in that regard where they conduct and monitor the transaction, but don't actually touch the merchandise.

The other big risk would be the security of stored payment information of buyers and sellers. That's true with all market websites, they are always under attack.

I'm going to take another look at it though, soon as I get a chance.

Just to share my experience with COMC since there is some confusion and misinformation here.

The way that COMC works is that you send cards into COMC headquarters and for 25 cents (for basic service, expedited is more) they take pictures of the card, list in in the appropriate category and put it in the seller's account for the seller to set a price. COMC adds 25 cents to the price as a fee and gives sellers three months of storage for free, after which cards over 75 cents cost one cent per card per month for storage fees. Once the cards have been accepted by COMC I don't have to do anything besides set a price, review offers (if I choose to accept offers), and make sure that I keep a positive balance on the 1st of the month to cover any storage fees.

Advantages are that they do pretty much everything and takes a lot of work off of my shoulders. If I am trying to sell a card, I usually try first to sell on eBay if I have time to list the card, and if it doesn't sell by the time I am ready to submit a shipment, then I put it in the box for COMC. I set a price that is what I think is worth it, factoring in the 20% fee for if it sells on eBay or Amazon and the additional 20% taken out when I decide to cash out and factoring in the fact that everyone will try and do offers so there needs to have some wiggle room to negotiate prices. I find COMC to be great to sell low level chase- I submitted 500+ cards that are worth 50 cents to a dollar and priced them accordingly. A large majority of these chases sold and those that didn't after three months got reduced to 75 cents so I wouldn't get charged storage feeds and can make 50 cents per card once it sells which is 50 cents more than when it was cluttering up my place. I made an initial $100 investment three years ago and have yet to need to put more money in and have managed to get some pretty good cards (Honor Blackman WOB auto, a couple of Game of Thrones autos, and a bunch of SHIELD autos) by saving up store credit from low level sales and making some good offers.

In short COMC stores all cards, lists, and takes photos of the cards. Sellers get to set whatever price that they want (which are usually higher because a big chunk of sellers are flippers and big fees make initial prices higher), and can request that COMC returns their cards at any time. If you can handle the large fees, it really takes a lot of the work out of selling extra cards and has helped me get some money out of cards that were causing clutter and I probably would never have gotten around to selling or trading, so it has been pretty nice for me.

Hope that helps clear some things up. To get back on topic, if the price is too high, see if there is an offer feature as many of the prices tend to be the seller's ideal, while their bottom line may be at a much lower price.

Not having read Ryan's article, I don't know if he covered this but I really don't think that UD was "holding back" Alien Anthology for ePack as much as they were looking for an alternate way to sell stock that was not selling through distribution.

quote:

Originally posted by igman7:
Not having read Ryan's article, I don't know if he covered this but I really don't think that UD was "holding back" Alien Anthology for ePack as much as they were looking for an alternate way to sell stock that was not selling through distribution.

Not sure there ever was an article by Ryan about the AA ePacks, I can't find it now anyway. UD did make an official announcement about it right before SDCC. They didn't really say why they choose this title and they certainly didn't say it was because the stock wasn't moving.

I mean you could be right about left overs from the distribution. It's as good a guess as any, but I kind of believe that it was planned myself. However it's the lack of real information that makes for all the speculation.

That and the fact that a new Holm autograph card was added as exclusive to the ePack version and the assumed supply of the other signatures, including any duals, triples and quads autograph cards that were available in the regular Alien Anthology based on the estimated numbers of boxes/cases got thrown way off and jumped up as soon as more of them showed up in this hybrid release, which first stage AA collectors didn't even know was coming.

quote:

Originally posted by igman7:
Not having read Ryan's article, I don't know if he covered this but I really don't think that UD was "holding back" Alien Anthology for ePack as much as they were looking for an alternate way to sell stock that was not selling through distribution.

Although I don't know (or care to know) all of the workings with COMC or Upper Decks shift to digital cards, I think I have grasped the basic concept.

I would contend that Upper Deck continues to live up to its shady reputation and played games with Alien Anthology along with the products initial collectors.

Not only was an early checklist released where many of the items failed to make their way into cases but as a collector of the product it was obvious that things were missing. For those of us in the dark it felt like UD had released a very rare production run.

Fast forward a couple of months and all of a sudden there are two and three times the ebay item count that was available during the initial case release. All of a sudden signed art cards and dual signatures are miraculously appearing. The Ian Holm that no one could figure out why he wouldn't sign given his past history magically is now available. I would say that UD held back as much as 35% or 40% of the release......maybe more.

Because I have an strong fixation to the Alien franchise and this was a title that should have been made years ago I have allowed UD to bend me over on this one so I could complete my set. We wont be doing business again.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mykdude,

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quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:

quote:

Originally posted by igman7:
Not having read Ryan's article, I don't know if he covered this but I really don't think that UD was "holding back" Alien Anthology for ePack as much as they were looking for an alternate way to sell stock that was not selling through distribution.

Although I don't know (or care to know) all of the workings with COMC or Upper Decks shift to digital cards, I think I have grasped the basic concept.

I would contend that Upper Deck continues to live up to its shady reputation and played games with Alien Anthology along with the products initial collectors.

Not only was an early checklist released where many of the items failed to make their way into cases but as a collector of the product it was obvious that things were missing. For those of us in the dark it felt like UD had released a very rare production run.

Fast forward a couple of months and all of a sudden there are two and three times the ebay item count that was available during the initial case release. All of a sudden signed art cards and dual signatures are miraculously appearing. The Ian Holm that no one could figure out why he wouldn't sign given his past history magically is now available. I would say that UD held back as much as 35% or 40% of the release......maybe more.

Because I have an strong fixation to the Alien franchise and this was a title that should have been made years ago I have allowed UD to bend me over on this one so I could complete my set. We wont be doing business again.

Hard to not agree with this. Something definitely did seem amiss upon physical release with so little product available, and certain cards almost missing entirely from breaks.
What I don't understand though is the rationale behind what went into sealed vs. epack product. Very few sketches hit eBay from the sealed product and the epacks were LOADED with the double auto combinations. I don't see why it shouldn't have been a more even split when dividing the hits across both releases, unless they simply wanted to stack the deck in their favour and make the point to some exec that epacks are better (which would of course look that way when you have collectors clamouring for epacks to find the cards they couldn't find in sealed product).

The only upshot of this is that plates, artist autos, sketches, double and single autos are far more available for everyone now. That said, I really feel for those collectors who overpaid a lot more for cards that turned out to be more plentifully available months later - Harry Dean Stanton being a prime example.

I am glad I only overpaid on one or two cards by a few quid but it does chap my *** I paid £30 for a Veronica Cartwright that has since sold in the $10 range. Fortunately I like the actress and her character and it makes me feel better I have done pretty well picking up the rest for good prices.

I know I will sound like I am on COMC payroll or something but more collectors looking to pick up Alien cards really should give it a look. It seems to be a platform mostly used by sports card sellers and, true to form, they have dipped their toes into a non-sport title like this, ripped their way through an obscene amount of epack product chasing the achievement cards and are now flipping for almost any price just to get rid.
I have picked up the Harry Dean Stanton auto for $30, Ian Holm for $46, two plates at around $14 each, most recently a Paxton auto at $25 and if you can believe it the SP2 achievement card for $13!

Earlier in the thread I was only buying the Marine dog tag cards but on COMC I have picked up all the rest for no more than a couple dollars per card, many for under a dollar. So why not finish the set if dealers are basically just giving the cards away?

Are people only aware of eBay or are prices on COMC indicative of so little demand for such a legendary series of films? On Blowout a guy won Charles Hall's only Artist Proof off eBay for $36 which I think is criminal. Speaking of sketch cards, now we have seen a lot more, despite the long list of artists I think the quality is very average. Some stunners of course but few and very far between.

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something here, but if these Alien autograph cards are selling this low from COMC or in the e-Pack back and forth business, doesn't that make it the card price? I mean, that is how it works doesn't? Everything sells to the bottom/lowest offer. So while it's fine to congratulate yourself on such great buys, what happened to having value in limited products? If this is what it is selling for, then that's all it's worth. That's the market we deal in and it will find it's way to all outlets, including eBay for us regular type buyers.

As for what UD is doing, they are playing games. Whether it works for them in the end or not I wouldn't know. Just saw on another forum that the e-Pack buyers believe that Dr. Strange will be in e-Packs also. Don't know where that info came from, supposed to be a one card per pack release, which is about as high end as you can get. Will be interesting to see if it happens to that title as well. I don't really care, won't effect me one way or the other, but if e-Packs will follow it should be known for those interested.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
I don't know, maybe I'm missing something here, but if these Alien autograph cards are selling this low from COMC or in the e-Pack back and forth business, doesn't that make it the card price? I mean, that is how it works doesn't? Everything sells to the bottom/lowest offer. So while it's fine to congratulate yourself on such great buys, what happened to having value in limited products? If this is what it is selling for, then that's all it's worth. That's the market we deal in and it will find it's way to all outlets, including eBay for us regular type buyers.

I get the logic but don't entirely agree. Two reasons.
Firstly The same stuff is generally selling for more on eBay than COMC, which leads me to believe there is a platform/visibility issue with the latter site.
Secondly, I find prices on things like auto cards generally hit their lowest levels within the first 12 months of release when they are more plentiful and so those prices are not indicative of what people are willing to pay for these cards at other points in time. When they dry up and disappear into other people's collections, some to never reappear, they then start creeping up again in value again when they occasionally pop up.

It's all guesswork but I still think based on certain actors, licences, rarity, and evidence that people have been prepared to pay a lot more, you can deduce when you have got a good buy. Or is the 'Best eBay thread' redundant because none of them are actually bargains?

quote:

Originally posted by X:

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
I don't know, maybe I'm missing something here, but if these Alien autograph cards are selling this low from COMC or in the e-Pack back and forth business, doesn't that make it the card price? I mean, that is how it works doesn't? Everything sells to the bottom/lowest offer. So while it's fine to congratulate yourself on such great buys, what happened to having value in limited products? If this is what it is selling for, then that's all it's worth. That's the market we deal in and it will find it's way to all outlets, including eBay for us regular type buyers.

I get the logic but don't entirely agree. Two reasons.
Firstly The same stuff is generally selling for more on eBay than COMC, which leads me to believe there is a platform/visibility issue with the latter site.
Secondly, I find prices on things like auto cards generally hit their lowest levels within the first 12 months of release when they are more plentiful and so those prices are not indicative of what people are willing to pay for these cards at other points in time. When they dry up and disappear into other people's collections, some to never reappear, they then start creeping up again in value again when they occasionally pop up.

It's all guesswork but I still think based on certain actors, licences, rarity, and evidence that people have been prepared to pay a lot more, you can deduce when you have got a good buy. Or is the 'Best eBay thread' redundant because none of them are actually bargains?

I think there are eBay bargains when there are mistakes or misinformed/lazy sellers. When you find a card that is misidentified, or put in the wrong category so that it doesn't get the audience it should, it may slip past a lot of collectors who might pay more. If the seller is just dumping product for fast cash or has no interest in it because he doesn't care or has already made enough money on the product elsewhere so its just surplus, that's when you find bargains. Otherwise eBay is just a race to the bottom for darn near everything except that select group of items (I'm not just talking about cards here) that are at the top of the high demand/low supply equation.

But I would have to respectfully disagree with you about that timing thing. I get what you are saying about waiting for the supply to dry up and I think that used to be mostly true, but not so much anymore. Premium hits, including autographs, seem to come out at their highest prices within the first six months to my mind. There is no maturing process anymore, everyone knows the big hits and they arrive at peak. Even good ones have practically nowhere to go but down. That SMG autograph from last year's Buffy is a great example of a card that never moved up a bit. Why? Well maybe it's because the price was set too high from the start.

Where there are leaps in value it is generally caused by some unexpected event. For autographs, people die or they have some kind of breakout. An unknown turns into a star in some other role, a game show host runs for the leader of the free world, you know stuff like that.

There are always exceptions that crop up, but I am speaking about the vast majority of cards, even the good ones. If you pull them out of box you have a bargain, but if you buy them on the secondary market and especially if you buy them early, that is the going rate. Don't call it a bargain and don't expect it to appreciate, if it does you are very lucky. However as long as you want the card and intend to keep the card, that is the most important consideration.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
But I would have to respectfully disagree with you about that timing thing. I get what you are saying about waiting for the supply to dry up and I think that used to be mostly true, but not so much anymore. Premium hits, including autographs, seem to come out at their highest prices within the first six months to my mind. There is no maturing process anymore, everyone knows the big hits and they arrive at peak. Even good ones have practically nowhere to go but down. That SMG autograph from last year's Buffy is a great example of a card that never moved up a bit. Why? Well maybe it's because the price was set too high from the start.

I agree that maturing process doesn't seem to exist anymore. Many times there's such demand to be among the first collectors to get a premium hit that the first 5 - 10 cards that hit the market (depending on how big the collecting base for the series/character/actor is) will usually be the among the highest price paid for the card. These days it seems like the practice is for dealers (or those that have the cards to sell) to start prices high to take advantage of over eager collectors and then gradually lower the price until it reaches a price they're willing to sell at. So is it because the price is set too high from the start or because collectors are willing to pay it?

I think you are being far to black and white in your conclusions Raven. A card can be listed absolutely correctly on eBay but due to the time of year, the day or time it ends, who just happens to be watching (or not watching), and how much spare money they have at that particular moment, a great card can end at a fraction of its "going rate" but that doesn't make it the going rate. For that to be the going rate, all the other sales of that card need to be in a similar range.
Check out the sellers who only ship to the US to see softer prices than identical cards sold at the same time but to worldwide buyers. Which price is the "real price"?
It reminds me of when eBay was getting bigger and dealers told me stories of collectors coming up to them, plucking out the random lowest price sold listing from eBay, and demanding they pay no more than that price from the dealer. You can imagine how those conversations ended...

Naturally the first cards out the gate often hit the highest price due to hype/anticipation/lack of patience, then that price immediately falls when the glut hit the market. When that glut diminishes the prices get stronger again because you have those who missed them at release and now have a smaller supply to purchase from.
At least for the cards I collect, or follow, I do notice an upturn in prices a couple years down the line. Some cards even going for A LOT more for those high prices in the very beginning.
(I should hope it is obvious I am not talking about really common cards printed in too high a volume to ever rise much in price).

Then again I buy autos mainly from a film series that's been going 50+ years as opposed to flash-in-the-pan TV series like Lost so maybe my viewpoint is skewed.
Regardless, I could give a list as long as my arm of cards (not just Bond) that have skyrocketed in value but I won't bore everyone. But one example I saw just yesterday was an Ursula Andress Bond auto card that sold for just shy of £300. At release 9 years ago my dealer pulled 3 from not many cases and flogged them at £75 a pop, the going rate being around £100 on eBay, give or take.

Despite the doom and gloom from some collectors at the moment, and even with downward blips from time to time, there are definitely upward trends for the good stuff.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: X,

As usual you and I are pretty much saying the same thing with a little different attitude about the destination. It's not that I'm so black and white as it is that nuance is hard to fit in a short post. Of course you are right, you can get a good deal on a card for various reasons and it does not make it the going rate. Just like a foolish person can drastically overpay on a card and it does not make it the going rate. It's average price on confirmed sales, throwing out a percentage of the very high and the very low. At least that's what the price guides always tell us.

Anyway my point about the Alien cards is that if there are a number of sales from whatever platform that are lower than expected, there comes a time when those lower sales have to start factoring into the going rate. So are they really such a bargain, or are they just selling at the current market price that is going down? It hardly matters what any collector believes a card should be worth based on rarity or any other logic, it's always the demand that drives the pricing. If its a 1/1 and the most someone will pay is $10, that's it worth. Maybe it changes in 10 years, maybe nobody ever cares.

I would like to see your list of skyrocketing autograph card prices for my own information. I can think of very few that went up significantly that were not driven by other factors such as death or a career success. To qualify that, I am speaking of modern products after 2000 and I am making the allowance for natural inflation or dollar/pound fluctuations. The Bond series has held better value than most titles and some of the high cards have certainly risen, but older autograph cards came out lower because that was the norm 10/15 years ago. So it's really hard to compare apples and oranges, even when they are the same apples and oranges.

So I shall close because I'm starting to confuse myself. Always a pleasure talking to you X.

I was just checking out the Ian Holm autographs cards from the various Lord of the Rings films on Ebay and noticed that Ian Holm's signature on those cards are quite different than the Alien Anthology signatures. The "Ian" part of the signature is quite different.

What do you folks think?

quote:

Originally posted by space phantom:
I was just checking out the Ian Holm autographs cards from the various Lord of the Rings films on Ebay and noticed that Ian Holm's signature on those cards are quite different than the Alien Anthology signatures. The "Ian" part of the signature is quite different.

What do you folks think?

I noticed it too. I commented about it on another forum regarding his last Hobbit autograph. It's this same way also (different from his usual). I know what I believe and no one aside from Sir Ian himself will convince me otherwise, but will leave it to others to make up their own minds.

Logan, just noticed the auto on Hobbit Five Armies and that looks like the Alien auto. The autos on Ebay from the Lord of the Rings releases are very different. Those signatures are consistent from card to card and the first and last name have the same slant,flow and style. It's plausible, though,that he has two distinct auto styles or that as the years have gone on from those early LOTR releases, he has changed his signature style.
For what it's worth.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: space phantom,

Consider also his age and declining health which could affect his signature. In fact, Ians health concerns kept him from going to New Zealand to film his scenes for the Hobbit. Peter Jackson brought his production crew to England for a few weeks to accommodate both Ian and Christopher Lee.

Age and health have a lot to do with deteriorating autographs. Big factors are also the differences in pen/ink strokes and what material you are signing. We are seeing radical differences in on-card as compared to sticker signatures for some people.

In this case the Holm's signature has gotten better. He has been fairly shaky for awhile. This version is neater and more legible. I don't claim to have noticed the change before those eagle eyes pointed it out, but it is a different autograph.

It could just be that he has gotten better meds and if that is the case I wish him well.

In defense of changing auto styles due to age and or health issues, just check out the Kim Darby (Miri) Star Trek TOS auto from 1997 Skybox vs. the ST TOS 2009 and ST TOS 50th anniversary silver auto of the same actor. The signature from 1997 is legible and neat while the current releases are more like a scrawl.