I am a Naxcom fan.

ndleo

This summer I started listing my better graded cards on Naxcom rather than putting them on ebay. I must say that I am very happy with prices I am getting. The downside is that it takes a while to get paid (12 days for basic members) and you never know when it will sell. Plus I'm still not clear how their fee structure works, however the amount deposited in my account is better than the ebay realized prices for similar cards.

The best part about Naxcom is that there is an opportunity to negotiate prices with other collectors. I listed several high dollar vintage and was able to sell them in a package deal to a collector in New York.

2/3 of my business is still thru ebay, but the 1/3 thru Naxcom is much more profitable. Those of you looking for a viable alternative to ebay and are not in a rush, I highly recommend trying out Naxcom. And no my girlfriend isn't one of the Naxcom tramps that work the booth.

ROCKDJRW

I bought two graded cards on Naxcom last week using some money that was put in my account for signing up at the National. I am pleased with the cards I got, however I don't feel the website is very user friendly. Perhaps I am just so used to Ebay everything else seems difficult but I always seem to end up looking at items that don't even match my search criteria. Congrats on the sales and I will continue to check Naxcom and hope for further improvments.

sagard

Naxcoms fees are very steep, but you can list with no upfront fees and non-paying bidders don't exist.

I had a recent $425 sale, buyer paid $10.20 for shipping (Naxcoms rate). Of that I received $401.37 and shipping cost me around $6.

So Naxcoms rate was 7.8%.

Ebays take on a $425 (plus $10 shipping) listing is:

$3.60 for listing.
$12.31 Final Values.
$12.62 PayPal.

Ebay takes 6.6% and gets cheaper as the transaction gets larger. Of course you are gambling with your listing fees.

I'm using Naxcom and Yahoo because I really don't like seeing the virtual monopoly which is Ebay. Unfortunately Yahoo just doesn't seem to have any visitors again yet.

jskirwin

<< <i>however I don't feel the website is very user friendly. Perhaps I am just so used to Ebay everything else seems difficult but I always seem to end up looking at items that don't even match my search criteria. >>



I've designed corporate websites and online databases for a living and am truly amazed at how bad Naxcom's site is. The overall design is terribly cluttered, and half the time you don't know if you are searching the complete site or just the seller you are interested in (it pays to shop with one seller who has lots of what you want to save on shipping).

Beckett is much better, and something along the lines of the Circuit City website would be optimal.

eadams24

Is Naxcom trustworthy? There's a PSA 6 1952 Topps Eddie Mathews selling for $5500. That last PSA 5 on Ebay went for $5000 and the last PSA 6 went for $8000. Can I trust buying a high price item like that?

baseballcardsonly

I too have trouble with the Naxcom website.....very hard to navigate.

Plus it seems that everything I'm interested in doesn't have a scan/photo of the card. You would think that with the way card grading is going, that the sellers would understand the lack of a scan is hurting business.

eadams24

I'm using Naxcom and Yahoo because I really don't like seeing the virtual monopoly which is Ebay. Unfortunately Yahoo just doesn't seem to have any visitors again yet.

My prediction is Google will come out with an auction site soon and take over a good deal of the market share. They will do what they always do which is take something that already successfully exists and make it better i.e. web search, email, maps.

Axtell

Didn't they predict overstock's auction website would come in and take over market share and it didn't happen.

It's easy for google to lay claim to market share of search engines and the like because for the user, there's no money at stake. When you start talking about possible monetary shortages, I think you'll find google's attempts a bit more trying. It's probably why they haven't entered the game already.

The next thing you are going to see from google is an instant messenger client...they recently purchased a company who has developed their own IM client, and I've heard google plans on intermixing their search engine with keywords from your conversation, so you could say to your friend 'I need to buy a new Ipod' and 'ipod search results' would show in the window.

Should be interesting times ahead, that's for sure. Google just acquired $15 billion from it's second batch of stock releases, so they are in the market to acquire.

fsjeter

<<Is Naxcom trustworthy? There's a PSA 6 1952 Topps Eddie Mathews selling for $5500. That last PSA 5 on Ebay went for $5000 and the last PSA 6 went for $8000. Can I trust buying a high price item like that?>>

You should be o.k. The money is held in "escrow" for a short time after the transaction. You get time to receive and inspect your purchase before the money is turned over to the seller. If there is a problem, Naxcom can refund the money. Unless things have changed since I haven't bought anything from that site in quite a long time.

Scott

wolfbear

Just went and checked out the site.

Found people wanting to sell their cards for twice what they'd get for them on eBay,
and people wanting to buy cards for half of what they'd have to pay for them on eBay.

Same nonsense as when I checked it out last year ...

TheCARDKid

Has anyone bought unopened wax from the site? Any experiences good or bad?

ndleo

Wolfbear - You're right about some of the sellers there. A lot of the big time dealers use the site (including our friends at BMW Cards), so you will see the high sell prices. I agree that the BUY offers are worthless. However some of the buyers do send me emails to negotiate and I can usually come to a deal. I sold a Magic/Bird RC PSA 8 for a net of $240 to a BUY offer guy. That falls right into the high range for ebay, which isn't bad considering that this card sells for around $200 often. They way I look at it, Naxcom eliminated the "low ball" auction risk of ebay.

CardKid - I bought some 2004 Football boxes and there we no problems. You have to shop around for the price, they can be a little high. I haven't bought any wax pre-1980 though.

glmueller

not a user friendly site

NickM

I purchased a number of modern wax boxes that were no longer hot there by putting out buy offers and waiting for someone to bite. I got OK deals on them (paid less than what a big dealer would get on ebay, but more than a low feedback seller might get), and found no problems with any of my boxes except from one seller who sent hobby blaster boxes instead of hobby boxes (the seller agreed to a return for a refund without a problem). I'm confident all the boxes were unsearched - not that these were high-end boxes, and almost all of them had inserts and rookies running with or ahead of ratios, except for a group of 2002 Donruss baseball that were woefully short of inserts but produced a Bonds jersey #/50. [Since the same seller gave me 2003 Leaf baseball boxes that kicked butt, I think it's just bad factory collation.]

Nick

jrdolan

<< <i>Naxcoms fees are very steep, but you can list with no upfront fees and non-paying bidders don't exist.

I had a recent $425 sale, buyer paid $10.20 for shipping (Naxcoms rate). Of that I received $401.37 and shipping cost me around $6.

So Naxcoms rate was 7.8%. >>



sagard, how did you get a break on the payment processing fee? I calculate for a $425 sale on NAXCOM:

$22.70 selling fee -- $5 for each $100 and $2.70 for the leftover $25.
$12.60 PayPal / CC fee -- 2.59% + 29 cents. (Anyone can use a credit card on any sale)

$35.32 total (8.3% of the sale price) for $389.68 in your pocket. I must have calculated something wrong.

Let's assume you're right about NAXCOM / PayPal's 7.8% (and you would know!) versus eBay / PayPal's 6.6%. I wonder:

Is the difference worth keeping it posted indefinitely until it sells for your price? Not having to worry about it selling for peanuts? Not having to worry about if the winner will actually pay?

Does NAXCOM allow you to specify check or MO only? Is that how you kept a larger percentage of your sale price?

And most of all, is the NAXCOM market large enough that reasonably priced items won't languish for months? Do many vintage collectors buy there, or is it 99% modern?

gregm13

I have bought around 10 cards on Naxcom and have been very pleased. I even had one seller that never sent the card and I received my refund within several days of making the compliant. Imagine that....

My two compliants have already been voiced, but are:

1. Horrible to navigate around, and
2. Very few seller include scans.

Why would a seller include a scan on E-Bay and not include one on Naxcom? It seems that 80 to 90 % of auctions on E-Bay include scans but roughly 40-50% do on Naxcom (off the wall estimates - but it illustrates my point).

Regards,

Greg M.

sagard

<< <i>
sagard, how did you get a break on the payment processing fee? I calculate for a $425 sale on NAXCOM:
>>



I found their pricing information hard to navigate. Here is what was shown on the transaction:

Buyer paid $435.20 total for card and shipping. The agreed upon price was $425 with $10.20 being the standard Naxcom shipping rate.
Naxcom fees on $425.

$22.45 from the chart + 2.79% of ($425) + $0.29 = $34.59

However their fees were actually only $33.83, so either I still can't calculate it or they raised their prices.

If I had Naxcom send via PayPal, I would take the additional 2.9% hit.

Naxcom is an option, but there still seems to be too wide of a gap between seller prices and buyer offers.




You are right if I had Naxcom Paypal me the money, I would have taken another 2.9% hit.

jrdolan

Out of curiosity, I sold my first card on NAXCOM. I made it a cheapie in case the deal blows up in my face.

I chose not to post a card and wait, but to look for offers I could live with. That was fun, kinda shopping around for money instead of merchandise.

I have a rather large collection of Johnny Bench autos, authenticated or factory-issued except for the ones I obtained from Johnny in person and thus never sent to PSA/DNA. I did a search for Buy Offers on Bench-signed insert cards, and most of the offers were silly low, as you might expect. But there were some serious guys there looking for particular auto cards, posting serious bids. I chose one for $60 on a 2004 Fan Favorites, since I have a couple of those. All I did, after I was logged in, was click Sell To This Buyer or something like that and enter a quantity of 1. Done deal. The money was instantly transferred to my account, to be released in 12 days (allowing time for the buyer to complain if necessary).

The $60 sale price + $4.25 S&H was deposited to me. The S&H was determined by NAXCOM based on value and shipping distance, and included insurance. If I chose not to buy insurance I would eat the loss in the event that USPS lost or damaged the card.

NAXCOM took $4.20 for their cut, plus $2.09 for "processing payment." It doesn't matter how the buyer chooses to pay, that's between them and NAXCOM. The seller must pay the processing fee regardless, and NAXCOM guarantees payment as soon as the sale is made. (Both fees are based on the size of the sale. There are charts to determine this in advance. These particular fee levels would have applied up to a sale of $67.99)

S&H actually cost me $2.45 in postage and insurance. I chose to insure for $50 ($1.30) instead of $60 ($2.20), so if there is a loss the most I can recover from USPS is $50 while refunding the full $60 to the buyer. So ...

$64.25 received if the deal proceeds smoothly.
- $6.29 paid to NAXCOM for its two fees.
- $2.45 postage, including $50 insurance and delivery confirmation.
- $1.00 for mailer and materials. (approximate)
$54.51 in my pocket from a $60 sale.

How would I have done on eBay? Well, I can say I bought the card there for $45 plus $3 S&H. I might have done better than the person who sold it to me, but that's always gravy if that happens. I might also have done worse in an auction format. But say I sold it on eBay for a fixed price of $60 so we can compare the fees even up. Insertion fee is $2.40. Final value fee is $2.27. PayPal's cut is $1.83. I charge $3 S&H, and the buyer most likely declines to buy insurance on a $60 deal, so I spend $1.15 for postage including delivery confirmation and another $1.00 on materials.

Total in my pocket from the eBay sale: $54.25. Just about identical to NAXCOM in this particular case.

It should be noted that the smaller the sale, the more the fees eat into the proceeds. eBay and NAXCOM don't have the same sliding scale, and it appears that eBay becomes cheaper on the more expensive sales. But it is also riskier; NAXCOM guarantees payment, though you don't get it right away.

Another difference is that eBay allows a seller to build his profit into the S&H rather than the merchandise. He can sell a card for a penny, and stiff eBay / PayPal in the process, but charge $9.99 S&H. NAXCOM sets S&H and forces you to keep your profit within the card. (You can build all your fees into your asking price, if you choose, but you have to remain competitive so it's a balancing act)

NAXCOM states that S&H is intended to be fair compensation for postage, materials and time. It also gives minimum packaging standards -- pretty lenient ones, if you ask me. No requirement of cardboard sandwiching the card, just a penny sleeve, toploader, tape or team bag to keep the card from sliding out, and a bubble envelope. For graded cards, it's just a bubble envelope with paper wrapped around the slab. I always use cardboard stiffeners in the bubble mailer, but since I cut up boxes for that, it's no added expense.

Anyway, on a $60 fixed-price sale it appears that costs are about equal between eBay and NAXCOM. There are many other pros and cons for both sites, but I'm not so quick to dismiss NAXCOM as I once was. Now to see how long a posted item gathers dust.

sagard

Ironically the guy who bought my card on Naxcom just sold it on Ebay. He got $456 on Ebay vs. the $425 I got on Naxcom. However, he listed it as a "featured" auction and probably just broke even on the deal. Though is other auctions probably did a little better with his having a featured auction out there.