24 April 2010

Check Out Clyde's Cards (p5)

I emailed COMC in response to the notification that one of my cards was being returned and very plainly stated my case, how I'd verified that every single card I submitted was, in fact, listed by Beckett, and identified the card to them as what Beckett called "1995 Takara SW16 Kazuhisa Ishii" and now they've acknowledge finding the card in Beckett's listings and are going to add it to my inventory.

Granted, for the typical COMC user, this card is a bit obscure, not worth very much, sure it's just Kaz Ishii, and he's not even relevant to American baseball anymore, but they chose to correct the oversight and that's good customer service. Whatever else I may have to say about how they choose which cards to list, I can't deny that Check Out My Cards has very good customer service!

1995 Takara Japan #SW16 - Kazuhisa Ishii - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com 

21 April 2010

Check Out Clyde's Cards (p4)

I was out of town for work yesterday, so I caught the notice for the completion of processing on my latest submission to CheckOutMyCards.com on my Blackberry and only just now got the cards priced and into the system. The email read as follows:

Jason,

We finished processing your shipment of 49 cards, Batch #427993. 1 cards are being returned, and 48 cards have been added to your 'DaClyde' account. $0.20 of your store credit was used to cover the processing fee.

Your account now has $15.55 of store credit.

Cards being returned are processed once a month by shipping. You will be notified by the Shipping Manager as to options for shipping.

Attached is a receipt of all the cards we added. If you find any mistakes, please click on the corresponding "Wrong Data?" link on the Manage Inventory page, or click on the "Notify Us" link on any Card Details page.

In order for people to purchase these cards, you need to go to the following page and set your asking prices.

http://www.checkoutmycards.com/manage/inventory.aspx?filter=attention

Price changes take effect immediately, but the search results are 1 hour delayed. Approximately one hour after you set your prices, you will be able to find your cards for sale here.

http://www.checkoutmycards.com/Users/DaClyde

If you have any questions, we would be more than happy to help.

~ CheckOutMyCards.com Team

http://www.checkoutmycards.com

Attached was a spreadsheet detailing all of the cards they added to my inventory.
Comparing their list against what I sent, the card that is coming back is the 1995 Takara Yakult Swallows Kazuhisa Ishii card. I very carefully made sure that every card I sent them this time was listed in Beckett's online price guide, and I also sent in my customary itemized list of every card in the lot. But I'll let this one slide, as the Takara sets don't make any outward reference to what they are (and the meticulously itemized list in English didn't seem to help them).

Again, they completely ignored that list and mis-listed several of the cards. All of the 2000 BBM Diamond Heroes cards were listed simply as "BBM Japan" and the one 2001 BBM Preview card of Kazuo Matsui was listed as "2001 BBM Japan #P73 - Kazuo Matsui PREVIEW". Ditto for improperly listing a 2000 BBM Yomirui Giants card of Hideki MAtsui. I went ahead and priced everything and submitted correction notes to all of the improperly listed cards.

So let that be a lesson. If you ever choose to submit any Japanese cards any more obscure than pre-2003 BBM base sets or pre-2001 Calbee base sets, expect to spend a lot of time repeatedly sending in corrections until you wear them down and they actually make the corrections (they still haven't corrected a Tuffy Rhodes card I send in back in September 09) or expect to see the cards back in your mailbox in about 8-12 weeks. I'm completely baffled that they've correctly listed the 1999 Broccoli Seibu Lions sets, which have absolutely no outward indication of the manufacturer each time, but botch the blatantly named BBM Diamond Stars!

On the plus side, I've sold a few more cards in the last couple of weeks, so at least the site is working for me on some level.

To see my latest additions, check out my COMC store here:

http://www.checkoutmycards.com/users/daclyde

By default, I think it sorts by "recently added", so you should see all the latest additions. Lots of Ichiro, Big & Little Matsui as well as a wide range of American oddball cards & stickers. I'll probably be sending in another submission later this week.

---Update---

Well, I can't complain too much with the results, less than an hour after getting all the cards posted, the 2000 BBM Diamond Star of Ryota Igarashi sold for $4!

18 April 2010

KuboTEN strikes again!

Back in February, I won another Yahoo Auction of 18 Tuffy Rhodes cards from joecool0314 (my 3rd). A couple of weeks later, I also took a shot at ordering from Mitchael-Trading.com via KuboTEN and picked up another 7 Tuffy's I needed (one was sold out, I guess I missed that when I was browsing their online inventory).

Oddly, Tuffy didn't have a card in the 1996 Calbee set. 1996 was his first year in the league, and the set was only 139 cards over two series, and already had a good number of gaijin, but you'd think they could have left Alonzo Powell out of the second series (he was #24 in Series 1) and included Tuffy. I guess it's just frustration on my part as 1996 was Hensley Meulens third year in the league, and he never got a card in a Calbee set! Tuffy did make his Calbee debut in 1997, though:

Also picked up his 1998 BBM Diamond Heroes:

The last of the 2000 BBM 20th Century's Best cards I needed:

A few cards from the 2001-2003 BBM Kintetsu Buffaloes sets:

including a signature insert:

and the Buffaloes winning the 2002 Pacific League Championship:

And the rest...
2003 BBM Touch the Game:

2003 Calbee

2005 BBM Touch the Game (which seems more concerned with the flashy design than the player):

2005 Konami Prime Nine 2nd Edition:

2007 Calbee Inter-League insert:

2008 BBM All Star Card:

The regular 2009 BBM:

2009 BBM Orix Buffaloes "Wild Buffaloes" card
(I don't think I've ever seen anyone else wear their caps and helmets as low as Tuffy, he must rip all the padding out of the top or something):

And his main card from the 2009 BBM Buffaloes Memorial set:

12 April 2010

If they didn't make endless parallels, they'd just make endless perpendiculars...

Is there a parallel set for the 2008 Upper Deck Yankee Stadium Legacy box set?

The top card is what comes from the dime-a-dozen 100-card boxed set. The bottom card I finally received today after watching it on eBay for the last year. It sat there at $2.99 for the longest time, and I didn't really want to bother since shipping was another $2. Just last week, though, I got about $50 from my Sportlots sales at the same time that the card was on sale for $1.49 with free shipping, so I had to pull the trigger.

After a bit of research, it turns out the bottom card is from the "Final Season" boxed set that was exclusive to QVC.

The main differences are the obvious gold-tinge to the whole front. All of the foil is gold, rather than silver, the upper background is the muted instead of dark blue, and the lower area has a cream colored background with gold pinstripes instead of the blue/grey. The main differences on the back are the lighter text and the absence of "BOX SET" under the set name at the bottom.




The seller, loret2154, doesn't have the other Winfield from the set, but she does have another 28 cards from the set.

Here's someone selling the complete set, with lots of extra details:

2008 UD YANKEE STADIUM FINAL SEASON BOX SET

06 April 2010

Check Out Clyde's Cards (p3)

I have absolutely no idea what it signifies, but my batch has moved on to the next step of completion (or maybe they just automatically bump standard service batches to 35% on the 37th day after the process begins).

ServiceBatchProgressEst. QtyDue DateEst. DateCompletedFees
Standard42799335 %504/21/20104/21/2010$0.50

04 April 2010

2000 Future Bee Power League UL box break (pack 6)



From pack #6, we find only two players who are still active this season, Hiroshima's Akihiro Higashide and Naoyuki Shimizu, who is now pitching with the Yokohama BayStars.