High dollar, low grade cards now showing up as "COMC reviewed" with grade
 

COMC appears to be experimenting with a new listing format. Cards that were over $1,000 book value, but in "less than excellent" condition are now being listed as "COMC reviewed".

So far the grades seem to be:

"COMC REVIEWED Less than Excellent"

"COMC REVIEWED Fair"

"COMC REVIEWED Poor"

The book value is no longer the High Book price. A book value no longer appears next to the card, but does show up in a text search. Book values appear to be around 50% of high book for "less than excellent" and around 10% of high book for "fair" and "poor", though they might also be the "good" and "vg-ex" values which appear in the Annual Beckett guides.

[url=http://www.checkoutmycards.com/Cards,=comc+reviewed]Cards matching: comc reviewed - CheckOutMyCards.com[/url]

Interesting. And it's not just high-dollar cards. I see a 1979 Johnny Bench that has an asking price of only $.35

I'm not sure if this is a Pro or a Con, but it causes the card to be listed separately from the other copies of the same card.

You're right. The cheaper cards appear to be newly processed cards, with COMC Item Numbers above 9.2 million.

It looks like this is a new way to do condition notes.

I definitely don't like the fact that they're all appearing on different pages, and appearing without any kind of reference value on the page. One of the biggest advantages of COMC is that every copy for sale of a particular card is right there for you to compare.

As a seller, I rarely sell cards which have no book value. As a buyer, I rarely look at cards without a book value. I do believe that these new reference values are much closer to the actual value of the card than full High Beckett, but I would like to see the reference value, and I would like there to be some way to see every copy of a particular card that is for sale at the same time.

Separating the cards might be the worst idea they have ever had...They obviously are doing whatever they can to discourage vintage cards as every change that is made is designed to hurt vintage sellers

I spoke with COMC a few days back and I got the impression that these new notes will be replacing the dreaded "Has flaws" condition note. I also understood that they will be going back and changing old stock to this new basis as well.

I think that the issue with no book value is similar to the graded cards not having book value; when they put a notation that shows up before you drill down into the card it is like they have changed the name of the card so it can not reference the book value.

In any event it is definitely time that COMC gave everyone a heads up on what they are doing.

Ugh. Now, it looks like they've changed the terminology on some cards. Instead of "fair", they're calling them "COMC REVIEWED Not Good".

I wouldn't mind "Less Than Good", but "Not Good" makes it sound like the card is counterfeit or something.

On the plus side, the first page of the "percentage off guide" sort on COMC is much less cluttered with low grade vintage.