eBay Introduces Price Guide and Collections for Trading Cards
eBay has introduced new features to the eBay app for trading card sellers, both still in the beta stage.
Price Guide beta
Access the most recent trading cards sales data with new Price Guide
Price Guide, powered by eBay’s incredible breadth of data, provides you with the most accurate insights available anywhere for sports and non-sports trading cards and collectible card games.
Price Guide shows the most accurate reflection of your trading cards’ current value on our site, based on verified transactions on eBay during the previous 12 months.
Track trends and filter results for your queries with Refined Results, or get broader results for market research and browsing with Extended Results. For sellers, Price Guide can help you make the best-informed pricing decisions with the most recent trading cards sales data—and get the best prices for your collection.
Collection beta
Know your portfolio’s past, present, and potential future value with new Collection
Curious about the estimated value of a card in your collection that you're thinking about selling? Collection is integrated with Price Guide data so you have all the tools you need to power your trading all in one place. Engage with your collection in a multitude of ways.
See the value of your portfolio at a high level or view a specific "asset class" like Pokemon or basketball. You can drill down to see the value of individual cards.
Designed for in-app usage, you can list directly from Collection, making the listing process faster and easier.
On desktop, upload up to 1,000 items using the .csv upload template, making it easy to upload your entire collection
Seller sentiment seems to be mixed on this one. A few sellers on Twitter were very impressed with the pricing feature in particular.
Huge announcement from @ebay today.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) July 30, 2021
New app update allows users to track trading card trends, dig deep into rich sold data (successful offer prices are now revealed) and track the value of their collections based on real time price guide created from consummated sales. pic.twitter.com/QZwqLa515B
I’m digging this, you really need to drill down into each individual card for it to work the best. You can clearly see the post SB spike on #TB12. I included no grades on purpose. @CardPurchaser pic.twitter.com/HJ4QND7UqU
— Bowman1951's Sports Card Adventures (@bowman1951) July 30, 2021
Other sellers in the eBay community and Reddit were concerned that the pricing data doesn't allow you to differentiate between graded and ungraded or other important factors, possibly skewing the results.
I tried out the tool when it was announced, and I still can't stop laughing.
Not only does it not differentiate between the two main categories of 'Graded' and 'Ungraded', it doesn't differentiate between set, card finish, edition, or anything else besides keyword I'm led to think.
The test collection I uploaded of 36 cards was showing as worth upwards of $2,000 because it was skewing the prices by mixing graded and ungraded card sales, cards worth $5 were being shown as worth $100+ as a result.I agree on the potential of it, but the implementation was absolutely wrong.
Ebay's Price Guide "Beta" from Ebay
Several other sellers in the community reported not being able access the new features or that they had technical issues when doing so and it would appear community staff didn't receive any training or information about the new feature before the announcement was made either.
There may be some potential here, but for now it is definitely another "early stages work in progress."
Another eBay staff member in the community responded to one post assuring sellers they are listening to feedback and provided a point of contact specifically for these new features.
Thanks for your feedback. We're actively monitoring and listening and we're currently looking into this. We'll be in touch soon. Also, we want to let others know that you can also reach us at betafeedback@ebay.com.
Cheers, eBay
much too complicated now for a few pounds a year in sales
They just "killed the golden goose". I imported my 1500+ eBay items to there since it was free. Turned out just to be a lot of work for (maybe) 3 sales a month.
The total fees were higher there before this new $20 a month cost structure, even though they claimed otherwise. When one factors in the 3.49% + 49 cent PayPal processing fees so one can get paid, there went a good chunk of profit.
Now they have boosted their commission to 11%, and still claim that the cost to sell there is less than eBay's. And remember that this does not include payment processing. WHY?? Makes no sense at all.
On eBay, for $27.95 a month, I sell over 100 items there every 30-31 days. Makes ZERO SENSE to pay a site $20 to make just a couple of sales. Since they now allow 50 "free listings", I have trimmed my offerings back to just below that amount. Also had to raise all my prices accordingly to absorb the extra selling costs.
The people who run the show here obviously didn't realize that eBay sellers who imported their listings gave the site a great depth of product, which would attract more buyers. Now that will be gone, because NO ONE will pay them $20 monthly for little to no sales.
The site also has technical issues that they refuse to fix. It was a decent resource to enable the occasional sale, but they will soon be stacked onto the eCommerce trash heap of companies that THOUGHT they could compete with Amazon and eBay. Etsy may also suffer the same fate soon, as many sellers are also leaving their site due to high fees, website issues, and poor management.
Basic eComm rule here: When you do not carry any inventory, and sellers are solely responsible for supplying your site with the goods offered, DON'T BITE THE HAND WHICH FEEDS YOU!!!