18 million trading cards were sold on eBay in Q1 2021, it’s big business and some sell for thousands of dollars. To help boost this trade, eBay introduced two new features this summer, but they appear to be in no mood for messing about as they’ve also suspended one of the largest trading card sellers on their marketplace.
New Trading Cards features
Price Guide
Price Guide 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 eBay, based on verified transactions on eBay during the previous 12 months.
You can 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
If you are 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
Protecting the Trading Cards market
eBay have suspended PWCC, one of the largest trading card sellers on their marketplace who typically have 10s of 1000s of listings live at any one time. An email was sent to recent consumers who bought from this eBay user:
“Recently, it was determined that individuals associated with a trading card seller, PWCC, have engaged in “shill bidding,” which is prohibited on eBay. As a result, eBay has restricted PWCC’s selling privileges and listings, effective today. eBay’s policies and standards were designed to ensure a trusted marketplace where our community can transact with confidence. If we determine that a buyer or seller is not acting in good faith, eBay takes this seriously and takes action.”
– eBay
Shill bidding is basically bidding on your own auctions to drive up the selling price, something that PWCC strenuously deny:
“PWCC was shocked to see eBay’s email today stating that unidentified “individuals associated with” PWCC engaged in “shill bidding.” To PWCC’s knowledge, its employees have never engaged in any behavior that violates eBay’s agreements and policies. PWCC goes to great lengths to ensure that its employees follow eBay’s rules and PWCC employees do not have access to eBay’s bidding records or information.”
– PWCC
Unless a case goes trial, and PWCC say that they are considering all available legal options, we’ll probably never know exactly what happened but eBay have unparalleled access to bidding history and the ability to link accounts so they would be in the best position to judge – perhaps even better than PWCC themselves. It’s worth considering that if you work for a Trading Cards company you could quite possibly be a collector yourself but bidding on your own auctions is still banned, even if it was in good faith and you genuinely wanted to purchase the item. (On eBay, you are only allowed to purchase via fixed price if you want to buy from a connected account).
What this does demonstrate is the size and value of the Trading Cards market and eBay’s determination to protect and grow this business and if you present a danger to the trust buyers place in eBay then, regardless of how big you are, you’ll be sanctioned.
2 Responses
Ebay cracking down on possible fraud…. gee, someone slipped up there! Thank goodness it is a very rare occassion… scammers everywhere would be looking for a new place to make money!
It has been known for years that consignment businesses like PWCC (there are more doing exactly the same thing) have been inflating prices via fraudulent practice. They accept consignments from collectors mainly in the USA and sell for those clients. Those clients can then bid on their own items (usually from an unlinked account) vastly inflating the price. There will have been many occasions where the successful bidder is actually the owner of the item and it is probable that the amount of cancelled auctions/orders has brought ebays attention to the situation. I am aware of this situation as we are the largest seller of cig and trade cards on ebay in the UK.