eBay officially acquires Goldin 👑

PLUS: PSA acquires eBay vault?? 🗃️

Author

Azum Beg
April 10, 2024

Today’s edition is brought to you by Cardboard Market — use one search to find cards across eBay, COMC, PWCC, MySlabs, and more!

Rise and shine, card enthusiasts! This is Penny Sleeve, we’re like your favorite kindergarten teacher — we’ll teach you something cool then send you to recess early.

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

  • eBay officially acquires Goldin 👑

  • PSA acquires eBay vault?? 🗃️

  • Auctions ending soon 🔎

  • People to follow in the hobby 👥

  • Meme of the day 🃏

EBAY OFFICIALLY ACQUIRES GOLDIN, AND PSA ACQUIRES EBAY VAULT?? 👑 🗃️

The rumors have finally been proven true — eBay officially announced this morning that they’re acquiring Goldin from Collectors, the parent company of PSA.

Collectors is officially out of the marketplace business, which had been controversial ever since their initial purchase of Goldin in 2021. People were uncertain about how much trust you could put in a grading company that also owned an auction house — wouldn’t they be incentivized to grade cards highly and send them to their own auction house? Now there’s one less conflict of interest, with Collectors no longer competing in the same market as eBay.

What is surprising, is that this isn’t just a one-sided exchange. As part of the same transaction, Collectors is acquiring the eBay vault from eBay. This is pretty confusing — Goldin has a vault, and eBay is acquiring Goldin, but eBay’s vault is now part of Collectors. Confusing, right? My understanding is that Goldin’s vault is actually the PSA vault, which is staying with Collectors and not part of the deal. All the items in the eBay vault will be moved over to the PSA vault once the transaction closes. Once this happens, there’s an immediate benefit for collectors — you’ll be able to send newly-graded cards to the PSA vault and have them listed directly on eBay. The current process requires you to have your slabs shipped to you and then shipped to the eBay vault, which takes a reasonable amount of time and risks damage/loss.

In 2023, eBay processed $73 billion in gross merchandise value, while Goldin has sold over $1.2 billion in cards and memorabilia since its founding in 2012. Based on these numbers, Goldin isn’t a huge addition to eBay’s business from a volume perspective. But it does unlock a high-end collectibles market that eBay hasn’t successfully penetrated in their nearly 30-year history.

This acquisition follows a number of other high-profile deals in the space: Fanatics acquired PWCC in May last year after things went awry with PWCC’s lending program. Robert Edward Auctions also acquired Huggins & Scott in July 2023, a couple months after the founder of Huggins & Scott, Bill Huggins, passed away.

My take: I like this deal — Collectors gets to focus on grading, while eBay can focus on auctioning. I also like the consolidation of vaults, and the fact that the hobby’s predominant vault isn’t owned by a marketplace, but a (slightly) more independent party.

AUCTIONS ENDING SOON 🔎

PEOPLE TO FOLLOW IN THE HOBBY 👥

MEME OF THE DAY 🃏

Source: @hoodiehaskins on Twitter