eBay Vault adding buyer’s premium?? 🔒

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Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• eBay Vault adding buyer’s premium?? 🔒

• Topps made a milly selling Caitlin Clark cards 💰

• Auctions ending soon 🔎

• People to follow in the hobby 👥

• Meme of the day 🃏

EBAY VAULT ADDING BUYER’S PREMIUM?? 💸

eBay is introducing a 3% buyer’s premium for its eBay Vault service, starting today (April 1). The eBay Vault, which launched in 2022, initially offered fee-free buying and selling of cards to attract users. Now, there will be a 3% surcharge applied to purchases of card that are already in the Vault, supposedly to cover the administrative costs of reassigning ownership. The 3% is calculated based on the card’s last purchase price.

eBay is also introducing a $1 per card submission fee for people wanting to add their own cards to the Vault, with the fee covering authenticity verification and processing. There are still no seller’s fees for cards in the Vault. It’s also worth noting that the eBay Vault is only for graded cards worth $250 or more.

My take: Everyone and their mom is launching a vault to bring some predictability and stickiness to their marketplace. Once a card is in a vault, it’s easier to facilitate transactions while simultaneously keeping the item on platform. eBay’s vault was (and probably still is) a great way to sell high-end cards without incurring significant selling fees. Presumably eBay is going to tack on seller’s fees in the future, so I don’t imagine that opportunity is going to last too long.

TOPPS MADE A MILLY SELLING CAITLIN CLARK CARDS 💰

I wrote last time about Topps releasing a Caitlin Clark-exclusive product, Collegiate Campaign. Well, I ran the numbers to see just how much money Topps made off their final at-bat with Caitlin Clark, before turning her over to Panini.

Here are the numbers:

The methodology for calculating the total revenue for the release is as follows. Each box contains a single, numbered autograph card. I multiplied the print run for each parallel by the number of possible subjects (i.e. different images from different moments in Clark’s career). I then added up the print run for each card — since there’s only one autograph card in each box, I multiplied the total number of autograph cards by the box price to get the total revenue.

Based on the numbers above, Topps made roughly $941k on this release. Not a bad way to say goodbye to Clark! It’ll be interesting to see where prices for cards in this product land once the boxes ship in 6 weeks or so.

AUCTIONS ENDING SOON 🔎

• Collect Auctions: ends on April 4

• Huggins & Scott: ends on April 4

• Sirius Sports Cards: ends on April 4

• Sterling Sports Auctions: ends on April 4

• Detroit City Sports: ends on April 6

• MEARS Auctions: ends on April 6

• BBCE Auctions: ends on April 7

• Greg Morris Marketplace: ends on April 7

PEOPLE TO FOLLOW IN THE HOBBY 👥

• Vikings95: Football breaking content

• Carlson Cards: Educational sports card videos

• CardCollector2: Fun card show content

MEME OF THE DAY 🃏