eBay - New Vault and Digital Wallet

[Swipe79]

Interesting...

The Future of Collectibles

The market for trading cards and collectibles continues to accelerate, and eBay is the biggest trading platform for these investment categories. Today eBay announced the eBay Vault – a 31 thousand square foot, secure storage facility and digital marketplace for trading cards and collectibles, with plans to expand into luxury goods.

The eBay Vault will launch in the U.S. next quarter, and will provide peace of mind and convenience for the company's millions of buyers and sellers. Once an item is in the eBay Vault, customers know their valuables are secure and "instant sale" becomes the new reality. Ownership can transfer from seller to buyer in a matter of seconds – without the need to re-authenticate, re-package or ship the item anywhere.

Keeping high-value inventory within the eBay ecosystem is significant for both buyers and sellers – and the Vault will make other planned features, like fractionalization and live commerce, possible for a wider audience. eBay is the only marketplace that can deliver this full suite of capabilities at scale, and signals the future of collecting. Within a few years, eBay expects the Vault will hold up to $3 billion in assets, making it one of the largest stores of non-governmental assets in the world.

Introducing eBay's First Digital Wallet

eBay's tech-led reimagination continues to underpin future growth plans. Since eBay completed the migration to its new payments platform, the company has been improving the user experience and creating value for customers. Now, eBay is launching its first digital wallet where customers can use proceeds from their sales to conveniently purchase their next item or pay their selling expenses.

From here:
https://investors.ebayinc.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2022/eBay-Hosts-Investor-Day-Outlines-Long-Term-Strategy-to-Build-eBay-for-the-Future/default.aspx

[coltsfan23]

Hey, they're only a few years too late on this! Better than the decade + that we're accustomed to from them. And any new policy from them that doesn't actively destroy its customers' ability to do business is a win.

Honestly, it's needed for them. They're rapidly losing market share and market confidence, though. I know I wouldn't trust them to hold a single collectible item of mine one bit.

[boxbuster7]

just what we needed...

[Swipe79]

The vault doesn't really impact me - the digital wallet is a great idea.

Hey, they're only a few years too late on this! Better than the decade + that we're accustomed to from them. And any new policy from them that doesn't actively destroy its customers' ability to do business is a win.

Honestly, it's needed for them. They're rapidly losing market share and market confidence, though. I know I wouldn't trust them to hold a single collectible item of mine one bit.

[jamcas997]

No thank you EBAY. I dont need so idiot who knows nothing about cards damaging mine.

[KhalDrogo]

The vault doesn't really impact me - the digital wallet is a great idea.
Why is the wallet a great idea?

[Bruins1993]

"and signals the future of collecting."

LOL, what comes next in the future from the money makers... paying the vault staff to shine plastic cases housing trimmed cards?

[jamcas997]

"and signals the future of collecting."

LOL, what comes next in the future from the money makers... paying the vault staff to shine plastic cases housing trimmed cards?



Very nice !! :)!

[Swipe79]

If you’re looking to use your proceeds to purchase other cards, it expedited the process. Currently, you would have to have the funds clear processing, transfer to your bank account, and then be available. This makes funds available sooner to spend on eBay.

Why is the wallet a great idea?

[MasterOfTheDark]

I'll be the lone person a little interested in this. So Ebay is setting up what COMC has? Been holding off on starting up with COMC due to the delays and things going on over there. So I'm curious about the Vault.

[rwperu34]

Why is the wallet a great idea?

It makes it easier to sequester the money as well. I liked the old days when everything came out of Paypal. If I ran out of money in my Paypal account I was done buying cards. Now there's an extra layer of bookkeeping.

[KhalDrogo]

If you’re looking to use your proceeds to purchase other cards, it expedited the process. Currently, you would have to have the funds clear processing, transfer to your bank account, and then be available. This makes funds available sooner to spend on eBay.
Funds are in my bank account 1-2 days after I ship the item. But who cares? There’s no legitimate argument for why you shouldn’t be buying everything on credit and taking the 2% cash back that many cash back cards have today.

It makes it easier to sequester the money as well. I liked the old days when everything came out of Paypal. If I ran out of money in my Paypal account I was done buying cards. Now there's an extra layer of bookkeeping.
See above. I don’t understand why people buy in cash. I’m over $550 in cash back already in 2022, plus 11k points on my Amex. Free money just to put charges on credit cards and pay them off at the end of the month.

[checkoutmydeals]

I really like both ideas. The collectibles warehouse sounds a lot like COMC, except that COMC doesn't handle a lot of things. For example, you could probably deal in coins, action figures and other toys, movie posters, Disney pins, and all sorts of things.

Even on things COMC does deal in, I might rather deal in it on eBay. COMC made a mess of comics. Their "family friendly" policy prevents most of the interesting comics from the past 40 years from even being sold on the site. They're constantly banning random things like 1990 Marvel Universe Red Skull, because it has a WWII German insignia in the background. They won't sell things like Benchwarmers at all.

Right now you can trade ETF's on the stock exchange for things like gold and silver. For example, the stock "GLD" trades like a stock, where each share represents 1/10 of an ounce of gold. "SLV" is a stock where each share is 1 ounce of silver. I've had these in my portfolio for years, and there are plenty of advantages owning these over having the physical stuff piled up in the garage. There are also advantages of having the physical stuff in hand. If this eBay thing works out, you'll have the flexibility to do both.

[checkoutmydeals]

See above. I don’t understand why people buy in cash. I’m over $550 in cash back already in 2022, plus 11k points on my Amex. Free money just to put charges on credit cards and pay them off at the end of the month.

One advantage is that it's a different bucket of money, separate from your other household finances. I've known plenty of people over the years who will set up at a collectibles show, come home with, say, $1,000 profit, and then the wife says "great! Now we can buy a new couch" or something. One of those guys had something like that happen to him 20 years ago. Now, he is now divorced, and even though his collectibles business earns him 6 figures and he has literal millions of dollars in the bank, he's miserable about his wife leaving. If these sorts of selling tools were available 20 years ago, maybe he'd still be married. Maybe his relatively uncluttered living room would have a new couch, and his kids and his wife, instead of boxes filled with valuable, but still bulky, collectibles.

[smanzari]

I LOVE the wallet idea, actually been one that friends and I have talked about!

Funds are in my bank account 1-2 days after I ship the item. But who cares? There’s no legitimate argument for why you shouldn’t be buying everything on credit and taking the 2% cash back that many cash back cards have today.


Same day they're sent for me, but I've been debating of switching to weekly payments (I get a good bit of holds I think for "outstanding postage" - like after a week of shipping 400+ Standard Envelopes and have been told this can help minimize the frequency these). Gives me the chance to do this while using "card funds" if something really great pops up, while I wait for the regular deposit

[KhalDrogo]

See above. I don’t understand why people buy in cash. I’m over $550 in cash back already in 2022, plus 11k points on my Amex. Free money just to put charges on credit cards and pay them off at the end of the month.

One advantage is that it's a different bucket of money, separate from your other household finances. I've known plenty of people over the years who will set up at a collectibles show, come home with, say, $1,000 profit, and then the wife says "great! Now we can buy a new couch" or something. One of those guys had something like that happen to him 20 years ago. Now, he is now divorced, and even though his collectibles business earns him 6 figures and he has literal millions of dollars in the bank, he's miserable about his wife leaving. If these sorts of selling tools were available 20 years ago, maybe he'd still be married. Maybe his relatively uncluttered living room would have a new couch, and his kids and his wife, instead of boxes filled with valuable, but still bulky, collectibles.
That’s a personal problem then. If you’re so bad at your finances that you are willing to sacrifice free money for something as ridiculous as an eBay wallet, that’s on you.

[Tiger23]

Do we really think it will be like comc with tons of cards or more like PWCC vault where you get high dollar cards sent in order to resell them?

[wizardsleeve12]

Do we really think it will be like comc with tons of cards or more like PWCC vault where you get high dollar cards sent in order to resell them?

Probably high dollar cards if anything. I don't think many people will be sending their Standard and select type cards in huge lots to ebay. I don't think ebay has the capacity or infrastructure to process that amount of card or want to be dealing in $10-$50 dollar cards.

[KhalDrogo]

Nobody is sending high end cards to eBay. You think eBay is going to promote and shop your card the way PWCC does?

[Swipe79]

From a seller perspective, I see nothing but positives for it. I don't care about the buying end - that's up to the individual person and what they want to do. You've got a system that works for you - doesn't mean everyone wants to go that route.

Look at it this way - the advantage of having the money available means that people won't wait to purchase the cards. It leads to more impulse buys.

Funds are in my bank account 1-2 days after I ship the item. But who cares? There’s no legitimate argument for why you shouldn’t be buying everything on credit and taking the 2% cash back that many cash back cards have today.

[Swipe79]

I would guess the vault is more for the products that already have to go through the authenticity process - really just eliminating wait time for buyers.

If the item is already at eBay it's authenticated and then shipped out when sold.

[KhalDrogo]

I would guess the vault is more for the products that already have to go through the authenticity process - really just eliminating wait time for buyers.

If the item is already at eBay it's authenticated and then shipped out when sold.
It will have to be. Unless eBay is hiring card experts to assess everything being sent to them.

[CicadaMound]

Even on things COMC does deal in, I might rather deal in it on eBay. COMC made a mess of comics. Their "family friendly" policy prevents most of the interesting comics from the past 40 years from even being sold on the site. They're constantly banning random things like 1990 Marvel Universe Red Skull, because it has a WWII German insignia in the background. They won't sell things like Benchwarmers at all.


The "family-friendly" issue is potentially a problem with eBay too. It's mostly the fault of the payment processors, meaning if you want to pay with a card, you have to play by their rules.

[checkoutmydeals]

I'm not talking about hardcore pornography. Most of the items COMC rejected is mainstream stuff. Most of it was marketed to children or at least teenagers in its day. Stuff like 1938 Horrors of War cards, 1962 Civil War New cards, 1960's and 1970's war comics like Sgt Fury and Sgt Rock, 1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark cards, 1980's Alan Moore Swamp Thing comic books, 1990's Spawn comics. I'm sure they wouldn't take Walking Dead comics or anything similar.

It is what it is, but I don't think it's unreasonable that some other venue could exist where people could dabble in things which are racier than Casper the Friendly Ghost. Things like vintage Playboy or other men's magazines from the 1950's and 1960's, for example.

That being said, the press release mentions an "eBay Vault" which is 31,000 square feet and they mention ultimately maybe having up to $3 billion worth of merch inside.

In comparison, an average sized Wal-Mart is about 180,000 square feet. Some Amazon warehouses are as large as 4 million square feet, and Amazon has over 50 of them in the US.

So, either they are under the impression that they will be handling a relatively small number of very expensive items, or they are under the impression that there will be massive turnover on these collectibles. Either way, that is unlikely to be the way things actually work out in my opinion. If I have a $5 million card, I probably don't want it sitting in some eBay warehouse somewhere. If I have a million $5 cards, I probably wouldn't mind. But warehouse managers worship turnover and sales volume. Sellers of long-tail inventory don't mind parking their stuff and waiting for it to sell.

I've seen this sort of dynamic come to a head with the Amazon FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon) warehouses, where they ultimately chased out all of the long-tail inventory with increasingly draconian "long term storage" fees. Eventually, they managed to jettison most of the one-off items in favor of truckload after truckload of brand new merchandise.

[sthoemke]

Seriously, ebay is going to need a bigger warehouse.

[Rage]

Bumping this to ask if anyone has used the eBay Vault.

They advertise no sales tax if you buy an item and send it to the vault. Seems to be saving me money if I buy an item that is eligible for the vault, send it there to not pay sales tax, then just withdraw it and ship it to me for about 5% of the total.

Anyone tried this?