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eBay’s new Price Guide helps consumers buy and sell trading cards for games such as Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering.
eBay’s new Price Guide service can help collectors buy and sell trading cards for games such as Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering.
A post linked on eBay’s homepage explains Price Guide’s features. While searching for trading cards, users can utilize the new tool to see an amalgamation of sales data for the product they’re viewing. Price Guide displays a graph featuring a given product’s sales over a customizable span of up to one year. Users can use this graph to see the product’s previous winning bid amounts and the average sale price over the selected time frame. eBay claims this feature makes it easier for customers to buy trading cards with confidence they’re not paying significantly over the product’s usual price.
All eBay users can access the “Price Guide experience” by clicking the pop-up window that automatically appears after searching for eligible products. In addition to presenting data from previous sales, Price Guide also shows users an “eBay market value.” This suggested price point is based on proprietary calculations and attempts to provide an accurate value for trading cards in real-time.
In addition to Price Point, eBay also launched a beta version of its new Collection feature that brings improved functionality for high-volume trading card sellers. Users can upload their entire product portfolio to eBay and track the estimated market value of both their whole collection and individual cards. Sellers can instantly post cards from their Collection page to their eBay storefront with a single button click that automatically fills the new listing with relevant information about the product.
These tools follow other recent attempts by eBay to improve the shopping experience for customers. In August, the site permanently revoked the sales privileges of its largest trading card seller, PWCC. eBay claimed that the seller was engaging in shill bidding, a violation which the site’s terms of service define as “when someone bids on an item to artificially increase its price, desirability, or search standing.” Despite PWCC’s long relationship with eBay, which includes the recent sale of a Black Lotus card for over $500,000, the seller has opted to open its own auction-based storefront.
Physical retailers have been struggling to deal with the semi-recent increase in trading card popularity. Target and Wal-Mart both suspended their sales of multiple trading card games in May after a customer drew a gun in a Target parking during a dispute over sports cards. Both stores resumed sales in July.
Retailers in Japan have employed creative methods to improve the experience of trading card game customers. One retailer started requiring that potential customers answer basic Pokémon trivia before receiving products from the Pokémon Trading Card Game. The retailer developed this strategy to combat the increasing number of scalpers buying up stock.
Source: eBay
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