Rick Probstein Leaves eBay to Launch Independent Marketplace

Rick Probstein Leaves eBay to Launch Independent Marketplace

Longtime eBay seller Rick Probstein, who moved nearly 6 million items and around 925 million dollars in sales during his 21 years on the platform, has announced his last day on eBay will be October 23 and will unveil a new auction app and website called Snype in November. What potentially makes this significant for the Pokémon TCG space is the fee structure. eBay currently charges 13.25 percent on the first 7,500 dollars of a sale and 2.35 percent on amounts over that, while Snype will charge 5 percent for items under 1,000 dollars and 3 percent for items over 1,000 dollars.

Under the current formula, a seller of a 9,000 dollar item on eBay would make 7,433 dollars, while that same item on Snype would net 8,730 dollars. For high-value Pokémon singles and graded cards where fees can cut deeply into profit margins, this kind of shift could change where major sellers choose to list their inventory and potentially reshape the secondary market.

Source: CLCCT