Hmmm…an E4 Buy It Now auction thread open to all members. Newer members must ship to established middleman or ship/pay first. 
2% of listed amount immediately goes to support the site prior to being listed. That would encourage proper sale price. No other fees. Cancelling the listing forfeits the 2%/100.00max.
Cheaper than eBay;)
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PLEASE.
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What are the forum costs per month to proboard?
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Interesting. I like it. Although, it would essentially be a pay to post format with lots of moving parts (more moderation).
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I think we need this. eBay has failed us.
What would be the proposed cutoff for a newer e4 member?
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Its free
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Look, this would be amazing. I’m tired of eBay and being from a country that doesn’t have it’s own eBay site it’s so difficult to deal with eBay issues. And I would much more happily to sell to E4 members than some randoms. I’m at a stage where I want to reduce my graded card collection a bit but I’m so afraid of eBay after some issues I had there in the end of last year.
None of us would want E4 to become a market place but if we had a separate site for it, it would be amazing. I wouldn’t mind a small fee going to support the site and the forum. I understand it would need a separate staff to deal with issues and all that. But it’s a great idea and would benefit a lot of us.
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I really prefer to buy exclusively off E4 members to keep the money in the community. Please let me know if this takes off!
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I don’t want to jump the gun, but I’ve actually been in development of a website recently to fill this hole.
It’ll be an eBay style approach, users can list and buy etc, however, the first 5 transactions go through the platform and users don’t get paid until the buyer is satisfied or confirmed shipping. It will hopefully discourage scammers. When signing up, names will be cross referenced against Facebook Group ‘ban lists’ - to keep the forum as clean as possible.
Cards will be listed as either raw or as slabs, but the key difference here is the idea of ‘asymmetric information and trying to bridge it’ - we all love a bargain on ebay or local - but how many times have we purchased from eBay and has a scratched card, or a card not at the condition it was sold at.
To counter this, the site will offer the ability for users to send cards into the company, we won’t be buying them off you (and I’m talking about raw cards here’ - we will photograph them with high res pictures and scan them under UV lighting and magnified lighting - essentially the checks I currently do for PSA cards before I send them. Then they will be listed with a detailed list of issues & general condition - that way, you can buy knowing the raw condition - there is less variability and risk.
Best part is, the seller gets paid directly by us and the buyer can either have the card shipped out to them or we will submit to PSA on their behalf.
There will be fees involved with all of this, but they will be small, think 1-2% kind of area, possibly larger for the ‘consignment listing service’ but still well under eBay as I want it to be ‘for the community’. However, there will be a monthly subscription fee - this will stop people who are scammers from buying in, putting the effort into listing 5+ cards before they can receive money directly as they will have to pay a monthly fee. This fee will be in a tier system and again, it won’t be a lot - less than $10 probably for the highest level.
Finally, there will be tables which track buyers/sellers and x% of the monthly revenue will go back into sending out packs/booster boxes for active users. It’s an expensive set up process the website as it has a lot of moving parts, but it’s about giving a genuine place for buyers and sellers to do business and feel safe.
I would absolutely love any questions etc or anything that users would love to see - I’m hoping to have this up and running in the next few months and ideally would like to do some promotions with Poketubers to start.
Thanks
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A separate site might make it more manageable. But that in itself is alot of work.
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What´s the big advantage compared to something like stockx?
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So the big difference is the fact we’ll be charging a much smaller % than them. They charge 8-9%, we won’t be anywhere near that. If you were to pay say $8 as a monthly fee, for example if you were to sell $1000 per month.
eBay: $100 + PayPal
StockX: $90 + PayPal
US: $28 + PayPal
Then that scales significantly if your a big seller.
We also won’t just be accepting anybody to the site - you’ll be checked against banned lists. For collectors, by collectors - not just a money pit for scalping. It’s a similar concept, but it’ll be more orientated to giving back with promotions and giveaways as well as not being as expensive.
Hope this answers your questions!
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Awesome idea, would love for this to happen!
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Sounds promising @bobbkos, with that low of a monthly fee, will be interesting to see how it turns out in the end. The most important part is how you regulate seller vs buyer protection imo.
A few questions related to that:
- “the first 5 transactions go through the platform”: what happens if the buyer says it´s not as described/didn´t arrive etc? Is the seller out of the money?
- with raw cards, you have to send them in and you basically examine them, I think that this is a very time consuming process which might not be easily scalable
- why wouldn´t you credit the sellers a certain amount instead of giving out free boosters? That would reduce a lot of hassle.
I know that nothing is fixed yet, just some general questions that could be asked.
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Hi these are all great questions and fully encourage them - you’re right in that nothing has been set and had this thread not popped up I’d have reached out on here later to get an idea of what buyers and sellers want from a platform.
I guess your first point about ‘who wins’ in any issue - the answer is, at this stage I haven’t finalised anything. My assumption at this stage would be that the website, much like eBay would mediate that. Due to the fact that I’m trying to aim this at collectors and fish out bad eggs early on, I’d like to think that whilst these things will happen, the incidence rate should be low.
So 1st 5 transactions, you sell an item, you send to buyer - buyer says ‘I’m not happy, I want to return’ - return is opened and buyer sends back the cards. The big difference in the mediation here is that the website (me) knows if a card is the same as the one sold - but it does require some level of ethics. If for example, you sold an item for $100 and the buyer wasn’t happy and sent it back & you claimed the item wasn’t the one you sent, then we’d gather the proof and make a judgement call - however, 2 instances of this close together would trigger a red flag and there would be more thorough checks necessary. If you weed out the bad people early, you’ll get a better platform - like E4.
With raw cards, you can absolutely sell them yourself and there would be nothing stopping you, however, you can send them into the platform, we will give them a ‘pre grade’ essentially and then sell on behalf of the buyer. You’d think this cause a big influx, but my assumptions are as follows: If I have mint cards, I’m going to want to send them in, having a 3rd party say ‘these are nice, could grade well etc, here are clear pictures and some details’ - this means I’m going to get the best possible price for my card and buyers are also knowing what they are purchasing - still some element of risk etc but minimised. Likewise, if I have cards which look nice but actually are scratched etc, I’m not going to want to send them for a 3rd party to review as then they are highlighted as PSA 6’s/7’s whatever they might be and the seller isn’t likely to want to have that up against mint cards. I actually see it as weeding out poor condition cards and having only the nicest cards on the block. Time wise - it probably will take a lot of time, but for example, if there are weekly blocks then it’s manageable to receive 500 cards and list per week - however I don’t see it being anywhere near that number any time soon.
It’s about giving confidence back to buyers and sellers. Weed out the scammers, disincentivise them by charging monthly fee and equally have a self governing site, where auctions and listings have to have strict criteria on photos etc. If selling a PSA slab it’s much easier as there is no information difference. Likewise, if you are a legit seller then waiting 5 days to get your items listed and potentially another few days after sale for the £ isn’t an issue - a lot of scammers don’t have this kind of patience.
It’ll be cheaper than eBay, the customer support will actually understand the difference between a sealed and resealed booster, we will be able to provide 3rd party middlemen services and ideally at a fraction of the cost of other places. Don’t get me wrong, the site will need to turn a profit for my time (I’d like to quit and do this full time if it takes off), but it’ll be for collectors as a must and it’ll never look to lose sight of that.
Your final point, absolutely, maybe you get a kick back of 1% of your sales per month or their is a lottery or something of that nature. Again I’d rather angle this based on community demand, rather than arbitrarily picking a prize which people may not want.
Also goes without saying, but the 1st month minimum is going to be free to get as big a foothold as possible, it’ll take a long time to build the perfect site which suits everyone, but I’d like to think I can do that and keeping my fingers crossed.
Thanks for your questions so far - given me lots to think about.
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It takes a lot of work to manage a site this size. The hours put in by Scott and the mods is no small number.
I didn’t think of this as a way to cancel out eBay. I just thought it would save our members a few bucks and make dealing safer and more personalized. If eBay gets hurt a little then so be it. It’s not like they’re watching out for us.
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Sounds good so far - there´s things that have to be tweeked but step after step - when you´re ready open up a seperate thread on here, I think people will be glad to contribute to your idea.
One thing that I see is that you will need to establish a solid trackrecord for you/this site, strict grading parameters etc…you´re dabbling in a lot of different fields with your idea. It would make sense to lay it out in different stages, maybe establish a platform for graded first (or raw/something else) and grow services over time. Launching this with every thought in mind is practically impossible, and you will have time to figure out some things while growing the essential parts of the site.
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I fully support this idea, we will have to see if someone (one of the mods/new mod) actually wants to follow through with it. Canceling out ebay is a great thing and will allow for good deals.
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I’d love to see this happen. In fact, I typically message eBay sellers I’m buying from to see if they’re active on this board before pulling the trigger. This would eliminate some of that.
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