Over the years I have purchased dozens of psa graded pokemon cards but have never put any up for sale. Some of the cards I would like to sell are now worth thousands of dollars and am a bit worried possibly being taken advantage of, being a first time seller and also sending high value cards internationally. What are some steps to best protect myself against a buyer claiming they didn’t get the correct item or some other scam of the sort? Sorry if this sounds like a noob question.
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There’s basically no way to protect yourself against scams on eBay (as a seller). Luckily, though, it’s pretty rare to encounter full-on scammers. The most common scam to contend with is ‘item not received’ cases, which is opportunistic scamming and if you add tracking and signature confirmation, you’ll mostly insulate yourself from those sorts of cases.
But if you’re really anxious and unsure about it, just send over the high value cards to PWCC. You’ll get top dollar and eliminate the risk of getting scammed. Though you’ll have to pay a small-ish commission, of course – but it might be worth the peace of mind.
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Send to PWCC, seriously. You’ll wait a little longer to get paid and you’ll pay a little more in fees but all the work is done for you and you’ll get the best prices and exposure. I send all my cards valued above $50 to PWCC (under $50 it makes sense to sell yourself, either on eBay or places like Reddit, Virbank)
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Can I ask when does PWCC confirm with you that the auctioned item is paid for/unpaid?
It took about 2 weeks after the auction ended to get paid last time I used them. I’m assuming that’s when they notify you if an item is unpaid which probably doesn’t happen too often.
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How much do the fees come out to on average? I’m sure there’s people like on eBay who have different structured deals with them, but on average the layman sending them cards to auction off. What is the average % you can expect as well as the average turn around period, as in from the the latest date you can send anything in for their upcoming auction, to getting paid.
In most cases you want to get the item to them before the 15th of the month but they do allow up to the 30th now and if the auction is not massive then there is no difference if you use the later submission date. The auction then starts around the 17th of the following month and you will be paid around the 15th of the month after that.
So, if you get an item to them on September 30th, for example, expect to get paid November 15th (45 days). You can get up to a 50% advance on all your items (I take the advance every time) and you can get that immediately after they receive your cards so you are really only waiting the 45 days for half of the funds.
As for the commission it depends completely on cards you are sending. I don’t recommend sending cards under $50 because the fees end up being around 20%. For bigger items it’s significantly better
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Thank you very clear! And in the event the card/item doesn’t sell, you obviously are contractually obligated to reimburse the other 50% / they hold that card as collateral type of thing/next auction or whatever?
And in the event that a paid for transaction/item comes back as a chargeback, fraudulent, etc. PWCC absorbs 100% of that loss? I had seen someone saying somewhere that you bear no risk for any potential scammers and such.
Yep they hold as collateral! They will relist the item in the following auction if the buyer doesn’t pay and then ban the buyer. If the item gets 0 bids then they send you the card back and charge you shipping lol but I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen. As far as fraud chargebacks that’s on pwcc
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Thanks for the replies. Someone purchased a card through Buy It Now for around 2k who lives internationally, they paid immediately, however they have 0 feedback. Feels like a red flag but there’s not much I can do from here to protect myself right?
Zero feedback users honestly aren’t all that unusual. You can communicate with them more if you want, make sure their PayPal (if they paid that way) account is legit, etc. And you can refund the buyer and say the item is “unavailable” if you don’t feel good about the buyer. It may hurt your credibility, but eBay can’t make you complete the transaction as a seller. So to that extent you have some control over the sale since they can’t make you mail it to someone you are unsure about, and you can always just refund them and even re-list it/send to PWCC as some have suggested.
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