I’m wondering if there are any tips as to selling graded cards safely on eBay.
I’ll be selling from The Netherlands, and I plan to wait out until people BIN my listings, alternatively they can give a Best Offer. Due to being in Europe I do have to charge around 20% (average VAT in European countries) more than the US prices, but likewise it would cost the buyers if they are located in Europe also around 20% to import the graded cards. First I want to put them up for a month using the Dutch eBay site, I’ll be aiming for European purchases but I’ll allow international for the ones that are interested, this also avoids currency conversion fees unless someone from the UK buys it pretty much. If it doesn’t work out then I’ll move them to the US eBay site and attract a bigger audience of buyers.
What I’m more concerned about though is the number of scammers on eBay, unfortunately when being ungraded cards I am right now going through a scammer most likely, so I’ll want to avoid getting scammed again when selling the graded cards. Are there any tips in this area other than following standard eBay practices and not letting a buyer convince you that you need to change something in your listing/settings, etc.?
Unfortunately Europe seems to be a more difficult place to sell than here in the US due to the VAT.
I have not lost a case even though I’ve run into two scammers, one from Europe and one from the states. The best advice I can give is to document everything you can within reason. I take clear photos to put in your listing give good descriptions and make sure ITS CLEAR that if the buyer has any questions about the item or shipping to ask BEFORE buying. This is sort of an unsaid rule with ebay’s buyer protection program that helps to support your case in the event that something like this happens.
You can sometimes know what to expect when you see low or no-feedback buyers. I personally always record packing and shipping of high-value sales and get receipt documentation of shipment. And absolutely get delivery confirmation (tracking & or signature) if your shipping service offers it (almost all do)
You can’t protect yourself from every little scam out there, but the best offense is a good defense as they say. You just gotta protect yourself with as much evidence as you can. And sometimes you still gotta put your lawyer boots on.
Just want to touch quickly on this subject. Europe doesn’t have VAT within different European countries, so in that sense it’s not a disadvantage within Europe, it’s only when importing outside Europe.
However Europe has the disadvantage that (Pokemon) sales are moving a lot slower than in the US, at least on eBay, and as far as I’m aware there’s not a single other site for all of Europe that is similar to eBay, there’s quite big countries in every country, but nothing unified, it also doesn’t help that English is not a common factor.
i know this probably doesn’t help on Europe, but the advice for folks in the US who don’t want to get scammed is to only ship using bays global shipping program; once eBay gets it and confirms it as being what it is, i am pretty positive thats where you are in the clear and eBay handles any problems from there… in my experience following other eBay sellers on youtube many seem to only want to ship internationally using the global shipping program…
The Global Shipping Program absolutely does not guarantee protection from anything.
Two people in the U.K. have used the GSP, successfully shipped and tracked their item to the eBay shipping location, then once eBay forwarded it on they have gone missing and in both instances the original owner deemed at fault.
That is odd. According to eBay’s policy, you are protected if an item is lost through the global shipping program. I personally don’t use GSP, which has its risks. I will have to refund two separate orders from Singapore as the tracking never fully updated, where with GSP the tracking is more efficient.
I have used the GSP hundreds of times and never once lost money or had an issue that wasn’t resolved. One time a PSA 9 1st edition fossil holo turned into a external hard drive magically at the buyers end and once we sorted it and discovered that it was an issue with the GSP shipper swapping items they fully refunded the buyer out of their pockets.
I have made roughly 50 international sales not through the GSP about half through the forum (all successful) and half though eBay which I had issues with about 10%-20% of them. I lost hundreds on those few items. Never again for anyone who I can’t trust knowing them through here or repeat buyers from the past pretty much.
Europe is probably the most advantageous place to sell PSA cards or any Pokemon cards for that matter:
Selling to Europe: EU has import/export treaties etc. so no VATS or import charges. Not sure about UK since brexit you’ll have to look into that but UK and EU sellers get a premium on cards they sell compared to elsewhere because the buyers are accounting for import charges they would normally have to pay.
Selling to USA: USA has no import charges
Selling to AUS: Australia has a high import limit ($1000) for now so no issues there.
These are the three main buyers, rarely will you get buyers from other places.
The only issue I can see from your point of view is importing the cards that you want to sell etc. other than that you are golden. There are three main ways you could conduct your selling:
No tracking on any sales: Will be the most cost efficient but risky method, you will get a lot more sales and a lot more “missing” items sometimes the risk or loss is worth the reward/sales etc.
Tracking on all sales: Middle ground with relative safety you can choose to include signature on delivery for a greater sense of security if items are “missing”. Will cost more in the long run but you most likely get less “missing items” compared to above.
Tracking with insurance: The most risk averse option where you are covered for all loss however is the most expensive route. Usually this is overkill and the costs might outweigh the risks but depends on how many cards you sell etc.
Correct… But to sell Pokemon cards you need to be able to buy them.
As far as I’m aware new and second-hand products are both 20% more expensive than their US counter parts and it’s very hard to find second-hand in Europe.
For example an Evolutions booster box costs 115 euro as a single, I found one company that offers six booster boxes (probably a case) for 100 euro each. I would expect boxes to cost about 85 euro from the distributor but I’ve got no actual way to figure that out.
just communicate with customers, ask them what they want customs wise if it is very high.
Please add tracking on all expensive items… i’ve had so much mail theft recently in the U.K, netherlands and Brazil… it’s crazy, 6 refunds over christmas. If you can charge higher postage for tracking, but this deter’s some buyers.
There is no magical source of cheap cards mate, just focus on the positives no one has it easy including US sellers everywhere has its advantages and disadvantages (except Australia no advantages found as of yet lol)
I’m from Finland myself and I’ve been selling some graded cards on eBay with no problem. I try to keep the prices competitive and I also have best offer available because my main goal is to just sell the cards and get at last some of my money back. If you are European and sell, taxes aren’t a problem at all so you don’t need to think about that on your prices, the only thing you might want to consider is the eBay fees. Taxes are a problem for Europeans if you buy outside of European Union as therefore you often have to pay that high tax cost.
So far I didn’t have any problems. I started selling with tracked shipping, but I really didn’t get any buyers from the US with that because tracked shipping from Finland is so expensive. $18 shipping one graded card? Not ideal. So I decided to take a risk and provide first class shipping without tracking, but I have tracked shipping available if someone wants it. But I would say that if Netherlands has reasonable prices for tracked shipping, you should provide that. I only made my risky decision thanks to the high prices here and to increase my sales.
So far so good, I haven’t had any problems apart from one guy saying he didn’t receive my card but I think it was just because of the holiday time delays. He opened a case but eBay closed it automatically as the buyer never contacted me anymore so I guess I can assume he received the card…? No idea, but so far I’ve had no problem with buyers other than a few buyers putting an offer to my listings and after I accepted they messaged me they don’t want the card. One bought my Scizor EX FA and messaged me saying that he doesn’t want it because “he thought it was the normal mega EX” (you could clearly see from the listing photo and the title that it was the full art version) and another one saying that their kid put an offer on my card and he doesn’t want it In general it’s been positive though, I guess it’s normal that sometimes you face that kind of buyers on eBay.
Oh and don’t forget to package your cards well, you definitely don’t want them to get damaged on their way. You can never trust those people who handle packets D:
I’ve always wondered what the income tax related ramifications are for international sellers. Do you guys have to pay income taxes on any profits made? I know most US sellers legally would have to, but if they are under the Paypal reporting limits to get a 1099 K (tax form reporting gross sales that gets sent to IRS), it is quite easy to just not do it, though it is illegal. I know most falling under that limit just don’t do it, as I didn’t when I was fairly small and completely ignorant of the laws. Does Paypal report to your governments if you hit a certain threshold? Ours is $20,000 AND 200+ sales last I knew and first when I crossed it in 2012 (with non Pokemon stuff).
I actually wouldn’t know… good question. I believe that in The Netherlands you are officially required to report any income/profits obtained in any possible way to the government, but you can guess already that nobody is actually doing that. I think that the only legal ramifications I’m aware of is that the police/government will take away your car if you purchase an expensive Mercedes/BMW/Audi/etc. where it should be impossible with your income from your daytime job, if you even have a daytime job that is.
Something related to this: The Dutch government offers a tax rule that is intended for resellers, etc. The rule is basically that you can report your total sale value minus the buy costs and on that part you will get taxed. I do believe there’s additional costs after that, but I haven’t further researched that. This would be very nice to do it 100% legal, but it only works for purchases within the European Union, it doesn’t work internationally. As far as I know, as a company (could also be a one-person company), you cannot ask back the VAT you paid from second-hand items and you would need to charge VAT on items you sell. Unless you use this special tax rule, except it doesn’t work internationally.
In general the government tolerates a lot though, and once you have a daytime job they will start to tolerate even more.
Something to add: I already knew that Ebay was going to charge me 8,4% final value fees in The Netherlands and anticipated for that, but I forgot that Paypal also charges 3,4% over the full transaction and a 0,35 € fixed fee. I’m a bit upset by this but in the end it’s around 4% so it’s not a very big deal luckily.
What this leads me to question though is: How do you eBay sellers deal with the insane premium that Ebay/Paypal wants to have? I don’t like it, but it seems like I need to put up with it.
For what eBay provides, the fees aren’t that bad. However, in relation to new sealed product, especially english, there is no way most people can sell on ebay. The 10-14% cut from ebay and paypal leaves literally no room for profit unless you have a higher sticker price on boxes.
i think its very easy to justify it by looking to the global exposure and name brand you get in “eBay” and the awesome and amazing security blanket that you get in 2 big corporations in eBay and Paypal and their seller and buyer protections. if you don’t look at it that way, then it might be harder to justify what they charge. If you look at it from running a brick and mortar or your own website, you are saving hundreds and thousands, and most importantly saving a lot of your personal time in not having to cover your own back on everything, unlike eBay and paypal help save you headaches and protect you from scammers and losses you might experience any other way.
*you just have to be very savvy in what you choose to sell and the room for profit that a product leaves you after fees…*
That is a very good point! Without eBay the market and hobby would not be anywhere near the size today. Also it is very difficult to run a stand alone website or store. There are a handful of non-ebay stores that are sustainable.
You will also pay 3% to exchange your money if you are trading to Euro, or at least that is what I pay to take my USD out as Yen into my bank account. Unless it’s changed I thought it was still 9% with an eBay store.
Purchase payments received (monthly) Fee per transaction Domestic only.
Yep, you are correct about the 3% extra conversion fees, which is a real shame again, but I anticipated for that
The good news is that I’m still happy with the resulting numbers, only I had rather that eBay/Paypal wouldn’t take as big as a cut
To compare this to the current situation in The Netherlands, we have one big site (marktplaats.nl) similar to eBay but it doesn’t offer listings that publicly end on a specified date nor does it allow for auction-style bidding. What it does offer is the ability to put up a listing, option to put a price or to allow bidding, but the bids are not binding. Then after you manage to make a deal with one of your bidders/interested people the common thing to do is to give your bank details, they will transfer the money and then you ship. So in our situation you see correctly that the buyer has 0% protection and the seller has 100% protection (unless you believe in Nigerian princes or my brother in Nigeria…). There’s also the option to allow Paypal but it’s not regulated and everyone thinks that the buyer can easily do a chargeback without consequences, I actually don’t know if this is true though. The downside of this is that it’s a lot harder to reach the professional market, but it does get some things done, and picking items up in The Netherlands is pretty common too as opposed to sending it via mail, though then you’ll need to deal with counterfeit money, but you can usually ride along with someone to a bank where he withdraws money or if you have the same Bank (there’s about three major ones) then the other person can transfer money via his mobile and you can check on your account to see if it’s there. On average the maximum distance you need to travel is about 300km on pretty much only highways with a maximum speed of 120 or 130 km/h, sometimes the roads closer to the starting and end points are 80 km/h.
In general it’s been positive though, I guess it’s normal that sometimes you face that kind of buyers on eBay.
