E-Bay Vault

[katzrul15]

Just received another Survey about e-Bay "vault"

I get the 31,000 sf temp controlled facility, but doubt this will ever apply to me as a Seller?  It is just for trading cards, correct?  And 31,000 sf is not a "huge" facility.

How much will e-Bay be charging a Buyer to leave it in the "vault"?  Have they said?  Hoping it really is "insured" for what is should be - with all the shoe thefts lately, this could be a temp-controlled nightmare.

I don't mind the surveys, but I have no intention of ever using e-Bay vault that I can think of.  Shouldn't they have done surveys before they committed to building this thing??  (and where will it be again?  Hopefully not in the desert heat and hopefully with great security/alarms and back-up generators).

[valueaddedresource]

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@gracieallen01 wrote:

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@katzrul15 wrote:

@southern*sweet*tea 

I hope they have great back-up generators and a great theft/security system.

Or hopefully, they bought really great insurance for the items they are storing on behalf of others!

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Well, look at the bright side - it will probably be the best controlled and protected square footage that seller's money can buy!

(In DE?  Renting space from a 'freight forwarder'?)

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@gracieallen01  - you may not be far off. 😉 One reason freight forwarders prefer Delaware is the fact that it is one of the few states that doesn't have sales tax.

Excerpt from eBay's page about the Vault:

Sales taxes will not be charged for items sent to or traded within the eBay vault.*

*Owners are responsible for remitting applicable taxes upon withdrawal. When you sell or purchase a card that is shipped from the eBay vault, eBay will collect sales taxes as required.

And yes, in my poking around I found a couple of job ads for warehouse personnel for the Vault that show the location to be New Castle, DE.

https://jobs.ebayinc.com/job/new-castle/facility-operations-manager/403/27860088896

https://jobs.ebayinc.com/job/new-castle/warehouse-associate/403/27860088928 

[valueaddedresource]

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@katzrul15 wrote:

@southern*sweet*tea 

It starts with Trading Cards and if you "buy" an item that is stored there, as a "buyer" you can continue to have it stored there.

31,000 sf temp-controlled building.  Did not realize until Cottage posted that it is in Delaware....lol

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@katzrul15  - yeah, the general idea they are hoping for any way is that once an item is stored in the Vault, it will just be sold many times over without ever having to be shipped, ownership simply changes hands immediately on purchase but the item remains in secure storage.

The eventual goal is also to enable fractionalization, where let's say you and 9 friends all decide to go in together to buy a $10k baseball card - each of you would own a partial stake in the card (depending on how you split the cost up) and each of you could then sell your stake at any time down the road.

Vaulting services like this are geared much more toward people who view collecting these items as investments who may not necessarily care about physically holding the items themselves.

Like @my-cottage-books-and-antiques said, eBay doesn't have to reinvent the wheel here. While we have no way to know yet exactly how eBay is going to structure this, I'm guessing it will be at least somewhat similar to some other companies who already offer this type of service.

For example, here's what PWCC offers for their vaulting service, along with costs:

https://www.pwccmarketplace.com/vault 

[vintagecraze50]

This may be a good step in the right direction for very high ticket items that are heavily scammed on here by buyers. Just hope they are stolen there by an employee.

[vintagecraze50]

“Not” stolen by employee.

[vintagecraze50]

Yes, has to be insured to control for internal theft.

[vintagecraze50]

Probably enough space for designer purses, watches, and other smaller high ticket stuff.

[vintagecraze50]

iPhones. In that vault.

[gosimus]

@katzrul15 

< And 31,000 sf is not a "huge" facility >   

From the internet, a typical Walmart store is 180,000 sq ft.  So you could set 6 of these vaults down inside your nearby Walmart. 

[fuzzface50]

Ok, first I want to say I did NOT read about the vault but just going off of what is said here. 

Sounds like a glorified high end storage unit to me and this would suggest that all items inside would need to be insured by the individual and not ebay just in case of fire, theft or some other accident/incident. Ebay would have insurance on the building but I would think the users would have to have insurance on their own items inside like a normal storage unit?

Then how about this scenario.  An authenticated  item has been in the vault for many years and gets transferred  to many buyers but then the last buyer pulls it out to sell at a high end auction house like Sotherby and it turns up either missing completely or turns out to be faked by their appraisers.  that could be a sticky mess trying to determine when it was replaced/ disappeared or was it really a true item when it was placed in the ebay vault, you know how well ebay authentication is. 

if I am buying something for $50,000, I would like to look at it first or at least have my own authentication done seeing it isn't coming out of a well known world wide auction house that has a GREAT REPUTATION. 

[luckythewinner]

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@katzrul15 wrote:

And 31,000 sf is not a "huge" facility.

Context is everything.

I suspect 31,000 square feet puts this near the top of warehouses intended for storing other people's trading card collections.

[valueaddedresource]

Interesting article on some of the other players in the alternative asset vaulting market:

https://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-stockx-roll-out-vaults-to-fix-big-collector-problem-2022-4

PWCC's Vault is quite literally a vault built into their headquarters.

StockX is doing something similar with sneakers as well.

[valueaddedresource]

Another interesting tidbit from PWCC that could give some insight into something eBay could emulate to pay for the cost of the Vault and then some....PWCC offers loans to vault users based on their portfolio value. 👀

https://www.pwccmarketplace.com/capital 

To be clear - I have no knowledge whether or not eBay intends to do the same, this is just being offered as an example of what other players in the vaulting market are currently doing.

That being said, I don't believe eBay would be going through the significant expense of getting into this type of service if they didn't have a roadmap for making even more significant amounts of money from it in some way, so it won't surprise me at all if something like this ends up being in the long term playbook for eBay Vault.

[glasser]

Has anyone seen proof that eBay is actually building such a thing? My guess is they are leasing something already existing or using some kind of third party that is already in this or similar business and just tagging eBay's name on it like they do with MPs, Global shipping, etc.

Buying collectibles as an investment, where you get no joy in physical possession, seems like a fad like trend. Collectibles have never been a great investment.

[valueaddedresource]

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@glasser wrote:

Has anyone seen proof that eBay is actually building such a thing? My guess is they are leasing something already existing or using some kind of third party that is already in this or similar business and just tagging eBay's name on it like they do with MPs, Global shipping, etc.

Buying collectibles as an investment, where you get no joy in physical possession, seems like a fad like trend. Collectibles have never been a great investment.

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@glasser  can't speak to building vs leasing, however I believe the job ads I referenced earlier in this thread make it pretty clear this will be an in house operation (people employed by eBay), not just a partnership with a 3rd party.

https://jobs.ebayinc.com/job/new-castle/facility-operations-manager/403/27860088896

https://jobs.ebayinc.com/job/new-castle/warehouse-associate/403/27860088928 

[onefootflipper]

It is a great business model for a couple of reasons.

First the instant transfer can allow ebay to theoretically lower selling fees on transferred items to encourage them to be sold over and over and over again hundreds of time. 

Second, somewhere there is going to be something in the user agreement about items being abandoned in the vault. I am sure there is a certain amount of time in which activity will be required on the part of the user or the user's ebay account or something. Can't just buy it and leave it there for 500 years with no contact with ebay. Because of this over time there are going to be millions of dollars worth of abandoned assets in the vault. Tom dies, no one but Tom even knows he had anything in the vault or maybe his wife vaguely remembers him mentioning it but forgets about it or doesn't pursue it, his $50,000 collection is eventually abandoned.