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05-18-2021
05:00 AM
This week, eBay Sr Director of Trading Cards, Bob Means shares news of the new image scan feature for quickly listing trading cards and an update of one of the hottest categories on eBay during the last year (Gaming Cards). Rebecca is back with Griff to share your submitted Best Listing Practices from the recent eBay For Business Facebook sweepstakes. And we answer one very important question regarding item specifics.
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Show Links:
Rebecca on Small Business podcast
Jordan Sweetnam Announcement; Collectibles and NFT’s
Brother QL-1100 Label Printer Installation Steps for Mac
Brother QL-1100 Label Printer Installation Steps for Windows 10
Zebra Label Printer Installation Steps for Mac
Zebra Label Printer Installation Steps for Windows 10
Dymo Label Printer Installation Steps for Windows 10 and Mac
Trading Card Image Scan Tool
Sold on eBay:
1993 Magic The Gathering MTG Alpha Black Lotus R A AUTO PSA 10 GEM MINT ($511,100)
1998 Pokemon Japanese Promo Holo Illustrator Pikachu PSA 7 NRMT ($375K)
Rebecca: This week on the eBay For Business Podcast:
Bob: "The pace that we're selling these things at is unbelievable. We sell almost 139 cards per minute. Over the last quarter, they're constantly moving. There's thousands and thousands of transactions that are happening, and lots of satisfied customers, lots of great buying experience. The explosion has increased exponentially. It's been noticed in the other parts of the world. People that weren't sports card collectors or collectible card game collectors, they're getting into it from an asset class perspective. They're seeing them as investments. We have the gamers, the people that play the collectible card games, they're still buying the cards just to make their decks as powerful as possible. There's a collector who goes out there and they just, they may not play the games, or they may not really care about the sports, but they want to have the entire team, or they want to have the entire set. And then of course, now we've got this person. Who's looking at this as a long-term investment as well."
Rebecca: I'm Rebecca.
Griff: And I'm Griff. And this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and the inspiration to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 141. Welcome back, Rebecca.
Rebecca: Pleased to be here. And you might notice that I'm here again, after being here last week. I was lucky enough to bump Brian out of the way this week and so here I am again.
Griff: Well, we're glad to have you.
Rebecca: And this was a very busy week. We'll have to get to the news in a minute, but in the meantime, how are you Griff?
Griff: Ok. I'm enjoying the weather. I think a lot of our sellers are, I'm reading their posts. Some of them have ventured outside. Some of them have actually ventured into social situations now that things seem to be turning around. Is that the right word?
Rebecca: Yeah, I think here in the U S it's okay to say that things are, they feel like they're on the upswing.
Griff: Yeah. The upswing. And the same with business. I think what's on the back of, most of our minds is how will the return to some sense of pre pandemic impact our businesses, especially if we're small sellers on eBay. So it's going to be an interesting development to watch over the next year. Will the things that have become sort of normal when it comes to selling on eBay, be the same now that we're moving out of this? All the new buyers that we picked up, the new buying habits. You know, I think of myself, I learned to buy groceries online and I don't think I'm going to change. So how much of that will happen with eBay and online shopping in general? That's a big question I think all of us have.
Rebecca: I agree that as you said, I think the return to some kind of normal or what we think of as the before times, what is that going to look like? Certainly I know we'll keep reporting on it here on the podcast and keeping sellers updated for whatever trends and knowledge we glean and making sure that all the sellers have access to that as well.
Griff: One category that's just been on fire in the last year is the collectibles category. All of them in general. And I learned something last week, Rebecca, did you know that a Magic The Gathering card recently sold on eBay for wait for it, a half a million dollars?
Rebecca: All right, now I'm thinking, I know I packed up all of my son's toys and games. I need to go open those boxes in the garage and in the attic and rifle through them.
Griff: Talk about it in a minute, but it's one of the first years that magic, the gathering was around and a card from that set really did sell on eBay for a half a million dollars. And we'll learn more about this and a lot more about trading cards when we talk with eBay Director of Trading Cards, Bob Means. He's going to tell us about some of the other record setting prices for trading cards that have been on eBay in the last year, as well as the new image scan tool that's just been released for listing trading cards and what the plans are for that. And our regular Podcast Correspondent Kirsty Dunn is out this week so you and I will be reading what we had planned to do with Kirsty, which is the best of the best seller responses to our question, what are your best listing practices? So that's something to look forward to. And I thank you in advance for taking Kirsty's part and working with us for that. But first it's time for some eBay news Rebecca.
Rebecca: There's a lot of news this week Griff. Let's start off with Jordan Sweetnam eBay Senior Vice President Of Marketplaces who made an announcement last week regarding a topic that is of a whole lot of recent media interest. Jordan said, and I quote "eBay has always been the world's destination for buying and selling the most unique and hard to find items and will continue to be the destination for collectors of all kinds, physical or digital. This opportunity unlocks new assets for collecting new ways for people to feel their passion and expands eBay's appeal to a new generation of collectors." And what does that mean? NFT's So Jordan continues "with this in mind today, we are updating eBay's policy to include the sale of NFTs, which stands for non fungible tokens. In the short term, NFT inventory will be provided by trusted sellers who meet our high standards across categories like trading cards, music, entertainment, and art." And finally, Jordan goes on "in the coming months, eBay will add new capabilities that bring blockchain driven collectibles to our platform. I'm looking forward to bringing on new creators, to share their passions in ways we can't even imagine yet. Together, we will ensure eBay remains the preeminent marketplace for collectibles of all kinds and serves as the next generation of collectors."
Griff: Yeah. For those of you who don't know what non fungible tokens are it's something that really popped up this year and what it is is it's one of a kind digital. You ever think about how you have an image, it's a JPEG, it's a digital file. Well, if you put it out on the internet, anybody can claim it. You can watermark it, but really, there can be millions of copies, but with a non fungible token there can only be one owner. And this now puts well things like art and collectibles that are digital in nature in the hands of collectors as a one of a kind item. This means the value shoots up. So it will be interesting to watch how this plays out.
Rebecca: I love the way that it just shows how eBay is constantly evolving to meet the needs of the modern buyer, modern sellers and a modern marketplace.
Griff: We will get to all of this in the coming months and as developments, we reach certain points in this process. We'll be sure to talk about it on the podcast. And we'll bring on folks at eBay whose job it is to make this happen so we can learn more. And we're going to talk with Bob Means, as I said about trading cards and I have some news first.
Rebecca: What is that?
Griff: well it's about thermal printers. Specifically, it's about setting up a thermal printer. I got a question from somebody who took my advice and went out and bought a Brother printer and then emailed me in a panic, said, I can't set this up! It's not working. And I thought, well, you know, that's right. Some thermal printers are not as easy to set up on some computers, like a Mac, for example. So I've located some really good websites that have excellent step-by-step instructions or tutorials for how to set up either a Brother or a Dymo or a Zebra printer on a Mac or a Windows 10 computer. I've vetted these they're not eBay sites, but I made sure all of them were up to date so that they'll be useful to anyone who's buying a thermal printer. And I'm going to put the links to those websites in our episode for 141, the transcript, so that you can access those as you need them and in the future I'll point to them.
Rebecca: This is a great service Griff that you're offering like this one seller who has followed your advice and ran out and got themselves a thermal printer.
Griff: I didn't know, they had a Mac and I would have advised against buying a Brother. If you have a Mac, I would suggest it would be better to have a Zebra printer, but it doesn't matter. I can't really be promoting specific brands that wouldn't be fair. They're all great. And they'll all work with any computer, be that a Mac or a Windows. And even Linux, if you're one of those rare people that are still running that operating system, hopefully we'll be able to offer some assistance that way. It's been great having you on this week and we're going to talk a little bit more after we talk to Bob and we talk about the new image scan tool for trading cards.
Rebecca: All right. I'll be back soon.
Griff: eBay recently announced a new tech feature for sellers of trading cards and who better to share the details of what it is and how it works. Then eBay's Director of Trading Cards himself, Bob Means. Welcome back, Bob.
Bob: Yeah. Hi Griff. Good to be here.
Griff: Remind me and the rest of our listeners, what it is you do at eBay.
Bob: Yeah. So I'm the Director of Trading Cards. Like you said, my job is to focus on the merchandise that's coming onto the site, focus on our sellers, make sure that we understand all the challenges that they might be facing. And then of course also focus on the buyers and make sure that we're providing a platform that allows people to get great value and find the things they need and have a great shopping experience.
Griff: Now, the last few years have, they've really seen an explosion for all things, trading cards. What has it been like at eBay?
Bob: It's been fun. I mean, it has really been an extraordinary thing to see. It's quite an exciting trend. The pace that we're selling these things at is unbelievable. We sell almost 139 cards per minute. Over the last quarter, they're constantly moving. There's thousands and thousands of transactions that are happening and lots of satisfied customers, lots of great buying experience. The explosion has increased exponentially. It's been noticed in the other parts of the world. People that weren't sports card collectors or collectible card game collectors, they're getting into it from an asset class perspective. They're seeing them as investments. We have the gamers, the people that play the collectible card games, they're still buying the cards just to make their decks as powerful as possible. There's a collector who goes out there and they just, they may not play the games or they may not really care about the sports, but they want to have the entire team or they want to have the entire set. And then of course, now we've got this person who's looking at this as a long-term investment as well. Just to give you kind of an idea, In the first quarter, which was a record-setting quarter for us, the category grew 345%. That's almost 18 million trading cards sold. I mean, it's just a staggering number.
Griff: That's incredible.
Bob: I joke around sometimes, you know, I don't think that there's a post office truck driving across the country without an eBay card on it at any one given time. There's just been that much volume. We're also seeing a lot of energy coming out of some other countries, Australians, the Chinese, Japan, you know, everyone is buying these US cards. And we're also seeing interest in the cards that come from those countries. We're selling rugby cards that are from Australia, we're selling soccer players. Soccer is an incredible trend. It's huge, it's a worldwide sport, right? But now we're seeing people in America want to get the cards that are only available in Europe. And, so it's really become an international game at this point as well. And then, you know, the last thing, and this is really one of the core pieces of my job is the community around this is just amazing. There's always been card shows, right? Those are kind of the old fashioned way of doing this. Especially pre COVID is you go to the hotel, that's near the airport and there's a couple of sports celebrities there. And there's all these guys with these trading cards and everyone's swapping and selling and they all know each other and it was kind of a closed circuit. Now this has just become a national thing. And now we're seeing people talking about these cards on discords, there's Twitch streams, there's people opening boxes with people watching just to see what they pull out, because there's kind of a lottery aspect to it. You know, there's a lot of real good energy out there. And these guys, you know, the people that are really, really engaged in this from a collecting perspective, they're all sort of in it together. If one of their friends gets a certain card, they all know that that person's been hunting for it for months, for instance. And they're all excited for that person to complete their collection. Really, really important community out there. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're working so hard to identify the things that are specific to this category and fix some of those things on our site.
Griff: There's recently been a lot of improvements because the categories have become so popular. What are we doing with the trading cards category to make it a better buying experience and a better selling experience?
Bob: The most exciting one that was just recently released was an image scan technology that allows people to scan a card and then have that card data populate their listing to just cut out some of the busy work that goes along with listings. Right now, it's only working for Magic: The Gathering. We intend to add Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, so it'll be in that collectible card game space. And obviously we want to eventually have this work for everything. That means even, you know, tertiary brands out there in the collectible card game space. That means sports cards. It's obviously a massive undertaking because it's a massive catalog. When you think about how many sports cards have ever been created, if you add non-sports trading cards in there, like Garbage Pail Kids, and Star Wars cards, and then you think about all the games that have been out there. There's a lot of work to be done and a lot of effort to go into it. But ultimately, you know, when I said we sold 18 million cards in the first quarter, that means we had to list 20 million. And so that's a lot of effort going out there. And if it's a manual process for somebody that's five minutes that they're spending, getting that listing up. And if we can cut that in half, which we think our image scan tool will do for you, we've just saved you a bunch of time, get even more cards on the site that way and just make it a little bit easier for everybody.
Griff: Okay. Let's say I've got a card. Of course it's Magic: The Gathering cause that's what it works for right now. And I want to list it on eBay and I don't want to have to go through all of the data entry and typing it all in. I open an eBay app and then what happens?
Bob: Go to the selling tab like you normally would. And normally what would happen is the camera would pop up and say, or actually it would say, tell us what you're selling. And then it would try to help you. And then you take some photos and then you'd finish your listing and set shipping and all that good stuff. With the image scan tool, what you can do is you can type MTG, which is kind of universally known as the acronym for Magic: The Gathering, or you can write Magic: The Gathering and it'll take you to a separate selling flow. What it'll do is it'll tell you to put the camera over the card, you'll put it over the card and it'll pop up with, I think this card is this. In some cases, Magic: The Gathering might have 10 different iterations of the same card, meaning that it came out at different sets. In that case, it'll show you all tents. It's like, I'm pretty sure this is a, you know, Griff's Fireball.
Griff: Is there such a thing?
Bob: There isn't but there should be. I don't have any connections, but I'll see what I can do. Cause I think that would be a cool card.
Griff: I do too. Thanks.
Bob: You know, let's say there's five different versions of Griff's Fireball, you know, all five of those would pop up. So there's still some responsibility for the seller to make sure they put the right edition in because you could lead to what's called a snad, right? If you said it's a first edition, but it's actually a second edition, then you haven't put the right data in. But if the cards is a mutually exclusive card, it'll get the right one. Boom, you've got your listing data. There's a couple of other steps that you have to update. You know, again, we want to make sure that you put the right data in. Most people want to put the condition of the card and that's kind of a subjective thing. So we expect the seller to say, Hey, this is a near mint card or this is a lightly played or damaged or whatever it is that they want to put in there. But the card scanning technology is not going to take a guess at what it thinks the condition of the card is. So there's a couple other steps that you'll want to do to make sure that you're doing the best possible listing. And then it'll take you to the, let's take some pictures, let's do that. And then from there, it'll lead you into the pricing and the shipping and all that good stuff.
Griff: So you do have to take a picture and it's always advised unless the card was absolutely brand new, I suppose you could get by with, is there a stock image? Like there would be if you did this process for a DVD or CD?
Bob: Yeah. We strongly recommend using your own images. There are people that sell vast quantities of the same card. It's almost like fodder, like they're relatively common and people typically want them just to be part of their play set or whatever. And in that case, the condition of the card might not be the most important thing to the buyer. But if you're selling a card of any value and any collectability, I think it's in your best interest to put pictures of the card. And that gets even more important as you go back in time. So the more vintage your card, the more critical it's going to be for people to want to see the actual physical condition of the card. And that's where we think taking a picture of the front and the back is great. In best case, if you're selling what you think might be a $500 card, I'm just making up a number...
Griff: And there is such a thing by the way.
Bob: Oh, there absolutely are. I'll have to give you some insight on that, but let's say you're selling a $500 card. That's a big investment for a buyer. And I would recommend taking pictures of the corners, taking pictures of the front, of the back, taking pictures of the edges. You know, everything that person's going to need because that card has definitely reached the collectability phase.
Griff: And one can't assume which cards are which. You have to know the card game in order to understand which cards are the most desirable. So don't just make an assumption that your card is a $1 card.
Bob: And that's a great thing about the eBay ecosystem is our sellers tend to be pretty knowledgeable of what they're doing. And plus you might be leaving money on the table. If you just put a card out there and you just look at price guidance or whatever you can find on it, if you don't know the right card, the right edition, you could actually be significantly undervaluing your card.
Griff: Yes. And we're, we're going to talk about some of those price points in a moment. So that's the listing end of it. But once you sell a card, we now have a new shipping service that's been extended specifically for trading cards. Let's talk a little bit about that for sellers who may not be aware of what's known as the eBay standard envelope.
Bob: eBay standard envelope, I think is a really cool service. It's for under $20 any card under $20. And it's recently actually extended out to other categories. So stamps, coins, some lightweight, I mean the common thing needs to be lightweight and it needs to be thin. But specific to training cards, you know, of those 18 million cards that sold, a lot of them were under $20. And when you're selling a $5 card, this is a chance to actually drive some margin into your pocket by rather than shipping it for 3.50 because you're trying to maintain your ETRS. And the reason why I say 3.50 is that's about the cost to ship USP first class. And the way we used to be doing things was you had to maintain that ETRS to get the Top Rated Seller Discount, which was valuable to you, but now you can ship it for anywhere between 50 and 91 cents, depending on what you're actually shipping. And that's all based off of the ounces that you're shipping and a single card is typically always going to be under an ounce. You're really talking about probably 51 cents, basically a stamp. But with that stamp, you're actually getting some tracking now. And it's, it's different from the tracking that people are used to with say first-class service or expedited service like FedEx and whatnot. The tracking is going to be when the card hits a major hub, like for instance, here in Bay area, it's not going to see my local post office, but it's going to get scanned typically when it's like at Oakland or San Francisco before it's about to go. So there's some nuances out there. If I ship a card locally to someone who lives down the street, they may never see a tracking update, but you'll still get credit for sending a tracked shipment.
Griff: And for those sellers of these items, that means that they finally qualify for Top Rated Seller standards so that they can achieve and keep a Top Rated Seller status.
Bob: No, that's right. It's a super affordable way of maintaining a high level of seller standards, giving the buyers the best possible experience. And fundamentally it also cuts down on the amount of mysteriously lost mail too. So that feels good as well.
Griff: We teased a little bit about some of these selling prices for trading cards that have been realized on eBay. And I'm looking at the list. Even someone as seasoned as myself, was a little shocked at some of these prices. Give us an idea of what some of these trading cards have been going for.
Bob: Yeah. I'll talk a little bit about the collectible card game world, because that's what image scan is connected to. We recently sold a Magic: The Gathering Alpha Black Lotus, when you hear something called alpha, that means it was part of the original set that was sold. I think back in 93, maybe a little earlier. That was a guy selling these cards out of the back of his van effectively. Right? There's just not a lot of them. I think the print run is incredibly low, so they're naturally scarce. And then the Black Lotus, it's the Mickey Mantle of the CCG world, right? It's the most coveted of coveted cards. There's something they call the Power Nine. It would be the power, one of the power nine, for lack of a better term. It's the most coveted card. So yeah, we sold one for $511,100, and that's a record for us and record for the card.
Griff: And you can't even move in.
Bob: You know, a couple other important things to know, like it was a graded card which means it had been encapsulated, it had been graded by PSA and had received a 10 gem mint, which meant it was effectively flawless. When we talk about scarcity, I don't even think there's another card of that quality available anywhere. It's almost a one of a kind type of item. And we've also set some records, in Pokemon. Pokemon has been probably the most explosive of all the categories out there in the CCG world. We sold a $375,000 Illustrator card. And what's really neat about these ones. Again, that eBay collector investor sort of thing, I think there was less than 30 of these made and it's called the Illustrator because it's a card that pays homage to the original illustrator of Pokemon. Super neat, cool story behind it. Incredibly rare. That one, if I remember correctly, it was a PSA seven. So when I said the black Lotus was a gem mint tent, basically flawless for 375,000, you got a seven, which quite frankly, Griff if you looked at it and I looked at it, we'd be like, that's a flawless card, but these graders, they really get in there and they see any little imperfection or any offset to the print or whatever it could be, you know, but it's a beautiful card.
Griff: They are looking at the molecular level at that point.
Bob: I think, I think they are at that point, they're, they're looking at it with a very, very fine eye. And then the last of the big three is a game called Yu-Gi-Oh And Yu-Gi-Oh is a relatively newer game, super popular. We sold an $85,000 card there. And this was again a PSA gem 10, not as rare, not as obscure and also not as popular as Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering, but still, that's just an amazing, beautiful card. And there's a very happy buyer out there who's got a very powerful and wonderful collection with that being a part of it.
Griff: If it's possible, if I can find them outside of eBay, if necessary, I'll try to find examples of these cards and link to them. So if you're listening in the transcript, you may be able to see, go and view some of the cards that have sold for these prices.
Bob: Well, I also want to share, you know there was also, we had sold a Tom Brady rookie card and of course, Tom Brady had an incredible year this year. And it's always fascinating to watch the real world occur and see something happen on eBay that is reflective or correlated to it. And so Tom Brady, another Super Bowl win. Sure enough, his rookie cards all went bonkers and everybody wanted them. And this and this again, was a PSA 10 gem mint. It went for $555,000. A really cool card we sold, this one goes back to the depth and the breadth that we have at eBay. We sold a PSA, 10 gem mint, Jesse Owens, 1936 Champions Of Sport, rookie card.
Griff: He wasn't a baseball player. He was in the Olympics.
Bob: Yeah. He was in the Olympics, 1936. Like who, I would be fascinated to be able to get the full story here of who had that card and who babied it for? You know, what, 80 years, 90 years? I can't even do the math correct. And then got it over to PSA to get the grading done. And it came back, Gem Mint, amazing story. That card went for $380,000, which is a material amount of money. But I just think it's so cool to have somebody like Jesse Owens who is such an important historical person. I mean, he matters in the sports world, but he also matters culturally. To see him have that kind of value in this day as for collectors is amazing. And then of course, these are gonna sound like small numbers now, but they're, they're staggering numbers to me. We sold a 1977 Topp Star Wars unopened series one wax box.That means literally the box that you're used to seeing at the grocery store, or you saw as a kid, an unopened one still in the shrink wrap. And that went for $35,000. And another fun one was a 1985 Tops, Garbage Pail, Kids, Adam Bombs, kind of the most famous Garbage Pail Kid. Adam Bomb like, if you remember, if you know the Garbage Pail Kids, they are like a play on the Cabbage Patch Kids that was coming out. And then they turned into the longer living license, but Adam Bomb of course had his head exploding and that went for $30,000. And then we're even seeing with the Marvel Universe being such a big cinematic kind of thing with all of the Marvel movies and whatnot. We had a 1990 full wax box case go for $30,000. That's a set that's what, 31 years old now, 32?
Griff: Seems like it was yesterday.
Bob: Yes. Yesterday. And what's fun about that is I hear a number like 31 years ago and it's like, shoot, I could have grabbed a box of those for probably eighteen dollars.
Griff: Yeah. Don't dwell on it. You'll drive yourself crazy.
Bob: Yeah. No, you can't think about that. You can't can't think about that.
Griff: Well, all these numbers, I mean, you'd like to think there's no place to go, but up, but on the eBay end, given all that's happened in the last few years with this renewed interest in literally the explosion and the prices what's next for eBay and trading cards?
Bob: We definitely need to continue to look at what are the events that are happening behind the scenes. We want to make it easier to buy, sell, flip, whatever you want to do. We want to get to a point where it's just a completely seamless transaction for you. You know, with the world, moving into a digital place, we need to figure out how to emerge digitally, if that's a word and physicality, right? So those two things are important to figure out how to blend together seamlessly. We definitely want to continue to work on some of our trust issues that we might have out there. You know, working on returns, it's a volatile marketplace. We have to look at some of the trust policies that we have around snad and returns and figure out what the right way of handling those are with the volatility that's in the marketplace. On that point. One of the other things we've done is we've allowed sellers in trading cards to have a no return policy. This is a big change because we've always felt that having an open return policy is an important thing to being a top seller. But with the way that the market's moving right now, we need to offer our best sellers the ability to say, Hey, no returns. We're in a world now where someone might buy a card and that guy literally might blow out his knee in the next game, and the card drops in value significantly. We have to be aware of these realities. And we have to make sure that the playing field is even for our sellers and our buyers when it comes to returns. So we're offering that without impacting your Top Rated Seller program. And in the past, you had to have a return policy to have Top Rated Seller, but for this category you don't. And then also payments has been a big change at eBay with where we're moving to our Managed Payments. Managed Payments works great if you're buying a $5 card, but it's a whole new ball game when you're buying a $500,000 card. And so we're looking into expanding the options available to our sellers and to our buyers to just add that level of confidence and security. For instance, escrow was rolled out to watches, and we think that that might be a great service to use for cards. If you're buying an $800,000 card, a $500,000 or a $100,000 card, right, having that middleman get in there and make sure that the transaction is all good and then move forward with it. We need to investigate every method out there. Cryptocurrency, wire transfer, all those things. We need to think about what all this means for the category and whether we've got all the right policies in place to continue to build this business out. The beauty of trading cards is everything that we learn here has value in all of the collectible categories at eBay. So the things that we're learning right now, that'll help us figure out what's the best way of doing collectible vinyl. What's the best way of doing collectible art. What's the best way of doing all of these things? Like what are the right policies that we need for these other categories and how do you tailor them to be just the best possible set of rules and policies to make that category really be the best possible place for both buyers and sellers?
Griff: Absolutely. Also, I know that on the list of URLs and I wanted you to talk about is the splash or landing page for the new image detection feature. Can you tell us where we need to go to see that?
Bob: eBay.com/scan to list. It'll give you probably a more succinct explanation of how to use it than I did. But, yeah, all the information is out there. I hope anyone who listens to this and hasn't tried it grabs a Magic: The Gathering card and just gives it a shot because it's the future. I hope at some point, you know, you're, you're scanning everything in your house and it's instantly going up to be listed on eBay at some point. But right now it's just Magic the Gathering. It's going to be Pokemon. And Yu-Gi-Oh, it's really easy to use. The fact is I figured out how to use it, so I know it's super easy to use.
Griff: Yeah. Us older guys. If we can figure it out, it has to be easy.
Bob: It passed the Bob test. So, it should be easy for anybody else.
Griff: Well, thanks, Bob. This is all really good news. Is there anything else you'd like to mention before we go?
Bob: This is kind of in the weeds, but there's some taxonomy changes coming up in Sports Cards. It's going to change the listing flow a little bit for our sellers, and we're going to start mandating some critical aspects. So an aspect for anyone who's not totally sure would be in cards, for instance, graded, not graded. That would be an aspect. Is it a graded card? Is it not a graded card? There are some aspects out there that are critical for us to make sure they get built into the listings so that people have an easier time searching for it. That's the key reason to have aspects. It helps somebody say, I'm looking for a basketball card, or I'm looking for a Magic: The Gathering card.
Griff: Right. And we say aspects, AKA item specific.,
Bob: Item specifics. Yeah. Thanks Griff. So anyways, on May 11th, we're going to be asking people to start changing some of the the listing flow within the taxonomy. And it's pretty straight forward. I think one of the big ones is just what sport are you listing in right now? Versus just being able to say something's a sports card.
Griff: Yeah. That makes sense. Well, Bob, this is really good information. I'm going to check out those cards that sold for so many hundreds and thousands of dollars. And if I can find them somewhere, either on eBay or off, I'll put the links to those in our transcript. I'll also put a link to the scan list page so that you can find it quickly and then see this and a step-by-step how you would go about listing right now, a Magic: The Gathering card, using the image scan tool. In the future, Pokemon and all other different types of cards. Bob. Thanks. It's been a pleasure.
Bob: Thank you, Griff. This is always fun.
Griff: We've been speaking with Bob Means. He's the Director of Trading Cards here at eBay, and we've been talking about many things. The new image scan tool.
Griff: When it comes to the nuts and bolts of running a business on eBay, there are no better experts than eBay sellers. To that end our social team has been asking sellers to share their knowledge with other sellers thru a sweepstakes on the eBay For Business Facebook page, where we ask a question about a specific selling topic and sellers respond with their tips. Then posters are selected at random and if you win, a hundred dollar eBay gift card.
Rebecca: The most recent topic what are your best listing practices, garnered a ton of responses. And we've selected our favorites to share with you.
Griff: And I want to thank you again, Rebecca, because normally this would be Kirsty Dunn's segment, but as I said, she's out this week. So, the way we do this is we have all our best ones that we've selected in a list. And we take turns reading them and then feel free to comment on any of them if you like, since it's only the polite thing to do, why don't you start?
Bob: Here we go. First up, Sherry says, "photos, photos, photos. I can't emphasize enough how much my iPhone's crystal clear photos promote my items and make them stick out from the competition. And I almost always utilize all 12 of my pics when I can plus bumping in a bit under the competition dollar wise, it doesn't hurt either."
Griff: Yeah, that's great. And I love that she mentioned the iPhone, you know, I used to be a camera aficionado and that's what I would promote when I would teach eBay selling. Now I have an iPhone 12 and that's all I'll ever use and the photos are superb. So yeah, she's onto something Sherry. Nicole posted an answer to the question, what are your best listing practices and said again," photos are an extremely important part of catching the buyers eye. , I try to find creative ways to showcase items I'm selling. For example, I use a glass skull I got from a retail store's Halloween collection, and I use it to display my vintage snapback hats for photos." That would be hard to forget right?
Rebecca: That would catch a buyer's eye when they're scrolling through plus it's in the spirit of the season. So I think that's a great hint. Next up Melanie's tip is, "I make my listings from scratch with vivid photos on a white background." Are we sensing a theme here Griff?
Griff: I think so.Yes. Rebecca: "I fill in all item specifics. I always make sure my description includes all measurements and note any flaws." That measurements thing, it's important for obvious things like, I don't know furniture, but gosh, it's great to have for almost anything out there.
Griff: Yeah. You should never assume that no one needs the measurements because someone will email you and say, what are the measurements? So you should be one step ahead.
Rebecca: Yeah. I mean, I've seen people do it on socks. So I think it's a good idea.
Griff: I haven't seen that but I suppose that is important. If you don't want socks that are too tight.
Rebecca: Or that, you know, go the right distance up the leg.
Griff: That's exactly right. I have an ankle I need covering. Robert posted "every morning. I edit and redo any ended listings for that day. And I do about 30 a day with 1200 listings." What Robert does, which I love is he takes a big task and he breaks it up into small little batches that he does every day. And that way he stays on top of it.
Rebecca: Nana says, "My best practices include using awesome photos, titles based on good SEO practices, an adequate description, sizes and measurements where relevant, fast shipping and superb customer service. I have a lot of repeat customers. So I think I must be doing something right." I love that her list of things to do is pretty much all of the best practices we talk about here all the time Griff. Photos, SEO, description, sizes, and measurements, fast shipping and superb customer service. I think Tana does have the secret sauce here.
Griff: Yeah. And I think you'll find as we go through these, that recurring theme, and it's not rocket science or brain surgery, it's actually just like a list. You check off to make sure you're hitting all of these points and this will put you front and center with buyers and keep them happy. Rosie says, "yes. Terapeak research has been a savior for listing optimization. Kudos." Can't it say it better than that Rosie.
Rebecca: Now Griff, can you remind us what is Terapeak for anyone who's been, not paying attention, living under a rock.
Griff: Or never listening to the podcast since it's a regular topic. Terapeak is a research company that we bought a couple of years ago and we've been integrating into Seller Hub. And what it does is it goes back more than 90 days to data for past listings. And it provides a way for you to look at that data in a way that lets you slice and dice it by category, by seller, you can get really into the weeds when it comes to item specifics so if you're looking for very specific things. And it gives you an idea of trends, prices, listing practices that work for those types of items so that you can adopt them or maybe change the listing practices you're using. It's all part of that research and development R and D for being a seller so that you're constantly keeping your business fresh and growing and robust.
Rebecca: And the great thing is all of this research is available free to sellers.
Griff: Yeah. It's free. I forgot to say that it's absolutely free. You used to have to pay for it, but not anymore.
Rebecca: John says, "consistency is number one. I have seen a large increase in sales by simply setting a daily goal to list X amount of items per day. For me, it is seven listings per day. Now I have a target, a baseline and something to improve on". Oh, I love this sort of metrics based approach that John has figuring out what the right number is, that consistency word. Love it right on John.
Griff: And John is onto that. It's almost like an urban myth, but it's one that's true about selling on eBay. And I have never heard a seller who's been able to disprove it, but the more items you list every day, the more you sell and it isn't necessarily just the new listings. It generates sales of all types of inventory, even old inventory. That's why we constantly tell sellers, Hey, we're not quite sure why this is the case, but the more you list every day, the more sales you're going to make. And Dave says, I'm in on this. I spent the first few months of the year, investing time, improving upon our listings. Now I see the results and I loved including this because this is one of those tips where somebody is not just saying, this is what I do. It's what I did. And I'm seeing the results of it.
Rebecca: Next up is Sandy, who also is talking about consistency. Sandy says, " list daily. Sales are more consistent when I list every day." Again, just as you said, Griff, that consistent listing, everyday listing really creates momentum in sales.
Griff: Cheryl posted, "organize your listings by category and list all those in one category together at the same time." I do this. I must be a smart seller. So you don't waste time shifting between categories for every listing using “sell similar” enlisting in the same categories reduces the amount of time it takes per listing. That's a great hack. I love that one. I use it.
Rebecca: Creating efficiencies like that really will make the process of listing every day a lot easier and faster.
Griff: I've always dreamt about building a box. It's a big box and you stick your item in the box and it does everything. It takes the photos, it describes it. It writes the listing, it sets the price and then it gets it ready for packing. So you just put the item in the box. You think that's ever gonna happen?
Rebecca: Probably not. Although I do think once upon a time there were whole businesses built around. Um, you could drop your stuff off and someone would box it up and ship it up and ship it and sell it on eBay for you. And you'd take a cut essentially like consignment.
Griff: What was that called? Trading Assistance. There used to be a program on eBay called Trading Assistance. It was very popular. It was a, it was sort of an eBay support for sellers who sold on consignment. And you could go to the directory and find someone in your area.
Rebecca: I remember seeing a stand-alone store in my town years ago. eBay right on the marquee out front.
Griff: We should have kept that program going. We will have to revisit that perhaps. Libby says, "I always start by thinking about the Teddy Roosevelt quote, do what you can with what you have, where you are. You have to get the listing up to start selling. I have definitely refined photos and titles throughout the years, but the most important thing is to get it listed."
Rebecca: I think this is great advice for people who have just started selling. You can, you know, worry too much about making a perfect listing, you know, getting everything Ideal before. No, just get it up on the website. Learn while you do.
Griff: I was in correspondence with a new seller for about six months who kept telling me, well, I'm getting ready. I'm learning everything I can. I'm just not there yet. And finally, you know, I said to him said, look, stop emailing me and go list something. I think you're suffering from analysis paralysis and you'll never get anything listed if you just don't go ahead and do it. I think he did eventually. I hope.
Rebecca: Susan's best listing practice is use good, clear photos that show the item as well as the complete title. Also fill out those item specifics. You can just write a letter or two in the drop boxes. And the choices that start with that letter will pop up, which saves time. If you know what drop in choice you're looking to fill in. It is true. Those item specifics, they really make an impact.
Griff: They do. And finally, we have a tip that was given by Kathy and Kathy says, "it's crucial to use the dropdown selections in item specifics as much as possible. Using them will make your listings available in the left navigation bar in search filters. It can be smokey black and the title or the description, but in the dropdown selections, it's just black. That's really wise.
Rebecca: Griff, that was an amazing list of tips from sellers to sellers. And hopefully our listeners out there found it really helpful. And we got so many great tips. We want to make sure that everyone gets a chance to hear them. Back with more in a few weeks.
Griff: I have a lot here on paper and I thought we would split them up and we'll do some more in the month of June. So this will be something for you to look forward to. Thank you very much, Rebecca, for sticking around and, and taking this on. I really appreciate it.
Rebecca: Happy to be here. This was fun.
Griff: Now it's time for our favorite segment.
Rebecca: You got questions?
Griff: We got answers. All the time.
Rebecca: Do we have any questions this week?
Griff: It is a good question that you just asked because we have one question and it's one I found on our Facebook page. We did get a few email questions, but I couldn't use them because they were about specific account issues. Remember that if you send us a question and we do want your question, if it's something that only a customer support agent can help with, whether that's, uh, ended listings or suspended accounts, we can't really assist with those on the podcast. But we can't ask your general questions about selling, including how tools work and or how features work. And this was one I found on our Facebook page. And although we have addressed this topic, Rebecca in past episodes, it's probably a good idea to revisit it every now and then, it's about item specifics.
Rebecca: I'll read the post. eBay seller Yvette posted. What is happening with eBay? My item recommendations and specifics are really messed up. I just got a specific vehicle type grade and sport on a plush blueberry doll. And that's just for one item. When I add what they request several more requests that have nothing to do with the item. This is frustrating enough to make me consider other options for selling. Okay, let's help Yvette here, Griff, what's going on?
Griff: There's still some confusion about the purpose of item specifics and what some of those recommended item specifics are and what the word recommended means.
Rebecca: I totally understand. If I was going through the listing flow and I had a doll and I got asked the vehicle type, that would seem odd to me. I think the point that is important to make here is because we don't know exactly what you are listing, we show many, many options. And we rely on the seller to choose the ones that are applicable to the item that they're selling.
Griff: And I didn't ask you about which category or I may have asked her and she may not have responded. What was the top level category she was listening in, and that can make a difference. So if you're listening, for example, some sort of plush toy, there are several places where you can list that. And depending on the top category, or even the subcategory that you listed in the presented item specifics may be different. So if you're listing a plush toy and you get something like a recommended specific for vehicle type grade or sport, you may have listed it in the wrong category, or it may be listing the that's correct, but there may be different types of toys listed in that category, which might actually relate to something like vehicle type or grade or sport. I wouldn't necessarily just think because they don't relate to my item they must be a mistake. They most likely relate to other items that are very different than the one you are listing.
Rebecca: Different, but still belong in the same category. As an example, if you go into toys, chances are, you could be listing a doll or a plushy. Another person could start at toys and be listing a remote controlled car. And you may see item specifics that are relevant or not. As you narrow down, the specific should get better, but either way, the other thing that I think we need to talk through here Griff is the difference between the words required and recommended. I think that that's causing some confusion.
Griff: Yeah. And before we started talking in this segment, you and I were speaking about those two words and you came up with a brilliant solution or a suggestion, which is to change recommended to optional. And I think that would be great. Because the concept of recommended is it sounds like we're saying, well, these are the required ones. And these are the ones that we strongly recommend that you use. There's kind of an under subtext there that we are recommending them, even if they're not relevant to your item. In this case, you know, the idea that give that set about vehicle type and grade, not relating to her plush blueberry doll at all. So I think that puts it in a seller's mind that, Hey, if I don't use one of these eBay recommended specifics, if I leave it blank, no one's going to find my item.
Rebecca: Optional on the other hand, maybe a little too soft, because we do think it's important to fill in as many specifics, both in the required and in the recommended as possible. The headline here though is recommended, can be safely left empty if you choose to. It's just, we know that the more accurate ones that you fill in the better. But blank under recommended, if it doesn't relate to your particular item, totally fine. And it doesn't risk your listing at all.
Griff: And focus on the quality of your listing, not on how much of that blue circle you're filling in. I think some sellers look at that as a game that they have to win. As you add more recommended specifics there's a little blue graphic. I don't know if you've seen this Rebecca. It's like a circle and it fills in more and more. A lot of sellers are trying to get that filled in completely, even if it means putting in items specific values that don't have anything to do with the item they're listing. That definitely is not the right strategy. The blue circle is not a race. It's not a game. You can leave those item specifics that are recommended blank. If they don't relate to your item and your item will show up in searches and relevant searches. And that's what is important.
Rebecca: I totally agree. I mean, I understand the purpose of gamification like this on a website. It's to help encourage people to complete something that will help them get to their goal. Here the goal is to have a great listing. That being said, the blue circle is not some sort of finish line. So just really focus on getting those required in and then among the recommended ones that are relevant for your item, fill those in and the rest, just ignore them and move on to the next listing.
Griff: Yeah, because the whole reason for this is just to help buyers find your item and putting in information that's not related or actually contradictory to your item can make it harder for buyers to find your item. So just fill in those that matter. Leave the rest blank.
Rebecca: I cannot emphasize this enough. Some sellers will put n/a in item specifics that aren't relevant to their item. Please don't do that. Just leave it blank. And the reason for that is because no seller is searching for n/a in fact, I think we had a tip on this a few weeks ago, from one seller to another, just leave it blank. Don't fill in n/a, don't fill anything in. And then your buyers will actually find the item better. If those required in the recommendations are accurate.
Griff: And relevant. Exactly. That's A very good point. Now. I hope this all makes sense Yvette. I'm going to trust that it does, but if you or anyone else still has questions about item specifics, please, we urge you to call them in or send them into us as email. We will always do our best to answer them for you. And if you notice something that really might be so off base, that it could be a possible glitch in item specifics, Yeah. Let us know. We're happy to see if that is the case.
Rebecca: And in fact, if you have any questions on any eBay selling topic, you can call us on (888)723-4630.
Griff: That number is music to my ears. (888)723-4630. You can leave a question or comment, and if it's appropriate, we'll put it on the air.
Rebecca: And if you're not a call on the phone person, you can always email us at podcast@ebay.com that's podcast@ebay.com.
Griff: And remember that every question, whether it's a call-in or an email that we put on the air, the person who sent it into us will receive while supplies last, an official eBay For Business Podcast, mug suitable for the beverage of your choice. Now it's that time that we all live for, your daily podcasts to do list.
Rebecca: Number one, check the announcement board for up-to-date seller news.
Griff: And this actually comes from one of the seller best practices that were submitted. And I like it so much. It's going to be our second one. Set aside time every day to go through your live listings, to make any improvements or edits as needed, including adding relevant item specifics.
Rebecca: And third, check out the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to see the links we referenced during the episode.
Griff: On our next episode, we'll meet with an Up & Running Grant recipient who is growing her business in spite of the many challenges she's faced in the last 12 months.
Rebecca: We'd like to, again, thank our guests this week. eBay Director of Trading Cards, Bob Means.
Griff: The eBay For Business podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.
Bob: "The pace that we're selling these things at is unbelievable. We sell almost 139 cards per minute. Over the last quarter, they're constantly moving. There's thousands and thousands of transactions that are happening, and lots of satisfied customers, lots of great buying experience. The explosion has increased exponentially. It's been noticed in the other parts of the world. People that weren't sports card collectors or collectible card game collectors, they're getting into it from an asset class perspective. They're seeing them as investments. We have the gamers, the people that play the collectible card games, they're still buying the cards just to make their decks as powerful as possible. There's a collector who goes out there and they just, they may not play the games, or they may not really care about the sports, but they want to have the entire team, or they want to have the entire set. And then of course, now we've got this person. Who's looking at this as a long-term investment as well."
Rebecca: I'm Rebecca.
Griff: And I'm Griff. And this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and the inspiration to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 141. Welcome back, Rebecca.
Rebecca: Pleased to be here. And you might notice that I'm here again, after being here last week. I was lucky enough to bump Brian out of the way this week and so here I am again.
Griff: Well, we're glad to have you.
Rebecca: And this was a very busy week. We'll have to get to the news in a minute, but in the meantime, how are you Griff?
Griff: Ok. I'm enjoying the weather. I think a lot of our sellers are, I'm reading their posts. Some of them have ventured outside. Some of them have actually ventured into social situations now that things seem to be turning around. Is that the right word?
Rebecca: Yeah, I think here in the U S it's okay to say that things are, they feel like they're on the upswing.
Griff: Yeah. The upswing. And the same with business. I think what's on the back of, most of our minds is how will the return to some sense of pre pandemic impact our businesses, especially if we're small sellers on eBay. So it's going to be an interesting development to watch over the next year. Will the things that have become sort of normal when it comes to selling on eBay, be the same now that we're moving out of this? All the new buyers that we picked up, the new buying habits. You know, I think of myself, I learned to buy groceries online and I don't think I'm going to change. So how much of that will happen with eBay and online shopping in general? That's a big question I think all of us have.
Rebecca: I agree that as you said, I think the return to some kind of normal or what we think of as the before times, what is that going to look like? Certainly I know we'll keep reporting on it here on the podcast and keeping sellers updated for whatever trends and knowledge we glean and making sure that all the sellers have access to that as well.
Griff: One category that's just been on fire in the last year is the collectibles category. All of them in general. And I learned something last week, Rebecca, did you know that a Magic The Gathering card recently sold on eBay for wait for it, a half a million dollars?
Rebecca: All right, now I'm thinking, I know I packed up all of my son's toys and games. I need to go open those boxes in the garage and in the attic and rifle through them.
Griff: Talk about it in a minute, but it's one of the first years that magic, the gathering was around and a card from that set really did sell on eBay for a half a million dollars. And we'll learn more about this and a lot more about trading cards when we talk with eBay Director of Trading Cards, Bob Means. He's going to tell us about some of the other record setting prices for trading cards that have been on eBay in the last year, as well as the new image scan tool that's just been released for listing trading cards and what the plans are for that. And our regular Podcast Correspondent Kirsty Dunn is out this week so you and I will be reading what we had planned to do with Kirsty, which is the best of the best seller responses to our question, what are your best listing practices? So that's something to look forward to. And I thank you in advance for taking Kirsty's part and working with us for that. But first it's time for some eBay news Rebecca.
Rebecca: There's a lot of news this week Griff. Let's start off with Jordan Sweetnam eBay Senior Vice President Of Marketplaces who made an announcement last week regarding a topic that is of a whole lot of recent media interest. Jordan said, and I quote "eBay has always been the world's destination for buying and selling the most unique and hard to find items and will continue to be the destination for collectors of all kinds, physical or digital. This opportunity unlocks new assets for collecting new ways for people to feel their passion and expands eBay's appeal to a new generation of collectors." And what does that mean? NFT's So Jordan continues "with this in mind today, we are updating eBay's policy to include the sale of NFTs, which stands for non fungible tokens. In the short term, NFT inventory will be provided by trusted sellers who meet our high standards across categories like trading cards, music, entertainment, and art." And finally, Jordan goes on "in the coming months, eBay will add new capabilities that bring blockchain driven collectibles to our platform. I'm looking forward to bringing on new creators, to share their passions in ways we can't even imagine yet. Together, we will ensure eBay remains the preeminent marketplace for collectibles of all kinds and serves as the next generation of collectors."
Griff: Yeah. For those of you who don't know what non fungible tokens are it's something that really popped up this year and what it is is it's one of a kind digital. You ever think about how you have an image, it's a JPEG, it's a digital file. Well, if you put it out on the internet, anybody can claim it. You can watermark it, but really, there can be millions of copies, but with a non fungible token there can only be one owner. And this now puts well things like art and collectibles that are digital in nature in the hands of collectors as a one of a kind item. This means the value shoots up. So it will be interesting to watch how this plays out.
Rebecca: I love the way that it just shows how eBay is constantly evolving to meet the needs of the modern buyer, modern sellers and a modern marketplace.
Griff: We will get to all of this in the coming months and as developments, we reach certain points in this process. We'll be sure to talk about it on the podcast. And we'll bring on folks at eBay whose job it is to make this happen so we can learn more. And we're going to talk with Bob Means, as I said about trading cards and I have some news first.
Rebecca: What is that?
Griff: well it's about thermal printers. Specifically, it's about setting up a thermal printer. I got a question from somebody who took my advice and went out and bought a Brother printer and then emailed me in a panic, said, I can't set this up! It's not working. And I thought, well, you know, that's right. Some thermal printers are not as easy to set up on some computers, like a Mac, for example. So I've located some really good websites that have excellent step-by-step instructions or tutorials for how to set up either a Brother or a Dymo or a Zebra printer on a Mac or a Windows 10 computer. I've vetted these they're not eBay sites, but I made sure all of them were up to date so that they'll be useful to anyone who's buying a thermal printer. And I'm going to put the links to those websites in our episode for 141, the transcript, so that you can access those as you need them and in the future I'll point to them.
Rebecca: This is a great service Griff that you're offering like this one seller who has followed your advice and ran out and got themselves a thermal printer.
Griff: I didn't know, they had a Mac and I would have advised against buying a Brother. If you have a Mac, I would suggest it would be better to have a Zebra printer, but it doesn't matter. I can't really be promoting specific brands that wouldn't be fair. They're all great. And they'll all work with any computer, be that a Mac or a Windows. And even Linux, if you're one of those rare people that are still running that operating system, hopefully we'll be able to offer some assistance that way. It's been great having you on this week and we're going to talk a little bit more after we talk to Bob and we talk about the new image scan tool for trading cards.
Rebecca: All right. I'll be back soon.
Griff: eBay recently announced a new tech feature for sellers of trading cards and who better to share the details of what it is and how it works. Then eBay's Director of Trading Cards himself, Bob Means. Welcome back, Bob.
Bob: Yeah. Hi Griff. Good to be here.
Griff: Remind me and the rest of our listeners, what it is you do at eBay.
Bob: Yeah. So I'm the Director of Trading Cards. Like you said, my job is to focus on the merchandise that's coming onto the site, focus on our sellers, make sure that we understand all the challenges that they might be facing. And then of course also focus on the buyers and make sure that we're providing a platform that allows people to get great value and find the things they need and have a great shopping experience.
Griff: Now, the last few years have, they've really seen an explosion for all things, trading cards. What has it been like at eBay?
Bob: It's been fun. I mean, it has really been an extraordinary thing to see. It's quite an exciting trend. The pace that we're selling these things at is unbelievable. We sell almost 139 cards per minute. Over the last quarter, they're constantly moving. There's thousands and thousands of transactions that are happening and lots of satisfied customers, lots of great buying experience. The explosion has increased exponentially. It's been noticed in the other parts of the world. People that weren't sports card collectors or collectible card game collectors, they're getting into it from an asset class perspective. They're seeing them as investments. We have the gamers, the people that play the collectible card games, they're still buying the cards just to make their decks as powerful as possible. There's a collector who goes out there and they just, they may not play the games or they may not really care about the sports, but they want to have the entire team or they want to have the entire set. And then of course, now we've got this person who's looking at this as a long-term investment as well. Just to give you kind of an idea, In the first quarter, which was a record-setting quarter for us, the category grew 345%. That's almost 18 million trading cards sold. I mean, it's just a staggering number.
Griff: That's incredible.
Bob: I joke around sometimes, you know, I don't think that there's a post office truck driving across the country without an eBay card on it at any one given time. There's just been that much volume. We're also seeing a lot of energy coming out of some other countries, Australians, the Chinese, Japan, you know, everyone is buying these US cards. And we're also seeing interest in the cards that come from those countries. We're selling rugby cards that are from Australia, we're selling soccer players. Soccer is an incredible trend. It's huge, it's a worldwide sport, right? But now we're seeing people in America want to get the cards that are only available in Europe. And, so it's really become an international game at this point as well. And then, you know, the last thing, and this is really one of the core pieces of my job is the community around this is just amazing. There's always been card shows, right? Those are kind of the old fashioned way of doing this. Especially pre COVID is you go to the hotel, that's near the airport and there's a couple of sports celebrities there. And there's all these guys with these trading cards and everyone's swapping and selling and they all know each other and it was kind of a closed circuit. Now this has just become a national thing. And now we're seeing people talking about these cards on discords, there's Twitch streams, there's people opening boxes with people watching just to see what they pull out, because there's kind of a lottery aspect to it. You know, there's a lot of real good energy out there. And these guys, you know, the people that are really, really engaged in this from a collecting perspective, they're all sort of in it together. If one of their friends gets a certain card, they all know that that person's been hunting for it for months, for instance. And they're all excited for that person to complete their collection. Really, really important community out there. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're working so hard to identify the things that are specific to this category and fix some of those things on our site.
Griff: There's recently been a lot of improvements because the categories have become so popular. What are we doing with the trading cards category to make it a better buying experience and a better selling experience?
Bob: The most exciting one that was just recently released was an image scan technology that allows people to scan a card and then have that card data populate their listing to just cut out some of the busy work that goes along with listings. Right now, it's only working for Magic: The Gathering. We intend to add Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, so it'll be in that collectible card game space. And obviously we want to eventually have this work for everything. That means even, you know, tertiary brands out there in the collectible card game space. That means sports cards. It's obviously a massive undertaking because it's a massive catalog. When you think about how many sports cards have ever been created, if you add non-sports trading cards in there, like Garbage Pail Kids, and Star Wars cards, and then you think about all the games that have been out there. There's a lot of work to be done and a lot of effort to go into it. But ultimately, you know, when I said we sold 18 million cards in the first quarter, that means we had to list 20 million. And so that's a lot of effort going out there. And if it's a manual process for somebody that's five minutes that they're spending, getting that listing up. And if we can cut that in half, which we think our image scan tool will do for you, we've just saved you a bunch of time, get even more cards on the site that way and just make it a little bit easier for everybody.
Griff: Okay. Let's say I've got a card. Of course it's Magic: The Gathering cause that's what it works for right now. And I want to list it on eBay and I don't want to have to go through all of the data entry and typing it all in. I open an eBay app and then what happens?
Bob: Go to the selling tab like you normally would. And normally what would happen is the camera would pop up and say, or actually it would say, tell us what you're selling. And then it would try to help you. And then you take some photos and then you'd finish your listing and set shipping and all that good stuff. With the image scan tool, what you can do is you can type MTG, which is kind of universally known as the acronym for Magic: The Gathering, or you can write Magic: The Gathering and it'll take you to a separate selling flow. What it'll do is it'll tell you to put the camera over the card, you'll put it over the card and it'll pop up with, I think this card is this. In some cases, Magic: The Gathering might have 10 different iterations of the same card, meaning that it came out at different sets. In that case, it'll show you all tents. It's like, I'm pretty sure this is a, you know, Griff's Fireball.
Griff: Is there such a thing?
Bob: There isn't but there should be. I don't have any connections, but I'll see what I can do. Cause I think that would be a cool card.
Griff: I do too. Thanks.
Bob: You know, let's say there's five different versions of Griff's Fireball, you know, all five of those would pop up. So there's still some responsibility for the seller to make sure they put the right edition in because you could lead to what's called a snad, right? If you said it's a first edition, but it's actually a second edition, then you haven't put the right data in. But if the cards is a mutually exclusive card, it'll get the right one. Boom, you've got your listing data. There's a couple of other steps that you have to update. You know, again, we want to make sure that you put the right data in. Most people want to put the condition of the card and that's kind of a subjective thing. So we expect the seller to say, Hey, this is a near mint card or this is a lightly played or damaged or whatever it is that they want to put in there. But the card scanning technology is not going to take a guess at what it thinks the condition of the card is. So there's a couple other steps that you'll want to do to make sure that you're doing the best possible listing. And then it'll take you to the, let's take some pictures, let's do that. And then from there, it'll lead you into the pricing and the shipping and all that good stuff.
Griff: So you do have to take a picture and it's always advised unless the card was absolutely brand new, I suppose you could get by with, is there a stock image? Like there would be if you did this process for a DVD or CD?
Bob: Yeah. We strongly recommend using your own images. There are people that sell vast quantities of the same card. It's almost like fodder, like they're relatively common and people typically want them just to be part of their play set or whatever. And in that case, the condition of the card might not be the most important thing to the buyer. But if you're selling a card of any value and any collectability, I think it's in your best interest to put pictures of the card. And that gets even more important as you go back in time. So the more vintage your card, the more critical it's going to be for people to want to see the actual physical condition of the card. And that's where we think taking a picture of the front and the back is great. In best case, if you're selling what you think might be a $500 card, I'm just making up a number...
Griff: And there is such a thing by the way.
Bob: Oh, there absolutely are. I'll have to give you some insight on that, but let's say you're selling a $500 card. That's a big investment for a buyer. And I would recommend taking pictures of the corners, taking pictures of the front, of the back, taking pictures of the edges. You know, everything that person's going to need because that card has definitely reached the collectability phase.
Griff: And one can't assume which cards are which. You have to know the card game in order to understand which cards are the most desirable. So don't just make an assumption that your card is a $1 card.
Bob: And that's a great thing about the eBay ecosystem is our sellers tend to be pretty knowledgeable of what they're doing. And plus you might be leaving money on the table. If you just put a card out there and you just look at price guidance or whatever you can find on it, if you don't know the right card, the right edition, you could actually be significantly undervaluing your card.
Griff: Yes. And we're, we're going to talk about some of those price points in a moment. So that's the listing end of it. But once you sell a card, we now have a new shipping service that's been extended specifically for trading cards. Let's talk a little bit about that for sellers who may not be aware of what's known as the eBay standard envelope.
Bob: eBay standard envelope, I think is a really cool service. It's for under $20 any card under $20. And it's recently actually extended out to other categories. So stamps, coins, some lightweight, I mean the common thing needs to be lightweight and it needs to be thin. But specific to training cards, you know, of those 18 million cards that sold, a lot of them were under $20. And when you're selling a $5 card, this is a chance to actually drive some margin into your pocket by rather than shipping it for 3.50 because you're trying to maintain your ETRS. And the reason why I say 3.50 is that's about the cost to ship USP first class. And the way we used to be doing things was you had to maintain that ETRS to get the Top Rated Seller Discount, which was valuable to you, but now you can ship it for anywhere between 50 and 91 cents, depending on what you're actually shipping. And that's all based off of the ounces that you're shipping and a single card is typically always going to be under an ounce. You're really talking about probably 51 cents, basically a stamp. But with that stamp, you're actually getting some tracking now. And it's, it's different from the tracking that people are used to with say first-class service or expedited service like FedEx and whatnot. The tracking is going to be when the card hits a major hub, like for instance, here in Bay area, it's not going to see my local post office, but it's going to get scanned typically when it's like at Oakland or San Francisco before it's about to go. So there's some nuances out there. If I ship a card locally to someone who lives down the street, they may never see a tracking update, but you'll still get credit for sending a tracked shipment.
Griff: And for those sellers of these items, that means that they finally qualify for Top Rated Seller standards so that they can achieve and keep a Top Rated Seller status.
Bob: No, that's right. It's a super affordable way of maintaining a high level of seller standards, giving the buyers the best possible experience. And fundamentally it also cuts down on the amount of mysteriously lost mail too. So that feels good as well.
Griff: We teased a little bit about some of these selling prices for trading cards that have been realized on eBay. And I'm looking at the list. Even someone as seasoned as myself, was a little shocked at some of these prices. Give us an idea of what some of these trading cards have been going for.
Bob: Yeah. I'll talk a little bit about the collectible card game world, because that's what image scan is connected to. We recently sold a Magic: The Gathering Alpha Black Lotus, when you hear something called alpha, that means it was part of the original set that was sold. I think back in 93, maybe a little earlier. That was a guy selling these cards out of the back of his van effectively. Right? There's just not a lot of them. I think the print run is incredibly low, so they're naturally scarce. And then the Black Lotus, it's the Mickey Mantle of the CCG world, right? It's the most coveted of coveted cards. There's something they call the Power Nine. It would be the power, one of the power nine, for lack of a better term. It's the most coveted card. So yeah, we sold one for $511,100, and that's a record for us and record for the card.
Griff: And you can't even move in.
Bob: You know, a couple other important things to know, like it was a graded card which means it had been encapsulated, it had been graded by PSA and had received a 10 gem mint, which meant it was effectively flawless. When we talk about scarcity, I don't even think there's another card of that quality available anywhere. It's almost a one of a kind type of item. And we've also set some records, in Pokemon. Pokemon has been probably the most explosive of all the categories out there in the CCG world. We sold a $375,000 Illustrator card. And what's really neat about these ones. Again, that eBay collector investor sort of thing, I think there was less than 30 of these made and it's called the Illustrator because it's a card that pays homage to the original illustrator of Pokemon. Super neat, cool story behind it. Incredibly rare. That one, if I remember correctly, it was a PSA seven. So when I said the black Lotus was a gem mint tent, basically flawless for 375,000, you got a seven, which quite frankly, Griff if you looked at it and I looked at it, we'd be like, that's a flawless card, but these graders, they really get in there and they see any little imperfection or any offset to the print or whatever it could be, you know, but it's a beautiful card.
Griff: They are looking at the molecular level at that point.
Bob: I think, I think they are at that point, they're, they're looking at it with a very, very fine eye. And then the last of the big three is a game called Yu-Gi-Oh And Yu-Gi-Oh is a relatively newer game, super popular. We sold an $85,000 card there. And this was again a PSA gem 10, not as rare, not as obscure and also not as popular as Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering, but still, that's just an amazing, beautiful card. And there's a very happy buyer out there who's got a very powerful and wonderful collection with that being a part of it.
Griff: If it's possible, if I can find them outside of eBay, if necessary, I'll try to find examples of these cards and link to them. So if you're listening in the transcript, you may be able to see, go and view some of the cards that have sold for these prices.
Bob: Well, I also want to share, you know there was also, we had sold a Tom Brady rookie card and of course, Tom Brady had an incredible year this year. And it's always fascinating to watch the real world occur and see something happen on eBay that is reflective or correlated to it. And so Tom Brady, another Super Bowl win. Sure enough, his rookie cards all went bonkers and everybody wanted them. And this and this again, was a PSA 10 gem mint. It went for $555,000. A really cool card we sold, this one goes back to the depth and the breadth that we have at eBay. We sold a PSA, 10 gem mint, Jesse Owens, 1936 Champions Of Sport, rookie card.
Griff: He wasn't a baseball player. He was in the Olympics.
Bob: Yeah. He was in the Olympics, 1936. Like who, I would be fascinated to be able to get the full story here of who had that card and who babied it for? You know, what, 80 years, 90 years? I can't even do the math correct. And then got it over to PSA to get the grading done. And it came back, Gem Mint, amazing story. That card went for $380,000, which is a material amount of money. But I just think it's so cool to have somebody like Jesse Owens who is such an important historical person. I mean, he matters in the sports world, but he also matters culturally. To see him have that kind of value in this day as for collectors is amazing. And then of course, these are gonna sound like small numbers now, but they're, they're staggering numbers to me. We sold a 1977 Topp Star Wars unopened series one wax box.That means literally the box that you're used to seeing at the grocery store, or you saw as a kid, an unopened one still in the shrink wrap. And that went for $35,000. And another fun one was a 1985 Tops, Garbage Pail, Kids, Adam Bombs, kind of the most famous Garbage Pail Kid. Adam Bomb like, if you remember, if you know the Garbage Pail Kids, they are like a play on the Cabbage Patch Kids that was coming out. And then they turned into the longer living license, but Adam Bomb of course had his head exploding and that went for $30,000. And then we're even seeing with the Marvel Universe being such a big cinematic kind of thing with all of the Marvel movies and whatnot. We had a 1990 full wax box case go for $30,000. That's a set that's what, 31 years old now, 32?
Griff: Seems like it was yesterday.
Bob: Yes. Yesterday. And what's fun about that is I hear a number like 31 years ago and it's like, shoot, I could have grabbed a box of those for probably eighteen dollars.
Griff: Yeah. Don't dwell on it. You'll drive yourself crazy.
Bob: Yeah. No, you can't think about that. You can't can't think about that.
Griff: Well, all these numbers, I mean, you'd like to think there's no place to go, but up, but on the eBay end, given all that's happened in the last few years with this renewed interest in literally the explosion and the prices what's next for eBay and trading cards?
Bob: We definitely need to continue to look at what are the events that are happening behind the scenes. We want to make it easier to buy, sell, flip, whatever you want to do. We want to get to a point where it's just a completely seamless transaction for you. You know, with the world, moving into a digital place, we need to figure out how to emerge digitally, if that's a word and physicality, right? So those two things are important to figure out how to blend together seamlessly. We definitely want to continue to work on some of our trust issues that we might have out there. You know, working on returns, it's a volatile marketplace. We have to look at some of the trust policies that we have around snad and returns and figure out what the right way of handling those are with the volatility that's in the marketplace. On that point. One of the other things we've done is we've allowed sellers in trading cards to have a no return policy. This is a big change because we've always felt that having an open return policy is an important thing to being a top seller. But with the way that the market's moving right now, we need to offer our best sellers the ability to say, Hey, no returns. We're in a world now where someone might buy a card and that guy literally might blow out his knee in the next game, and the card drops in value significantly. We have to be aware of these realities. And we have to make sure that the playing field is even for our sellers and our buyers when it comes to returns. So we're offering that without impacting your Top Rated Seller program. And in the past, you had to have a return policy to have Top Rated Seller, but for this category you don't. And then also payments has been a big change at eBay with where we're moving to our Managed Payments. Managed Payments works great if you're buying a $5 card, but it's a whole new ball game when you're buying a $500,000 card. And so we're looking into expanding the options available to our sellers and to our buyers to just add that level of confidence and security. For instance, escrow was rolled out to watches, and we think that that might be a great service to use for cards. If you're buying an $800,000 card, a $500,000 or a $100,000 card, right, having that middleman get in there and make sure that the transaction is all good and then move forward with it. We need to investigate every method out there. Cryptocurrency, wire transfer, all those things. We need to think about what all this means for the category and whether we've got all the right policies in place to continue to build this business out. The beauty of trading cards is everything that we learn here has value in all of the collectible categories at eBay. So the things that we're learning right now, that'll help us figure out what's the best way of doing collectible vinyl. What's the best way of doing collectible art. What's the best way of doing all of these things? Like what are the right policies that we need for these other categories and how do you tailor them to be just the best possible set of rules and policies to make that category really be the best possible place for both buyers and sellers?
Griff: Absolutely. Also, I know that on the list of URLs and I wanted you to talk about is the splash or landing page for the new image detection feature. Can you tell us where we need to go to see that?
Bob: eBay.com/scan to list. It'll give you probably a more succinct explanation of how to use it than I did. But, yeah, all the information is out there. I hope anyone who listens to this and hasn't tried it grabs a Magic: The Gathering card and just gives it a shot because it's the future. I hope at some point, you know, you're, you're scanning everything in your house and it's instantly going up to be listed on eBay at some point. But right now it's just Magic the Gathering. It's going to be Pokemon. And Yu-Gi-Oh, it's really easy to use. The fact is I figured out how to use it, so I know it's super easy to use.
Griff: Yeah. Us older guys. If we can figure it out, it has to be easy.
Bob: It passed the Bob test. So, it should be easy for anybody else.
Griff: Well, thanks, Bob. This is all really good news. Is there anything else you'd like to mention before we go?
Bob: This is kind of in the weeds, but there's some taxonomy changes coming up in Sports Cards. It's going to change the listing flow a little bit for our sellers, and we're going to start mandating some critical aspects. So an aspect for anyone who's not totally sure would be in cards, for instance, graded, not graded. That would be an aspect. Is it a graded card? Is it not a graded card? There are some aspects out there that are critical for us to make sure they get built into the listings so that people have an easier time searching for it. That's the key reason to have aspects. It helps somebody say, I'm looking for a basketball card, or I'm looking for a Magic: The Gathering card.
Griff: Right. And we say aspects, AKA item specific.,
Bob: Item specifics. Yeah. Thanks Griff. So anyways, on May 11th, we're going to be asking people to start changing some of the the listing flow within the taxonomy. And it's pretty straight forward. I think one of the big ones is just what sport are you listing in right now? Versus just being able to say something's a sports card.
Griff: Yeah. That makes sense. Well, Bob, this is really good information. I'm going to check out those cards that sold for so many hundreds and thousands of dollars. And if I can find them somewhere, either on eBay or off, I'll put the links to those in our transcript. I'll also put a link to the scan list page so that you can find it quickly and then see this and a step-by-step how you would go about listing right now, a Magic: The Gathering card, using the image scan tool. In the future, Pokemon and all other different types of cards. Bob. Thanks. It's been a pleasure.
Bob: Thank you, Griff. This is always fun.
Griff: We've been speaking with Bob Means. He's the Director of Trading Cards here at eBay, and we've been talking about many things. The new image scan tool.
Griff: When it comes to the nuts and bolts of running a business on eBay, there are no better experts than eBay sellers. To that end our social team has been asking sellers to share their knowledge with other sellers thru a sweepstakes on the eBay For Business Facebook page, where we ask a question about a specific selling topic and sellers respond with their tips. Then posters are selected at random and if you win, a hundred dollar eBay gift card.
Rebecca: The most recent topic what are your best listing practices, garnered a ton of responses. And we've selected our favorites to share with you.
Griff: And I want to thank you again, Rebecca, because normally this would be Kirsty Dunn's segment, but as I said, she's out this week. So, the way we do this is we have all our best ones that we've selected in a list. And we take turns reading them and then feel free to comment on any of them if you like, since it's only the polite thing to do, why don't you start?
Bob: Here we go. First up, Sherry says, "photos, photos, photos. I can't emphasize enough how much my iPhone's crystal clear photos promote my items and make them stick out from the competition. And I almost always utilize all 12 of my pics when I can plus bumping in a bit under the competition dollar wise, it doesn't hurt either."
Griff: Yeah, that's great. And I love that she mentioned the iPhone, you know, I used to be a camera aficionado and that's what I would promote when I would teach eBay selling. Now I have an iPhone 12 and that's all I'll ever use and the photos are superb. So yeah, she's onto something Sherry. Nicole posted an answer to the question, what are your best listing practices and said again," photos are an extremely important part of catching the buyers eye. , I try to find creative ways to showcase items I'm selling. For example, I use a glass skull I got from a retail store's Halloween collection, and I use it to display my vintage snapback hats for photos." That would be hard to forget right?
Rebecca: That would catch a buyer's eye when they're scrolling through plus it's in the spirit of the season. So I think that's a great hint. Next up Melanie's tip is, "I make my listings from scratch with vivid photos on a white background." Are we sensing a theme here Griff?
Griff: I think so.Yes. Rebecca: "I fill in all item specifics. I always make sure my description includes all measurements and note any flaws." That measurements thing, it's important for obvious things like, I don't know furniture, but gosh, it's great to have for almost anything out there.
Griff: Yeah. You should never assume that no one needs the measurements because someone will email you and say, what are the measurements? So you should be one step ahead.
Rebecca: Yeah. I mean, I've seen people do it on socks. So I think it's a good idea.
Griff: I haven't seen that but I suppose that is important. If you don't want socks that are too tight.
Rebecca: Or that, you know, go the right distance up the leg.
Griff: That's exactly right. I have an ankle I need covering. Robert posted "every morning. I edit and redo any ended listings for that day. And I do about 30 a day with 1200 listings." What Robert does, which I love is he takes a big task and he breaks it up into small little batches that he does every day. And that way he stays on top of it.
Rebecca: Nana says, "My best practices include using awesome photos, titles based on good SEO practices, an adequate description, sizes and measurements where relevant, fast shipping and superb customer service. I have a lot of repeat customers. So I think I must be doing something right." I love that her list of things to do is pretty much all of the best practices we talk about here all the time Griff. Photos, SEO, description, sizes, and measurements, fast shipping and superb customer service. I think Tana does have the secret sauce here.
Griff: Yeah. And I think you'll find as we go through these, that recurring theme, and it's not rocket science or brain surgery, it's actually just like a list. You check off to make sure you're hitting all of these points and this will put you front and center with buyers and keep them happy. Rosie says, "yes. Terapeak research has been a savior for listing optimization. Kudos." Can't it say it better than that Rosie.
Rebecca: Now Griff, can you remind us what is Terapeak for anyone who's been, not paying attention, living under a rock.
Griff: Or never listening to the podcast since it's a regular topic. Terapeak is a research company that we bought a couple of years ago and we've been integrating into Seller Hub. And what it does is it goes back more than 90 days to data for past listings. And it provides a way for you to look at that data in a way that lets you slice and dice it by category, by seller, you can get really into the weeds when it comes to item specifics so if you're looking for very specific things. And it gives you an idea of trends, prices, listing practices that work for those types of items so that you can adopt them or maybe change the listing practices you're using. It's all part of that research and development R and D for being a seller so that you're constantly keeping your business fresh and growing and robust.
Rebecca: And the great thing is all of this research is available free to sellers.
Griff: Yeah. It's free. I forgot to say that it's absolutely free. You used to have to pay for it, but not anymore.
Rebecca: John says, "consistency is number one. I have seen a large increase in sales by simply setting a daily goal to list X amount of items per day. For me, it is seven listings per day. Now I have a target, a baseline and something to improve on". Oh, I love this sort of metrics based approach that John has figuring out what the right number is, that consistency word. Love it right on John.
Griff: And John is onto that. It's almost like an urban myth, but it's one that's true about selling on eBay. And I have never heard a seller who's been able to disprove it, but the more items you list every day, the more you sell and it isn't necessarily just the new listings. It generates sales of all types of inventory, even old inventory. That's why we constantly tell sellers, Hey, we're not quite sure why this is the case, but the more you list every day, the more sales you're going to make. And Dave says, I'm in on this. I spent the first few months of the year, investing time, improving upon our listings. Now I see the results and I loved including this because this is one of those tips where somebody is not just saying, this is what I do. It's what I did. And I'm seeing the results of it.
Rebecca: Next up is Sandy, who also is talking about consistency. Sandy says, " list daily. Sales are more consistent when I list every day." Again, just as you said, Griff, that consistent listing, everyday listing really creates momentum in sales.
Griff: Cheryl posted, "organize your listings by category and list all those in one category together at the same time." I do this. I must be a smart seller. So you don't waste time shifting between categories for every listing using “sell similar” enlisting in the same categories reduces the amount of time it takes per listing. That's a great hack. I love that one. I use it.
Rebecca: Creating efficiencies like that really will make the process of listing every day a lot easier and faster.
Griff: I've always dreamt about building a box. It's a big box and you stick your item in the box and it does everything. It takes the photos, it describes it. It writes the listing, it sets the price and then it gets it ready for packing. So you just put the item in the box. You think that's ever gonna happen?
Rebecca: Probably not. Although I do think once upon a time there were whole businesses built around. Um, you could drop your stuff off and someone would box it up and ship it up and ship it and sell it on eBay for you. And you'd take a cut essentially like consignment.
Griff: What was that called? Trading Assistance. There used to be a program on eBay called Trading Assistance. It was very popular. It was a, it was sort of an eBay support for sellers who sold on consignment. And you could go to the directory and find someone in your area.
Rebecca: I remember seeing a stand-alone store in my town years ago. eBay right on the marquee out front.
Griff: We should have kept that program going. We will have to revisit that perhaps. Libby says, "I always start by thinking about the Teddy Roosevelt quote, do what you can with what you have, where you are. You have to get the listing up to start selling. I have definitely refined photos and titles throughout the years, but the most important thing is to get it listed."
Rebecca: I think this is great advice for people who have just started selling. You can, you know, worry too much about making a perfect listing, you know, getting everything Ideal before. No, just get it up on the website. Learn while you do.
Griff: I was in correspondence with a new seller for about six months who kept telling me, well, I'm getting ready. I'm learning everything I can. I'm just not there yet. And finally, you know, I said to him said, look, stop emailing me and go list something. I think you're suffering from analysis paralysis and you'll never get anything listed if you just don't go ahead and do it. I think he did eventually. I hope.
Rebecca: Susan's best listing practice is use good, clear photos that show the item as well as the complete title. Also fill out those item specifics. You can just write a letter or two in the drop boxes. And the choices that start with that letter will pop up, which saves time. If you know what drop in choice you're looking to fill in. It is true. Those item specifics, they really make an impact.
Griff: They do. And finally, we have a tip that was given by Kathy and Kathy says, "it's crucial to use the dropdown selections in item specifics as much as possible. Using them will make your listings available in the left navigation bar in search filters. It can be smokey black and the title or the description, but in the dropdown selections, it's just black. That's really wise.
Rebecca: Griff, that was an amazing list of tips from sellers to sellers. And hopefully our listeners out there found it really helpful. And we got so many great tips. We want to make sure that everyone gets a chance to hear them. Back with more in a few weeks.
Griff: I have a lot here on paper and I thought we would split them up and we'll do some more in the month of June. So this will be something for you to look forward to. Thank you very much, Rebecca, for sticking around and, and taking this on. I really appreciate it.
Rebecca: Happy to be here. This was fun.
Griff: Now it's time for our favorite segment.
Rebecca: You got questions?
Griff: We got answers. All the time.
Rebecca: Do we have any questions this week?
Griff: It is a good question that you just asked because we have one question and it's one I found on our Facebook page. We did get a few email questions, but I couldn't use them because they were about specific account issues. Remember that if you send us a question and we do want your question, if it's something that only a customer support agent can help with, whether that's, uh, ended listings or suspended accounts, we can't really assist with those on the podcast. But we can't ask your general questions about selling, including how tools work and or how features work. And this was one I found on our Facebook page. And although we have addressed this topic, Rebecca in past episodes, it's probably a good idea to revisit it every now and then, it's about item specifics.
Rebecca: I'll read the post. eBay seller Yvette posted. What is happening with eBay? My item recommendations and specifics are really messed up. I just got a specific vehicle type grade and sport on a plush blueberry doll. And that's just for one item. When I add what they request several more requests that have nothing to do with the item. This is frustrating enough to make me consider other options for selling. Okay, let's help Yvette here, Griff, what's going on?
Griff: There's still some confusion about the purpose of item specifics and what some of those recommended item specifics are and what the word recommended means.
Rebecca: I totally understand. If I was going through the listing flow and I had a doll and I got asked the vehicle type, that would seem odd to me. I think the point that is important to make here is because we don't know exactly what you are listing, we show many, many options. And we rely on the seller to choose the ones that are applicable to the item that they're selling.
Griff: And I didn't ask you about which category or I may have asked her and she may not have responded. What was the top level category she was listening in, and that can make a difference. So if you're listening, for example, some sort of plush toy, there are several places where you can list that. And depending on the top category, or even the subcategory that you listed in the presented item specifics may be different. So if you're listing a plush toy and you get something like a recommended specific for vehicle type grade or sport, you may have listed it in the wrong category, or it may be listing the that's correct, but there may be different types of toys listed in that category, which might actually relate to something like vehicle type or grade or sport. I wouldn't necessarily just think because they don't relate to my item they must be a mistake. They most likely relate to other items that are very different than the one you are listing.
Rebecca: Different, but still belong in the same category. As an example, if you go into toys, chances are, you could be listing a doll or a plushy. Another person could start at toys and be listing a remote controlled car. And you may see item specifics that are relevant or not. As you narrow down, the specific should get better, but either way, the other thing that I think we need to talk through here Griff is the difference between the words required and recommended. I think that that's causing some confusion.
Griff: Yeah. And before we started talking in this segment, you and I were speaking about those two words and you came up with a brilliant solution or a suggestion, which is to change recommended to optional. And I think that would be great. Because the concept of recommended is it sounds like we're saying, well, these are the required ones. And these are the ones that we strongly recommend that you use. There's kind of an under subtext there that we are recommending them, even if they're not relevant to your item. In this case, you know, the idea that give that set about vehicle type and grade, not relating to her plush blueberry doll at all. So I think that puts it in a seller's mind that, Hey, if I don't use one of these eBay recommended specifics, if I leave it blank, no one's going to find my item.
Rebecca: Optional on the other hand, maybe a little too soft, because we do think it's important to fill in as many specifics, both in the required and in the recommended as possible. The headline here though is recommended, can be safely left empty if you choose to. It's just, we know that the more accurate ones that you fill in the better. But blank under recommended, if it doesn't relate to your particular item, totally fine. And it doesn't risk your listing at all.
Griff: And focus on the quality of your listing, not on how much of that blue circle you're filling in. I think some sellers look at that as a game that they have to win. As you add more recommended specifics there's a little blue graphic. I don't know if you've seen this Rebecca. It's like a circle and it fills in more and more. A lot of sellers are trying to get that filled in completely, even if it means putting in items specific values that don't have anything to do with the item they're listing. That definitely is not the right strategy. The blue circle is not a race. It's not a game. You can leave those item specifics that are recommended blank. If they don't relate to your item and your item will show up in searches and relevant searches. And that's what is important.
Rebecca: I totally agree. I mean, I understand the purpose of gamification like this on a website. It's to help encourage people to complete something that will help them get to their goal. Here the goal is to have a great listing. That being said, the blue circle is not some sort of finish line. So just really focus on getting those required in and then among the recommended ones that are relevant for your item, fill those in and the rest, just ignore them and move on to the next listing.
Griff: Yeah, because the whole reason for this is just to help buyers find your item and putting in information that's not related or actually contradictory to your item can make it harder for buyers to find your item. So just fill in those that matter. Leave the rest blank.
Rebecca: I cannot emphasize this enough. Some sellers will put n/a in item specifics that aren't relevant to their item. Please don't do that. Just leave it blank. And the reason for that is because no seller is searching for n/a in fact, I think we had a tip on this a few weeks ago, from one seller to another, just leave it blank. Don't fill in n/a, don't fill anything in. And then your buyers will actually find the item better. If those required in the recommendations are accurate.
Griff: And relevant. Exactly. That's A very good point. Now. I hope this all makes sense Yvette. I'm going to trust that it does, but if you or anyone else still has questions about item specifics, please, we urge you to call them in or send them into us as email. We will always do our best to answer them for you. And if you notice something that really might be so off base, that it could be a possible glitch in item specifics, Yeah. Let us know. We're happy to see if that is the case.
Rebecca: And in fact, if you have any questions on any eBay selling topic, you can call us on (888)723-4630.
Griff: That number is music to my ears. (888)723-4630. You can leave a question or comment, and if it's appropriate, we'll put it on the air.
Rebecca: And if you're not a call on the phone person, you can always email us at podcast@ebay.com that's podcast@ebay.com.
Griff: And remember that every question, whether it's a call-in or an email that we put on the air, the person who sent it into us will receive while supplies last, an official eBay For Business Podcast, mug suitable for the beverage of your choice. Now it's that time that we all live for, your daily podcasts to do list.
Rebecca: Number one, check the announcement board for up-to-date seller news.
Griff: And this actually comes from one of the seller best practices that were submitted. And I like it so much. It's going to be our second one. Set aside time every day to go through your live listings, to make any improvements or edits as needed, including adding relevant item specifics.
Rebecca: And third, check out the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to see the links we referenced during the episode.
Griff: On our next episode, we'll meet with an Up & Running Grant recipient who is growing her business in spite of the many challenges she's faced in the last 12 months.
Rebecca: We'd like to, again, thank our guests this week. eBay Director of Trading Cards, Bob Means.
Griff: The eBay For Business podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.
Recurring Links:
This week, eBay Sr Director of Trading Cards, Bob Means shares news of the new image scan feature for quickly listing trading cards and an update of one of the hottest categories on eBay during the last year (Gaming Cards). Rebecca is back with Griff to share your submitted Best Listing Practices from the recent eBay For Business Facebook sweepstakes. And we answer one very important question regarding item specifics.
You got questions? Call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com.Join the conversation
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Show Links:
Rebecca on Small Business podcast
Jordan Sweetnam Announcement; Collectibles and NFT’s
Brother QL-1100 Label Printer Installation Steps for Mac
Brother QL-1100 Label Printer Installation Steps for Windows 10
Zebra Label Printer Installation Steps for Mac
Zebra Label Printer Installation Steps for Windows 10
Dymo Label Printer Installation Steps for Windows 10 and Mac
Trading Card Image Scan Tool
Sold on eBay:
1993 Magic The Gathering MTG Alpha Black Lotus R A AUTO PSA 10 GEM MINT ($511,100)
1998 Pokemon Japanese Promo Holo Illustrator Pikachu PSA 7 NRMT ($375K)
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