How To Sell Sports Cards On eBay

Follow @garyvee on Twitter, he has such a large following that if he mentions something about a player’s sports card then it is very likely to affect the price.

There is always some lag time in this. So if you are quick on the draw, you can snipe cards cheap and then immediately resell them for more.

Another way you can follow trends is a site called Sports Card Investor.

They cover a lot of trends (they also sell a software service that tracks cards like stocks.)

But, for example, if a player is off to a hot start on the season then you may be able to buy and sell cards quickly.

A lot of this can be boom or bust speculation. If you bet on a player and things go really well, you can make some good money. (Josh Allen and Fernando Tatis Jr come to mind.)

Now, if you bet on a player and things don’t pan out…or they get hurt…well then you’ll be left holding the bag. (Looking at you Cody Bellinger and Lamar Jackson!)

Investing – Buy and Hold To Sell Later

My personal favorite for how to sell sports cards on ebay is this strategy:

Focus on proven players and/or sealed wax.

This would be something like…

Players, mainly rookie cards:

Michael Jordan
Kobe Bryant
Lebron James
Tom Brady
Peyton Manning
Jim Brown
Wilt Chamberlain
Jerry West

Or…

Sealed Wax:

2003 Topps Basketball
1996 Topps Series 2 Basketball
1992 Topps Series 2 Basketball
2018 NFL Prizm
2018 UFC Chrome

Stick with proven winners or sealed cards/packs that already have value.

The best thing you can do once you buy cards like this is just tuck them away in your closet for a while and don’t even look at them until a year from now.

Finding Comps To Price Your Cards

Before you list your sports cards for sale on eBay you should probably figure out the proper price to sell them at.

Price too low and you’ll be leaving money on the table.

If you price too high, your item will just sit and you’ll wonder why you can’t make any money.

So we’ve got to try to find the sweet spot.

Now, you have to remember to add in your costs (shipping and fees on top of your purchase price) and make sure you wind up with a profit at the end of all of this too!

Don’t worry, I’ll show you how to get all of that info.

For my example, I’m going to be using a “2019 Panini Mosaic Blaster Box” as I actually have some of these and can work through my actual process instead of working with hypotheticals.

The process is going to be the same whether it’s a single card or a graded card, doesn’t matter a whole lot.

Desktop Version

Start off by searching at the top of eBay.com like this:

You’re going to see active listings first. We don’t really care about these a whole lot. Let’s get rid of them.

We want to see sold listings so we get an idea of the current market looks like.

Two ways you can accomplish this. Scroll all the way down the left until you see the part that says “Show Only”

Click on Sold Items (it will automatically select Completed Items also) and it should automatically refresh the page.

The other option, which I find a little bit quicker IMO, is to click the Advanced button next to search.

Which will bring up the next page:

Click Sold Listings and then click Search.

Six of one, half dozen of the other. Go with whichever way works best for you.

Now, we should be looking at a screen like this:

Make sure the Sold Listings is showing and that this page is sorted by “Ending Recently”

Mobile Version

How To Check Prices

Now, what we’re looking at is the price of items that sold recently, where the red arrows are pointing.

Scroll or swipe down the page and look at quite a few, ignore any that are different items or bundles or were won at auction.

We really only care about the Buy It Now prices.

There are sales for $94.99, $89.99 and a couple at $99.99 recently.

I’d lean towards the higher end and say $99.99 is what these would still go for.

Now you have to consider if this will make you money OR if you want to sell at this price?

If you go back further you can see these were fetching $150 before.

Anyway, let’s check the calculator.

Not bad, but I’ll probably wait to sell these until closer to when the season actually starts or even into the first month of the season.

I’m anticipating prices will rise again because historically the start of a new season is the best time to sell, when the hype is highest.

Think of all the optimism people have…”Oh my team is for sure going to win the championship this year!”

Every situation is going to be different but at least now you know the steps to accurately gauge pricing for how to sell sports cards on eBay.

Listing Your Sports Cards For Sale

The listing process for sports cards is fairly simple.

Here are some tips:

The better the image, the better your sales will be. Clean, solid background, natural light.
Try to accurately capture any flaws in pictures. Zoom in with a separate picture if needed.
Describe any flaws in the description.
Title is more important than description.
Decide if the item will be sent Signature Required and definitely make that clear in the description if you decide to send it that way.
Tell them how you will package it. (Bubble mailer inside a bubble mailer, or PWE (plain white envelope), etc.

Here’s a shortcut for listing your sports cards:

Find one in the search that has a good title and then you’re going to click “Sell one like this”

On Desktop it looks like this:

On Mobile it is a little different, you have to tap on the listing itself and then swipe to almost the very bottom and you’ll see a section like this:

When you click on “Sell one like this” it will already input the title and most of the category info that you need.

Usually you only need to upload your pictures, add a little description and set your shipping/price.

You can list items really quickly by doing this.

One thing to note on mobile – make sure to turn on immediate payment. It is off by default for some reason and it really sucks if someone either slow rolls paying you or doesn’t pay at all.

eBay Fees for Sports Cards

The category of sports trading cards carries a final value fee of $0.30 + 12.35% of the total sale, up to the amount of $7500.

If the sale is over $7500 then you’d pay the 12.35% on the first $7500 and then an additional 2.35% on anything over $7500.

The bummer here is that eBay charges the final value fee on the whole order…so the item + shipping + sales tax. Bleh.

Here’s a real example:

I sold a Hobby Box of 2003 Topps Basketball cards for $7000 to someone in California.

They had to pay $630 in sales tax.

Because I’m a Top Rated seller, my fees wound up being $850.47 (11.14%) – now, because eBay charged me on the final value fee on the sales tax I got dinged for an extra $59 because of that.

Little slimy on eBay’s part if you ask me.

Becoming a Top Rated Seller is very important and something you need to strive for as you get farther along in learning how to sell sports cards on ebay.

My fees would have been $944 without my top rated status. That’s $94 extra I got to put in my pocket from one transaction.

How To Get Top Rated Seller Status on Ebay

You get to be Top Rated by hitting a certain amount of sales and having good metrics like on time shipping and positive feedback.

More specifically:

Account active for more than 90 days
Minimum 100 transactions AND $1000 in sales with US buyers
No more than .3% unresolved seller resolutions cases (2 max)
Less than 3% orders shipped late (5 max)
Tracking uploaded and validated for at least 95% of orders
Adhering to eBay’s policies

It sounds like a lot, but it’s really not.

Focus on lower value items for a while to get to the 100 transaction threshold.

Then go ham once you have the extra discount.

Should You Use Promoted Listings?

Short answer: it depends.

Here is how I usually look at it.

If I have a sports card that has a ton of hype around it, then I’m not promoting it. If my price is somewhat reasonable, it’s going to sell on its own.

Now, maybe I have a more expensive item that tends to move slower, or a player that isn’t super popular but I can make money on, then yeah I’m probably going to throw some ad money at it.

How much?

Well, eBay usually suggests a percentage first…I’ll look at it and if it’s not too bad I’ll just stick with that.

As a general rule for me, I like to stay in the 2-5% range. If you start getting higher than that you’ll start to really eat into profits.

Any lower and it’s not going to be very effective.

Selling Your Cards – How To Ship

Congratulations, you made a sale!

Now you have to ship the item and we want to make sure the customer gets it in the same condition as you listed it.

Here are some tips for various cards.

Single Card

If the card is lower value, placing it in a penny sleeve and into a top loader is ok.

It’s best to get a little piece of blue painter’s tape and fold it over the open slit of the top loader so the card doesn’t slide out.

Shipping in a plain white envelope (PWE) is fine if it is only like a few dollar card. Just make sure you state this in the description and that also there won’t be any tracking.

Once you get above the $5-10 range I think people start expecting tracking. You can do the same thing, just get some first class flat envelopes.

I like cardboard mailers because they offer a little more protection also.

If it is much more expensive then $50 or so, start treating it like a graded slab (below.)

Graded Slab

The best way to ship a graded slab is as follows.

Cut two pieces of cardboard that are slightly bigger than the slab. (Rubber banding cardboard to hold it in place is optional.)
Place into a U-Line S-9984 #000 4×8″ Bubble Mailer and then seal.
Then place into a U-Line S-9985 #0 6×10″ Bubble Mailer and then seal.
Slap your shipping label on it.

Now, I understand if you don’t want to shell out the big bucks for the ones from U-Line – maybe you don’t need that many anyway.

Your next best bet is these two searches on eBay:

S-9984

S-9985

You can usually find 10 packs of each fairly reasonably.

Sealed Wax

If your sealed wax that you’re shipping is just a single cello pack, I’d ship it much like the graded slab above.

Now, if you’re getting into shipping hangers, blasters, Megas or Hobby Boxes then you should ship them in a cardboard box.

I personally like to wrap boxes in bubble wrap first and then from there put them in a box that’s fairly close in size, allowing me to place packing material all around.

Brown kraft paper, air bubbles or even more bubble wrap is what I use to pad the sides and edges.

When I sold my 2003 Hobby box for $7000 I actually placed it in a box and made sure it had plenty of padding and then placed that box inside of another box with lots of padding. Box in a box.

The goal is to be able to shake the box and not hear the item rattling around inside.

Make sense?

Final Thoughts

Hopefully by now you have a pretty good idea of how to sell sports cards on ebay.

In addition to sports cards, don’t be afraid to experiment in the trading card realm either.

That would be items like Pokemon, Magic The Gathering, TMNT, etc…they all have a lot of potential too.

And Pikachu is never going to blow out his ACL as Gary Vee would say.

Also, I wrote a post on what to sell on ebay to make money so check out out for some other profitable ideas for selling on eBay.