I mean, if nothing else - it means there will hopefully be a lot less of the fake base zards that pop up on a regular basis.
Though, I wonder if they’ll be a lot more of the ‘thank you for making offer, now meet me on Insta to exchange’
Not on board with the slabs. Can’t wait to get 100 messages complaining that they haven’t received them yet and my shipping is slow and they want a refund before they even receive the card. I’ve read sneakers are about 7 days. Can you imagine buying a $250 slab and waiting 10+ days to receive it? (it happens in some instances, I know, but 7 EXTRA days to be checked along with the regular shipping to the checking point and after) Are there really that many fake slabs that aren’t apparent? Is this because of people abusing the return system stating the item isn’t legit? Really going to turn people AWAY from ebay for off-site sales even more, especially for a huge waiting period.
I mean, if CGC have a dedicated team who just process ebay verifications, with a guaranteed turn around time - then I’ll be a lot happier than they join the mass queue and at high peak times, we just wait a few months.
1 Like
Just shows how out of touch they are
1 Like
For me, the main issue comes with the extra wait times to receive your cards. The “authenticity guarantee” has been around for nearly a year in the sneaker world apparently, and I just watched some videos where they said it could take 2 weeks to go through their whole process (this does not include shipping to and from the facility). So no, im not upset that its with CGC, I could care less, but I would prefer not to have to wait a month to receive my shit english ex cards from ebay
I dont even want to think about what is going to happen in Q3 when they start doing 250+ cards/slabs
1 Like
Yeah I don’t think anyone’s problem here is with CGC. It could be PSA and it would be the same issue. It’s the idea of wait times, increased potential of loss/damage and the ridiculous notion that a card that is already graded has to be verified as authentic. Now we obviously don’t know too much about the $250 graded card thing yet, so it’s entirely possible that it will only apply to certain grading companies that don’t have a longstanding reputation, but having to send PSA, BGS or CGC cards (which is even funnier) in to CGC for verification is ridiculous.
1 Like
If it was raw only… I’d be fully behind this. But…
I guess Ebay are doing it because they’re fed up of having to mediate in cases of fakes, so it’s cost effective for them to implement the policy. For Ebay, they don’t distinguish, they see all cards of X = risk.
I think this is in an effort for new collectors and new customers to have that extra layer of protection and peace of mind but again as everyone has said why $750.00. I don’t know if i should be thankful or offended at this point. Most everyone spending $750 plus per item has the knowledge, experience and is educated enough about what they are buying to be able to spot fakes for themselves. To leave out the largest group of customers which is the lower end, sub $750.00 purchases, seems ridiculous. On top of that, EBAY money back guarantee was already strong enough. For anyone like myself who has bought and sold on EBAY for 10+ years knows EBAY will take the buyers side 99.9% of the time and if you feel in anyway your item you recieved in not as described, not as pictured, fake, resealed etc. EBAY will refund you. It’s that simple.
Almost seems like CGC has a good business manager or salesman that sold EBAY on this service to grow their brand and business and try to continue to take market share from becket and PSA and establish their name as #1 with reliability and authenticity in all collectables…
You said it perfectly, 99.9% of the time ebay sides with the buyer. What if I sell a $1k card to a buyer with 0 feedback and the buyer claims I sent them a Caterpie? I like this because it gives great SELLER protection as well.
4 Likes
Great Point! Maybe your right, maybe this will help protect sellers. I luckily haven’t had any issues since back when I used to ship singles with USPS envelope no tracking years and years ago but i understand it still does happen unfortunately…
O And I hope that was just an example and that scenario with the $1000 card into a caterpie didn’t actually happen to you lol!
2 Likes
I think the question you have to ask yourself is this
Assuming you’re a seller and this service is free, optional and not unbearably slow, would you turn it on?
The benefit is, of course, when it hits the middleman that it is basically not your problem any more. Any case of “item not described” is sided with the seller because the item was determined to be accurate by a third party. Presumably any issues with the buyer’s address is not your problem. Returns can happen but since they must go through the middleman and not have the security seal broken, return scams are minimized or effectively eliminated.
Privacy was also brought up as an issue and I mostly agree with the points made, but also I’d rather give my return address to a company than any random person who wants to make a purchase from me.
So while I agree that certain types of cards probably dont deserve this treatment and it might seem silly to need to do this for cards already graded, I just don’t see the major drawback of this service as a seller, outside of maybe dealing with an impatient buyer
So, here’s my question again. Assuming you’re a seller and this service is free, optional and not unbearably slow, would you turn it on? Would you have a price threshold? Would you only do raw or also put graded cards through?
4 Likes
If this service is free, as a seller I would use this “middle man” service for anything over $100. Selling authentic cards is easy if the seller is cleared of all responsibility once it hits the CGC authentication team. I don’t get why sellers would be turned off by this. I don’t care if it adds 10 days for the buyer to get the card. What does that matter to you as a seller?
I think there are two things being discussed.
-
Is there an actual need for this in pokemon? No. According to sales data, majority of fake cards are below $750. Even at the $250 threshold, most fakes are still below that value. Also most buyers paying $750 or more do not need this service. Since this is clearly not a major issue at all, its why people are correctly questioning its purpose.
-
Does an authentication service add value for authenticity/peace of mind? Obviously yes. But the need and force is the point of contention. Once/if it becomes optional, then its fine. The seller side is fine if no additional charges. As a buyer, I don’t want to wait an additional 10 days for a purchase. 90%+ of people buying $750+ are in that camp. Its a weird policy aimed at a small exception.
When you compare this to something like GSP it really puts “the need” into context. For the 15 years I’ve been on Ebay, non-fully tracked international packages were a nightmare. Guaranteed loss as a seller. GSP rectified a real need that affected every single seller shipping internationally. This “authenticity” policy is catering to such a small exception, which begs the question why it was enacted.
7 Likes
Because:
1.) It increases the chance of potential damage/loss;
2.) Some buyers are already impatient when a card takes five days to arrive. You expect them to wait multiple weeks?
And apparently, they are going to start implementing this for cards that have already been graded, as well. Why the hell should I have to pay anything for this “service” if I’m selling graded cards? The entire point of getting a card graded is to get a third party opinion and authentication. Why the hell should I have to send it for authentication again after already doing so?
We also shouldn’t be forced to do this. It should be up to the buyer. If the buyer wants it? Fine. If not? Fine.
I don’t see what is so hard to understand about why sellers are bothered by this.
2 Likes
This is the seller this service is targeting. Low feedback guy who probably needs the money quickly instead of grading first.
You obviously seem to be missing the part of the equation where this will also apparently apply to graded cards over $250 at some point. THAT is what is unsettling about this.
It will probably matter to you as a seller if you sell fewer cards on eBay as a result, which seems plausible if this does end up being extended to graded cards
1 Like
This was only published on same random website. It hasn’t been communicated by ebay yet. We can only evaluate what is currently being offered as a “service”
Hopefully you’re right, and I don’t think that the whole “authenticating already graded cards” thing makes much sense, but a video was posted here yesterday from eBay saying that this could apply to more cards in the future (graded cards?), which is why this whole thing is unsettling at the moment.
I guess the disconnect for me is that I’ve seen so many thread like “should I sell to this zero feedback buyer?” and so much fear about selling over ebay because of abuse of the iron-clad buyer protection that people are driven to sell their items on places like facebook and instagram. This is especially true for people who sell infrequently and suddenly need to sell something that is outside their risk tolerance. One of the reasons we don’t see many high-value raw cards sell on ebay could very much be the fact that this service didn’t exist and so selling raw is a very large liability.
While this system is imperfect and raises some valid questions in its current state, it seems to be a pro-seller option that ultimately protects sellers from dumb or malicious buyers. Again, I agree that the use cases today are limited, the parameters should be tweaked and it remains to be seen if it will eventually be optional, require payment or get extremely bogged down. But the initial resistance to this change that is such a pro-seller move in it’s current state is just surprising to me.
ALSO: as a side note, I will say that e4 makes up a significant portion of the high-value pokemon sellers on ebay. Should this service get turned into something more of a pain than a benefit, we shouldn’t underestimate the sway we could have over ebay as a collective.
3 Likes