I’m a Pokémon history nerd so the CoroCoro Pikachu is one of my favorite cards. But now my PC copy has become a substantial % of my net worth so I cannot justify to myself keeping it. There are no past sales at its grade (CGC 9), but PSA 8s sell for $50-65k, a PSA 9 recently sold for $500k and a CGC 10 for $1.3M so I think it could end up going for a pretty high price. It is pop 3 at this grade with no 9.5s above it.
Right now it’s scheduled for an eBay auction starting this Thursday, but I’m having some second thoughts about whether eBay is the right platform. The highest grade I have seen go to auction on any site is a 9(OC), so this would be the highest-grade public auction in recent times. As a seller I believe it’s safe due to AG, but I’m concerned whether buyers feel safe with good-old eBay auctions at this price. I’m considering Goldin, who claims that their site gets much more exposure for the high-end, which is likely true. I don’t have the experience with them to know the extent to which that makes a difference. My eBay account has 100% positive feedback and many reviews.
In summary my two concerns are:
Whether buyers feel safe on eBay at this scale,
Whether eBay gets enough exposure from interested buyers at this scale. I think baseball or institutional buyers might also be interested in this card for its history, which doesn’t require a Pokémon passion to understand.
Thanks for the advice,
Felix
Edit October 2: I ended up putting both the Pika and my PSA 9 Jigglypuff to a Goldin auction this week. It was a good experience but wasn’t without issue; I’ve shared my experience in detail in a post below along with some lessons for anyone in a similar position.
I agree with z&g will get better traction and trust then your own account and at that price point the selling fee will likely be less selling thru him then your own account.
I guess I hadn’t considered consignment through eBay. My thought was that the reach is the same, and when it comes to trust, buyers are safe anyway because of AG. What would you say is the difference between selling through Z&G vs an individual high-feedback eBay user that would affect the price? I’m not quite convinced at present but am interested to hear more. The selling fee is higher with Z&G but only by a percent or so. They’d be able to start the auction in a week and change according to their website.
I think the fees decrease as the price increases but reputable seller, you don’t have to deal with non paying buyers, and they don’t have the option to claim they didn’t receive item against you.
I’d only do this or fanatics if I were you specifically so I don’t have to deal with the headache of shipping and such.
if u sell thru a high volume consigner buyers know they will get the item if they pay for it. if u get scammed by a rando ebay account u will get ur money back eventually so for 1000 bux or w/e its generally fine but for a half a million card thats a lotta money to be out for a while
for eg this rando account keeps auctioning a no rarity zard im sure they have it
ZandG is probably a good and safe option, and certainly has a large reach. Alternatively, I do think @smpratte consignment would be a great option for a card like this (unless he isn’t accepting CGC graded cards). Fanatics also has more staff in the background if you have questions or just want someone in general to communicate with, which may help give increased peace of mind.
Just pray you don’t get Rodolfo or Rigo, the Super AI Bot Bros.™. But I would hope for a card of this value that Fanatics actually puts you in front of a human agent.
I’m not a pro, but my personal opinion would be to use an auction house: ALT, Goldin, or Scott for Fanatics. From the little I follow, they get bigger premiums over eBay. Z&G is great too, but you talking big $$$ and feel these make it feel more premium.
Either way you go, congrats on the big Win! Love reading these types of big moves.
You will want the auction house to advertise it and get it in front of buyers that they know will pay $$$ for it. You should talk to Goldin, Alt, and Fanatics reps directly about this rather than just blindly consign it based on the advice here. Could be the difference between going for PSA 8 prices vs 6 figures IMO
Thanks for the advice, following up on this now and sharing my experience selling my CoroCoro Pikachu and Jigglypuff 9s. Z&G ended up recommending I go to Goldin for the Pikachu, saying that eBay can be restrictive for 6+ figure cards, so they are both currently running there.
In the meantime I got to see some of the daily user statistics for e4, and it was far higher than I thought. I think consigning with Scott through Fanatics would have been a very solid choice. Not sure if I’m allowed to share since it was sent to me by private message, but the daily exposure on e4 is roughly 50x what I would have naively guessed.
As for my experience with Goldin:
Pros:
I was happy to be able to speak to a consignment director individually, who I can also reach on the phone. Communication isn’t seamless but it’s regular and professional.
Not for this card, but for another item I sold, they did a great video promotion on their instagram page that got a lot of attention. That was the single best point.
Cons: The editorial team dropped the ball and I’ve had to constantly push for corrections, which happen slowly:
Only the first 80 characters of Goldin’s titles are searchable on eBay, but they put the most important keywords at the end (e.g. “Pikachu”) so even now, the listing cannot be found on eBay by normal searches. That’s a lot of exposure lost for no reason, when ordinarily Goldin listings appear on eBay. I created my own eBay listings to promote the Pikachu and Jigglypuff instead, which is not as good as it doesn’t link to the listing on Goldin.
It seems like the person writing the Pokémon titles and descriptions is not familiar with Pokémon. This resulted in typos, important omissions, and just a sort of out-of-touch feeling to the descriptions compared to the enthusiasm that a Pokémon person might have.
The consignment director I worked with promised that my cards would be lot numbers #1 and #2 for the weekly auction, but they aren’t. I don’t really mind, but for something like the Goldin 100 that would make a difference.
Other advice:
Before you send in your item, if it is a high-value item that has received recent media attention, the auction house will be excited about it. In my experience, as soon as I sent it in, the excitement faded and responsiveness wasn’t as high. So:
All of your leverage in negotiation goes away once your item is already sent in. If you think it’s realistic that your item would get a media promotion, or you’d like to ask for a higher percent of the buyer’s premium, a certain starting price, lot number, or reserve price, you can only really do that beforehand unless you’re a regular big-ticket customer or the auction house wants to promote it anyway. Pick what’s most important to you and focus on that.
If you aren’t sending in something big ticket (~200k+, or recent media attention), don’t expect to have much leverage to begin with. There are so many sports cards that go up for 6 figures, most sellers won’t get special treatment. You can expect to get a higher % of the buyer’s premium though – I don’t think Goldin has a public table but they’re probably competitive with Fanatics, which publishes what % the seller gets as a function of hammer price.
This is helpful info! I’d love to hear if other auction houses let you determine your own title or description. Or at least send you a draft to correct or confirm?
Hi! I think no auction house will confirm with every seller before listing cards; that would be too much effort. Auction houses have descriptions for cards that get re-used for each listed item. However they will likely work with you to make corrections if needed.
I want to update that Goldin did update the titles to make the cards searchable on eBay. So they do work with sellers. We still lost 5 days of eBay exposure out of the 11 days of auction, so it would have been better if they had gotten that right that from the start. However, I think I was unlucky and most cards will be decently searchable without corrections. I advise every seller to test their listings asap for eBay SEO; it took me 2 days to realize that revisions were needed & get in touch with Goldin about it.
Edit: There are still a few other CoroCoro listings on Goldin with the old title. It gives the impression that they only cared because I personally reached out, and they took the minimum effort, not bothering to update anyone’s cards who didn’t squeak. Not very impressed with their mentality.
No worries on sharing the metrics. I probably should be more proactive about advertising E4 consignments, nonetheless here are this months metrics for anyone curious.
Obviously advertisement doesn’t guarantee a higher price point. However E4 is unique in that threads will be picked up by google seo, hence the crawler traffic, where social media is more of a walled garden. Also this month has had spike days, I don’t know what causes that bump, but the averages are what @doublefelix921 mentioned.
