Being one of the world’s largest marketplace for trading cards, eBay is the richest available source of data for card values. For those who buy and sell trading cards, eBay offers a new Collection tool for quick upload and a Price Guide.
At the moment, the Collection beta is available only in the desktop web version and in native apps. Here you can upload information about all your cards using preformatted CSV templates. After uploading, all your trading cards will be available for viewing in the Collection section.
The CSV upload tool offers two kinds of preformatted templates:
- Sports trading cards template
- Collectible card games template
User History and Error Report
All the uploads over the previous 90 days (both successful and failed ones) can be found in the Upload History. If an upload is not successful, the system will generate a downloadable error report. The user can download it immediately after the upload failure or later on in the upload history. In the report, there is an Error Description that states the reason for the failure.
Example: The user has forgotten to provide the card name. In the report, the Error Description will say that the Title is a mandatory field.
The successfully uploaded CSV files will be sent to the user’s Collection, and these cards will be available for viewing in native or in desktop web.
How to upload trading cards to eBay Collection
1. Open My eBay drop-down menu and select Collection beta. If there is no such option in the menu, follow this link.
2. Click the Start your collection button. You will see a popup window with a ‘Grow your collection’ heading.
3. Select Get started to open the list of available templates.
4. Download the most suitable template: for Sports trading cards or Collectible card games. The templates come preformatted with short instructions and some examples.
5. Enter your collection data to the spreadsheet. Only two fields are mandatory: the card title and its type (Game for CCG and Sport for sports trading cards).
6. Click Upload to add the data to the system.
7. You are all set. Now you can view your collection of cards.
It is recommended that you fill out most if not all of the fields in the template. Providing more details for each card improves the quality of the Price Guide, a special service that determines the value of an individual card over time.
Trading cards Price Guide
Trading cards is a fast-growing market composed of millions of items: sports trading cards, collectible game cards, and non-sports cards. Users are constantly looking for insight into the cards they own or the ones they are interested in buying. However, no single source of truth exists for how much these cards are worth or what they are trending towards. Now, with Price Guide beta, eBay will give users the tools to answer the following questions:
- How much is a certain card worth? How does the value compare across conditions (e.g., mint vs. near mint)?
- Which cards should I buy? Which variations (e.g., holofoil vs. reverse holofoil) are increasing in value more?
- How much will it cost to complete my deck?
- What’s the value of my portfolio?
The Price Guide is released as an open beta and is the first step in introducing price guidance tools to buyers and sellers of trading cards and other collectibles. Since eBay is one of the world’s largest marketplace for trading cards, its Price Guide has all the necessary data to offer a fair and relevant price for each card.
The Advantages of the Price Guide:
- The built-in noise filtering removes random lots and unpaid items
- Users can refine their results further for accuracy and/or decide to only consider certain buying formats, such as auctions
- The underlying transactions under Recent sales are the basis for trust-building as well as helping users identify how they can specify their query further
- The quick access to live item search helps users continue their buyer journey or quickly jump into the selling flow to list their cards
Users with a US shipping address can access the Price Guide beta by typing in a trading card query in search to access the entry point that will lead them into the new experience. For example, try “Pikachu”.
What’s next
Soon eBay will add important new features to the CSV Upload tool and the Price Guide:
- Video guides on the CSV upload process will be introduced
- The 1000 items/cards limit will be increased
- The downloadable error report will provide richer feedback for the error type and how to fix it
- The Price Guide will feature cards scanning for quick price estimation, filters for graded vs. ungraded cards, graph explanations, and more.
You can participate in the open beta testing of eBay Collection and its tools. Your feedback will be used to improve the section and develop new features.