[seanofjapan]

Just my 2 cents as an international (living in Japan) based buyer.

I used to buy a lot of cards off of Ebay because there used to be a lot of sellers who would ship overseas at a reasonable rate. There were quite a few who would be willing to sell me 3-4 singles and just put them in an envelope for a couple of bucks, which is about what USPS charges (accounting for fees, etc).

I haven't bought a card off of Ebay in the past 3 years though and its entirely because nobody does that anymore. When an international buyer scrolls through Ebay listings for any given card the few who offer to ship overseas now only do it through eBay's program so it costs like 20-25$ per card. If like me you are mainly buying cards that themselves are under 100$, it just makes no sense to buy on ebay anymore.

So I just gave up.

This wouldn't explain any current slowdown this month since it happened a few years back, but basically ebay has cut sellers off from the entire international market for cards (which, while not huge, is not marginal either - loads of people in Japan and other countries where baseball is popular are interested in collecting American cards).