Posted By:
Mike MasinickOur website does many other things besides just this marketplace, so our member numbers aren't public knowledge. However, there are over 400 accounts who own at least one "partial share". 95%+ of our business is still eTopps cards. We did over $1.5 Million Dollars in eTopps transactions in 2006.
Users are all over the country and even all over the world.
The transaction fees start at 6% for the standard user (which includes any CC fee that we pay to paypal or the credit card companies). These can be "bought down" by subscribing to one of our advanced services which provides many other tools (mostly for eTopps users) for collection tracking, eBay sniping, and other services. The transaction fees can be as low as 4%.
Now a serious question for you based on your suggestion... why should we concentrate on the cards where the value is known and not purchase cards where the value won't be fully known until the card leaves our marketplace? Isn't that part of the fun? Each person values cards differently, and I think part of the enjoyment of collecting is trying to figure out what your cards are worth. I think any of us can see that our users tend to overvalue cards that are super rare and likely the only existant copy. But isn't that part of the fun of buying the card? Knowing that it's likely the only one around or at least very rare? Is that worth a premium to own part of such a card (even knowing that if it was sold today it would probably sell for 80% or less of the current market value)? The financial/investory guy says no... clearly not. But what does the collector part of you say?