I've received the Ebay messages on their vault as well. Of no real interest to me from a collector standpoint.
As for the sales tax savings aspect of vault users, as others have mentioned, that only works if you have the seller send your items directly to a vault you are using that is located in a state with no sales taxes. If you live in a state with sales taxes, and have a seller send an item directly to you first, and then you turn around and forward/deliver it to your vault yourself, you are going to be liable for paying the sales tax due to your state, where the item was originally sent by the seller.
Aside from that aspect though, I can see another possible reason for Ebay getting into providing such a vault service as a way of positioning themselves for future business as they see the landscape of collectibles such as cards starting to transition from just being regarded as hobby collectibles, to truly being regarded more as investment type assets by an ever-growing portion of the population. We've had numerous threads on here where the idea of more and more new money coming into the hobby is looking at cards for primarily flipping or investment purposes, and not truly viewing them as prized collectible items. As such, these new generation collectors, as I'll call them, aren't really all that concerned about having physical ownership of these cards and items. Think of it like your 401(K) or other investment account(s). You own interests in numerous companies and funds, but don't have a single share of stock or any other physical items to prove or show your ownership or otherwise document your ownership. You leave it to the investment firms and managers handling your IRA, 401(K), or other investment accounts to watch over and guard your holdings for you. You don't have to worry about losing or misplacing your stock certificates, or having them secured in a safe or safe deposit box against theft or destruction. As part of this, can easily see Ebay starting their own vault to offset and possibly squelch attempts by competing businesses, such as PWCC and Goldin, from making inroads to starting to take away some market share and future business from them by getting sellers to buy into and use their selling platforms because of the advantages their vaults have to offer. These Ebay competitors were offering something that Ebay was not, but not anymore.
It also sets Ebay up to become a significant future player in this new type of alternative investment market as well, should the growth of investors/flippers in the card collecting hobby continue to grow and expand. It potentially adds another income source to Ebay's bottom line, while providing a service to the collecting/investing community. What with NFTs, digital assets, and fractional share investments all seeming to become more and more the norm, it kind of makes sense to have such vault services to offer people still collecting such tangible collectibles as rare cards. Take the SGC 9.5 '52 Topps Rosen/Mantle card currently up for auction. Very few people could afford to buy it in this day and age. But what if you got a group together, say all the Net54 members, to pool their money to bid on and end up winning that card currently at auction? Rather than having everyone fighting over who would be in charge to hold onto the actual card, and keep it safe and protected, it would probably make the most sense to have an independent third-party vault hold and protect the card for everyone. And knowing how much everyone on here just adores some of the other vault providers out there, I can easily see Ebay's vault getting serious consideration to be the one to hold on to such a card for the buying/investment group.
In fact, I'm kind of surprised we haven't really seen different people/entities already publicly advertising for and forming groups for the specific purpose of combining participant resources to go out and specifically start buying these big-name cards as investments. And if they are, I can see that using an independent third-party vault provider would probably make a lot of sense to the fractional investors, as opposed to the person(s) who set up the group purchase of these rare assets also acting as the custodian. Too many people still remember and know the name Bernie Madoff. LOL
And there probably are groups out there already that are formed/forming to go after and acquire these cards that the participants cannot otherwise afford to purchase themselves alone. They just don't seem to be publicly advertising it to the general hobby community, at least not yet. I can see that possibly changing in the future though as some cards look to continue setting record prices, even in the face of inflation, economic woes, and recession fears.
|