Potential issues for some purchasers under Ebay's new certification program

[brianp-beme]

I recently made a purchase on Ebay that qualified for the new certification service they now provide for non-graded cards. As Ebay states in their overview of this service, the seller ships the card to an authenticator, and if the card checks out as authentic, this authenticator then ships to the buyer.

When looking more closely into the details of this service after the fact, I discovered that if you have a PO box (or an Armed Forces postal address) as your shipping address in the Ebay system, the card will not go through the certification process.

Fortunately I was confident that the card I purchased was legit, and when I received it directly from the seller, its obvious authenticity was reconfirmed.

Just something for PO Boxers to consider, especially if you have some questions about the legitimacy of a card that qualifies for this certification service. If you do have a PO Box, you should probably make sure to change your shipping address to a physical, non-PO Box address in the Ebay system (at least temporarily) before purchasing, so as to prevent the card from bypassing the trip to the authenticating company.

Brian