Small Traditions LLC/SCANDAL UPDATE

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

What? If PWCC did 150 million in gross sales on eBay, what percentage of those sales do you think eBay kept? Let's say it was 5% across the board and that would be a very high number, I think. That is 7.5 million of eBay's over 10 billion in gross revenue. I would not call that a threat to eBay's bottom line...in the least. They already forgot he is gone.

This was in just the first 6 months of 2021. And in a growing market. They were on pace to probably do upwards of 350 million in revenue this year on ebay. You're fooling yourself if you think eBay doesn't care about that revenue. It was one of their top 10 accounts in all of eBay. They care. This decision was 100% discussed with and strategized by all of the top executives at eBay. Probably at great length. Their legal team, CEO, and CFO all thought deeply about this issue without question, whatever that issue was. Obviously, ebay will do just fine without PWCC. They'd even do just fine without the entire sports card industry. But you shouldn't conflate that with the idea that they don't care about losing one of their largest accounts or that they couldn't be bothered by the idea of PWCC creating a competing platform to take away "their" customers. I promise you, they care.

I work for a company that has a similar grip on a different market like eBay has in theirs (and our market cap is triple that of eBay's). There are a handful of other companies that try to do what we do, but none of them come even remotely close to our capabilities and volume. We are orders of magnitude larger than all of our competitors combined. But I promise you, we definitely care what they're doing and we pay close attention to all of them. Only a fool wouldn't.

Say what you want about PWCC, but scandals aside, one thing is certain. They've built a remarkable brand in this hobby in a fairly short amount of time. They have catapulted themselves to the very top of the sports card industry, and the owners are extremely driven and creative. Perhaps all these rumors about them are true, in which case they'll burn down in flames. But if they're not true, then I wouldn't want to bet against them. They took consignments to a new level. They invented the vault. They launched a premier auction platform and broke records right out of the gate. They've built arguably the best database for card sales that exists online, and they're launching a new platform to compete against eBay with lower tier cards next month. They continue to innovate more and more every year. People like that don't just stop creating new products and expanding. They don't just suddenly become content. They are greedy. They are driven by the desire to succeed and will pursue it at any cost. Today, it's sports cards, but tomorrow it might be sports cards and comics, and the next day it's cards, comics, Pokémon, video games, and coins. I promise you, eBay execs aren't stupid. They see the threat for what it is, and it's not just a few million dollars per year in lost revenue.

I'll make a prediction. Come back and visit this thread in 5 years. Either they'll be in jail, or they'll be a huge competitor to eBay in this space within 5 years, and they will have already expanded into other collectibles markets by then as well, and will continue to develop more tools and resources for the market and their customers as well.