Ebay Vault - Marketing/Shipping

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Leon

I buy stuff on ebay fairly frequently, mainly vintage baseball cards. Today was the first time I saw them put up a shipping option going straight to their vault. They also advertise, that if you do that, you don't pay taxes on the buy. I think that's a little bit aggressive marketing, but that's capitalism for you.
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And a random M116-like card/ad cut?...(not bought on ebay)

Exactly how to deal with competition, especially from others not as big yet, but eventually looking to take more and more market share from you. You have PWCC coming up with the original "vault" concept/idea, and then Goldin not long after doing a copycat job and "borrowing" the idea as well. Though unlikely to be unseating Ebay anytime soon, these two competitors are operating their own selling platforms "in direct competition" to Ebay. And this is the same Ebay that is/was also subject to and experiencing additional operating pressure due to and brought on by the sales tax ruling from the SCOTUS back in 2018, which ended up causing them to have to start charging sales tax on all applicable transactions on their platform to begin with. And that is the same initial action that was likely a huge factor behind the "vault" idea to begin with, but sadly for Ebay, they weren't the ones smart enough to initially come up and put into operation the "vault" idea to begin with, making their competitors looks smarter and more reactive/proactive for their customer base's benefit. Now add the additional pressure and issues caused Ebay's sellers/users due to the more recent change in the 1099-K reporting rules, which will potentially impact most all of their smaller sellers, and now Ebay is facing even more direct, negative pressure coming up against their normal way of operating in the past.

Granted, many of you may say that the selling of sports and other cards on Ebay is really just a small fraction of their overall business, so why would they even care or worry about some small, insignificant AH based companies doing things like PWCC and Goldin have started doing? Doesn't make any sense, right? LOL Now go back in time and tell that to others. like say Sears, J.C. Penny, K-Mart, and so on, that weren't really paying attention to other sales vendors/platforms when they first started out, like say Amazon, that began as just a simple online source selling books I believe. Or maybe even Ebay itself, that really began as a platform just to help collectors sell their Pez dispensers online IIRC. Funny how ideas can take off and completely replace and sweep away old ideas and ways of doing things, along with companies/providers that used to supply those old business/service ways of doing things, but failed to adopt and keep up with the times.

And to paraphrase an old saying, those that don't study and learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Think about it!!!