Interesting Stats on Probstein’s Ebay Business

[FromVAtoLA]

The latest episode of the Sports Card Madness podcast interviews Rick Probstein. He said he’s the largest in the hobby on Ebay by a factor of 2. (Note: other categories on Ebay are larger than collectibles).
He has 850,000 sales/year. For each of the last four years they’ve sold over $100M/yr with the biggest year being $160M. He uses the same pricing for everyone who consigns a card regardless of price/volume. It’s a volume business in his mind and it’s too difficult to have special deals for some of their customers - more efficient just to have standard pricing.
They receive over 100 packages a day. He has about 30 employees. He said “I only have 4 or 5 that know what they are doing.” (That’s one hell of a quote!) Many of the employees are paid minimum wage but the most important are the two head scripters who are responsible for listing and titling the cards placed up for auction. I suspect many of these employees are opening mail, sending out mail, or scanning cards into Ebay.
One notable part of the interview was where he said he feels EBay’s Buy It Now listings are completely broken with the average BIN card listed at 5 times latest comps. Some BIN listings have been up for over a decade (not sure how much hyperbole is in either of those statements but I agree with the general sentiment.) He’s getting rid of all of their BIN listings and replacing with auctions that have a minimum floor price. If the card doesn’t sell they lower the floor price and will relist for auction.
His personal collection has to be worth tens of millions based on some of the cards he owns and discussed during the interview. I guess that makes sense if your business is low margin, your revenue is $100M+, and you’ve kept your labor costs as low as possible. He didn’t mention another equity partner so his profits from the business should be substantial.