Small Traditions LLC/SCANDAL UPDATE

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by BobC

Don't disagree at all Scott, but then why would PWCC have been working on their own platform already? If they had such a sweet deal with lower Ebay fees in the first place, and costs for setting up and then running their own platform would be so exorbitant, why would they have ever thought of operating outside of Ebay? If it ends up costing them so much more to operate their own platform, one would think they would have to charge more to their consignors to cover their costs then, or end up settling for making less money.

And you know how some people/consignors can be when it comes to even a slight increase in costs, they immediately start looking for a cheaper alternative. I don't know if Probstein has the same sweet deal PWCC did regarding Ebay fees. But if PWCC does end up having to charge more to their consignors going forward to cover the operating costs of their own online platform, couldn't this possibly cause some PWCC longtime consignors to maybe start consigning to Probstein, or others who sell on Ebay, instead?

That's why I was thinking PWCC may have figured out a way to operate their own platform at a more reasonable cost than Ebay. I know it isn't cheap to operate their own platform, but PWCC is not ignorant when it comes to running their business. Of course they weren't expecting the boot from Ebay, so maybe that has screwed up their plans on how they were going to run their new platform more than we'll ever likely know. Will be curious to see how PWCC's new platform will actually operate. Will it be like Ebay auctions or more like an online store with mostly BIN pricing, does anybody really know yet? I guess time will tell.

Don't underestimate the money to be made in an opaque setting where nobody can access your data without a subpoena. This doesn't make the expenses less, it just makes the upside greater.