PWCC Videos and Future Auction

[jchcollins]

Short of somehow being found massively criminally liable for all the drama of the past 2-3 years (doubtful...) I think this will be at most a blip on PWCC sales / profitability. If they are allowed to continue to have a platform to sell, and they continue to have the goods, then they will sell. Nothing throughout the pandemic of late has done much to prove that anything matters to the vast majority of collectors and investors beyond just...stuff. I could be proven wrong, but if that were going to change in any way, I think it would have already.

[packs]

If you didn't buy from them on eBay you aren't going to buy from them on their own platform either. It won't change the buyer / seller relationship but you also aren't going to reel in anyone trolling eBay who may not know the story behind the seller, who no longer appears on the site.

[Johnny630]

Aren’t most auction houses all sales are final no credit cards accept?

I wonder what would happen if a card was purchased off their platform that was later found to be altered by BODA ?

[Snowman]

Something that I think will be interesting is to see how well the way they run auctions will work with lower valued cards. Nowadays on eBay, most card auctions are won within the final few seconds through snipe bids. eBay might as well be a silent auction site now. It's a totally different ballgame than the way their auctions used to run 10+ years ago. Before, everyone placed their true bids earlier on and you had opportunities to outbid and be outbid all the way through the course of an auction. That aspect is mostly gone now. With PWCC auctions, snipe bids won't be a thing. You can't really place them because of the extended bidding. It'll be interesting to see how this affects hammer prices of $100 to $1000 cards on their platform. I suspect there might be some pretty good bargains that slip through the cracks with some degree of regularity. But I also suspect that we might see larger separation on their platform for disparities between cards with the same grade (e.g., greater separation between a BGS "True Gem Plus" and a BGS "Min Gem"). I think the cards that have aspects like perfect centering on a 10, or really clean crisp autos, or well centered 7s and 8s will see more separation in a setting with extended bidding than they might otherise get on eBay's snipe-heavy platform.

Originally Posted by jchcollins

Short of somehow being found massively criminally liable for all the drama of the past 2-3 years (doubtful...) I think this will be at most a blip on PWCC sales / profitability. If they are allowed to continue to have a platform to sell, and they continue to have the goods, then they will sell. Nothing throughout the pandemic of late has done much to prove that anything matters to the vast majority of collectors and investors beyond just...stuff. I could be proven wrong, but if that were going to change in any way, I think it would have already.

I agree. Unless PWCC blows up in flames for criminal behavior (which seems unlikely at this point, though certainly still possible) then this is likely to only be a temporary setback. PWCC will probably become the most serious competitor to eBay anywhere online. I think this could be a good thing for the hobby. eBay needs some competition. They have an unhealthy monopoly on this market.

Originally Posted by Johnny630

I wonder what would happen if a card was purchased off their platform that was later found to be altered by BODA?

Probably nothing. They might help a buyer to take it up with the grading company if they're lucky? And really, why should they be held responsible? They're a consignment company. That's a pretty big ask to expect them to be responsible for what is essentially regrading and certifying cards that were already graded and certified by professional grading companies.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

I still don't understand the idea that they will be competition to ebay. By that logic Heritage, Goldin and REA are competition to ebay. They'll just be another auction house.

[packs]

I agree I don't really understand this stance that they're competition. eBay sells everything and anything. This seller deal exclusively in sports memorabilia. There is no equal footing or really a basis for comparison.

[Frank A]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

I still don't understand the idea that they will be competition to ebay. By that logic Heritage, Goldin and REA are competition to ebay. They'll just be another auction house.

Exactly. I can't see them doing as good as they did on ebay. I don't understand people thinking they will be better.

[Republicaninmass]

Originally Posted by Frank A

Exactly. I can't see them doing as good as they did on ebay. I don't understand people thinking they will be better.

If possible, MORE rampant shilling, pushing people to cosign...only to be left taking a "Mayweather psa 9" haircut

[Snowman]

[

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

I still don't understand the idea that they will be competition to ebay. By that logic Heritage, Goldin and REA are competition to ebay. They'll just be another auction house.

Heritage, Goldin, REA, and the others are only competition in the high end market though. Ebay isn't really competitive in that market anyhow. Most high end cards get sold outside of eBay through the major auction houses. Until now, PWCC has only hosted their monthly Premier Auctions through their own platform, which has gone extremely well so far despite it being their first attempt at it. They didn't have any server issues (unlike the competition), bidding was very straight-forward, their rotating 360° images of each card were great, they broke the record for a Michael Jordan RC despite the market being "down" for that card (and yes, it was a real sale), and they had countless other huge consignments right out of the gate, even 7 figure ones. Imagine some other new auction house launching their platform and doing that well on day one. LOL. Not happening. They became an instant player in the high end auction house market overnight.

But they're not just trying to compete against the high end auction houses. They're going to be running their weekly lower end auctions on their new platform as well. All those $100 to $10,000 cards that previously would have been sold on ebay will now be hosted on their platform using the extended bidding style auctions rather than eBay's snipe-bid-heavy platform. It remains to be seen how much business they'll bring with them, what their fees will be, and what sort of prices they'll fetch, but you're fooling yourself if you don't think this is going to be serious competition for eBay. They have ~150,000 buyers using their vault and many more people who have bought from them in the past. I would bet good money that unless some of these allegations come to legal fruition that they will instantly become the #2 option online for selling $100-$10,000 valued cards, surpassing all other selling platforms like myslabs, COMC, stockx, Facebook groups, Instagram, etc.

They'll also now have access to all buyer info for anyone bidding on their auctions, so they'll be much more well equipped to prevent shill bidding on their platform than they were on eBay. On eBay, the only thing they could do before was block bidders who didn't pay. And eBay's platform only allows a maximum of 5,000 users to be blocked, but PWCC has a list of 20,000+ users that they'd like to block for non payment so they have to recycle the list every time they want to add someone to it. They tried multiple times to get ebay to increase that number but ebay literally couldn't figure out how to do. I'll repeat that in case that didn't land for you. Ebay is incapable of increasing the maximum number of blocked bidders above 5,000 because their database and systems architects are archaic and incompetent. It costs money to upgrade these systems to bring them into the 21st century, and ebay doesn't think it's worth making those investments.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Snowman

[They'll also now have access to all buyer info for anyone bidding on their auctions, so they'll be much more well equipped to prevent shill bidding on their platform than they were on eBay. On eBay, the only thing they could do before was block bidders who didn't pay. And eBay's platform only allows a maximum of 5,000 users to be blocked, but PWCC has a list of 20,000+ users that they'd like to block for non payment so they have to recycle the list every time they want to add someone to it. They tried multiple times to get ebay to increase that number but ebay literally couldn't figure out how to do. I'll repeat that in case that didn't land for you. Ebay is incapable of increasing the maximum number of blocked bidders above 5,000 because their database and systems architects are archaic and incompetent. It costs money to upgrade these systems to bring them into the 21st century, and ebay doesn't think it's worth making those investments.

Interesting, had never heard that before. And just to clarify, the 5,000 limit is per seller, correct.

If true, makes you wonder why no one from PWCC ever came on here to pass that info along in any of the threads they were being bashed in regarding alleged shill bidding. If they truly were being limited in how many bidders could be blocked at once, it would make it a bit more difficult to keep up with policing on Ebay.

Of course, there are also the references in some other threads/posts about the level Ebay personnel went to in attacking the one couple who had posted some negative stories about Ebay online. That kind of story could deter almost anyone from saying anything that could make Ebay potentially look bad. Makes you wonder and think about what all we don't yet (or never will) know that may be going on behind the scenes of everything currently going on.

[mrreality68]

Originally Posted by packs

If you didn't buy from them on eBay you aren't going to buy from them on their own platform either. It won't change the buyer / seller relationship but you also aren't going to reel in anyone trolling eBay who may not know the story behind the seller, who no longer appears on the site.

+1 Agreed

[slightlyrounded]

Originally Posted by packs

If you didn't buy from them on eBay you aren't going to buy from them on their own platform either. It won't change the buyer / seller relationship but you also aren't going to reel in anyone trolling eBay who may not know the story behind the seller, who no longer appears on the site.

I'd wager this is a huge part of PWCCs business.

Also remains to be seen how much of PWCCs client base has email unsubscribes on and push notifications turned off absent eBay.

[taul166]

I suspect that PWCC will quickly launch their own platform, and will not miss much by ebay's termination action. They no doubt have the resources and have their platform in place or ready to go. Others, such as Probstein would probably suffer more if ebay were to take similar action. I am guessing it would take Probstein a lot more time and the investment of resources to stand up their own platform.