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While there have been a number of innovations and new sports card apps, eBay still reigns supreme. CollX is great for certain things, and Market Movers has a ton of value as well, but eBay is still the best app to value sports cards.
In fact, eBay, the global online marketplace, has long been a go-to app destination for both buyers and sellers of sports cards. The huge user base and millions of listings make it an undeniable tool for gauging the current market value of almost any card.
Whether you’re a seasoned collector or just starting out, eBay offers a real-time snapshot of what people are willing to pay for a particular card. By analyzing completed sales (often referred to as “ebay comps“) and looking at current listings, you can get a pretty clear picture of a card’s demand and value.
Specifically, eBay’s dynamic nature, with cards being bought and sold around the clock, ensures that you’re always getting the most up-to-date pricing information.
What Makes eBay Great for Sports Cards
More of a true market value guide rather than a sports card price guide, the main benefit of using eBay is the real-time data based on vast amounts of transactions
Years of Accessible Data
The one shortcoming of the platform’s data on sold items was the fact that it was restricted to the last 90 days, which posed a challenge when researching rarer cards with infrequent sales. That has been solved, though, as users can access 3 YEARS of sales data.
Huge Catalog of Cards
eBay is the place where most online trading card transactions are happening. As such, the amount of data the online auction platform accumulates each day is astounding. From basic cards to hard-to-find variations, you’ll find there is a very good chance that the card you’re researching was sold on eBay at some point over the last few months.
Easy-To-Use
Let’s not forget that while data is great, if you can’t easily access that data to find what you need, it might as well be all for not. The eBay app is clean, intuitive, always-improving, and pretty much everything you’d want from a sports card app.
How to Check Sold Listings for Card Values
To find card values, there are two methods: checking sold listings and current listings.
To start, you can easily go to eBay comps and check sold listings. These are completed auction or “buy it now” listings where you can see the price a card sold for.
To access the sold listings on the eBay app, search for your card, in this case, something like “mike trout topps chrome update refractor 69 250” and then click “filter” in the top right. Scroll down to the “sold items” option and toggle so you see blue, as is shown below:
Now, click the “show results” button and take a look at the listings.
All of that said, the pricing picture still isn’t crystal clear, as past performance doesn’t always indicate what a card will sell for today. So, there is one more thing to check.
Check Current Listings
Besides sold comps, you’ll want to check current listings that haven’t yet sold. Think about it this way:
If a card has 3 sold comps at $20, $30, and $25, does the price you’d like to sell your card at change if there is a current listing sitting at $15 compared to no other current listings? You bet it does. Meaning, good luck trying to sell a card at the high end of comps ($30) when there is a card available at half of that price.
Challenges (and Solutions)
All of that said, there is still one value hurdle that needs to be cleared.
That one last challenge is that cards sold via the “Best Offer” option might not always display the final sale price. Meaning, while eBay is a go-to for many collectors, it sometimes falls short in providing the true “sold for” price when a card is sold via a best offer.
For example, does this look familiar:
Although you can occasionally unearth this price by delving into the eBay price guide, it’s not always a guarantee. For such instances, 130 Point ebay sales tool emerges as a stellar alternative.
With this card example, just go to https://130point.com/sales/, and then search for your card like you would on eBay. After a few quick seconds, you’ll see your results, and while we only saw the $330 with strikethrough on eBay, 130 Point reveals the true sales price of $255:
If you’ve made it to the end of this guide, congrats! And, if after reading all of the above you still have specific questions, that’s OK too! I’m here to help answer anything that wasn’t covered or needs more clarification.
