More trading cards were sold on eBay during the first six months of 2021 than in all of 2020.
The GMV, or gross merchandise value, of cards sold on the platform totals over $2 billion so far this year, roughly $1 billion in each quarter. The number represents a 175% increase from the same six month period in 2020.
eBay hasn’t broken down sales of sports vs. gaming and non-sports cards but reported earlier this summer that $871 million worth of sports card sales worldwide had been sold in the first three months of 2021.
There were 20 million new listings for trading cards on eBay in the first quarter of this year alone
“Double the amount of buyers came to our site in Q1 than we had last year,” Nicole Colombo, eBay’s general manager of trading cards and collectibles told SC Daily in a recent interview.
Another company representative tells us that there are now 162 new trading card listings posted on eBay on average every minute of every day and 130 cards were sold per minute in the second quarter of the year (April 1-June 30).
There are currently over 43 million listings for sports cards alone on eBay.
Year over year, tennis and soccer cards saw the biggest percentage increase in sports card sales. Tennis cards grew by nearly 1,800% as new buyers embraced alternatives other than the four major sports typically traded in the hobby in years past, giving the overall market more of a “sports stock market” feel.
Soccer sales were 852% greater in the first six months of 2021 vs. the same period in 2020. Golf cards were up 436% while football grew 200%, hockey increased 176%, basketball climbed 148% and baseball increased by 93%. Sales of tennis, soccer and golf cards would likely have been minimal in 2020.
While the collectibles market in general saw an unexpected and unprecedented boom take place beginning in the spring of last year, Colombo says eBay had already noticed the interest in trading cards beginning to simmer.
“Before the pandemic, we actually saw steady growth in this category with more users coming into the space which made us realize this was definitely a booming market.”
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