eBay Vault vs. Collectors Vault – Which One Is Better And Why?

Attention sports card collectors and investors: while the PWCC Vault puts up a much better fight vs. the eBay Vault, the Collectors Vault doesn’t stand a chance.

For those of you who follow my content, you know that I’ve used the PWCC Vault for the last couple of years while living overseas and flipping sports cards, and you also know that I’ve been super intrigued with the eBay vault.

I’ve also recently tried the Collectors Vault, since I do have a lot of my cards graded at PSA. After a recent submission to PSA, I realized that there was an option to ship my cards to the Collectors Vault for free after they completed the grading phase, rather than ship them back to PWCC or to my eBay vault.

I figured I would try it, just to see how the experience compares to the other two services.

Let me tell you, the Collectors Vault is God-awful.

Here are the main reasons why eBay’s Vault is way better than Collectors Vault:

1. eBay is the top sports card marketplace. Collectors has a sports card marketplace with more than 82 million items, but it’s janky, and it’s fixed price “buy now” only. Whereas eBay is a much better place to buy, because of the bidding system. Collectors is also integrated with Goldin Auctions, but that’s a whole other level of investing also. So basically, collectors.com marketplace is like the bottom 10% of the market, Goldin may represent the top 10% of the market, while eBay represents 80% of the market.

2. Online User Experience. Even if you did want to sell from your Collectors Vault on Collectors.com or Goldin, you can’t. The online user experience of the Collectors Vault is the worst I’ve ever seen.

Despite PSA having the ability to photograph cards - items are completely blank within the Collectors Vault experience. There’s also no way to easily list or ship your individual cards somewhere - only a bulk shipping option to one address for all of your cards.

This not only totally hamstrings you as a seller, but it also makes you feel anxious about your cards potentially being stuck in the vault.

With the eBay vault’s seamless in-app experience, you can track, buy, and sell your cards in real time. From listing your cards in seconds with eBay Collection, to tracking trends with eBay Price Guide, managing your collection is super seamless.

eBay’s vault integrates with the “Collection” feature in the eBay app, and every item you purchase is backed by eBay’s authenticity guarantee program.

Also, because eBay is the top sports card marketplace, the eBay vault features a one-click listing population, which saves you a ton of time listing cards.

3. eBay is for everyone, while Collectors only makes sense really if you are having cards graded at PSA. The only reason I considered the Collectors Vault was to save a few bucks on shipping my cards after a PSA grading submission. This was dumb and short-sighted on my part.

Collectors Vault really only slightly makes sense for people who submit cards frequently to PSA, and don’t have a reliable return address during a time period when they may get a submission returned.

Even this isn’t a good enough reason to consider choosing Collectors Vault over eBay’s Vault.

It’s eBay all the way in this case.

Paul Hickey is the founder of NoOffseason.com, home of the Sports Card Investment Report and The Sports Card Strategy Show. He is also a contributing writer for Sports Card Investor.

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