I’ve used the PWCC Vault for the last two years. The reason why I started was because I live in Spain, but I grew up in the US collecting sports cards, and found my old collection while visiting family at the end of 2020. I quickly realized that in order to organize, grade and sell my sports cards, I would need a third party service to help me.

I tried hiring friends of my family that were interested in making some extra money on the side, to help me receive, photograph, store and ship my cards.

I quickly realized that it was far more worth it to pony up and pay PWCC to do it for me. They do a great job of handling all of the aforementioned services.

Even though the overall vaulting services were solid, and the web app and mobile app allowed me to view and manage my collection with ease, the fees were very high for receiving raw cards and sealed wax, and curation times were a bit long.

All of this was before eBay launched its vault service.

Ever since eBay announced its vault service, I’ve been rapidly liquidating my cards within my PWCC Vault.

Why am I choosing eBay’s vault over PWCC?

1. eBay is the top sports card marketplace. I know, I know, PWCC has a marketplace too, but eBay is the sports card market. 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.

So while PWCC and Collectors Vault offer similar services, it’s really eBay’s vault that is most built for the collector to save time, and money…

2. Cost Savings. While PWCC is located in Oregon, which allows you to ship there and avoid paying sales tax, PWCC charges high ingestion rates for raw cards and even charges for graded cards. They also take a while to curate your cards and show them on your portfolio.

With eBay’s vault, you pay no sales tax when you ship to or transact within the vault, and there are no storage fees for two years.

That’s a huge savings compared to PWCC. Also, PWCC’s marketplace is much smaller than eBay, which is significant, because you’ll also need to pay PWCC an additional fee when you ship your cards somewhere, but with eBay’s vault, there’s a good chance you may never have to ship your cards to the buyer again, because the buyer is more likely to have an eBay vault themselves to transfer cards to.

3. Increased efficiency. Instead of having to spend time taking screenshots of photos from my PWCC Vault, write descriptions, headlines and manually list them on eBay, I’ll be able to simply utilize eBay’s Collection feature integrated with the eBay vault to list cards with one click/tap.

Also, PWCC just had to launch it’s own authentication program for raw cards, which now makes the PWCC curation process even longer - while eBay pre-curates which cards quality for the vault program by limiting it to cards that will meet eBay’s tried and true authentication guarantee program.

So while PWCC was a good stop gap for me, I truly believe that the eBay vault is the better long term solution for me as a sports card investor, flipper and collector.

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.