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Selling, fees & tax

Consignment vs Selling It Yourself

Consignment costs a commission and buys you a bidder pool you cannot reach on your own. This works out how much higher the consigned sale has to land to cover the commission — and how often that premium is real.

$
%

Negative if the card is generic — auction houses hurt commodity cards.

%
%
h

Photos, listing, questions, packing, and the dispute if it goes wrong.

$
—premium the consigned sale needs to break even

Both routes, net of everything.
RouteSale priceCostsNetHoursWeeks

What the commission actually buys

Access to bidders who do not shop on eBay, a catalogue that gets read, and the credibility of the house's own authentication. For a genuinely scarce card that produces a real premium; for a card with fifty comparable copies listed at any moment, it produces none, and the commission is simply a cost.

consigned net = hammer − commission × hammer hammer = (eBay price × (1 + specialist premium)) ÷ (1 + buyer premium) DIY net = eBay price − 13.25% fee − postage − your hours × rate break-even premium = the specialist uplift at which the two are equal

When consignment clearly wins

  • Four figures and genuinely scarce. Low-population graded cards, 1/1 parallels, pre-war material.
  • When you would not sell it well yourself. Bad photographs cost more than any commission.
  • Volume you cannot process. Fifty good cards is weeks of listing.

When it clearly loses

  • Common modern cards that sell instantly on eBay at a known price.
  • Anything under a few hundred dollars, where the commission and the wait exceed any plausible uplift.
  • When you need the money this month. Auction cycles plus settlement run three to five months.

Questions people ask about this

Is consigning cards worth the commission?

Only when the specialist audience pays a premium larger than the commission. On scarce four-figure cards that premium is real and often exceeds 20%. On common modern cards with dozens of active eBay listings there is no premium at all, and the commission is a pure cost on top of a slower sale.

How long does consignment take to pay out?

Three to five months end to end is normal: intake and cataloguing, the auction cycle itself, then a settlement period of 30–45 days after the sale closes. Selling on eBay pays in days. If the timing matters, that gap is worth more than a few points of commission.

What commission should I expect on a card consignment?

Published ranges run to about 15%, but the specialist card houses will negotiate to zero on cards they want, because the buyer's premium already pays them. Anything genuinely desirable should not pay a double-digit seller commission — the quoted rate is an opening position.

Where these numbers come from

Rates on this page were last checked against the published price lists on . Grading companies change fees and pause tiers without notice — confirm the total on the submission form before you pay.