eBay is acquiring TCGplayer for $294 Million consolidating the marketplace

eBay has this week announced that they’ve reached an agreement with one of the biggest trading game marketplaces. eBay will acquire TCGplayer, massively consolidating the trading card marketplace. Both already have significant portions of the marketplace for reselling and buying trading cards and the buyout brings both together.

This is going to have big implications for players of Magic: The Gathering and other trading card games, even esports cards like the CDL trading cards.

eBay is acquiring TCGPlayer

This week it’s been announced that eBay will be acquiring TCGPlayer. This sees them taking an even bigger stake in the trading card market which has grown considerably recently. Under the pandemic, sales increased quite a lot. eBay already owned a big chunk. As a premier site for buying and reselling goods, trading cards are a natural fit for eBay where players sell off their duplicate cards or look for specific cards. eBay has already invested quite a bit into expanding its trading card services. Earlier this year, they expanded their authenticity guarantee to cards. These will grade trading cards to ensure the quality promised is being delivered.

They’ve also launched eBay Vault. This is a large facility where cards are stored in a temperature-controlled environment. It keeps the cards safe and helps make sure the inventory for sale on eBay is arriving in the condition it’s listed. A good deal for those crazy valuable Pokémon cards. eBay has definitely expanded in this market, even before buying TCGPlayer. That store themselves is one of the biggest sellers of trading cards too.

eBay acquiring TCGPlayer will carry a hefty price tag. $294 million in total. Although, the company isn’t going away. While they are acquiring the company, it won’t be a traditional merger. Things are going to work differently.

How Will the Trading  Card Marketplace Look After this?

The traditional response for a buyout like this would be for players to assume they’ll only be on one platform going forward. In this case, TCGPlayer would probably disintegrate into eBay. However, that is not the case.

The CEO of TCGPlayer has made it clear that the company is still going to exist. It will now be owned by eBay. However, it will exist as an independent platform run separately. While the profits go to eBay, players don’t have to just stick to eBay when looking for cards. We’re not entirely sure what changes are coming. There will still be two platforms though.

This does make a lot of sense. Absorbing a company into the eBay ecosystem wouldn’t really do much other than add a big seller. While it does put more products on the platform, there isn’t a major change to how eBay would work for most customers. With eBay acquiring TCGPlayer, they can secure a second marketplace without just listing products on their own site.

We’ll have to wait and see how this change actually plays out for customers of TCGPlayer. For now though, it seems the website itself and its secondary market are sticking around.