eBay has announced that it will be expanding its Authenticity Guarantee service to include trading cards in a bid to combat the number of costly fakes that have grown in circulation.
As detailed in a press release, the company has stated that it will be expanding its Authenticity Guarantee starting with single ungraded cards.
While free, the service at launch will include any collectible card games, sports and non-sports that are sold as single ungraded cards for a fee of $750+ in the U.S. Looking ahead, however, the company says that it also has plans to include graded, auto and patch cards sold for $25+ - though this won't be available until mid-2022 at the earliest.
Ask and you shall receive! Authenticity Guarantee for Trading Cards is here and even more cards will be eligible soon. https://t.co/kSIuExaEBf
— eBay (@eBay) January 25, 2022
The move represents eBay's latest bid to reassure customers when purchasing higher-value items through the online marketplace and follows in the authentication footsteps of other products such as handbags ($500+), sneakers ($100+), and watches ($2000+) that are already covered by the guarantee.
eBay's decision to offer customers more assurance when purchasing and selling high-value cards through the marketplace is to little surprise. The company noted in its press release that its trading card category is growing "significantly faster" than the total marketplace. According to eBay, trading card sales in the first half of 2021 reached a peak of $2 billion in transactions - a figure equal to the total value of transactions made across the entirety of 2020.
To date, the company says that over 4 million cards purchased on and off the marketplace have been added to its customer collections tool, which allows collectors to upload their cards to a portfolio and monitor the real-time market valuation of any cards that they own.
For anyone looking to get into the trading game, the company also revealed the categories of trading cards that saw the most growth during the first half of 2021, which included tennis (growing by 1,797%), soccer (at 852%), Pokémon (536%), Marvel (437%) and golf (436%).
For more from the world of trading cards, make sure to check out this article detailing how Logan Paul recently denied faking his reaction to the $3.5 million Pokémon scam that he found himself at the heart of. And, if you finish that then try this article explaining how you might be able to tell if your (real) cards are worth any money.
Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.