By now, you’ve heard the same advice a thousand times: “Stop purchasing packs. Buy singles!” But what if your nearest “local” card shop is hours away or you’re searching for a chase card for sale located across the country? That’s where eBay comes in.
From cards to Funko Pops, eBay has been a vital lifeline for collectors for decades. As the worldwide brand continues to adapt to meet the needs of its users, Mantel met with Luci Yang, eBay’s GM of U.S. Collectibles, at The National to learn more about how the marketplace’s latest changes. Here’s what she had to say about her career, the importance of community, and how eBay is putting powerful data into the hands of collectors.
You’ve got undergrad degrees from Harvard, and both an MBA and a JD from Yale. How did you end up working for eBay?
Everyone’s path is a little windier than people expect, and mine was too. I spent a long time earlier in my career in business and management consulting. I joined eBay about five years ago, right as the company was leaning hard into its focus-category strategy—you’ve probably heard our CEO talk about that.
At the time, I joined the automotive parts and accessories team, since that was one of the focus categories then. Over the last five years, I’ve worked in parts and accessories, electronics, and heavy equipment, another focus area for eBay. This past January, I moved into collectibles. So I come from more of a corporate background, but I’m excited to tap into the childhood passion of collecting. Right now my role is head of U.S. collectibles, with trading cards a big piece of it, along with comics, toys, coins and more.
You started on the auto side of things. What parallels does that have to collectibles?
Two things stand out.
First, we really value enthusiast communities across all of our categories. I saw that strongly in automotive, and I see it just as strongly here at The National, across sports cards and collectible card games. There’s a real community feel to it.
Second, eBay operates as one platform across these categories, so a lot of the same priorities carry over, trust being a big one. In automotive, that shows up as things like Guaranteed Fit, which helps you search for and confirm a part actually fits your vehicle. In trading cards, it’s Authenticity Guarantee, making sure the card you’re buying is authentic and arrives in the condition you expect.
eBay has so much consumer data. How are you using those insights to make changes on the collectibles side?
One of the things we’re most excited about is the amount of data we can bring back to the hobby community. Over the last year we’ve focused on consolidating that data and presenting it back to shoppers through our Price Guide tool. Price Guide lets you get accurate comps on a card you’re looking to buy, sell or grade; you can see sold listings and current listings of the same card, CGC and PSA pop-report data, and other relevant market data across the industry. We’re excited to keep building that out.
What trends are you seeing in the collectibles space?
What’s fascinating to me, especially since I’m new to the space, is how closely the data mirrors what’s happening in pop culture in real time. In the first half of this year, our top players were the usual names you’d expect—Jordan, Ohtani, LeBron and so on—but Victor Wembanyama was also one of our top five searches, which makes sense given the run he’s had. And with the World Cup, soccer spiked quite a bit; some of our top soccer searches were up more than 200% month-over-month between May and June.
What do major events like The National teach you about the collectibles space that you don’t see online?
We love being at The National. This might be our largest presence here ever. It’s a chance to be part of the community: seeing people, talking to the buyers and sellers who use eBay every day. This is the best place to really understand the heartbeat of the hobby. I felt that viscerally being here, in a way you don’t get just learning about it academically.
I also love bringing new innovations to customers and showing them live: livestreams, showcasing inventory going up for auction like the Upper Deck Michael Jordan pieces, and displaying the new packaging for our outbound Authenticity Guaranteed card membership, which is rolling out later this year.
[On that note], Authenticity Guarantee has now processed five million cards since it launched, a pretty big milestone.
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