eBay is buying the trading card marketplace TCGplayer for $295 million

eBay is betting heavily on the booming trading card industry. The company will acquire TCGplayer — an online marketplace for trading card games — in a deal worth up to $295 million, it announced today. Introduced in 2008, TCGplayer specializes in collecting cards from popular franchises such as Pokémon, , Digimon and more. The site will operate independently following the acquisition, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023. eBay — currently the world’s largest card resale site — also noted that the transaction enabled its “strategic omnichannel capabilities like order fulfillment and shopping cart optimization.”

The pandemic led to a surge in interest in trading cards that has only recently begun. Last year eBay sold a trading card every two seconds, the athlete. The company has taken steps to make it easier for individuals to sell trading cards on its platform, e.g. B. Adding automated offers worth $750 or more.

eBay has also ventured into another area of ​​collectibles – NFTs. Earlier this year, the company launched its own NFT collection and bought digital art marketplace KnownOrigin for an undisclosed sum.