I’ve sold thousands of baseball cards on eBay over the last two years, and it’s been a bit of an adventure. Shady buyers, nonsensical reviews, and missing mail deliveries are just some examples. This article specifically focuses on my experience with shipping cards on eBay.

There’s two different ways that I ship cards, and they cost two different amounts.

Types of Shipping

The first type of shipping I offer is the eBay Standard Envelope. This is sometimes referred to as a PWE in the hobby, which stands for Plain White Envelope. Ebay offers a limited tracking service, in partnership with the United States Postal Service (USPS) that currently costs $0.64 in postage to ship an envelope with a couple of cards anywhere in the United States. You can only use it for cards that were sold for less than $20. It’s honestly a great deal. But there are more costs than just the postage. Let’s look at how I pack an eBay Standard Envelope:

eBay Standard Envelope ($1.11)

In the image gallery above, you can see that there are lots of packing materials to make sure that the card arrives safely. Here’s a list (and the cost) of each of those items:

• Penny Sleeve ($0.006) – despite their name, I buy these in bulk, so I get them for about 1/2 a cent each.
• Toploader ($0.08 – $0.40) – these rigid card holders are great for keeping a card safe. The price varies by “thickness”, but I carry 35pt, 60pt, 100pt, 140pt, and 190pt, which covers almost every card I’ve encountered.
• Team Bag ($0.03) – These little bags are very versatile, and they hold 1-4 toploaded cards inside with an adhesive seal over the top.
• Envelopes ($0.09) – I use the ones with an adhesive seal so I don’t have to lick them, you can probably find envelopes for cheaper, but this is a good option.
• Shipping Label ($0.03) – I already have a thermal label printer (Brother QL-1100), and I’d been using Brother’s labels, which were over $0.10 each. These are an excellent alternative.
• Red Stamp ($0.0001) – One stamper will give you thousands of bright red stamps on your envelopes. It costs $10 total.
• Do Not Bend Stickers ($0.007) these cost less than a penny, and are a bold reminder to treat the envelope gently.

If we total that up, it costs me between $0.30 – $0.60 to package a baseball card for shipping in an envelope, in addition to the postage. Add in the $0.64 for postage, and you’re between $0.94 and $1.24 for your entire shipping costs.

So if I sell a card for $0.99, charge $1.11 for shipping, and it costs me $0.94, that means I make $1.16, right? 

  $0.99
+ $1.11
—————
  $2.10
-  $0.94
—————
  $1.16

WRONG.

We haven’t talked about eBay’s fees yet.

eBay takes a variable percentage of every sale depending on your “seller rating.” I am a Top Rated seller, so my fees are discounted by 10% over the standard fees. Let’s take a look at the fees I am charged for a $0.99 card sale. In the image below is eBay’s breakdown of the fees.

The first thing you should notice is that they take their 13.25% off of the total of sale price, shipping price, and sales tax. After my Top Rated discount, those fees are $0.26. But they also take an additional $0.30 as a Final Value Fee, which makes my total eBay fees on a $0.99 card add up to $0.56.

So while we thought we might make $1.16 on this sale, we actually only make $0.60.

I sell plenty of cards for $0.99. Sometimes an auction never goes anywhere (that’s my starting price), and sometimes I’ve got piles of base cards, and $0.99 is the lowest amount eBay will let you sell something for. It hurts to give eBay half of the money for the sale.

Let’s look at the other kind of shipping I offer: the bubble mailer.

Bubble Mailer with Tracking ($4.99)

Also referred to as BMWT, the bubble mailer is used for cards that cost more than $20, or that a buyer really wants to protect carefully during its postal voyage. I will also upgrade a buyer to this shipping level if they bought several cards from me at the same time, to combine shipping for them. This uses the standard USPS Ground Advantage rates, which for shipping from Ohio, range between $3.50 – $5.00. This shipping rate is variable depending on the location of the buyer, so you have to take the wins with the losses on this. 

The beginning of this packing process is the same, but for the extra money, we offer extra protection. I’ve been using the plastic Ding Defend cards, but two pieces of cardboard will also suffice here. Here’s the list of materials and costs used for this type of shipping:

• Penny Sleeve ($0.006) – despite their name, I buy these in bulk, so I get them for about 1/2 a cent each.
• Toploader ($0.08 – $0.40) – these rigid card holders are great for keeping a card safe. The price varies by “thickness”, but I carry 35pt, 60pt, 100pt, 140pt, and 190pt, which covers almost every card I’ve encountered.
• Team Bag ($0.03) – These little bags are very versatile, and they hold 1-4 toploaded cards inside with an adhesive seal over the top.
• Bubble Mailer Envelope ($0.23) – I like the black ones, but these come in lots of colors. I do wish they were cheaper, though.
• Rigid Card Protectors ($0.22) – these cost 11 cents each, but I use two of them. They make the presentation look very professional, and have resulted in many positive reviews.
• Shipping Label ($0.03) – I already have a thermal label printer (Brother QL-1100), and I’d been using Brother’s labels, which were over $0.10 each. These are an excellent alternative.
• Do Not Bend Stickers ($0.007) these cost less than a penny, and are a bold reminder to treat the envelope gently.

If we total that up, it costs me between $0.61 – $0.93 to package a baseball card for shipping in an bubble mailer, in addition to the postage. Add in the approximately $4 for postage, and you’re between $4.50 and $6 for your entire shipping costs.

So if I sell a card for $20, charge $4.99 for shipping, and the shipping costs me $4.61, that means I make $20.38, right? 

 $20.00
+ $4.99
—————
 $24.99
-  $4.61
—————
 $20.38

WRONG.

We haven’t talked about eBay’s fees yet. As you saw in the previous example, I pay 13.25% of each purchase (sale price + shipping price + sales tax), minus 10% of that total, plus a final value fee of $0.30. That comes out to $2.69 in fees, for a total take-home profit of $17.69. While this is a much better final percentage of my sale price, it’s still a ton of money to give eBay for every transaction.

There HAS to be a better way, right?

How do you ship cards? How do you like to receive your cards when they are shipped to you? I’ve seen every possible variation, and it’s humorous how much (and how little) thought some people give when protecting your precious little cardboard rectangle.