On May 11 Ebay announced it would start selling NFTs.
The important part:
"With this in mind, today we are updating eBay’s policy to include the sale of NFTs. In the short term, NFT inventory will be provided by trusted sellers who meet our high standards, across categories like trading cards, music, entertainment and art.
"This is only the beginning. This initial rollout will help us learn more about what’s important to our community. Expect to see programs, policies and tools that will allow our audiences to buy and sell NFTs with greater ease and confidence, across a broader range of categories. "
Market Conditions
If you do a search for NFT on Ebay, as of March 15, there are around 11,000 search results with "NFT" in the title.
Approximately 11,000 NFTs have sold in the past three months, so roughly 1/3 of inventory gets sold each month. This isn't too bad.
It appears that NFTs are mostly a way of adding some value to a physical product, like trading cards. The main NFTs are on the WAX network, a low-cost NFT marketplace focusing on traditional low-priced, mass market collectibles like trading cards.
This is reminiscent of old DVD/BluRay combos, where you got a code to get a digital download in addition to the physical discs.
VeVe.me is another popular network with Ebayers selling NFTs. They're more of a pure digital play, selling digital artwork based on big media corporate branded and copyrighted material, like DC comics, Star Trek, Back to the Future, etc.
How is the NFT delivered?
The NFT purchaser gets a passcode to get on the site and get their NFT artwork.
What does "trusted seller" mean?
Here's Ebay's definition: https://pages.ebay.com/find-trusted-seller/
Basically, it's anyone with a lot of sales and a lot of positive feedback.
Buyers generally don't give feedback often. I'd guess it's around 10% to 25% of the buyers who leave feedback for sellers, depending on the category.
If the seller begs for feedback by putting a note in the package asking for it, they're more likely to get feedback.
Getting positive feedback isn't that hard. You need to send out the packages correctly, and quickly. If you're organized enough to ship out things daily, you can attain "Top Rated" status, and boost sales.
Selling the four categories listed is a little complicated because they require "grading" or evaluating the condition of the physical medium. There's also a problem of fraudulent buyers, who are trying to get things for free.
Trust Features Ebay Implements Currently
What will Ebay's NFT features look like? I can only speculate.
If you think of Ebay within the context of classified ads or sites like Craigslist or Facebook, they are a platform the improves the transactions in the following ways:
- Reputation system - a log of some transactions, and a reputation score.
- Insurance against seller fraud - they use the parcel tracking systems to protect honest sellers who send out packages. If the package isn't tracked, the buyer can get a refund. If the item arrives damaged, the buyer gets a refund.
- Insurance against customer fraud - If the package reaches the destination, the seller gets paid. If the customer wants to do a return, they can, and a refund can be conditioned on their returning the item.
- Customer service - you can call them up and resolve conflicts. They sometimes will refund both parties, and Ebay eats the costs.
I expect that NFT sales through Ebay will be similar. There will be some way to verify delivery of the NFT. There will probably also be some way to verify that the seller has ownership of the NFT. They may also provide some kind of refund mechanism, but that could be a lot harder to implement.
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