We opened the eBay store on August 4, 2026 and spent the month putting bulk singles online as fast as we could scan them. Here is everything the first month did, including the parts that look bad.
By the end of it we had 2,781 cards listed and another 518 scanned and waiting. 84 of them sold.
What sold, and for how much
84 cards out of 2,865 listed. That is a sell through of 2.9% in 25 days, and it is the number I would have wanted before starting.
It sounds terrible until you remember what these cards are. Bulk singles are a lottery ticket per card and a business in aggregate. Nobody is buying the box, they are buying the one card they need.
Total revenue was $240.25, an average of $2.86 per card.
51 of 84 sales went out at exactly $1.99, our price floor. That is 61% of everything we sold.
The other end of the table is one card: a reverse holo Wynaut from EX Legend Maker that went for $25.09. One card was worth more than ten of the floor cards put together, and we had no idea it was in the box.
Foil did the work
| Finish | Cards sold | Sold at the floor | Average price | Days to sell |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Holofoil | 40 | 15 | $2.90 | 9.3 |
| Reverse Holofoil | 25 | 19 | $3.41 | 5.7 |
| Normal | 15 | 13 | $2.07 | 7.5 |
| Unlimited | 4 | 4 | $1.99 | 6.8 |
Holos and reverse holos were 65 of the 84 sales. Non foil cards sold too, but 13 of the 15 of them went at the floor and never moved above it.
That split is the whole argument for pulling foil out of a bulk box first. It is also why we time how long each finish takes, which we did properly in how long a single takes to sell.
The money, in and out
eBay credited us $173.10 and charged us $155.22. Net: $17.88.
That is the honest headline. A month of scanning, listing and packing produced under twenty dollars of marketplace balance.
Three things ate it. Selling fees of $45.57, insertion fees of $39.60 for putting the listings up, and $43.84 in shipping labels across 50 packages. The store subscription took another $25.85. We pulled that apart properly in what eBay really keeps from a sale.
There is also $44.64 in refunds across 4 orders. That is a big number against $240.25 of sales and it is the line I watch most closely. Four orders is too small a sample to call it a pattern, but it is not too small to hurt.
What we would do differently
Publish less, faster. We listed 999 cards in the first week and paid $0.30 each time we went past the plan allowance. That charge does not care whether the card sells.
The cards themselves were fine. The scanner kept up, the sorting held, and nothing about the workflow broke in a way that cost money. What cost money was volume without a plan for the fees attached to it.
And the sell through says the real constraint is not listing speed at all. With 2.9% of a catalogue moving per month, the lever is which cards you list, not how many. That is a harder problem and we have not solved it. See the listing mistakes we already know about and our take on whether bulk is worth it.
Month two starts with 518 cards already scanned. We will publish the same table then, whatever it says.
Frequently asked questions
- How many cards did you sell in the first month?
84 cards out of 2,865 listed, a sell through of 2.9% in 25 days, for $240.25 in revenue.
- Did you make a profit?
eBay credited $173.10 and charged $155.22, leaving $17.88. That balance does not count the cost of the bulk itself or any of the time, so month one was not profitable in any real sense.
- What was the most expensive card you sold?
A reverse holofoil Wynaut from EX Legend Maker at $25.09. It was the only sale above $10 all month.
- What is a realistic sell through rate for bulk singles?
Ours was 2.9% in the first 25 days. A brand new store with no feedback history is the worst case, so treat that as a floor rather than a benchmark.
