eBay advertises a 13.25% final value fee on trading cards. That number is correct. It is also the least useful thing you can know if what you sell is two dollar singles.
We pulled every settled sale from our payout report, 56 of them, between August 4 to August 28, 2026. Buyers paid $212.00. eBay kept $45.57. That is 21.5% of the money, not 13.25%.
The gap is not a scandal and eBay is not hiding it. It is arithmetic, and once you see it you price differently.
Where the other eight points go
There is a fixed charge of $0.30 on every order, on top of the percentage. On a $25 card you never feel it. On a $1.99 card it is most of the fee.
We sold a card at exactly $1.99 on 30 separate occasions. Average fee: $0.57. Average amount that reached us: $1.42.
Of that $0.57, about $0.27 is the percentage and $0.30 is the flat charge. The flat charge alone eats 15% of a $1.99 card.
The same fee at four price points
| Sale price | Sales | Average price | Average fee | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Up to $2.50 | 34 | $2.04 | $0.57 | 28.1% |
| $2.50 to $5 | 15 | $3.75 | $0.80 | 21.4% |
| $5 to $10 | 4 | $6.53 | $1.20 | 18.4% |
| $10 and up | 3 | $20.12 | $3.10 | 15.4% |
Read the last column from the bottom up. A card over $10 gives up 15.4%. A card under $2.50 gives up 28.1%. Same marketplace, same category, nearly double the rate.
This is the single strongest argument for not listing at the floor unless you have to. We do list at the floor, constantly, because a card that sells at $1.99 still beats a card sitting in a box. But we do it knowing the real number.
The fees nobody quotes you
Selling fees are the part everyone talks about. They were not our biggest line in month one.
We paid $39.60 in insertion fees, 132 charges of $0.30 each. That is what it costs to put a listing up once you pass the free allowance on your store plan. Nothing sold for that money. It is rent on shelf space.
Every one of those charges landed on August 5 and 6, and then they stopped. We moved up a store tier, and the plan we are on now includes 10,000 listings in the trading card category, so the same listings cost nothing.
If you are paying $0.30 a listing on two dollar singles, that is the whole fix. It pays for itself the same week, and it is a better answer than listing fewer cards.
Shipping labels came to $43.84 across 50 packages, an average of $0.88 each with eBay Standard Envelope. The store subscription was $25.85. Promoted listings, which we barely used, $1.29.
If you are working out whether a card is worth listing, our profit calculator takes the fee, the label and the supplies in one go. And if you want to compare this against the other places to sell, the Misprint fee breakdown and Misprint against eBay are the two we keep going back to.
What we would tell a new seller
Stop thinking in percentages and start thinking in dollars per order. Every order costs you $0.30 before anything else, plus a label. That is roughly $1.18 of fixed cost per shipment in our numbers.
Which means a card has to clear about $1.50 before it is worth the trip to the mailbox, and a $1.99 listing is right at the edge. We price bulk with that in mind, and it is why we would rather bundle two cheap cards into one order than ship them separately.
One honest limit before you take these numbers anywhere. This is 56 settled sales from one store over 25 days, on a Basic store plan, in the trading card category. Your plan, your category and your shipping choices move every figure here. The formula does not change.
Check your own payout report. It is the only number that counts.
Frequently asked questions
- Is eBay's 13.25% fee accurate?
Yes, as a percentage. But there is also a fixed $0.30 charge per order. Across our 56 settled sales the combined effective rate was 21.5%, and 28.1% on cards under $2.50.
- How much do you actually receive from a $1.99 card?
$1.42 on average, measured over 30 sales at exactly $1.99. eBay kept $0.57 of it.
- What is an insertion fee?
A $0.30 charge for putting a listing up once you pass the free allowance on your store plan. It applies whether or not the card sells. We paid $39.60 of them in the first two days and then moved up a store tier, which includes 10,000 trading card listings and ended the charge.
- What is the minimum a card should sell for?
In our numbers a shipment carries about $1.18 of fixed cost between the per order charge and the label, so a card needs to clear roughly $1.50 to be worth shipping on its own. Bundling cheap cards into one order changes that math.
