eBay

Are you hoping to shake up your car collection? Then let us direct your attention to one of the strangest vehicles you’ll likely see this year.

A 1999 Acura NSX that was converted to look just like a Lamborghini Diablo GT is currently up for bid on eBay Motors. If for some reason that’s not weird enough for you, just know that the person who commissioned the bizarre mash-up is said to be former big league slugger, Jose Canseco.

At some point around the turn of the millennium, Canseco acquired an NSX even though the car he really seems to have had his heart set on was a one-of-83 Diablo GT. The baseball player made over $45,000,000 during his 17-season career so presumably he could have just bought one of the $309,000 supercars for himself. Rather than do that, though, he enlisted the custom specialist who designed the Vaydor, the custom purple Infiniti G35 Coupe the Joker drove in Suicide Squad, to turn his NSX into a Diablo.

Jose Canseco’s former Acura NSX-Lamborghini Diablo GT mash-up supercar 

eBay

While the NSX and Diablo would not immediately seem to have much in common, they are both mid-engine supercars from the 1990s. And because of that they seem to have blended together surprisingly well. Details are sparse, but the builder appears to have taken the chassis and mechanical bits of the NSX and covered it with a somewhat convincing Diablo body. No technical specs are provided in the listing, other than that it is powered by a V-6 mated to a manual transmission. Assuming this it’s the same setup found in a standard 1999 NSX, that suggests the mill can pump out around 290 horses and 224 ft lbs of twist. That’s nowhere near as powerful as the Diablo GT’s V-12, which could deliver 570 hp and 465 ft lbs of torque, but it’s got some pep.
If you’re wondering why the current owner is willing to part with such a rare vehicle, the answer is simple—he needs more space in his garage.

Inside Canseco’s former NSX-Diablo GT mash-up 

eBay

“It is an EXTREMELY UNIQUE exotic sports car,” he writes in the action listing. “This car was once owned by Jose Canseco and TURNS HEADS EVERYWHERE. I am only selling this car because I am buying another Lamborghini and if I could keep two I would.”
If this exceedingly unusual NSX-Diablo mash-up has piqued your interest, you have until next Tuesday to put in your offer. Bidding has already reached $123,456, which is more than $50,000 below the reserve of $175,000. As of press time, 13 bids have already been placed since the car was listed Saturday. We’ll soon find out whether it meets its goal.

While the supply chain is of great concern this holiday season for both consumers and retailers alike, the resale market hasn’t missed a beat having continued access to fashion, accessories and luxury items.Serving as a sort of ecosystem of its own, resale consumers are intrigued by shopping on eBay as they are recognizing the value of items in both the present and future. According to Charis Márquez, head of fashion at eBay, the continued access to fashion, accessories and luxury items meeting an increase in thoughtful consumers has created the “perfect storm” for the resale industry.
Notably, one of the strongest categories for eBay is sneakers, with the company’s recent data showing eBay’s sneakers category has continued to grow at double-digit rates. A pair of sneakers bought every 1.5 seconds on the site and the women’s sneaker category alone grew more than 80 percent over the past year.

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Fueling the sellers and buyers of the category, eBay recently launched its new eBay 3D true view technology, which allows shoppers to examine the item they’re browsing from every angle to mirror holding it in their hands. In an official statement, eBay said the new capability is crucial for people buying pre-owned items and looks forward to utilizing the technology for listings more in the coming months.
As the holidays get closer, Márquez shares insights on the future of resale in luxury, eBay’s growing space for buyers and changing consumer sentiment.
WWD: How has eBay seen buyers’ and sellers’ behavior change in the pandemic?
Charis Márquez: Everybody’s sort of in the game, you know, right now, and what we are seeing, and of the most interesting pieces, is this alternate asset class where we have now this generation that [says] I don’t have money right and I don’t know if I understand stocks and real estate that goes up and down but I do get this beautiful pair of shoes. [They] can understand and appreciate an item and that there will be some items that do have future value, that it’s more than just me wearing it today that it’s a long-term purchase that is really being looked at as kind of an alternate asset class right now by this generation.
For a while now we’ve talked about an openness just for resale and use, but I think it’s this element that people are building businesses. This generation is really building businesses out of it, whereas I think if you looked at a lot of the other generations, they were more saying, “I want a Rolex to say that I got this job” or “I want to have a designer bag when I turn, whatever age.” Now, it’s also [consumers saying], “I’m buying this because I know that if I do get sick of it after a certain amount of time, somebody will actually appreciate it later.”
WWD: What are shoppers looking for when they are shopping on eBay?
C.M.: Part of why our authenticity guarantee has been really important is because they are looking for items that they do believe will hold value. When we talk about this generation, they really are looking for investments.
For Gen Z, it’s just silly to buy new, right? Whereas my generation [says] “I don’t want this used T-shirt or sweatshirt,” but we’re the ones selling it. And then Gen Z buys it because it aligns with a value system.

In terms of what people are looking for, they do want to feel like they can trust the product that they bought so we’ve got an authenticity guarantee there. And for more expensive items like a Rolex, we also have the basic protections there that people are looking for but again, it’s really just about the unique and different that people are looking for.
When we think about transitioning into the holiday, I think — I wouldn’t say for the first time — but probably more prevalently people are open to pre-owned from a gifting perspective. I think people have always been, some people have been OK with it for themselves but now because of everything having the supply chain scarcity this, that, and the other, I think there’s an openness.
EBay is really well-positioned because we have all of those unique and different things. I’ve shopped for my kids because they’ll say something random and I don’t know where to find it. EBay is a great place for that just because we already have a lot of new and different things.
We’ve just seen so much happen in the world between being more purpose-driven, intentional, that I think the pandemic has just sort of turned all the beliefs we once had upside down. And that focus is bleeding into everything we do. And now looking at the supply chain, it’s just becoming a perfect storm of knowing you have to really think about this differently and knowing you can’t just go and wait for Black Friday and hope that I’m going to find what I need.
WWD: EBay has an entire section dedicated to luxury gifting for the holidays — how have you managed to drive luxury and where do you see it going?  
C.M.: In the end, when it comes to resale, you’re looking for something unique and different. And if you want to know where you’re going to find the biggest breadth and depth in terms of resale, you’re going to go to eBay. Even if you’re not as in love with our experiences as some other platforms, you’re just not going to find just the assortment. And people are looking for things that are unique and that are different, and that really are part of that self-expression.
For luxury, specifically, what’s been helpful for us is our authentication. That guarantee has been a game changer for us because it’s good for the buyer and the seller. We do have a lot of buyers that are sellers and they all kind of become part of the community and having that protection on both sides and kind of that intermediary party has made a huge difference in people saying, “Yes, I’m willing to try on eBay” and ”I feel comfortable if I choose to sell on eBay.” It keeps it within the ecosystem.

WWD: How does eBay encourage users to stay in its ecosystem?
C.M.: An element that’s really helped us kind of keep within the ecosystem is that we encourage continuing to sell after you’ve bought. We have an NFC-capable card that if you tap it with your phone, you can see it’ll take you straight to all of the information on it that was in the listing so that if you wanted to go back listed again, we make it super easy.
There’s less buyer’s remorse because we’re making it really easy if you do choose to resell it as well or if you just want to know the information on this handbag or sneaker. The NFC card is an actual physical little tag but having that digital document iskind of like when you buy a piece of artwork and you have that paper, now we have that digitally. That’s been really powerful for us.
WWD: How have sellers’ behaviors changed during the pandemic?
C.M.: We’ve definitely seen in the time of COVID-19, people building up their businesses. We have plenty of stories of people that had their regular job, were furloughed and then came to eBay and started selling sneakers, or trading cards because they had a bit of interest in a category and in the end, it became a real business.We have a seller that literally was a lawyer and is now making almost as much money as an eBay seller and is really trying to do that full time.
People are kind of just looking at their passion and we definitely are seeing more momentum in that. If we look at the past 18 months, it’s really been around more people just saying, “my closet actually may have some value, so can I create a little business out of it?”
WWD: How does eBay work with its sellers as partners?
C.M.: We connect heavily with them. It’s lots of events with them and we talk through data we went through the business study that we did with them. Anytime we have kind of new information, we really do share it with them in those categories and then we also get information from them.
From our CEO down we all spend time with sellers just understanding their overall pain points and then vice versa like them kind of talking to us about their trends. We had conversations with them about the supply chain to see if they were impacted by it. We’re very well connected and when we have those data points to share or updated terminology we suggest using, they really take it on.

While secondhand is nothing new, incoming and existing resale players are changing faster than the listings in a Gen Zer’s Depop shop.The space today is best described as a playground of peer-to-peer selling apps, managed marketplaces, re-commerce and logistical powerhouses alongside the age-old brick-and-mortar charity shops and retailers getting in on the action.
To isolate resale’s players, leaders and newcomers, it’s worth taking stock of the market and its movements.
Setting the Resale Scene

The average reseller isn’t venturing over to glossy marketplaces, but may actually be engaging on a platform like Facebook Marketplace relinquishing goods to nearby buyers in a shabbily shot photo and minimal merchandising — despite the attention around the newest and most exciting platforms.

That being said, ever since The RealReal’s initial public offering and sustainability’s increasing trendiness, industry and investor eyes have been locked on resale and lookalike marketplaces spawned thereafter.

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Marketplaces typically fall into three formats: traditional (like flea markets), managed (The RealReal, StockX, ThredUp, Rebag) and peer-to-peer marketplaces (Etsy, Depop, Poshmark, eBay).
Of course, the list is extensive as more players emerge.
There are also the re-commerce and logistics partners to consider, among them Trove (handling the behind-the-scenes resale for brands like Patagonia, REI and Eileen Fisher); Recurate (powering direct-to-consumer peer-to-peer marketplaces for brands like Mara Hoffman, Frye and Re/Done), and newcomer Treet, which launched in 2021 and counts Boyish Jeans in its mix.
And who can forget the long-standing thrift chains?
Nonprofits like Goodwill (hoping to be a $1 billion resale site), Salvation Army and Oxfam, for-profit shops like Savers (one of the largest for-profit thrift chains in the world, averaging $1.2 billion in revenue) and Buffalo Exchange are also reigniting their value proposition as fashion resale burns bright.
Analysts say resale’s potential is not to be underestimated.
“Fashion resale is a dynamic market, and I believe it has the potential in the long term to become 20 percent or more of the total apparel and footwear spending,” said Boris Shepov, research analyst and portfolio manager of Fidelity Select Retailing Portfolio at Fidelity Investments.
Fidelity is a top shareholder of resale’s big three marketplaces — The RealReal, Poshmark and ThredUp, which went public in succession.
But what’s ushering in the category’s explosive growth?
Shepov attributes it to resale’s “cool factor” as well as rising consumer awareness.
“We see that consumers want to save money, protect our planet and express themselves through fashion. Resale enables that through the ‘treasure hunt’ buying experience at a fraction of the new merchandise cost and with a wide assortment of often like-new merchandise,” he said. “Additionally, my research finds that the carbon emission footprint of resale merchandise is only a fraction of that of new merchandise. Moreover, adoption is accelerating further as top brands and retailers recognize this paradigm shift and expand into resale.”

Of the leading fashion companies by economic value creation, 30 percent of fashion players are designating funds to resale.
What Defines Resale’s Leaders
The “treasure hunt” has become a delineating factor for resale’s movers and shakers. Public financial reports spell out inventory as gross merchandise volume, or GMV, a measure of the total transactional value of goods and services puttering along the marketplaces, which is an indicator of who is actually getting the goods.
EBay leads the way with $27.5 billion in transactions happening in its most recent financial report. Following eBay is Mercari, at $7.15 billion (for its mainstay Japanese business; in the U.S. it’s $1.13 billion), Etsy at $3 billion (which it reports as gross merchandise sales or GMS), StockX at $1.8 billion, Poshmark at $449.6 million, The RealReal at $350 million and 1stDibs at $107 million.
Facebook Marketplace is a popular destination for everyday resellers. Facebook overall boasted an impressive $26 billion in total revenue and 250 million monthly users for its platform in the first quarter, but the volume of its marketplace transactions is harder to track down because the company doesn’t report it separately.
Although millions of marketing dollars are put up by platforms to lure buyers and sellers, that may not warrant stickiness in the community after all. Investors are keener to examine active buyers within a platform’s community.
As Poshmark founder Manish Chandra puts it, bundling (or styling outfits for individuals) and live virtual shopping “Posh Parties” are just two social elements that liven the Poshmark community. On average, Poshmark users spend 27 minutes a day on the platform, and the community counts more than 30 million active users, but only 6 million users are actually buying.
While Facebook Marketplace counts 1 billion members, there are closer to 250 million monthly buyers, which is not far from eBay’s 187 million monthly active buyers. Etsy is a force, too, counting 90 million active monthly buyers. The list goes down with Mercari (15 million), Poshmark (6 million), ThredUp (1.29 million) and The RealReal (687,000) among the public resale companies garnering consistent buyer traction. The RealReal’s founder Julie Wainwright often speaks to the flywheel effect of turning buyers to consignors, enabling the company to surpass the milestone of $2 billion in cumulative consignor commission payouts in the first quarter of 2021.

Comparing the aforementioned platforms, however, isn’t an apples to apples contrast as those like Facebook Marketplace, eBay and 1stDibs count much more than apparel in their stock, whereas those like The RealReal, Poshmark and ThredUp are focused on fashion. But the disparity between active users and a captive audience prompts the question: are resellers really craving community or profit? At the end of the day, money talks more than members.
“Resellers often have two priorities: the community and making money,” said Alex Shadrow, partner and chief operating officer of List Perfectly, a software for resale entrepreneurs to maximize efficiency and profit by bulk crossposting resale listings across 12 popular peer-to-peer marketplaces including eBbay, Poshmark, Mercari, Depop, Etsy, Shopify, Instagram, Facebook Marketplace, Kidizen, Grailed, Heroine and Tradesy.
Mercari has even promised to build out two physical locations in Japan for its seller community called “Mercari Stations” as well as unmanned mailboxes for shipping ease (called “Mercari Post”) to bolster its community appeal. Depop has all but become a meme with its flair for Y2K fashion.
While relative resale newcomers like The RealReal boast over a dozen stores now, brick-and-mortar space is still an area where old-school thrift chains dominate. For-profit thrift chain Savers counts more than 300 thrift stores, while Oxfam tops 1,200 stores and Goodwill is well over 3,000 stores worldwide.
“It’s important for sellers to understand that each marketplace brings its own unique audience and customer base,” said Shadrow, who prior to List Perfectly founded an on-campus, closet-sharing app called Relovv. “This is why cross-posting to multiple marketplaces with List Perfectly is so important. For example, Depop is the leader in Gen Z purchases with bestsellers including ’90s vintage and streetwear. Meanwhile, Poshmark is the leading fashion marketplace amongst Millennials and beyond. EBay remains the largest marketplace for all things resale across hundreds of categories from vintage clothing to furniture, electronics, antiques and collectibles and lots more. Conversely, Etsy is reserved for artists and small brands that sell their own original creations. Each marketplace has its own unique bestsellers and customer bases, and cross-posting is the key to reaching all of them.”

Shadrow has a point that may actually validate Chandra’s social commerce angle further: marketplaces are unique and unpredictable — a show like “Gossip Girl” or biopic like the anticipated “House of Gucci” will drive up interest in vintage wares. It’s then that a vintage bag or accessory becomes a hot commodity, and the investment payoff will determine where he or she goes to list — not the community.
That being said, Shadrow believes the List Perfectly community is making gains with its #SellerCommunityPodcast and seller competitions.
Another advantage to resale is its built-in sustainability benefit, but as competition grows for resale the edge needs sharpening.
Secondhand poses an 82 percent reduction in carbon footprint compared to new clothing, according to market insights firm GlobalData Retail. Carbon emissions avoided are a standard metric for resale platforms. Pre-loved platforms like The RealReal, Depop, ThredUp, StockX, eBay and more have published proprietary resale or “re-commerce” reports to the excitement of investors and trendy-savvy consumers alike, etching out environmental and social benefits of thrift.
With the urgency of the climate crisis, science rules in resale as in retail.
Out of the public (and private) resale companies analyzed by market share, handmade and vintage goods marketplace Etsy and veteran used goods seller eBay are the standout sustainability leaders by way of formalizing their aims by signing on to things like the Science Based Targets Initiative.
While eBay was late to the game in launching a formal re-commerce report — which it debuted only last year despite having a decade’s head-start on newcomers like ThredUp or The RealReal — the company led the way in committing to a Science Based Targets Initiative in January 2021. The resale veteran also published its first Task Force on a Climate-Related Financial Disclosures investor report reinforcing its increased momentum toward climate transparency and action. In the first quarter, the company revealed a $25 million investment in the Clear Vision Impact Fund to bolster small and medium-sized businesses that are based in, or support, underserved communities nationally.

Following suit in April, Etsy committed to science-based carbon emissions reduction targets in line with the SBTi and the prescribed 1.5-degree Celsius trajectory set by the landmark Paris Agreement, a global blueprint for keeping temperature rise under safe limits.
However, whether it’s an electric vehicle, solar power or resale clothing, the argument that the alternative is simply better than the norm is falling away to favor clear-cut results.
“Nowadays, [the bare minimum claim] doesn’t cut it anymore. People will no longer look at emissions avoided or landfill avoided, but active progress toward more sustainable textiles and products,” said Joachim Klement, a London-based investment strategist at Liberum Capital. Fast fashion has obviously “aggravated that [disposable] philosophy,” he added.
“[Retail analysts] have started to look at the entire ESG factor as it relates to ‘Are they reducing greenhouse gas footprint and track record?” Klement said, noting that resale platforms will have to prove their environmental, social and corporate governance performance credibly, year after year, as with retailers. Margins, growth expectations, competitive pressures, volume of goods, authentication or third-party verification sourcing occupy the list of considerations for resale, too. (Some platforms, like Los Angeles-based peer-to-peer marketplace Tradesy and Mercari, have even touted the environmental gains of virtual authentication services as proof of the competitiveness in the space.)
As with Fidelity analyst Shepov, Klement finds material risks and increasing public pressure are changing the tune of the industry.
“The entire world is in a big transition in the sense that we are all increasingly becoming aware of how we did business and how we ran the world in the past. It has become evident that climate change has serious impact whether its heatwaves, wildfires, floods, you name it, it is evident all over the world,” Klement said, calling the issue “extremely multifaceted.”
The Emerging Resale Players

Funding in private resale has gone wild.
Private resale companies hold a lot of promise if Vinted, StockX, Vestiaire Collective, Goat Group or Depop are any indication (the companies all topped $100 million in total funding, with Vinted raising an impressive $562.3 million in all, grabbing a recent $4.2 billion valuation).

StockX isn’t far behind with a $3.8 billion valuation.
“Money-driven bankers will finance anything as long as there is a reasonable return,” said Klement. But he sees the potential for the green bubble to burst in resale, and has said “green stocks will eventually suffer from excessive investor optimism and end in a bubble and crash.”
Because of their notable investors, Vestiaire Collective (Kering), Sellpy (H&M), Stadium Goods (LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton), Watchfinder (Compagnie Financiere Richemont), Thrilling (Closed Loop Partners) and Fashionphile (Neiman Marcus) are ones to watch closely regarding further partnerships.
Case in point: After first investing in Watchfinder in 2018, Richemont (which owns Yoox-Net-a-porter Group) announced Net-a-porter and Mr Porter’s entry into resale with pre-owned timepieces from Watchfinder in July, rubber-stamping the evolution.
While the company is no newcomer, having been founded in 1999, Fashionphile is also on the move. The company scooped up a cumulative $38.5 million in funding as well as property in Chelsea, Manhattan for a 60,000-square-foot luxury re-commerce center in June; by August the company jumped into physical resale with Neighborhood Goods.
More resale players have emerged, while amassing new funding and cult followings in their not-so-niche verticals. Specialized resale platforms are cropping up for outdoor gear (Requipper formerly called “Switchback”), formalwear (Queenly), furniture (Kaiyo) and kids’ wear (Kidizen and Dotte among them).
Queenly, in its latest funding round announced last month, has scored $7.1 million in funding to date.

EBay’s Authenticity Guarantee has a brand new bag.
The service, which launched with premium watches in September and expanded to collectible sneakers in October, now covers high-end handbags as well.
New and pre-owned bags eligible for authentication must be worth more than $500 from a select group of 16 luxury brands — namely Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci, Hermès, Saint Laurent, Celine, Dior, Prada, Fendi, Goyard, Burberry, Chloè, Valentino, Givenchy, Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta — putting the new category between the $100 threshold for sneakers and $2,000 qualifier for timepieces.
The goal, according to eBay, is to foster trust.
“Before we started authentication, we looked at a lot of consumer data and did a lot of surveys just to understand what our customers want,” Charis Márquez, eBay’s vice president of fashion, told WWD. “By far, this ‘trust’ piece came up as the biggest thing that customers were looking for, so this is a direct response to what our consumers were already telling us.”

The mechanics of how it operates is simple but not easy: The company employs a team of professional authenticators trained to conduct comprehensive, multipoint physical inspections. When a shopper purchases a premium bag, the seller ships it directly to the team, which evaluates the item and verifies that the product and collateral materials are consistent with the listing title, description and image.

Goods go out to the customer, via expedited shipping, only once they pass muster. EBay does not charge the seller or the buyer for the service.
In other words, the service is not a direct revenue source for the company. But it has plenty of reason to ensure shoppers have confidence in buying their prestige bags from the platform.
“We sell a handbag every 12 seconds, so we already had a ton of business here,” Márquez said.
On average, the company sees 1.41 million handbag listings daily and in 2020, it sold more than 2 million handbags in North America alone. That could have prompted the company to start with the high-value category, but it intentionally chose to wait.
“We just wanted to make sure we got it right, so we started with watches and then sneakers,” she continued. “Frankly, we wanted to just make sure we had the program down as we started to add new categories — especially a category like handbags, that’s so huge and so important.”
It’s such a priority, in fact, that authenticated bags even carry an NFC tag, a piece of high-tech kit that can conjure authentication information with a tap of a smartphone. “Once you see that tag, you know it’s gone through the process,” she added.
NFC, or Near Field Communication, is the same technology that makes tap-to-pay work at store checkouts and transit centers. Most modern smartphones and smartwatches come equipped with it, and now that eBay has started equipping products with the tech, it’s exploring what else it can do with it. Some day, those tags could include other data, like sourcing or sustainability information.

For now, the company is focused on its authentication quest for luxury categories.
“Demand for luxury items on eBay is soaring — an iconic Hermès Birkin bag was recently sold for $98,000 and our watches business doubled last quarter,” Tirath Kamdar, general manger of luxury at eBay, said in a press statement. “People come to the marketplace knowing that they’ll find the designers and items that they’re coveting. And now, eBay is delivering a more seamless and accessible experience that lets shoppers buy and sellers sell luxury handbags with total confidence.”
The focus on authenticating luxury is creating interesting conversations inside the company. It’s even inspiring it to explore new territories, such as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. The blockchain-based technology can intrinsically verify ownership of unique goods, both digital and physical, and it’s nearly impossible to fake or alter. Think of it as another weapon in the fight against knock-offs.
Counterfeits have been a scourge in a retail world forever dogged by copycats. In 2017, as Global Financial Integrity noted, the intense profitability of transnational crime of between $1.6 trillion and $2.2 trillion annually, it also singled out counterfeiting as the most lucrative, at $923 billion to $1.13 trillion.
The problem has only intensified since the pandemic. Heightened online buying has collided with supply chain and delivery issues to create scarcity and deepen demand — in other words, a perfect set of circumstances for illicit operators to take advantage of retailers and the public, especially in the online shopping environments that have exploded when the coronavirus surged.
The issue has become too big for marketplaces to ignore. Amazon recently announced that it blocked 10 billion listings for counterfeits and “seized and destroyed” 2 million knock-off products last year. In April, Facebook and Gucci teamed to jointly file a lawsuit in the United States District Court, Northern District of California, against an international online counterfeit business operator who has evaded the platform’s prior enforcement efforts.

By that measure, the hundreds of thousands of products that eBay has clocked through its Authenticity Guarantee so far may seem small. But that doesn’t mean it’s not big business.
Since introducing the service for watches and sneakers, the business reported notable growth. Sneaker sales have grown at a triple digit rate year-over-year for several quarters, the company said, while watches jumped from 16 percent to 38 percent in the first quarter. EBay credits its Authenticity Guarantee as one of the main drivers of momentum that’s lifting sales in other areas.
One of them is handbags. Already, the category saw an increase of more than 31 percent in sales compared to last year, and surges since February alone have ignited subsets like mini purses and clutches by more than 72 percent and 30 percent, respectively.
Now eBay’s betting that it can explode the key bag category even further by building its cred as a known, trusted source for legit Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga.

When eBay expanded its authentication service to include sneakers, the company hosted a three-day pop-up in Los Angeles last fall to unveil the service.
This month, the company took the service on the road with Authentication Nation, a traveling pop-up where consumers can have their luxury watches, sneakers and trading cards authenticated on the spot.
The first stop in Atlanta on April 9 and 10 was similar to the L.A. pop-up in November 2020 with a drive-in station hosted by third-party authenticators Sneaker Con for sneakers and Capetown Diamond for watches that evaluated the items in front of collectors. NBA star Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks attended the event to showcase his watch collection that included brands such as Rolex, Cartier, Hublot and Tissot.

Each collector was allowed one item to be evaluated and receive an estimation. They could then opt to list their item for sale or take it home.
The event moved to Nashville April 13 and 14 and heads to Seattle on April 21 and 22, Las Vegas on April 30 and May 1 and finally Austin, Texas, on May 7 and 8.
“The program itself has gone really well and we’ve seen huge growth since we’ve launched,” said eBay vice president of fashion Charis Márquez.
Marquez, who joined eBay in January, said the event is a way to “get the news out that we’re authenticating,” which is something that’s been missing from eBay since the beginning. Although the company sought to build trust with user-submitted seller ratings and transaction reviews, some consumers were still hesitant to use eBay.

EBay’s authentication station in Atlanta. 
Mark Peter Tiongco

When it comes to sneakers, StockX, Goat, Stadium Goods and others have built global businesses by authenticating items and giving a seal of approval, but long before these businesses launched in the mid-2010s, consumers bought, sold and traded goods through eBay.
Although eBay launched authorization for watches in 2018, the extension of that service into sneakers was necessary to keep pace with these other companies. “Authenticity is critical in collecting,” Marquez said. Even so, the site is a big player in the business, selling 7.69 million sneakers and 4 million watches in 2020.
“We’ve had a really passionate community that said what we do well and do not do well,” she added. “They’ve said I want to shop with you but [while] I trust you, I don’t know about the seller. There are generations of consumers that are open to a business model like ours, working in the sharing economy, comfortable working with strangers than the previous generation might not have.”
EBay has not said the next cities that will host its authentication pop-ups, but Marquez said the company is focused on bringing awareness to underserved collector communities such as female sneakerheads and young watch enthusiasts, who are “craving some real authenticity,” hence the association with Trae Young.
Looking ahead, she said eBay is exploring adding more categories in the luxury space to its authentication program, including jewelry and handbags. It is also exploring blockchain technology and digital assets such as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, but does not have anything official in the works.