In more than 21 years as a power seller on eBay, Rick Probstein sold almost 6 million sports collectibles, generating $925 million in sales.
Probstein, 56, shared those numbers with cllct Friday after revealing his last day on eBay will be Oct. 23. An eBay spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
Probstein isn’t getting out of the game. He just thought he could build something better. In November, he will unveil snype, an auction app and website that aims to solve some of Probstein's biggest issues with other platforms.
It starts with logistics for power sellers.
“If someone sells a lot of items on our platform in a day, they can ship their items to us in one package, and we will send them out to the individual collectors,” Probstein said.
In order to get sellers to put their items on snype, Probstein has dropped his commission fees to 5% on an item under $1,000 and 3% for an item over $1,000.
In sports collectibles, eBay currently charges a 13.25% seller’s fee plus an extra 2.35% for items selling for more than $7,500.
Under the current formula, a seller of a $9,000 item on eBay would make $7,433. With Probstein’s snype, that same item at the same cost would net the seller $8,730.
Probstein says he thinks he will immediately be able to get market value for items.
Bidders, who pay no fees upon buying, can get multiple items for lower costs by holding their items won on the site for 30 days and then getting a single package to save on shipping costs.
While eBay closes an auction immediately at a prescribed time, snype will have extended bidding. A bidder can bid three ways: next bid, max bid or "snype." If a collector chooses snype bidding, the max bid hits with two seconds left and extends the auction 15 seconds.
Probstein said snype will also have unprecedented energy for an auction site. Aside from live commerce, chat is enabled within each auction.
Snype, based in New Jersey, has 35 employees. Three investors have joined Probstein, who says he owns 90% of the new company.
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectibles market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.