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Sports Cards Lead eBay Growth as Goldin, PSA Drive Volume

Brendan Coffey

Thu, May 1, 2025, 9:45 AM 3 min read

Sports cards highlighted eBay’s start to 2025, helping the sales platform post first-quarter revenue and profit that beat Wall Street expectations.

“We’re really pleased with the trading cards growth. It grew healthy double digits year-on-year in Q1, and growth accelerated for the ninth straight quarter,” eBay CEO Jamie Iannone said in response to a question from Deutsche Bank analyst Lee Horowitz on an earnings call Wednesday evening. “What I feel really good about … is that the growth in trading card volumes that we’ve seen in recent quarters has been mostly driven by sold item growth, not just [average sale price]—which signals the growth is more sustainable.”

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While eBay didn’t disclose specific figures for trading cards, management said sports cards were the largest contributor to sales growth on the platform for the second straight quarter. The business overall posted revenue of $2.59 billion in the period ended March 31, up about 1%, and net income of $1.38 a share, better than Wall Street expectations. Ebay shares opened trading Thursday up about 3% at $70.05 (EBAY).

Iannone said Goldin Auctions, which eBay bought a year ago, added 0.3% to the volume growth in the quarter, assuming neutral currency impacts, with the sports memorabilia specialist expected to add 0.2% to sales growth in the current quarter. Both are notable given the company’s overall growth picture. The company also said a partnership with PSA, the card-grading service owned by billionaires Steve Cohen and Dan Sundheim with sports card collector Nat Turner, has been a strong contributor to trading card sales since integrating with the eBay platform in the latter half of 2024. PSA has sold 500,000 cards through its eBay storefront since the third quarter, when PSA allowed consignment of cards on eBay. Services to streamline listing, reselling and directing cards to PSA for grading also helped business, the executive said.

Iannone sounded a positive note over the potential impact of tariffs, at least on the collectibles segment, given trading cards are largely an internal U.S. market and tend to be less reactive to spending pullbacks by consumers compared to purchases of new items.

For the current quarter, management said they expect net revenue to come in around break even, between a decline of 1% to a rise of 2% assuming neutral foreign exchange (the dollar has been weakening against most other currencies, however).

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