eBay Fees on Trading Cards
Trading cards, sports cards, TCG singles like Pokemon and Magic, and graded cards all sell under eBay's standard 13.6% final value fee, the same rate that applies to most of what's sold on eBay. There is no separate, discounted trading-card category.
Why the confusion exists
Cards get lumped in with "collectibles" in casual conversation, and eBay does run a genuinely different rate for one nearby collectible category: Coins & Paper Money, at 13.25%. It's close enough to the standard rate that the distinction barely matters in dollars, but it's a real, separate line in eBay's fee schedule, and it's easy to assume trading cards get similar special treatment. They don't. Cards are "most categories," full stop.
A worked example: a $75 graded card
Sell a PSA-graded card for $75 with $5 shipping charged: the fee base is $80. At 13.6%, the final value fee is $10.88, plus a $0.40 per-order fee, for $11.28 total, a payout of $68.72. The card being graded, or being a card at all rather than any other collectible, changes nothing about this math, it's the identical calculation eBay runs on a $80 fee base in any standard category.
What actually differs for card sellers, if not the rate
The fee rate is standard, but a few things about how card sellers use eBay are genuinely distinct from a typical seller:
- High volume of low-price sales. A seller moving many $5-$20 singles feels the flat $0.30-$0.40 per-order fee much more, proportionally, than a seller doing fewer, higher-value sales, since it doesn't scale down with price.
- Lots-and-bundles listings combine many cards into one sale, which means one per-order fee covers the whole bundle rather than one fee per card, a meaningfully better rate per card than selling each one individually.
- eBay's Vault program, for pre-authenticated high-value cards stored and shipped by eBay directly, carries its own separate storage and service costs outside the standard final value fee and per-order fee this schedule covers.
Selling cards elsewhere
Whatnot's livestream auction format has become a major venue specifically for trading cards, at a materially different fee structure (8% commission plus separate payment processing rather than eBay's bundled 13.6%). See Whatnot fees vs eBay fees for the full comparison and a worked example.
For your own card sale's exact payout, use the eBay fee calculator, selecting "Most categories."