Our estimate explores how nearly one million trading cards may sell online each day across eBay, TCGplayer, Cardmarket and other marketplaces.
For collectors, the challenge is not only finding somewhere that sells trading cards. They must also find the right card among many listings across dozens of marketplaces.
The same card may appear on eBay, COMC, Whatnot, Beckett, or a specialist auction marketplace. Each listing can have a different price, condition, seller, shipping cost, and purchase format. New listings arrive constantly, while older listings sell, expire, or get removed.
That raises a simple question: just how many cards move through these marketplaces every day?
We wanted to understand the market scale to help put the collector’s search problem into perspective. Most marketplaces keep their daily sales figures private. We used available eBay transaction data, estimated marketplace inventory, and adjusted sell-through assumptions to create a directional estimate.
The result should not be treated as the definitive size of the global trading-card market. It is a working model based on selected major marketplaces and several necessary assumptions.
Even with those qualifications, the scale is striking.
Our model suggests that the largest online trading-card marketplaces collectively process approximately:
The reasonable overall range is approximately 625,000 to 1.3 million unique card-item sales per day.
This refers to card items rather than checkout orders. One order may include several individual cards, while one listing may represent a multi-card lot, multiple copies of the same card or a sealed product.
eBay is one of the few marketplaces for which meaningful trading-card transaction data is available.
In the first quarter of 2022, eBay reported that buyers were purchasing an average of two trading cards every second, equivalent to approximately 172,800 per day.
More recently, GemRate tracked more than 42 million sports-card single transactions and 19.5 million TCG and non-sports transactions on eBay during 2025.
That represents more than 61.5 million single-card transactions, or approximately:
We therefore used 185,000 daily eBay card sales as the central estimate, with a reasonable range of 170,000 to 200,000.
Using the midpoint of the estimated eBay inventory range, 37.5 million listings, approximately 0.45 percent of active card inventory sells each day.
That became our initial benchmark, but it could not be applied equally across every marketplace.
Each line shows the marketplace, its estimated listings or offers, and its estimated daily card-item sales.
Cardmarket publicly states that it has more than 500 million card offers and has sold more than 600 million cards. Our model retained the lower working inventory estimate because a Cardmarket offer is not directly comparable with an individual eBay listing.
Each marketplace behaves differently.
COMC and Beckett contain large amounts of fixed-price and long-tail inventory. Some cards may remain available for months or years, so their listings are likely to turn more slowly than eBay inventory.
TCGplayer and Cardmarket operate differently. A buyer may purchase dozens of inexpensive cards in one order, and a single product listing may contain several copies of the same card. As a result, these platforms can sell far more individual card units than their number of customer checkouts would suggest.
Our central estimate places TCGplayer at approximately 400,000 card units per day and Cardmarket at around 220,000.
Whatnot presents the opposite problem. Much of its activity occurs through live shows, breaks and rapid auctions, so visible marketplace listings may considerably understate the number of cards sold. Whatnot currently supports sellers across the US, Australia, Canada, the UK and several European countries.
Auction houses such as Goldin and Fanatics Collect process far fewer individual sales, but their average sale prices can be much higher. A platform’s transaction volume is not the same as its dollar value or influence within the hobby.
The model includes international purchases, but it is best described as a US-weighted estimate of major Western online marketplaces.
eBay connects buyers and sellers across more than 190 markets, meaning its card activity is not confined to the US.
Cardmarket is focused on the European trading-card market, while TCGplayer supports international buyers and sellers and describes its marketplace as global.
Whatnot also supports sellers and international shipping across a growing number of countries.
However, most of the platforms included in the model are based in, or primarily associated with, the North American market. The central eBay benchmark also does not provide a clear breakdown between US and international transactions.
The model does not fully capture:
For that reason, this should not be called a complete estimate of the global trading-card market. It is a way to understand the likely scale of activity across a selected group of large, visible marketplaces.
The true number of cards changing hands worldwide could be materially higher.
For collectors, market size creates both opportunity and friction.
More listings mean:
But it also means more noise.
A collector looking for one specific rookie card may need to search several platforms, compare dozens of near-identical listings and account for shipping, seller reputation, card condition and recent sale prices.
Searches can also be distorted by reprints, digital cards, packs, unrelated players, incorrect years, missing grades and keyword-heavy titles.
The card may be out there. Finding it at the right price is the difficult part.
CardHunt.ai is being built to make that search easier.
Rather than visiting multiple marketplaces and repeating the same query, collectors will be able to search aggregated listings from major sources in one place, compare available cards side by side and then visit the marketplace offering the listing they want.
The aim is not to replace the marketplaces or hold card inventory. It is to provide a clearer route through them.
CardHunt.ai is designed to help collectors:
If close to one million card items are being sold online each day, no collector can reasonably watch the whole market.
CardHunt.ai’s role is to help narrow that enormous pool of inventory to the cards that actually matter to the individual collector.
The analysis began with estimated inventory counts across 15 marketplaces, representing approximately 276 million to 343 million listings or offers.
GemRate’s 2025 eBay transaction total was used to calculate an initial daily sell-through benchmark. GemRate describes its sales trends as being sourced from completed eBay sales across the hobby.
We then adjusted each platform according to factors including:
The resulting scenarios were:
We then deducted approximately 10 to 15 percent from the central estimate to allow for duplicated and cross-listed inventory.
This produced a central estimate of approximately 850,000 to 900,000 unique online purchases per day.
These figures are intended to illustrate possible market scale. They are not official marketplace disclosures, audited transaction counts or a claim to have measured the entire global market.
A definitive or complete measurement of the global trading-card market.