Longtime power seller Rick Probstein — one of the biggest names in the online collectibles market — made headlines earlier this month when he announced he was leaving eBay to help launch his own marketplace: Snype.
Probstein had been responsible for billions in card sales over the years, and his departure raised questions about everything from eBay’s seller experience to whether the hobby has room for a new major marketplace.
Early coverage (Cllct, VAR) highlighted both the scale of the move and the ambitious promise of Snype: a modern, seller-first platform with lower fees, improved transparency, and faster payouts.
But Snype’s first major auction last night hit serious technical issues, forcing the platform to disable bidding mid-event.
Collectors reported:
• site outages
• bids not registering
• lag during auction closings
• and in some cases, inability to log in
Shortly after, the platform was taken offline. Snype has not yet announced when auctions will resume.
For a startup trying to win trust away from eBay, PWCC, Goldin, Fanatics Collect, and others, this kind of launch-night failure has real consequences.
Was this move too ambitious or does the Hobby deserve a real eBay competitor? What can Synpe do to rebuild consumer trust after last night's mishaps?
