I know that, at first glance, the community will be opposed to this, but hear me out.
Currently, as many people already know, there is a large, unofficial “black” market where people exchange hundreds, and sometimes thousands of dollars to procure accounts with rare, unobtainable cosmetics. Not only does this violate the ToS, but this market is also is riddled with scammers and other unscrupulous individuals.
A player-based cosmetic marketplace already exists in other games, most notably in Team Fortress 2 (the spiritual precursor to Overwatch) as well as Counter-Strike, which is openly supported and facilitated by Steam, both of which are owned by Valve.
Doing so would not only curb the “black market” by essentially eliminating the need to buy and/or sell accounts, but it would also provide Blizzard with a native opportunity to earn more money, considering that they could monetize such a process by imposing a fee that is some percentage of the transaction, or something to that effect. I don’t doubt that Blizzard could find a way to monetize this. Valve, the operator of Steam, undoubtedly has made a lot of money on the prolific Team Fortress 2 Marketplace, which is still quite active to this day, nearly 17 years after TF2 was released.
Although this would create an avenue for players to determine the price point of certain items, I still believe that it would create profits for Blizzard whereas there otherwise wouldn’t be. For example, let’s say hypothetically someone chose to sell their Pink Mercy skin for $500, (based on my research, this was the market value for the skin before it was re-released, and crazily enough there are people out there that would spend that kind of money on a cosmetic item), anyways, if Blizzard were to charge a 15% transaction fee on such a listing, Blizzard would make $75 on every sale, without really having to do anything.
One might say that doing this would deter players from buying skins from the Store. I disagree, if anything it would encourage them to do so, due to FOMO, as they would likely see the lowest price for an item first, in the Shop, rather than later on when buying directly from another player, especially if the item won’t be released again.
An alternative to this would be to simply list every single item, spray, etc., in the Store, though for many items I surmise that the price Blizzard comes up with would be less than what the player-determined market value is, which ultimately would bring in less money for Blizzard. Doing this, however, would also completely eliminate FOMO and the aforementioned black market.
In conclusion, the creation of such a market place would all but eliminate the Overwatch “black market,” protect buyers from scams, allow people to obtain what they’re clearly willing to spend money on, and most importantly, give Blizzard a piece of the pie. I remember back when the URLs for certain OWL skins were discovered, and certain individuals out there were selling the URLs for $50 each, which was completely ridiculous, as they were merely links to buy the items. Anyways, These transactions are taking place right now, and will continue to take place regardless of whether or not this is ever actually implemented. It merely boils down to whether or not Blizzard takes a step in this direction. Thanks for reading.