Selling on ebay
 

Was wondering if anyone could answer a few questions or point me to a good website. (Most of the stuff I have found online is aimed more towards someone making a living and not selling some old basement junk).

So I found a bunch of old games and superhero memorabilia at my parents house, some of which seem to sell for $50-100. Was wanting to unload them and make a few bucks but didn’t want to make a rookie mistake that really ended up screwing me over for that small amount.

1) Shipping? As a buyer I always just assumed some people list stuff for cheap and then charge $20 shipping to create views. Is my shipping estimate tied into what i actually spend to ship? I guess meaning if I say $15 does my box need to have $15 worth of postage?

2) Should I only list continential US or is there value in the whole world nowadays?

3) How long do you set for the auction? A week? Two weeks?

4) The stuff was played with as a kid. As long as I say that, take good pictures, and say no returns I am not going to end up eating profits with someone not satisfied it’s not in mint condition right?

On 4 it really depends. If they say that the item doesn’t match what they expected you will still have to accept a return.

Find the dynasty I did a few years back about selling using eBay and Amazon. I can point you to it when I get home or you can find it before then I also answer your questions later

1. You aren't obligated to charge exact shipping. But make sure you realize what shipping will cost you. I sold a bunch of stuff a few years ago and went to a UPS store and was blown away by the charges. I took it all to the Post Office instead and it still cost me a pretty penny, so it's best to know what it'll cost to ship before you list.

People do it various ways, lots of Free Shipping and it's just built into the cost of the auction.

2. It's totally up to you if you want to deal with the rigamarole of shipping things out of country. It can be time consuming and frustrating, and I've found, not really worth the effort.

3. Again, this is is completely up to you. I'm not sure there's a right or wrong answer. Obviously more time should lead to more eyes, but if you're in a hurry, shorter could be better.

4. Pretty much yeah. Explain the age and amount of wear, take pics, and state that there will be no returns or refunds. In 20 years I've had 2 problems with people on Ebay. That's probably less than normal, but I still wouldn't get anxious over it. 99% of the time it's smooth as silk.

1. So like never suck the cost of shipping. Shipping was the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around when i started ebaying. basically what helps a TON is getting a small mailing scale. Cane find it at target or whatever. that way you can weigh your stuff and just type that into ebay .

You can charge a flat rate and maybe make a little money. See buying postage through ebay GIVES YOU A DISCOUNT!!!!!!!!! So always use that to your advantage. Like if I weigh something in its package (and i put a couple pieces of paper on top to compensate for the labeling and packing slip) and get the weight. Then I look it up on USPS what that costs...sometimes i round up to the neareast 50 cents or whatever....and then when you actually buy the postage in ebay you get discount so its built in....

2) you CAN list whole world....i've sent something worldwide twice...

the first time it was some boots that some guy in japan bought...i had to fill out customs forms and shit and it was annoying

since then there is a new system that you send to a shipping center and it mails it for you.
But if you are freaked out you can just say to continel US and that's fine.

Actually Alaska aand military bases are good to send things to as well really

3)
typically a week. I rarely do auctions tho. I always use BUY IT NOW onlys. THose last for 30 days then recycle....i adjust prices if it doesn't sell. I'm scared of auctions.

4)
as long as you select USED in the condition you are fine.
yeah some people are absolute assholes that buy stuff and will complain to ebay....

even wqorse ebay has fucked sellers completely now. THe mexican standoff is no more. Buyers can give sellers negative feedback about anything and everything and sellers can't do a thing about it

But def say no returns

they say you can sell it to more people if you let reutnrs happen

and really 've never had anyone want a return...nay they'll just bitch and leave neg feedback without asking for reutn.

but yeah say no returns if you are skitting.

thing is they have to pay for returns

and they won't want to do that

there's agambit you can try where you say shipping is free but then you increase the sale price for the amount of shipping :)

that's for buy it now

doesn't totally work

people are cheap a-holes

they'll overpay on amazon or in store for new stuff
but won't cough up the 4 bucks for shipping

Really appreciate you finding the link to your dynasty (which I will begin reading after this post) and answering my questions. I did a test run with a Batman and Robin playset and unfortunately started it before getting your advice. (Specifically the shipping part and the auction part).

1973 BATMAN AND ROBIN IDEAL PLAYSET w/ FIGURES | eBay

I kind of justified my thoughts on both as the minimum bid at least covers shipping, ebay fees, and paypal fees with some profit. Anything on top of that is gravy. These things sat in my parents house for 30 years so it's not like I had any expectation of making money. However once I get a better grip on how the auctions work from the seller's side I will definitely fine tune and try to make some money which I am likely not going to do on this one.

Yeah I kind of guessing at $15 shipping but you are right I will likely be off by a few bucks on this first item. Like you said you kind of get the hang of it thw more you go. Appreciate your response!

One of the items I found in the basement was a Dark Tower game which unfortunately the tower no longer works. Was thinking about piece mailing it out as it seems like just sets of flags or keys actually sell for like $20. (Not just unrealistic listings but actual sales) But maybe I should get a better idea on the shipping and dealing with buyers before starting 15 different auctions.

USPS flat rate boxes are your friend.

The wife ships around 1,400 packages a year. We have a UPS commercial account with a .23 multiplier. Flat rate still beats that for most stuff

Dark Tower is worth a lot of money. A lot of money

I have been using FB Marketplace with reasonable success.

Yeah but mine has both a broken tower and no box. I do have all the game pieces. It looks like I can probably pull in more money with just sets of the different pieces.

Fix the damn tower.

how to fix it: Dark Tower Repair | Dark Tower | BoardGameGeek

There is also an app for the tower...

App for Dark Tower on the AppÂ*Store

If somebody buys my item on a day where everything is 20% off do I eat that cost or Ebay?

Over the past couple months, I've sold a Garmin watch and a laptop on eBay.

I've gotten "I'll pay price + $100 if you send me money request to my paypal" etc. Googling tells me this is a scam and I tell them "no thanks, let's keep everything in eBay". And I don't hear back from them.

What I don't get is why doesn't eBay crack down on this stuff. Our email exchanges are on their eBay email, simple enough to do a search on key words/phrases and then, if needed, research a little further, and then kick these scammers out.

Woo hoo. Sold my second laptop.

Trying to get rid of the older stuff so I can get a newer one.

Also got my daughters old HS laptop, unfortunately it's got stickers and need to read up on how to remove them.

Maybe goo gone?

I googled and used WD 40. Worked great to get rid of the glue stuff after my fingernails did the work.

It's a 6-7 year old Dell XPS 13. Works okay except for one USB port seems to be on the blink. Looking at comparables on eBay and I'd be lucky to get $150 for it. Wondering if it's worth the effort.

eBay takes 12.9% of my laptop selling price. Ouch, but guess they are worth it for an amateur selling used stuff.

ebay changed their videogame and te4ch fees a couple years back. Gees for those are outrageous

Put a third laptop (not my daughters) up for sale. This one is pre-2010 and saw there were buyers for similar. Got my first bid already!

Not going to make a lot of money but happy to get rid of it and use the $ for my next laptop (which I just ordered today but don't tell the wife just yet).

Good selling day!

My third laptop (pre-2010) did not sell on Fri so I lowered the starting bid price and buy it now by $10.

Someone bought it at the buy it now price this morning! Kinda strange, based on watchers, he would have known it wasn't that popular and prob could have bought it in 3-4 days at the starting bid price.

But yeah, 3 older laptops sold now! Can finally tell my wife that I already bought a new laptop scheduled to arrive in about a months time.

Just sold my 4th old laptop. Glad to be rid of it, had an i7 2 core/4 thread CPU that was pretty slow on anything other than web browsing.

My wife has received her new laptop and mine will ship soon. Glad to keep our computers (2) to a manageable no and simplify. Should last us for 3-4 years at least.

Now I have 2 old desktops to get rid of. Won't be able to sell them on eBay so thinking neighborhood FB for $75.

(Still have my daughter's old HS XPS 13 laptop which I may keep because it's got a great screen and use it for emergency backup if we need to send new laptop for repairs)

Decided to sell my daughter's laptop. Still functional but at 8GB RAM, won't last much longer.

16GB is good enough for most people, but do wonder when 32GB will start being the new baseline. Maybe in next 5 years. Don't see regular office type applications forcing the change, I'm thinking games

The XBOX only has 10gb so while it's possible 32 becomes required anytime soon I think it is unlikely barring Microsoft doing something drastic with their hardware.

If the additional 16GB was like $100 more, I would buy 32GB now. But there is still a hefty premium. And fair chance that in 4-5 years, I'll want a new laptop with better GPU, graphics etc.

****

Woohoo. Sold my daughter's laptop. Got more than I expected. I have now officially gotten rid of 5/all older laptops and replaced them with 2 current year models.

Now have to clean up my 2 older desktops. I'll definitely get rid of one and maybe leave the other as an emergency backup. Hoping to get maybe $50-$75 but willing to give it away also on the neighborhood FB.