Pricecharting.com lists my collection at about $28k and I’m heavily thinking about parting with it to pay important debts. What does one do to sell it accurately and fairly?
Selling it yourself on a site like eBay may get you more money (if you’re good at it), but it will be time consuming and you’ll have to learn a lot.
Selling it as a whole lot will be faster, but probably will get you a lot less money. Especially if you sell it to a second hand shop, who will be trying to make money.
Selling it through a consignment service will get you better money than through a second hand shop, but may take just as long as selling it on your own. However, you won’t have to do the work yourself, and they’ll probably be able to sell it for a higher gross price, they’ll just take their fair cut for the service.
So really it’s just how much work you want to do, and how quickly you’d like to sell it. If you have an accurate appraisal and inventory, you can see what some consignment services think about it.
We need a list. Individual sales or small batches are more time consuming but you’ll make more.
Hopefully this link works
Wow, $28k. That’s wild! Is it arcade cabinets? Rare stuff?
From selling a fair few MTG cards for the last few decades, I’d say it really depends if you want it to be fast/easy or maximize profits.
Selling individual things (think eBay) will net a lot more, usually what price estimators use like Pricecharting. If you just wanna get out of it all, then a bulk purchase will net a lot less (think game store)
Of course it’s unrealistic to expect full 100% payout of the full worth but it’d be nice to get 80%. It’s a very tough decision that honestly 8 don’t even wanna sell but the thought of being debt free sounds nice as well.
Physical media or digital media?
100% physical
I’m only familiar with my area. Look into the Pacific Northwest. There’s a lot of game collectors here who really love classic games. Call them up, ask lots of questions.
Another is to join retro game communities. There was a classic game conference and those folks are always looking.
I’m sure Pink Gorilla Games would be happy to help out.
I ran high end bicycle consignment on eBay professionally. It was a side thing when I was a Buyer for a bike shop chain, and what I did part time for nearly 2 years after disability. In total I sold $139k on that account.
You must be established on eBay in the first place. You need an account with at least 60-100 feedback first. Make purchases to get some of that, sell a few low value (to you) items at a really good deal for others and across different categories. You’re trying to show that you are a real person and imply your country of origin. Ship everything you sell the same day that payment clears, and get a receipt from the logistics handler every time.
When you package any item, take a picture of the item in the box, after sealing the box, and keep a scale on your packaging table to take a picture of the boxed item with the weight on camera. You are going to have 5-10% of customers that are scammers. This combo will save you from their scams.
Shippimg insurance is a complete waste of money. The most expensive thing I sold was a $14,900 Felt IA FRD without the Zipp wheels for $9600 on eBay after 1 season of use. That was a major outlier. Most bikes were $1k-$3k, but I was dealing with some pricey stuff that represented substantial risk. I had to deal with major issues a few times despite using better shipping practices than anyone else I have ever encountered. If you own the merch, you own the risk. I didn’t have that luxury. I developed the strategy of finding the advertised cost of the cheapest insurance option I had available and I paid this amount of the sale into my insurance account separately. That account went negative once near the beginning, but stayed about even with incidental drains occasionally. The hassle and time it takes to go in circles with the third party shipping insurance companies is the intentional obfuscation built into their scam. You will be able to recover any lost amount simply by working a minimum wage job for the same amount of time it will take you to get money out of these scammers. You could probably panhandle the amount quicker that they will pay.
It will be nearly impossible for you to keep track of all of the fees and costs of eBay. I tracked everything as fees; taxes, logistics, insurance, supplies, everything. In could not close monthly books until 3-4 months after the sale. The total cost to actually sell items was 39% of the total sale as of April of 2017 with an account in perfect standing ~98% of the time.
When you post items, have them boxed in advance and post the last picture if the item boxed. Add a unique number to this box, have it in the picture, and add it in the description of the item so that you know what is in each box to match with the purchase. Don’t count on your descriptions or listing. Don’t package whatever sold in the last few days. You WILL screw this up and send the wrong things to the wrong people or forget something no matter how diligent you try to be. It is much better to have a label that prints and includes the listing details with the unique number matching the box; like today I sold: “K4R3N,” “IAN123,” and “JK1337,” and must match these values to boxes that say the same. Do not do: Brombus Brzezinski bought Final Fantasy VII Special Edition (6/10), Bambi Blow water bought Final Fantasy VIII Special Remastered Edition (7/10), and Blumbus Bluewaters bought Final Fantasy VII (7/10). If you package what sells after the fact, you’ll be slow and when problems with logistics happen your delay is only going to make the problems much worse. It does not matter that you have x days to ship items in the system or described in your listing. Ship it the same day that payment clears as a point of pride. When you have real problems, that is the only time to use your shipping window. This is the only way you can keep an account in prefect shape long term.
The price others list items at is a joke. Ignore this nonsense and only look at the sold history for items in the last 60 days. If you can provide better information and images than anyone else in this sold history, you are likely worth 10-15% more than the rest. Keeping a listing up costs money and is a loss that must be accounted for.
Low demand items without substantial sold history are worth less in this market. Emotional attachment is worthless, sold history is everything.
This is the key to doing well on demand: eBay has the most traffic of customers willing to make purchases on Sunday evenings between 9-11pm Eastern time as this will bridge the entire continental USA so that it is 5-8pm in California. The trick is to list your items with ten day auctions and time your listings so that they end in this time window on Sunday. In other words, you schedule ten day auctions that start Thursday evening in this time slot. Stagger your listings around 10-15 minutes apart so that a person can bid on and watch multiple items. Now, this is where the real hack happen and the details matter. You list these items to start for $0.99 with free shipping if possible, and with no reserve. The item must have an active sold history. This means there is demand. The initial traffic of a real no reserve auction on eBay will max out your visibility priority for suggested and relevant cross posts. This is more powerful of a tool than any other form of promotion. I did this with $1k-$4k bikes all the time. I almost always set the max sold history value for similar items, but I also did detailed listings unlike anyone has ever done before or since with high end bikes on eBay. Like I documented every scratch, bearing, and part, along with detailed wear descriptions where I was downright negative by typical salesperson standards. I also used my automotive painting background to photography cosmetic issues before and after I did minor touchups and fixes to really high end stuff. You have to think like a skeptical buyer that is afraid of getting scammed and reassure them in a way that would satisfy yourself. Like prove that your games actually work in pictures, etc.
Only start your no reserve auctions to end on a Sunday that follows the 15th of the month, and only when there is not a holiday or major sporting event in the USA. People pay rent/mortgages on the 1st of the month. The largest pool of people with excess funds to spend a little more or get carried away with bidding are the people on the Sunday after the 15th of any given month. Never list items that are competing with themselves in auctions that are ending on the same night. Make your listings Buy it Now for a good price in the interm then convert these to no reserve auction when you’re ready. Avoid giving any excuses that might indicate the person can procrastinate and get the same thing later or for a better price.
Overall, this is how you dominate eBay and get your stuff in front of the most people, most often and that is how you make sales conversions. No matter what you do, you’re going to have overburden that will not sell. Pick an number and and strategy for handling this. Like when you have sold $xx,xxx amount you’re giving the rest away to N and quitting. You will never experience a day when the last item sells.
This is absolute gold. To the right person, this comment is priceless. Thank you for typing all this out. This is wisdom right here.
Amazing writeup that was a pleasure to read.
There’s a board game store near me that bought all mine. I chose store credit because I’m into board games but the cash option was pretty fair too.
Put it on ebay ig
Okay, first you need to establish what’s valuable and what’s vendor trash. You’ll need to research that. Single out anything valuable and set it aside. The rest just dump as a job-lot on eBay (or divide it up into chunks and do the same thing. If they don’t sell, there’s always the pawn shop.
List the valuable games individually. Like any good auction house, charge slightly less than anyone else that’s also selling them. The key to moving merch is always undercut, undercut, undercut. If the competition lowers their prices, adjust to compensate.
Finally, ignore the price you originally paid for them. It means literally nothing now. Resale value is determined exclusively by demand, and if there’s zero demand, them you might as well give it away or even just recycle it.
Ironically I’ve never paid full asking price for any of my stuff. I’ve always either been lucky or found amazing deals
