Selling Items online

Include PICTURES !  The for sale thread on this forum works well.  good luck

@LIdoubleR posted:

Selling a lot of items around 2000 AF(gilbert/Lionel)/Lionel /MTH and Other O/LGB for a friend thinking of selling on the bay and here on the forum and have a few questions:

Any tips selling here on the forum?

Include pictures, read the For Sale forum rules, put all of your for sale items in one post, and respond promptly to emails.

Has anyone used paypal on the forum and if so how?

I use PayPal for purchasing and selling here on the forum. It allows for protection for both the buyer and seller if there is any issues on either end. Simply tell the buyer your paypal address (usually the email associated with your paypal account when you set it up) and have them send it via goods and services with them paying the 3% transfer fee.

Where do you get boxes from?  I saw uline has ok prices but shipping is high.

I usually collect boxes that neighbors are throwing away. Not only do you get free boxes, but you are also recycling in a way. Usually packing material is also in those boxes which is an additional cost saved.

off track but anyone have luck selling Dept 56 Houses and if so how?

For this, please email me as I may be interested in what you have. People have sold them here on the forum as they are train related. 

Thanks in advance for the help

 No problem. Feel free to contact me at the email in my profile if you have more questions and I can go into more detail. 

 

Some suggestions:

1.  Create an account at usps.com.  With that you can have delivered to your door, free of charge, a large variety of USPS boxes and envelopes suitable for shipping using their Priority Mail service.  With that account, you can also schedule them to pick-up packages, again,free of charge.  You can also reuse Amazon boxes and packing materials.  Purchase of commercial boxes can be avoided.

2.  With an inexpensive digital scale and cloth tape/tape measure, you can weigh and measure your outgoing packages and print you own postage labels assuming you have a printer at home.  With 1 + 2, you can ship everything without going to the post office, UPS store, etc.  Use PayPal's shipping website and you can print shipping labels at a discount:  paypal.com/shiplabel/create/.  You can also print postage using your USPS.com account, but only for Priority Mail.

3.  Regardless of where you list your items, have plenty of photos of each item, and identify flaws--i.e., what you would want to know if you were the buyer.  Doing so avoids post-sale disputes.

4.  Regardless of where you sell, research your items' values using eBay's "sold" and "completed listings" search features.  

5.  Understand that between eBay and PayPal fees, they will take about ~15% off the top of your sale price.  Avoidance of eBay fees (~10%) is a significant benefit of selling on the forum.

6,  Many buyers rely on PayPal's buyer protections, so having a PP account for your buyers to pay you with makes sense.

I am no expert, and what I've listed is not exhaustive.  But I do sell items here, on eBay and elsewhere from time to time, and they have served me well.

If I had that many items to sell I would check Stout Auctions. Unless you sell at low prices selling on EBay will take a lot of work and time