Selling on eBay, FB Marketplace, etc

In My Humble Opinion
1

There are bits and pieces of adjacent threads here, but nothing that summarizes what I’m looking for.

I’m beginning to get rid of stuff, and surprisingly, some of it has value. I have an old iPod Classic 160GB that still works; I have some obscure albums I kept that seem to be selling in around the $100 range; my Thunderbird bass may have appreciated; etc.

First, are any of you still selling on eBay, and what’s that process like? Do you feel like the $ protection via PayPal is worth the vig they take?

Second, regardless of whether you sell on eBay or FB, how are you valuing things?

Third, for expensive items, do people buy stuff without any kind of warranty?

Vague questions, I know, I appreciate your patience.

2

I occasionally sell something on eBay, but I find it easier and faster to sell something on Marketplace. The buyers are local and can swing by to check something out if they want. On eBay, all you have to go on is a photo. I very rarely buy something on eBay because I don’t like having to watch an item at the end and react to someone else’s last-minute bid. Too stressful for me, I guess.

Valuing an item is always a challenge. You don’t want to overprice something and scare people away, or underprice something and leave money on the table. I use eBay as a good gauge of whether something is worth real money, but for smaller items, I assign a price that I think is fair and what I would expect to pay for it. I will always negotiate a little if the buyer is prepared to buy on the spot.

I have sold some expensive stuff, such as a car, and never given any kind of warranty on anything I sold, nor would I expect a warranty on anything I buy.. As the Latin saying goes, caveat emptor.

3

I can only answer part of this from a buyer’s perspective. I have bought at least a couple of hundred fountain pens on eBay over the past 6 years (I have stopped in the past year, but not because of eBay). Most of them were vintage, many were sold as is, also some reputable dealers of new pens sell on eBay. I have had only 2 or 3 problems where I had to request a return/refund through eBay. The only warranty one gets in this market is that flaws are described in the listing and/or included in photos, and failure to do so with meaningful flaws (mechanical or cosmetic) is grounds for return for full refund including return shipping. This seems weighted in favor of the buyer, from my perspective, unless the seller has posted “no returns” in their listing. Then you may have to fight harder, and be more cautious as a buyer.

How to price stuff is a good question. When I research eBay, I look at completed sales to see what people actually paid; there’s no point in looking at asking prices, lots of folks have fantastic ideas what these things are worth.

I have no personal experience selling on eBay, since there are specialized FB message groups where there is a ready-made market, and no fees (and therefore somewhat lower prices). This is not FB Marketplace, just offering items for sale in a message group. FB message groups is another place to check out for pricing, although you can’t tell if something sold for below asking. The ones I am on I had to ask to join, but it was a formality as far as I could tell.

I’ve heard a lot in the fountain pen world about eBay fees and so on, and how ruinous they are, but people still use it. When I think about selling on there, it’s the fraudulent buyers who scare me more than the fees, the experienced ones can really skin you. Or so I’ve heard.

4

Can someone buy from facebook marketplace without a facebook account? I dont want to create an account but they seem (Ive heard) to have things in which I would be interested— I have no interest in registering/ joining. E.g I buy things from ebay without registering.

5

Assumedly you could, but I don’t know how you’d communicate with the seller. Looking at FB Marketplace, nobody lists phone numbers or addresses (unless it’s a large garage sale), so the only way to contact the seller is via Facebook Messenger.

6

You can browse FB Marketplace without an account. You have to have a FB account to initiate contact with the seller unless you can track down the seller by other means. FWIW, I think it’s a good idea to join and do all communications in the Marketplace ecosystem. It serves as a security buffer and will protect you somewhat from doing some stupid stuff. It provides some procedural consistency between users. .

7

I sell stuff on eBay. Mostly because my stuff is sellable but it needs to find the right person and I want the wider eBay audience. Also feel the process is very smooth and easy. eBay taking a cut sucks, especially for lower valued items, but it gets the stuff out of my house and I get some money.

My process for eBay is to take pics and measurements of everything. I pack each item in the shipping box or bag (leftover boxes I got from stuff shipped to me) without sealing it, and then weigh it and measure it. I have a notebook where I write this all down. If you sell clothes people want a ton of measurements and photos of the tags

Then I post each item and set it up that the buyer pays exact shipping costs. I type in the size and weight and choose a shipping carrier or two and the buyer will see what their cost is when they see the listing.

Most of my stuff I post as Buy It Now. I don’t accept offers until it’s been listed for a while. I check the sold prices (do a search and add a filter for “sold”) and the price of current listing. I will price based on recent sold items but usually at least a few dollars less than current listed items.

Sometimes I do auctions. Usually for collectible stuff. I put the starting price just below what I’d be willing to let it go for. If I get no bids I get no bids. I will also add a Buy It Now price too, which is the price I would be very happy to sell it for.

I haven’t ever been really disappointed with how much my stuff has ended up going for. Some of my stuff sits for months and I don’t care. Sometimes I am ready for it to be gone and will accept a low offer.

I have a pack of 1000 inkjet adhesive shipping labels and a lot of shipping tape. When something sells I close up the container with the shipping tape, print on a label and there ya go. I have an XL mailbox so most of my stuff fits in there to ship but sometimes I gotta go to the post office. I ship 90% of my stuff USPS cuz it’s cheapest.

The whole process is pretty similar on Facebook. Only difference is I end up going to Pirate Ship for a label, they are cheaper than FB Marketplace labels I think. And of course big stuff I don’t ship, I just offer local pickup. Sometimes I let people come to my house and other times I meet them at the police station parking lot. Depends on how I feel about their profile and the transaction.

8

Check out Reverb for your bass’s value. Note: check actual prices sold for, not prices asked.

9

Oh hey, look at that! Thanks so much for that suggestion.

10

I’ll buy on eBay but I almost exclusively sell via FB Marketplace.

eBay’s buyer protections mean that it’s much easier for a bad actor to make claims that an item arrived broken, not as described, etc and try to squeeze concessions from the seller or else eat return shipping costs that can make the item not even worth selling any longer. I’ve known a few people to get burned by this, though mostly in the electronics and video gaming space so maybe it’s less of an issue if selling other stuff. Plus the bite eBay takes out of a sale feels fairly significant.

Facebook means dealing with a bunch of flakes, bots and potential scammers but, once I make the sale, it’s done and they have the object and I have their cash (I only work via cash). The additional front end headaches are offset (for me) but the knowledge that the sale is over and I can move on with my life. Plus no hassles with shipping or having FB take a slice. Though that last one is kind of mitigated by everyone trying to shave another 10% off at the time of sale so I factor that into my initial price.

I do some of my sales in parking lots or police stations but cheaper items and more mundane stuff I might just do from my house. I’m not super worried about someone tracking me down over $30. I’ve only had one real comeback after a sale – a guy bought a PC off me and said it didn’t work when he got it home. I drove to his house, took a look and saw the power jumper shook loose during transit. No one else looking for refunds or insisting I had scammed them or anything.

11

I’ve sold thousands of dollars worth of stuff (low volume, high prices) on eBay over the decades, and still do on occasion. I’m about to list an iPhone 14 there.

It’s good for high-value electronics and other things where trust is important: Both for my buyers, who know that I have perfect feedback, and for me as seller, because there is a dispute process. I’ve never had an issue there either as a buyer or seller (but I’m not a high-volume seller, just a home user). The peace of mind is worth eBay’s cut… I’m not doing this as a business, just to get rid of stuff I don’t want anymore.

To gauge prices, filter the results by “completed listings”, within some recent time frame, and filter by the appropriate condition and also exclude any outliers too low or high… try to find an average amount among similar items.

For electronics, I offered a 7 to 14-day or so money-back guarantee, buyer pays return shipping unless item is defective. None of my customers have ever actually returned something, but I would assume that guarantee helped make the sales. I thoroughly cleaned and tested the stuff I sold.

I’ve also sold electronics and other things with a UPC barcode (i.e., something I can easily find the correct listing for) on Amazon: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/. You can choose to either handle shipping yourself, or if you have several items, you can send them all to Amazon in one box and Amazon will re-ship them to customers for you (and handle customer service/returns too). That largely took over my eBay selling, until I discontinued my Amazon account (due to an unrelated issue — their treatment of warehouse workers).

I also sell the occasional low to mid value thing on Craigslist, especially items that are too bulky to ship. It’s not a very nice experience (tedious, lots of bots and spam) but of the people I’ve actually met and sold/bought things from in person, I’ve similarly also only had good experiences — across dozens of transactions in many cities & states.

Facebook Marketplace would be the easiest out of any of them, with both local users and some degree of trust (you can see their account, at least). But I’ve only used it a handful of times… deleted my FB account a decade ago and have had to bug friends & family to sell and buy for me there if there’s something I really can’t find or sell on Craigslist or the other options. It’s a very nice sales platform, though, and that’d be my choice if not for my ethical gripes against Meta.

12

Things for all the suggestions and insights - I’m still on the fence a bit, but at least have a way better idea of how it might work.

13

I started selling on eBay a little over a year ago. I’ve sold more than 1,500 items. I have an eBay “store” that has around 7,000 active listings.

I started out in a position similar to yours - I had stuff I wanted to get rid of (including three iPods and some vinyl). I was surprised that my iPods sold for well over $100 each. I sold a Dead Kennedys album for $85. I have hundreds of other albums that would be well worth selling, but I started getting sentimental about them, so that is on hold.

I had a stack of old magazines - Creem, Mad, National Lampoon, that I sold individually and did ok on. I had many, many old unopened packs of baseball and hockey cards that did extremely well (for example, I had a wax box of 36 packs of unopened hockey cards that went for $30 - $40 a pack, sold one at a time).

I started going to garage sales and estate sales with an eye on flipping stuff. I bought a few turntables that sold well (but, I’ve learned, are expensive to ship). I bought a single issue of Esquire magazine for $2 that sold for $260.

I’ve now settled into a niche that suits me well. I average about 4 sales a day with a net profit of close to $6 per item.

My advice: eBay takes their cut, to be sure. They take even more if you “promote” your listings (I started promoting at 8% but quickly knocked it down to 2%). For me, eBay is still worth it because the audience of potential buyers is so vast. I would not ship anything fragile or heavy (or particularly valuable), such as your bass. Shipping USPS Ground Advantage gives you up to $100 insurance coverage automatically.

To value your items, look for identical items that have sold on eBay (be sure to look at sold/completed listings, not active listings, for an accurate number).

I’ve only encountered one or two genuine A-holes. The vast majority of buyers, I have found, are friendly and honest.

Good luck!

mmm

14

Well… how timely.

I tried to list a used iPhone for sale on eBay yesterday. Within a few minutes of it going live, it was taken down due to a rules violation of trying to sell the thing outside eBay. That was completely false.

Fine, false positive, malicious user report, whatever. I figured I’d just appeal it and that’d be that.

Except their appeal process is totally broken… if you revise the listing (I removed a link to Apple’s specs sheet, thinking that might’ve triggered the warning), nothing happens. It still just says there’s a violation. And if you try to appeal it, you get an error that says:

Great. That’s it, too bad.

When it works, eBay is great. When something goes wrong… it’s just too bad, so sad, I guess. Shrug. Never had this issue in the past, but it’s been a while since I sold something.

Their customer service has been replaced by an AI chatbot, too. Screw it, Craigslist it is, lol.

15

Edit: Despite being a user of 22+ years — I started the account when they were a new company, as part of an early focus group they had at their headquarters — I am giving up on them.

I was annoyed enough by that incident to close my eBay account completely and request a deletion of all my information.

Overreaction? Perhaps, but the older I get, the less patience I have for enshittification, especially the kind that makes customer service harder to reach by using AI.

I already spent too much time fighting the automated (and broken) violations system, then their useless chatbot, then a first-tier human support agent (when I finally got through to one) who couldn’t read their own policy. I had to request a manager several times, and when I finally got one, they were much better, but by then I’d already made up my mind. So no more eBay for me — not that I’d been using it much lately, anyway, since listing there takes quite a bit more work than on Amazon, FB, or Craigslist (even without any violation issues).

If you’ve never used it, I still think it’s a fine platform for sales, especially anything high-value, unique (i.e. no Amazon listing for it), or auction-able. But for getting rid of the occasional excess item, it’s just too much work for what it is, when the alternatives are perfectly viable and easier to use (in terms of ease of listing).

And of course if you use it as a business and sell many items a day, I’m sure it’s a great platform for that too. You get used to the quirks. You deal with the systems. I just didn’t want to bother any longer, personally…

16

I still use craigslist and bought a lawn mower a month ago.

I’ve become a bit of a penfan myself and I keep an eye on the reddit pen swap group. I haven’t bought or sold anything yet but I think there’s a sort of feedback rating system.

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