On eBay which would you rather have? 10 watchers or 10 people with item in their cart? Neither is a sale but which one do you think will actually convert and why?

What’s this happening

Costing me as much as $9.92 to send a 1lb box 4x8x6 to some areas now and that is with eBay's discount. Some places are only $6.67 and that's a nearly 50% disparity.

I don't understand with how much prices differ in more expensive parts of the US, so why can't eBay adjust prices and still offer free shipping so a buyer in CA might see a price that's $3.25 higher to offset the difference in cost?

Oddly I looked into it and shopify has apps that adjust prices based on location for this exact reason. I think eBay should as well.

Especially when a lot of the stuff I sell...nearly all is sold with free shipping so putting in calculated shipping would pretty much kill sales.

1lb items that sell for $20 shipped, I'm starting to just pass them up now because the shipping and fees leave me only $6.13 to higher priced shipping areas whereas cheaper areas leave me $9.38 and I can't really have any say in where I sell it to.

Plates. I live in an old town with old people who still collect pewter. I know now way too much about plates. The various patterns, manufacturers, blah, blah, blah, etc. I don't care. Most of the pewter around here is cheap shit. Do you know why I know its cheap shit? Because they spend all their time complaining about it in the estate sale lines.

I always grab cheap silver at yardsales, flea markets etc, just like anyone else. I don’t keep tabs on the spot price as I never sell it, it just goes into the soup for safe keeping.

I was just at a flea market, and one dude had at least 20 crossed off prices written on the same little coin holder, clearly just being repriced as the silver price ebbed and flowed.

Silver guys- what’s the method? Just price high and hope to never have to go in and change all your labels? I’ve been to booths with hundreds if not thousands of individually priced coins. How are you not getting flooded with people the morning after a huge spike, trying to buy your stuff before you could get in to re price it?

What have you learned lately? Could be through a success or a failure. Could be about a specific item, a niche, flipping in general, or even life as learned through flipping.

Do please keep in mind the difference between shooting the shit and plain bullshit and try to refrain from spreading poor advice.

Try to stop in over the course of the week and sort by New so people are encouraged to post here instead of making their own threads for every item.

Hi everyone! I’m newish to flipping and kind of got into it accidentally - I saw a lot of cool and funky stuff on estate sales and figured I could buy what I liked in a lot and sell off the rest. I didn’t really mean for it to be a business model, more of something to help offset the cost of buying the pieces I wanted to keep. Well, now I’m eyeball deep in really cool stuff, but I don’t need to keep all of it. We had a neighborhood wide yard sale a little over a month ago, so I don’t want to host another one, but selling everything en masse on Facebook marketplace seems eye-twitchingly painful. So I thought about setting up a temporary website/store front on something like Shopify or Square, and posting the sale on Facebook marketplace (featuring pictures and prices of the things I’d like to sell, not just a flier or something).

I also don’t mind posting in Facebook groups about it, as I intend for the sale to be local and will have disclaimers and a box they have to check verifying that they know purchasing the item is an agreement to come pick it up at a specific date and time (will likely use something like signup genius to organize this).

I know it sounds like a lot of work, but given the amount of items I’d like to clear out, it seems like it’d potentially be easier than listing individually, or in lots (I’ve noticed people want *steep* discounts on lots or bundles on fb marketplace). I figure a storefront automates a lot of the back & forth questions, and encourages people to read the item description rather than ignoring it and asking every question I’ve already answered.

Any chance it could work? Or is it more likely a time sink that’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Got the most egregious lowball offer I've ever received since I started eBay and I just couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity.

Someone who has lowballed me on offers in the past using the offer system sent me this message offering $100 shipped for almost 50 brand new and sealed DVDs (list contained multiple repeats) that I have listed price at a total of around $320 after a 15% discount.

The guy specifically mentioned the list was items priced at $3-4 a piece but tried sneaking in several items I had priced at $15-30 each thinking I wouldn't check or bother doing the math.

The lowball was already ridiculous, but wanting free shipping on a nearly 50 item order is just such a slap in the face that it feels like ragebait. Immediately got put into the block list.

Anyone else have stories of lowballs this bad?

Kinda annoyed. I dropship from a certain manufacturer. Ebay buyer bought it from me and I ordered it to the buyer's house. The manufacturer for whatever reason decides to ship the 4 items in one shipment of 3 via Fedex and one shipment of 1 via USPS. Now I have to give the buyer multiple tracking #s and deal with them possibly complaining when one shows up before the other and he thinks he's missing items. Anyone had this happen?

Hey everyone, I haven’t used Live Auctioneers before and I’d really like to start using them. There’s a few things I’m concerned about but shipping is the main thing. A lot of times the auction house won’t offer in-house shipping or sometimes they do. I’m under the impression if you use the Live Auctioneers shipping opinion, it will show up on your invoice and you can choose it on the app/website. I have read that their shipping is usually not great, as it’s often overpriced, handled not well, tracking and times estimates can be off, and a few other things. For instance there is a lamp that I am looking at and the LA shipping quoted be around $800, which seems insane but I’m not sure if that’s normal. I haven’t used it, so I’m unsure of how to use the option of in-house shipping or third party shipping. I would hope that it shows up on the invoice or at least the app in some way and is not completely separate from LA. That just seems weird to me but again I’m not sure if this is normal.

I’ve only been In-person live auctions (ai go regularly) and on the occasion local auctions on different websites. So this is new territory for me but I am determined to start using this method.

If anyone could lend a helping hand here, that would be immensely appreciated. Thank you all so much.

I've been thinking about getting a thermal printer for shipping labels. Using a regular printer and cutting everything out gets old pretty fast when you've got orders to pack.

For those of you who sell regularly, was switching to a thermal printer worth it? I'm mostly wondering how well the cheaper ones hold up over time and whether the setup is pretty painless with the usual selling platforms.

Not looking for anything fancy, just something that works without becoming another thing to troubleshoot every week.

What are you guys into?

My husband and I have been selling through our own site for a couple years now after mostly using marketplace channels. The margins are better when we aren't paying fees, but the traffic is obviously slower to build. I've been testing Meta ads to drive people over, and I keep wondering if the learning curve is worth it or if we should just double down on the platforms where the buyers already are. The ad budget is small so every dollar feels high stakes. I know some people here only do marketplace flips, but I'm curious how others handle moving customers off the big sites without burning money on ads that don't convert. Do you keep both channels going at once or pick one to focus on?

I never get hit with extra fedex fee because i measure and inch over on each side. Today though it finally happened, I hit was hit with a fee that was more than original postage for "irregular packaging".

I got the fee because I wrapped the box in a poly bag so the package wouldn't get stolen. The box was the original stereo equipment box for an expensive receiver.

i just looked into fedex terms and poly bags are an "irregular package" if they measure over 18 inches on the longest side, or 13 inches on the second longest side, or 5 inches or greater on the height of the package.

Now, I know.

Just trying to save other people money by avoiding the same mistake.

Storage would be my first limit. I share a rented flat with two flatmates, so I'd want to keep any resale stock within my own space. Which types of items stay manageable once you include packaging and unsold stock?

Whatever you want to know about flipping, no matter the question, ask here. Even if it's been covered 1,000 times before. Doesn't matter if you're new or old. If you stop learning things, you're probably on your way out.

This is an extremely newb-friendly thread. As such, any rudeness is to be reported.

What would you like help selling? What is it? What are you trying to get for it? What have you tried so far? What will you try next? Hopefully we can help you out a bit.

Once the thread has been up for a while, please try to sort by New so you can try to help latecomers. The more helpful we are in this thread, the less often people will make their own threads for individual items.

I have a simple rule when buying things from me.

Make sure it works with your application before ordering.

Seems simple enough right?

If you are buying a car part, take 30 seconds to pop your hood and look at the part and that it looks like the same part you are replacing.

If you are buying a part for a John Deere X700 riding mower, make sure it says "X700" on the side of the hood.

If you are buying an appliance part, and it shows a list of models, look at your appliance and make sure the model matches.

Yet around 98% of my returns this year, yes, 98 percent! have been due to people being idiots.

Not only do they not check, they blame me!

I had one today, I listed an AC compressor for a 2015-2017 vehicle.

"the description is inaccurate". No it's not. They claim to have a 2018. How on earth can this person find their rear with both hands in their rear pockets?

How can someone presumably smart enough to replace an AC compressor read "2015-2017" and get "2018" from that?

If I plug "2018" into the fitment tool, it also spits out it won't fit.

That is what is really ticking me off.

Because not a single fucking time do these people take responsibility - EVER.

How hard is it to say "oh sorry, I misread". Nope, 99.9999% of the time, they double down. It's one thing to be stupid and admit you are incorrect, it's another to be shown in every fucking conceivable way WHY you are incorrect and STILL insist the other person is at fault.

I even said "Oh, I am sorry this part does not fit, can you show me what made you think it would fit your 2018?" Know what I got back? "I'm reporting you to eBay for terrible customer service". That shows you just how fucking stupid they are. You can't reason with the unreasonable.

How much has this impacted me this year? About $2,500. Because they often fuck the part up trying to make it fit, or they send it back without packaging and it gets damaged on the way back.

It's not fair to raise prices to offset this, but I have tried EVERYTHING to counteract idiots and you simply cannot idiot-proof the buying process.

Or do you just let it sit for a bit more? Was kind of wondering

I’ve been selling on Chairish for almost two months using the option to have Chairish pay for the shipping label while I handle packaging, and I’ve noticed that none of the UPS shipping labels are appropriate for fragile items. Chairish support assures me any package DIM overages will be handled by them, but im still on the hook for any potential damages unless I use their drop & go method. I’m still skeptical that UPS is able to accurately package antique porcelain, artwork, or earthenware sculptures the way they should be.

What are the experienced sellers doing:

drop & go, package yourself with chairish prepaid label, or handle everything yourself?

Any issues with UPS somehow destroying an item even after you double boxed something and packed it perfectly?

Whatever you want to know about flipping, no matter the question, ask here. Even if it's been covered 1,000 times before. Doesn't matter if you're new or old. If you stop learning things, you're probably on your way out.

This is an extremely newb-friendly thread. As such, any rudeness is to be reported.

This thread is for you to talk about anything and everything. It can be flipping related, but it doesn't have to be.

Here are my recorded flips from April to this month. I’ve been mainly sourcing outdoor gear and feel I am doing really well. I want to start sourcing items to try to make at least 2000 a month. my major hurdle is getting people to agree to low cash offers. If anyone has any recommendations I would greatly appreciate it.