what i learned selling off my collection on ebay
professorpuck
Posts: 148 ✭✭✭
I’ve been a collector for a long time and across several different subjects. Some people here know that I am interested in hockey (mostly vintage, mostly autographs), but I have been dabbling in many different collectibles over the past several years. It started years ago, with ‘just one card, like when I was a kid’. Then it turned into a single set. Then that set turned into an autographed set. Then that autographed set turned into an autographed genre. Then my basement was full of cards…
I have always been an avid user of eBay on the buying side. It was the main source of my purchases, alongside COMC and some Facebook groups of topics of interest. I made one trip to The National (in 2018) and many trips up North to Canada for the Sports Card Expo (fantastic, if you have never been—what a show, and great food cart out front!).
Well, time passed and I had a daughter. That daughter has now started to grow up and my wife and I are at something of an inflection point deciding about whether or not private school is the way to go. The area we live in is reasonably nice, but if its better, its better—and there is not much else that I would rather spend money on than what is best for her. I got to a point where the amount of money that I had tied up in my collection really wasn’t justifiable from a parent side of things, so I decided to sell it off.
What started as a simple decision to sell … was less than simple. I had accumulated thousands of cards, many of them non-sports and ungraded. I was going to have to sell that vast majority of them as singles to maximize the value. There wasn’t really a great ‘bulk’ selling option without accepting something like 40%-50% of market price, at best.
So, I set out to sell it on my own. Recently, I completed the sale and I thought that I would share my notes on how I did it for anyone else in the same situation or something similar. Nearly all sales were on eBay, with a few taking place directly through PayPal or bank wires as a result of connections that began on eBay.
I had a reasonably high feedback number (~5000) from buying and a little previous selling. I was not a Top Rated Seller due to selling under 100 items in the preceding year.
I thought I’d share my experience and answer any questions that people have, since I feel like I have a decent sense of the current landscape.
Total items sold on eBay: 1219
Total sales price: $175,236.40
Average sales price: $143.75
Total fees paid to eBay: ~$17,000
Total fees paid to PayPal: ~$5,500
Returns: 4
Non-paying bidders requiring an eBay case: 13
Items shipped using non-USPS methods: 5 (FedEx signature >$750 to Japan, FedEx signature >$750 to Canada, 3 requests for FedEx in the U.S. to expedite)
Countries shipped to: 13 --- U.S. (did not keep track of states, but Alaska and Hawaii for sure), Canada, Japan, Australia, UK, France, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy.
What I did right:
1) Numbering: as I listed each card, I wrote the number order in which I listed it on the penny sleeve. This was an absolute lifesaver, as I had many duplicates that could have otherwise been swapped, and it made retrieving cards to ship much faster.
2) Having good supplies: I bought 2 types of bubble mailers in bulk. I’d ship a #000 inside of a folded-over #2 bubble mailer. This prevented me from needing to cut/use cardboard. (For the record, only 1 card was damaged in shipping. An international card to Canada where the entire mailer, top-loader, everything was completely smashed. Nothing to be done about that.). I stocked up in advance by buying printer paper, tape, toner, and top-loaders. All-in-all, I would estimate that I probably spent around $300 on supplies. I ordered (for free) a package of USPS Small Flat Rate boxes and grabbed several Medium Flat Rate boxes from my Post Office.
3) Making friends with my local PO. I did daily trips, and used a small basket for each day’s packages. On Mondays, since cards would pile up over Sat. and Sun., I would usually take a clothes basket full of bubble mailers. My PO had a large bin near that counter that I could walk directly up to and place my packages in. This made the daily drop off quick.
4) I sold about 80% of my items as BIN/BO. I probably could have sold up to 90% this way before really slowing down, but I was getting pretty tired by the end of the run. I am a believer that this is the way to maximize value, especially if you are selling something that is less than central to your particular section of the hobby.
What I did wrong:
1) I really should have gotten some peel-off shipping labels, so I could print directly to them. It seemed minor and unnecessary in the beginning, but when you have to print, cut out, and tape on 1000+ shipping labels, it starts to eat up your time. There were some solid hour-long stretches where I would just package items from the day. It doesn’t sound so bad until you do it. I needed to be more efficient in the process.
2) I was not patient enough with buyers who were slow to pay. I am a pay-immediately so I get-immediately kind of person. It turns out that there are many, many people who are not like that. Whether waiting for a paycheck, waiting to sell an item of their own to pay for an item, traveling, or just being slow, it is very common for buyers to take 3-4 days to pay for their items. I found this to be really frustrating and a source of stress and if I could do it over again I would steel myself for that annoyance and try to zen.
3) Not getting TRS status before selling. For me, I decided to sell off without a ton of advanced planning. I probably should have sold a small amount of lower value items and gotten TRS from eBay before scaling up to sell more. As you can see from my stats above, the fees are quite large. I had to partition off pretty big chunks of my last waves of sales in order to cover the monthly eBay bills (this was all before mandatory Managed Payments, BTW, so that part may no longer apply).
What I learned:
1) USPS does tons of things that don’t make sense. Many packages not scanned at the Post Office, waiting for weeks at Sorting Facilities, being Misrouted, etc. I feel like I saw it all. Surprisingly, buyers happened to be very very chill, for the most part. People seemed to understand that COVID times were good for no one and stayed cool. It helped to be in quick communication and it helped (I think) to open Missing Package cases with USPS to ‘shake loose’ items that were stuck, but I actually managed to not ‘lose’ a single item in the mail out of 1200+ items sent through the mail. The vast, vast majority were First Class (there was actually a period of time when First Class was faster than Priority, due to backlogs).
2) Zero feedback buyers are a little scary but part of the eBay life and not something to be avoided like the plague. I had a couple bad ones (non-payers), but actually made several large sales to zero feedback buyers with no problems whatsoever. I did it by the book w/ tracking and signature when needed, shipped promptly, and did some minor vetting of addresses/names, but that was about it.
3) One method of detecting scams is to investigate the Buyer’s feedback left for others. One buyer of a significant item made an offer that I accepted, then waited several days to pay. During that time, I, being impatient, messaged them to kinda politely nudge. No reply. So, I googled their eBay name. Up popped several forum threads mentioning this user as a problem. Red alert! They specifically mentioned that this person was working a scam where they would constantly claim small defects and demand ‘partial’ refunds under the threat of negative feedback. Had I looked at this Buyer’s feedback left for others, I would have obviously seen that---something like 30-40% of all of their feedback left for sellers was negative. Even more incriminatingly, this ‘trend’ of negative feedback started suddenly—before about two or so years ago, they only left Positives. Anyway, I quickly canceled, blocked, and got out of that situation.
4) I didn’t get ‘scammed’ per say, but did have a couple of buyers send messages saying things like ‘oh, I thought X about this card, but I see now that Y, what do you think we should do?’, angling for a refund of some sorts. My standard reply was to just immediately offer a no-questions asked full refund and not to entertain any further discussion. Several people just never replied after that offer. One person didn’t reply, then opened a case and returned the item about 30 or so days later. That sucked, but I relisted the item and sold it for about the same price again, and all was right in the end other than some inconvenience.
So, yeah, that’s about it. I now have a bit of a card-related nest egg, many fewer actual cards, and need to decide what the plan will be for my daughter soon. Thanks for reading.
Comments
Nice, thanks for posting. I've been selling for about a month now with weekly auctions, mostly seeing what the temperature is for some vintage football. Sometimes get more with an auction than what I would have guessed, sometimes less...so hadn't decided if I could confidently price things right on a BIN/BO listing. But I might look into giving that strategy a try in the very near future and see how I feel about those results. Thanks again, very detailed post. There's a lot that goes into it beyond just making the sale.
For my part I am done selling I am never selling a single thing again. It's all coming with me to my last day then to my close family that can do as they wish. Just sold 3 gold coins from Spain to move into my area of collecting full swing. That was the last of the ''rest''. And I am super happy it's over. Have been on ebay for almost 10 years never had a issue all items arrived 99% left feedback.
Find what truly makes you happy and you will bee done with ever selling again. If I upgrade I will give the double to my young niece who enjoys history and coins.
Just a buyer from now on and that alone gives me peace of mind no more what ifs with buyers. No more trips to the post office and packaging it's freedom!!! After 30 years of back and forth it truly is great that it's over.
i see that you paid the ebay and paypal fees. do you have to claim taxes on selling high dollar cards on ebay. i have been thinking about selling a couple of cards to pay for a truck i just bought recently. i sell some cards one ebay but none of them are big dollar cards.
A necessary evil as they say. Be glad it's done like I said buy stuff you will never want to sell makes life so much easier.
Congrats, Casey, and thanks for sharing the results!
Well written. I am somewhat in the same boat as you. Realized that I had a lot of money tied up in my collection, and would I rather have a couple large items worth X, or 100,000 small items worth X in total. I started selling off, piece by piece, about 4 years ago. In order to get my 1 item worth x, I needed to maximize my sales and like you said, not do a bulk sell because you'd take too big of a hit. It's working out great, I'm realizing more $ than I thought I was going to. I started off by taking advantage of all the free listings you get, but I did eventually get a store about 2 years ago...and what a difference that has made. I mainly did it so I was able to list 1000 items and hopefully speed things up, and not stuck with the 75 free listings one month, and 150 free listings the next month, then back down to 50 the next month. That was also about the time ebay started making everything that didn't sell, automatically list again, so I had to be careful and really watch what I had active so I didn't go over the free listings for that month and start accruing extra fees. What I've learned is it's taking longer than I thought, but I'm not in any hurry, so it'll work out in the end. My one question is how long did it take you to sell off everything?
Appreciate you sharing your experience. How long did it take to sell everything?
So much good information in this thread - thanks for sharing!
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Prof Puck:
Great read on do’s & dont’s. Thanks!
What'd you do with taxes?
I am in the same boat. But at about 10% the scale of your collection. And my lots are priced less on average, probably around $30 per sale. What do you do with the last BIN's that just aren't selling. I probably have 150 auctions with around $8,000 total BIN now price that are just sitting there. How do you accelerate these sales without selling them for pennies on the dollar?
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Good questions. Like I said, I am happy to share at least my experience and perspective on things in order to help others who might be in similar situations now or soon.
How long?
I sold everything over a period of roughly 3 months. Toward the end, I ran 10-day auctions that ended each day to move the last remaining items. All in all, I was fine with that timetable. I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take going in, and sales did start slow initially causing me to be worried about how it would go, but it soon picked up rapidly as I filled my store with inventory and started to get some repeat customers.
One thing I didn’t anticipate was how much work that I’d have to do at night. I don’t know if it was just the items I was selling or what, but there was a lot of activity between 10pm EST and 2am EST. Enough that I eventually altered my sleep schedule in order to respond to offers, answer messages, and do some late night packing to avoid needing to package 20+ items before hitting the PO in the morning.
I also did this with what I would call a semi-competent understanding of eBay. You need to know how to list items quickly (I can explain how I did that if people are interested), send combined invoices (better yet, send them from your phone!), send refunds via PayPal (a lot of people don’t wait for a combined invoice before paying, pay multiple shipping charges, and then message you insistently asking for their overage back), interact with eBay customer service (whoever here provided the advice that ‘if you don’t like what they say, call back and speak with someone else and you’ll get a different answer’ was spot on), etc. I feel like if I didn’t have a working understanding of eBay and PayPal to begin with, it would have been much more difficult and slower.
Do you pay taxes and how?
So, with the proviso that I am not a CPA, nor do I play one on TV, here is my general take. If you do have a large potential tax bill, talk to a professional.
Myself, and I believe the consensus of people in the hobby, think you do need to pay taxes. The primary ‘trigger’ for this historically has been the PayPal 1099-K, though that might change with the shift to Managed Payments. Once you sell over $20,000 gross AND 200 items in a calendar year, in most states, you then received a 1099 from PayPal that is also reported to the IRS.
If you don’t do anything related to this on your tax return, the IRS will know. They have a report of some income (1099) and you need to match that in your filing or their system is going to trigger.
Anyway, there’s a 1099. It shows your gross revenue. If you don’t do anything and just report it on your taxes, you will have a very large tax bill as 1099 misc. income is taxed at a high rate, you will have paid no taxes on the amount before, and you will have sold a lot of high $ amount of cards, hopefully.
I’d rather not share my exact number paid, but, I can tell you what I did. Against the gross revenue, there are expenses. The key to driving down your tax bill is to drive up your cost basis, so your net is less. What constitutes an ‘expense’ is somewhat murky, but things that I would consider including:
-- original cost of purchasing cards that you sold
-- eBay selling fees (this are not taken out of the money that goes to PayPal)
-- shipping fees
-- grading fees
-- shipping fees to/from PSA
-- materials cost for supplies
-- eBay store fee
-- any other fees related to listing (third party sites that facilitate listing, etc.)
I created a spreadsheet with all of my sales. This can be done via eBay. I generated a list of total fees from eBay, also using the eBay system. I then generated reports from PayPal showing total PP fees and shipping. I have records of all of my purchases in my gmail account, as that is where the automated eBay emails ago. You can get a total of grading fees from PSA.
You have to devote time and effort to this, just like you have to devote a bunch of time to selling cards individually if you want to maximize the value.
There are alternatives---years ago, I sold off another large collection to a major company who paid cash for the collection. I was surprised about how much cash you can deposit at one time at a bank with no major questions being asked. But, there are downsides to this approach---you get less money for what you have in exchange for the decreased hassle/effort/time.
Good results and very good and helpful info, thank you!
Coinsof1984@martinb6830 on twitter
Thanks for taking the time to post.
Moving the last items?
There are two approaches. 1) Keep them as BIN/BO, perhaps slowly decreasing the price until they sell, or 2) Auction.
For my specific items, they were fairly in demand and I was able to receive a pretty good price via auction (perhaps 90% of what I would have gotten by waiting and selling via offers). I decided to run about 10-day auctions starting at $0.99 each for the last 100 or so items. It moved the merch. I took a bath on a few items, but a few actually sold for more than my BIN price.
One downside of auctions to consider beyond the price is I found that you get a lot more non-paying bidders this way. I do not know exactly why, but I suspect that some people ‘toss out’ bids without being serious, or bid and then forget that they’ve bid and by the time they’ve won days later have changed their mind or have buyer’s remorse.
For me, at this point I had already sold more than I expected, so I was happy with the final total sales price, and I was getting pretty tired of the daily grind of selling, packaging, dealing with late night messages, etc., so I just wanted it to end and knew that there would be a hard stop if I auctioned them off. So, I gave up a little equity for quality of life.
Advice on auctions:
1) Stagger them at least 1 minute apart. The benefit of running many auctions at once is you get a lot of eyeballs on your items. People see one item, then look at your others. Winning bidders of 1 item want to buy another to get ‘free combined shipping’. You want people to be able to bid on multiple items.
2) I don’t really think day of week matters all that much. I didn’t notice a huge difference. I did try to time the auctions to end no sooner than 8:00pm EST to avoid ending while people on the West Coast were at work. I also tried not to list too many of the same item in each round of auctions to maintain as much of an illusion of scarcity as possible and avoid the thinking of ‘well, this item went too high…I’ll stop bidding and try to win the other card’.
If auctions aren’t a possibility for you, you could try making lots, or messaging your most frequent major buyers in the past and offering them package deals at a discounted but still reasonable rate.
@professorpuck well written and well detailed. Thanks for sharing your information!
Nic
Guides Authored - Graded Card Scanning Guide PDF | History of the PSA Label PDF
Thank you. Good stuff. I have a large collection I'm considering selling and debating the pros/cons of various methods. I've never bought or sold anything on eBay. Sorry if I missed this above, but were all/some of your cards graded? I have a HUGE collection and nothing is graded. I'm guessing I need to have the expensive stuff graded, but not the cheap stuff.
Casey, I didn’t know about this big sell off, but it was an entertaining and informative read. Sounds like you did well. Congrats and thanks for the post!
Yaz Master Set
#1 Gino Cappelletti master set
#1 John Hannah master set
Also collecting Andre Tippett, Patriots Greats' RCs, Dwight Evans, 1964 Venezuelan Topps, 1974 Topps Red Sox
My items were primarily not graded.
That is probably a bit unique, in that this is the norm in the particular segment of the market that I was operating in.
For most sports cards, graded items are most liquid, avoid problems where buyers claim issues with condition, or worry about counterfeits at a high dollar amount. They’re also the norm that buyers expect.
In my opinion, the question to grade isn’t one of ‘high value = yes grade’, ‘low value = no grade’. Instead, it’s a calculation for each item:
(Estimated selling price of item) = X
(Cost of Grading) = Y
(Estimated selling price of item after Grading) = Z
If Z minus Y is greater than X, you should grade, regardless of the item’s value.
Though a couple of provisos:
1) It seems like grading turnaround times are basically forever these days. If you want to keep variable Y low in order to make the math work, you’re going to have to wait a long time and have an extended horizon for selling. That is possible, but the delay / tie up of your money is a factor.
2) A proper equation should probably read something like “Z minus Y is much greater than X, you should grade”. That is because people tend to overestimate their cards grades and you should plan for the worst-case scenario to avoid spending a bunch of money unnecessarily, especially if you have never graded before. And, even for experienced and generally accurate graders, there will be a few ‘duds’ in the bunch---cards where you missed a hairline wrinkle or PSA punts on the grade and it comes back unacceptably low. You need to ‘build in’ the cost of those failures into the equation because they are basically inevitable. You also have to account for shipping to / from PSA, which can add up if you submit multiple times or across multiple service levels.
Great advice. Thank you for taking the time to detail your journey.
This was a great post. I hope your daughter enjoys school. Is she playing prep hockey?
Altogether over that period I have sold about 300 items. Moving forward it will be ZERO. Anyways hope you find things you truly enjoy owning with the money you made.
Interesting read. I am in a position where I don't think I will need to sell everything (unless something drastic happens to alter my financial future). I do have 2 boys that will soon be college age (one is 18 and a Senior in HS, one is a 16 YO Junior).
I wanted to pass along the collection to them, but it has grown to be quite expansive and although it is loaded throughout with goodies, there is a good amount of bulky crap that only I could really appreciate. I have always collected what made me happy, and that was usually not the most popular or expensive items, but I do have a lot of really oddball stuff too, that has really appreciated. My boys don't have an interest at this time in cards at all. That could change someday, but since neither really developed an interest in collecting as kids, it's less likely they'll suddenly discover cards as adults.
I have been an ebay buyer for 23 years now and absolutely hate the selling process. i have sold a little for myself and did some consignment stuff a few times. I felt like I was always up front, reasonable and easy to deal with, yet I seems to have issues all the time. Deadbeat bidders, shifty buyers, etc. It seems I have had many more issues as a short time seller than as a long time buyer.
Your experience seemed to go well. Murphy's Law tells me that being in the same position as you, I'd have 20X the issues! The crazy prices of things lately have really got me thinking about selling, just to reap some benefits of certain items, but I still can't really seem to get over the "I don't want to deal with the BS" phase of selling, especially since ebay is so buyer friendly.
for shipping the dymo 4xl thermal label printer is the only way to fly. just the fact of never having to buy ink ever again is worth the price of admission.
factor in the time saved w peel n stick and it's a no brainer. comes in quite handy for a variety of other things as well. making your own fragile stickers, labeling storage boxes vs writing, rewriting on boxes. also perfect for the new barcode labels needed for subbing to psa to name a few.
and great write up, casey.
the biggest point i would hope folks recognize is starting out w the lower tiered items solely to build up and get the top-rated seller rating before selling off the big ticket items. the amount saved in fees can be massive.