Other Ways to Sell Your Hobby Stuff Besides eBay

Transcript

Today is about how to pay for your hobby with the hobby. If you remember early on in my first videos, I had a huge stack of books—literally taller than me from the floor. I spent a whole day posting them to eBay back in November.

My eBay Disaster

I woke up the next morning to a ton of sales, which was great. But while shipping stuff out, I realized eBay somehow glitched and posted some books twice when I only had one copy. I immediately refunded the second buyers and sent messages explaining what happened. Because I canceled about five orders, eBay tanked my top-performing seller status down to basically eBay jail. They’re not showing my auctions to people, so I’m trying to sell new-in-box Warhammer stuff pretty cheap and nobody’s buying it.

The eBay Fee Math

Even when eBay works, the fees eat into your profits. Take a Thousand Sons Boarding Patrol—the going rate is about $190 shipped based on sold listings. Run that through the eBay fees calculator: $190 sale price, about $6 shipping cost including box and bubble wrap, below-standard seller fees, plus the promo ad rates they tack on now. The eBay fee comes out to about $41. So that $190 item nets you about $135 actual profit. When you’re shipping one item at a time, you need to calculate your time into those profits too.

Alternative Selling Methods

My goal for the day was to hit $250 cash. Here are the alternatives to eBay:

Discord and Facebook Groups

Most Discord channels, Facebook groups, and Reddit communities want what’s called a “tag”—a photo with your username or name next to all the items you’re selling. It shows you actually have the stuff. A lot of places will take your post down without one.

Take a photo of the tag with all the items, then close-ups of individual pieces, and post it. Don’t be the seller who says “I maybe want to sell these someday, send me offers.” If you’re selling, have a price in mind. The onus is on you.

Discord Etiquette

I had all pictures ready but didn’t include them in my first message since it was already long. I didn’t want to spam the feed with pictures if nobody’s interested. I listed exactly what I had, the condition, and how much I wanted. If someone’s interested, they’ll hit me up for photos.

Reddit MiniSwap

Reddit MiniSwap is a great place to buy, sell, and trade. Always use PayPal Goods and Services—it protects you as a buyer from scams since you can get your money back, and it protects you as a seller with insurance. You can buy shipping labels through PayPal without walking into the post office.

There is a PayPal fee, so either eat it or calculate it into your asking price. I combine the shipping and PayPal fee and just say something like “60 bucks shipped in the US.”

Local Game Stores

I called the LGS, but they had a backlog of people selling stuff. They have you drop it off, then call you in a couple days with an offer. That’s a trip there, trip home, second trip there, second trip home—all to not get eBay pricing. At that point I’d just throw it on eBay.

Video Game Trade-Ins

I remembered I had a bunch of old Switch games I’d already beaten with zero replay value. Traded them in at a local game store that does video games. They double trade-in value on certain days. It killed me to take cash instead of store credit, but I needed the cash.

Results

The Crucible Guard lot sold almost instantly—$150 in the time it took me to walk from the table back to the office. That tells me I probably had it priced too low, but that’s okay. We’re not running a business, just trying to fund the hobby.

Between PayPal from Facebook Marketplace and cash from the game store trade-ins, I hit $293 for the day. Don’t automatically think you have to eBay everything—the game store gave me more cash than I would have made on eBay after fees. Check what your community has available. You’ll be surprised.