Recent Acquisitions

[McMetal]

Well, I haven’t had any luck with the FB groups but I have sold a few things on eBay.

I have had two people now reach out to me trying to get me to sell them all my Legos outside of eBay. This seems shady to me and I know eBay frowns on it, so I have rebuffed these kinds of questions so far. Even though it would be nice to forego the 15% seller fees, I feel like this would be opening myself up to more risk as well.

I’ve never had this happen in many years of selling other stuff, so I guess it must be a Lego thing?

[EdSolo]

There are a lot of resellers out there.  I unload a bunch of my Hasbro stuff to one of them.  He was also interested in my Lego and SS stuff, but I didn't go down that road with him.  It all depends on what they offer you.  I just had a FB marketplace guy try to lowball me on one of my listing.  He wanted to pay $100 for a set that was fairly priced at $225.  I replied "you are offering less than half?" and he replied "bro, I do this for a living" and then proceeded to send me a listing for around $130 for an open set.  When I replied that mine was factory sealed and priced fairly, I didn't anything further.  You will get a bunch of this nonsense.  I sold a bunch of my carded figures with Star Cases.  I had one guy lowball me on a set.  I told him I could sell at a lower price without the Star Cases and he replied, "how am I supposed to resell them without the cases".  Many of the resellers feel entitled to get your stuff for cheap so they can make their own profit.  Told that guy just to send me his buyers names and I would sell direct to them.

As for FB marketplace, you need to give it time.  There is an ebb and flow.  I will go months without a sale, and then get a bunch in a two week period.

[Dave]

Well, I haven’t had any luck with the FB groups but I have sold a few things on eBay.

I have had two people now reach out to me trying to get me to sell them all my Legos outside of eBay. This seems shady to me and I know eBay frowns on it, so I have rebuffed these kinds of questions so far. Even though it would be nice to forego the 15% seller fees, I feel like this would be opening myself up to more risk as well.

I’ve never had this happen in many years of selling other stuff, so I guess it must be a Lego thing?

I've done this for expired auctions, and I've had people inquire about other unlisted stuff too if I've got a bunch of things listed.  I've sold a lot this way in the past when I was clearing out all my extra boxed vehicles.  As a seller its great - no eBay fees and the buyer can't use eBay to screw you. 

[EdSolo]

Ebay's default position is to screw the seller, regardless of how obvious a scam a buyer is running.  Paypal can be a bit better with protection.  As a seller, while this is a bit dishonest, if you can get someone to send money friends and family, then they have no recourse with Paypal.  That is an obvious red flag to any legitimate buyer.  Avoid anyone who asks for Zelle, it is the scammers payment of choice.  I have had countless inquiries that end up with "I'm busy but my brother/husband/cousin will pick it up.  Do you take Zelle?".  Meanwhile, the FB account they have stolen is from somewhere in Europe when my listing is clearly from the US.

Really FB marketplace isn't really any different than someone asking to purchase your ebay listing outside of ebay.  However, many times these people than they should get a 50% discount for "saving you the ebay fees".

[McMetal]

Thanks guys, great input again. Yeah, one of these guys is def a reseller, I checked out his Instagram account. The thing is, I don’t see any benefit to me from doing that. I price all my stuff based on the current market values, eBay takes 15% and shipping is usually around $10 to most places. So unless these dudes are willing to pay 90% of the market value, which I highly doubt, it just isn’t worth my while financially.

[Matt_Fury]

I think someone mentioned it before, but have you tried Bricklink?  I was on there a lot when my kids were into Lego.

[EdSolo]

That is a go to site for pricing.  I have bought a bunch of random replacement pieces from the site for reasonable prices.  The only thing is to try to get a pretty big list together to buy for pieces since even minimum USPS shipping is over $5.  You can buy a replacement piece for pennies, but then have to pay shipping.  I haven't tried selling anything through bricklink.  When I was pricing items based on past email sales, I would get several people that would state the price on bricklink is x, so that is what I use now to price my sets.  Ebay and FB probably have a much wider audience, but bricklink might not be a bad second option.  I'm not sure what it takes to set up a shop, or if they take a cut like ebay, but you may want to check them out.

If you aren't in any particular rush besides having a bunch of stuff taking up space in your house, I would play the long game.  We do have high inflation at this point, so it may not be the best time to sell.  I'm getting random hits on my stuff, but have only made two or three sales in the past few months.  Just hang in there, and you can get the value out of it.

[Rob]

about 5 or 6 years ago my wife was teaching out of state and I had lots of free time... I spent a bunch of it printing off parts lists for old space and pirate and castle sets that I never had but wanted.  Then used most of my extra parts to get close and ordered all the missing pieces off of Bricklink.  It was a ton of fun and I love that site.

Now all of those sets are in bags in big bins in the closet because I can't also use the guest bedroom as a second collection space.