Selling your Gear: What strategy and methods do you use?
I’m by no means new to selling my old cameras I’ve sold circa 20 cameras / lenses.
However, I’m curious how others go about selling their items I’m not thinking about it as a business (profit making). More as a method of reusing funds from gear that’s not being used.
I assume most people use eBay:
- What pricing method do you use? E.g. try to price it in line with the highest 20% of sold prices based on the same condition?
- Time frame: how long are you willing to wait for it to sell.
- Search term optimization. How do you try to get your listings to stand out? I’ve got a few items up that have been on sale for a while with nice photos and are priced well but aren’t selling.
It depends.
If I just want to sell gear and to avoid any hassle, I ask MPB to make me an offer, usually it's roughly 2/3 of their selling price (including VAT).
If I have gear which might be interesting for people I know, then I have a look at the selling prices at MPB and sold items at ebay. My offers are between the purchase price and the selling price at MPB and a bit below the ebay prices and I take the items back within 14 days. So my acquaintances get a better price from a (hopefully 😉 ) trustworthy source, I know the buyers and get a bit more money than from MPB or ebay.
Haven't sold stuff on ebay for years now. At the time I sold it, I didn't have a minimum price, but put in good photographs and declared my items correctly. (*)
Sunday evening seems to be a good time to put stuff on ebay and have the usual week as the time frame.
E.
(*) The ebay charging scheme annoys me a lot. Not only the continuously growing bit of the selling price, but they also count in the shipping costs. If you accept Paypal, the take the whole sum as base and charge. In the end you have to pay ebay charges for the sold item, ebay charges for the shipping costs, Paypal charges for the sold item, Paypal charges for ebay charges for the sold item, Paypal charges for shipping costs and Paypal charges for ebay charges for the shipping cost. If I have a next life as a greedy being, I'll found a payment company.</rant>
Details details details. I buy and sell old cameras to help pay rent (I'm in grad school!). Typically I find that what makes people hold off from buying is a lack of information - if there are flaws, document them closely. Perform basic tests so you can reassure buyers of operation in your ad (I sell a lot of film cameras - I always test the light meter and shutter speeds against my digital camera). Ideally, add a photo taken with the camera/lens you're selling (helps a lot with film cameras especially). A lot of people are still iffy about buying used gear online as they're worried about buying something crap or getting scammed, even with the solid buyer protection on sites like eBay and Mercari. If I buy a camera now and it comes with a flaw that wasn't mentioned, I always send it back. Had this recently with a guy selling a Fuji X-T1 who failed to mention that the grip was sloughing away from the body and again with a woman selling a Olympus E-M10 ii who failed to notice that the EVF was broken (she only ever shot it using the screen!). Obviously this is no skin off my back, but it costs the seller return postage money. Don't be like these sellers!
In terms of sale time, it depends on the item. I snap up Pentax K1000s and Canon AE1s whenever I see them for under $60 as I can reliably sell them for $140+ on eBay within 24 hours. On the other hand, a less popular/iconic item might sit up for a couple of weeks - I had this recently with a Pentax D FA 100mm f2.8 WR, a nice but apparently unpopular lens (it finally old for $240) and a Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 in K mount, another great lens that took almost 3 weeks to sell (it finally went on Friday for $140). It took me over a month to sell the #1-voted-Pentax-lens-of-all-time, the Pentax FA 77mm f1.8 Limited, for $400. I'd expect more popular (Canon, Nikon, Fuji, mirrorless Sony etc.) and less expensive systems/lenses to move much more quickly.
I price competitively but still with an eye to profit. With the K1000 example, auctions frequently end at the $50-60ish mark (especially "untested" K1000s with no info) while professional businesses sell them for $200+. I almost always price them with a kit lens for $140. They sell very fast.
Sorry for the wall of text - hope that was helpful.
Quote from FradBoob on October 15, 2022, 10:06 pmDetails details details. I buy and sell old cameras to help pay rent (I'm in grad school!). Typically I find that what makes people hold off from buying is a lack of information - if there are flaws, document them closely. Perform basic tests so you can reassure buyers of operation in your ad (I sell a lot of film cameras - I always test the light meter and shutter speeds against my digital camera). Ideally, add a photo taken with the camera/lens you're selling (helps a lot with film cameras especially). A lot of people are still iffy about buying used gear online as they're worried about buying something crap or getting scammed, even with the solid buyer protection on sites like eBay and Mercari. If I buy a camera now and it comes with a flaw that wasn't mentioned, I always send it back. Had this recently with a guy selling a Fuji X-T1 who failed to mention that the grip was sloughing away from the body and again with a woman selling a Olympus E-M10 ii who failed to notice that the EVF was broken (she only ever shot it using the screen!). Obviously this is no skin off my back, but it costs the seller return postage money. Don't be like these sellers!
In terms of sale time, it depends on the item. I snap up Pentax K1000s and Canon AE1s whenever I see them for under $60 as I can reliably sell them for $140+ on eBay within 24 hours. On the other hand, a less popular/iconic item might sit up for a couple of weeks - I had this recently with a Pentax D FA 100mm f2.8 WR, a nice but apparently unpopular lens (it finally old for $240) and a Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 in K mount, another great lens that took almost 3 weeks to sell (it finally went on Friday for $140). It took me over a month to sell the #1-voted-Pentax-lens-of-all-time, the Pentax FA 77mm f1.8 Limited, for $400. I'd expect more popular (Canon, Nikon, Fuji, mirrorless Sony etc.) and less expensive systems/lenses to move much more quickly.
I price competitively but still with an eye to profit. With the K1000 example, auctions frequently end at the $50-60ish mark (especially "untested" K1000s with no info) while professional businesses sell them for $200+. I almost always price them with a kit lens for $140. They sell very fast.
Sorry for the wall of text - hope that was helpful.
This is really solid advice, and along the lines of what I used to do a lot to pay for my camera gear. I bought maybe $500 worth of camera gear years ago, and everything else came from buying and selling for profit. It works! 😀 Nowadays, I have enough gear to cycle through and YT bringing in cash so I don't buy and sell for profit often any more. I did the other month just for fun, because I used to enjoy it so much. That was my video about the ebay lot I bought. I've sold only a few of those cameras and already got back $200+.
For selling on eBay, I do price a little below the cheapest listing that matches my condition. This is because I like to sell quickly. Sometimes I'll throw in extra items that don't add a lot of actual value, but often make buyers more willing to choose your listing over another. Extra filters, bags, etc. Just related stuff I have laying around.
Taking good pictures and a lot of pictures help. Long descriptions with extra keywords for the items helps with search terms. For the title I just try to hit what people are searching for on that item. Then make sure it's in the correct category and tags that eBay is making a bigger and bigger deal about nowadays. Getting one of these off accidentally can result in no one finding your otherwise accurate listing - I've had it happen before!
I haven't ever sold to UsedPhotoPro, KEH or MPB before, but the more and more I get into collecting the gear, the more tempted I am. It's a lot of work to list stuff, and sometimes I wonder if that extra time might be worth the money I lost. Not just with listing the items, but always the chance to have to relist because someone doesn't pay, returns because someone didn't read the listing about which lens mount it was (grrr, happened to me recently :D). But so far I still just sell on eBay, forums, or in person.
Basically it's been covered....but honesty is my biggest selling point. I want to document any flaws with the equipment and take really good photos and have a description with keywords that make the algorithm favor your listing. I generally price 15-20% below eBay sell prices, if I really want to move any gear, or I'll trade into MPB, they've done me very solid on trades so far.
I do worry sometimes I over describe items. E.g. pointing out minor flaws such as dust in view finder of a DSLR, dust in lenses etc.
