Follow-up: Selling used photographic equipment

After posting here of “extra” used camera equipment I was planning to sell and not getting any reasonable offers I’ve proceeded to sell it on-line.  I thought I’d share a little information from that process.

First, you’ll see a number of the major online companies/stores which are in the business of selling cameras and electronic equipment, new and used, offering to buy used equipment.  This seemed to be a easiest process. They give you a quote, you ship the equipment to them, they confirmed the condition and firm up the quote and then you agree to it.  They’ll then give you either an in-store credit (they love to do this) or send you the money.

So, I got a couple of quotes from the major ones which to me seemed a little low even considering their need to make a profit. However, at that point in time I wasn’t sure if my projected value for this used equipment was realistic or not.  I didn’t try to negotiate a better price but in fairness they may have adjusted their quote slightly if I’d told them what the others were offering — I didn’t.

I did decide to take my chances with eBay.  To make it easier creating professional looking ads I purchased “GarageSell Basic” for Mac for $24.99.  I could have created the ads on the eBay web site but I never regretted this purchase — time & stress saver.

I’ve been selling two items at a time, running the ads for 7 days, beginning on Sunday nights between 8-9pm so they will finish on the next Sunday night during that same time frame. This is recommended as the best time frame to run auctions on Ebay.  I’ve only been doing two items at a time to keep it very manageable for me. When two auctions end, I release the next two.

Some items I’ve started at $1 and others I’ve set a more realistic minimun starting bid  amount. They’ve all sold for what I consider acceptable amounts so I don’t know if one way has much advantage over the other.

With my last two items selling this week, I can compare what the six items already sold brought to what I was offered for these same items by the big on-line sites.  Even after subtracting individual shipping cost from the eBay sold items, I’m averaging 36% more for the items by selling them on eBay — lowest +17% and highest +62%.  None of these six items have sold for less.  Being these items are multi-hundred dollar items it’s a sizable difference in the bottom line.

The lesson here is, if you don’t mind spending just a little more time it’s worth it to sell camera equipment yourself, on eBay or another site.

I have the time these days. :-)