Selling your old RPG books on Ebay/Amazon/etc.

[Deleted]

Hi all,

Question: What are your experiences with selling your loot via the internet?

- Myself, I plan to do a first "virgin sale" around Christmas time. Basically, everything that I have not used in the last ten years is getting the axe; a lot of d20, some Earthdawn, some of those impulsive purchases that I never really followed upon. Like, I love you, Kingdoms of Kalamar, but it's just not working out.

Now, since it's going to be the first (and perhaps the only time) that I'll be doing this, my questions are pretty global? How should I handle this? I am talking about around 100+ books and booklets, mostly in good size. I've already learned that, since I pay my taxes in Germany, I can only earn around 400 € in profits per YEAR before I have to pay income tax on earnings through ebay. (Which is a f**king joke, BTW.) So, I am thinking of either selling the material to a professional ebay vendor, or of another, similar option.

So, if you have any experience in the field, let me know! - BTW, this is not any sort of backdoor promo for the sale; since about 85% of our regular users here (you!) are state-based, I figure you will find better conditions to buy the items I could possibly offer you from a more closely-located seller.

Thanks a lot,

Rafe

[Finarvyn]

I've never done e-bay as a seller but I've done it as a buyer. The reasons why I avoided selling that way were mostly about having to go through the bother of shipping stuff -- packaging it up safe and taking it to a post office.

My preferred way to get rid of my gaming stuff is to go through Noble Knight, which is close to me and far from you. I set up an appointment with their buyer and just load up the car and go there. They appraise on the spot and offer cash or credit (credit being roughly twice as much as cash). I always pick credit because that gives me the ability to shop online and they send me stuff for "free" as long as my credit holds out. (Even shipping cost comes out of my credit.) Maybe there is some similar store in your area?

[geoffrey]

I have had more enjoyable experiences selling my stuff to people via dragonsfoot and via these boards. What doesn't sell that way, I then put on ebay.

Ebay is OK though. I have no complaints or issues.

[hamurai]

Maybe you can sell some of your loot directly to German users here O:)

If it's going to be over the 400 € you indeed might want to consider selling it through some other channel. Or have family members sell some of it separately?

[swordofkas]

I do a good amount of selling on Ebay and I have not had any issues with that. I also have bought items and sold items on this facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/RPGsalestrades/

I only buy and sell through paypal so that way I have protection against scammers. I also always use insurance and tracking for my packages (USPS media mail has free tracking).

[bat]

I have bought things from the rpg group that swordofkas has posted above with no difficulties. I have sold on eBay and rpg.net with no problems. The only suggestion I have with rpg.net is to stay in the Bazaar of the Bizarre and don't go wandering around that place too much.

[artikid]

I've sold a lot of stuff via eBay, it worked OK.
BTW if you have any Birthright stuff I might be interested.

[Deleted]

Hey, guys! Thank you very much!

I have not yet decided how to manage this; I guess, in the end, it will be a mix of all options mentioned: I might sell some stuff by myself, some other via a professional vendor, and also chat a while with some of the local gamestore owners. (Not NK, but perhaps the closest thing I'll get to that mythic shop. I even ordered there... Once. )

As to the way I am parting with my older stuff, I'll be happy to keep you informed. (Though, again, be warned, I wouldn't think that most of the stuff is of interest to most people here, judging from our shared tastes.)

Basically, outside of keeping a few mementos (the FFC, for example), I am parting with all the games/gaming books that I am not looking to run myself, or with stuff that I don't think I'll return to, any more. It's been a bit of a sour choice, but at the same time, it's interesting to structure my gaming efforts, this way. Like, as I wrote in recent campaign journal thread, I know more or less where I want to go, game-wise, and I don't want to carry along too many items that ultimately only serve as baggage. I love RPGs, I love books, but especially in the age of PDFs, I try to be as practical as possible. - Like, say, my Ravenloft d20 books; good material, but I will probably not run that one, ever again. So, one or two books will serve me well in the future in stead of twenty-two.

[grodog]

If you post a list of titles, Rafe, we can vette them for you and help to ID any that might be particularly-valuable.

You can also sell stuff via the various RPG marketplaces on Facebook, without the eBay fees (assuming that you'll still be accepting Paypal, which is probably a good idea in general unless you already know the buyers).

If you sell to NK, you'll net 25% or less of the value on your books---Aaron (the owner) is a good guy but he basically follows the used bookstore model when buying. If you're providing the books to him in trade, then you'll do a little better. OTOH, if you're just trying to unload the books all at once, Aaron's pretty easy to deal with and reliable, so you'll be in good hands, you just won't make as much money if you sell them yourself.

Also: if you're trying to minimize your potential taxes, you might split the books up into two groups, some of which you sell in December, some in January.

Allan.

[barrataria]

Oct 25, 2017 21:14:24 GMT -6 grodog said:

If you sell to NK, you'll net 25% or less of the value on your books---Aaron (the owner) is a good guy but he basically follows the used bookstore model when buying.

Last year or so I shopped a pile of stuff to them including my copy of Cairn of the Skeleton King... they offered me way less than half what that was worth for the whole lot, and the other stuff was not worthless. It was such a silly offer I just deleted it, then a few days later I got a smarmy "hey, why didn't you make a counteroffer?" message. So I told them why. I won't bother trying again.

I then sold that stuff on ebay, and ended up with two failed sales, one buyer who thought she got to decide how to ship and another that just flat out bailed. I guess ebay's still the best choice, as I don't want to sell things piecemeal, but I think I might try forums first next time.

Oh, and Rafael... our tax rule is "all income from whatever source derived", so be glad you get to keep 400E first

[ffilz]

I've done the following so far:

Sent an e-mail to the local gaming lists and sold some stuff fire sale ($50-$100 for entire RPG lines)
Part of that was a gaming garage sale (one or maybe two people showed up, looked at what I had and bought some stuff)
Packed books in the back of my car and met a gamer friend for lunch, he looked through and bought a box full
Put stuff up for sale here and other boards which thus involved shipping, but I'd already been selling LEGO online
Brought stuff to Powells to trade for credit (stupidly the first time I did this, I took cash...) - my gaming books have bought a lot of books for the wife and kids...
Brought stuff to an FLGS and sold a bunch (for cash, I think all they did at the time)

I really wish there was a gaming equivalent of bricklink.com (the premiere online LEGO market, seriously if you have any interest in LEGO and have never been there, check it out...)

I still have several milk crates of stuff to thin out...

I haven't worried about taxes, well, I think for a few items I sold at collector prices I did roll them into my taxes, most of the stuff I've sold has been for about or less than original MSRP.

Frank

[Deleted]

Thanks again, guys! I'll keep you posted about my progress.

I think, in the end, it will boil down to me chosing the least time-consuming way, and selling everything through a local ebay store. To give you an idea of the bigger picture, I am also selling a lot of my parents' more valuable books and items. (They passed away between '14 and '16, and you might perhaps remember me commenting how unexpectedly difficult dissolving their household proved to be.) So, I am thinking of striking some sort of overall deal, for entirety of the items. IF there are some items that warrant closer attention, or that have any value for collectors, I'll save those, of course, to sell them a bit later, on my own. - To give you an idea why I am breaking things down to the "easy" choice, we're still talking about around 20 large boxes of items, here. My RPG collection, plus a few more items are about one-and-a-half box of things.

...Luckily for you, giving things to a store like this also means that I'll have to write an inventory. As soon as I am done, I'll be happy to post it here.

For our happy lot here, I think the most (and likely, only) point of interest might be whether I decide to get rid of my Wilderlands d20 stuff, as well. - I still love that setting, but, like with most things Blackmoor, these days, I so strongly associate it with the BM-community's decade-long online game endeavor that I seriously doubt I will ever go there again. Remember it fondly? - Sure. Join as a player, occasionally? - Sure. But go back and do the kind of immersive work that you have to, as a DM? - I am pretty sure I won't.

This, for better or worse, is also the basic process I am applying for the whole selection process about what to keep, and what to give away. Oddly, I find that my relation to many gaming books is closer than to many novels; you spend just so much time over them, especially as a youngster. Now, I sat down for one or two bittersweet evenings, and looked through most of the stuff in my collection: Basically, for the last ten-or-so games, I've been specializing on one particular style of gaming, one that is perhaps currently best embodied in the DCC RPG. That's the style of game I like, and that's what I am going to run in the future; it isn't that I wouldn't appreciate the rest of my games - but I doubt there will be room for it in the next few years to come. Like, in the spirit of effectiveness, I am keeping two or three complete or quasi-complete collections: For example, I can run Castle Ravenloft blindfolded, in pretty much any installment or in any edition; so, I keep that one. But, say, "Castles Forlorn", that I've read once, ten years ago? - I can't really justify throwing out Ravenloft in favor of this one. The same goes for genre differences: I have one or two OSR clone-games that I run; I don't need six or seven. Or, what, that sci-fi RPG that we ran ten years ago, for one weekend only.

[hamurai]

You get a "like" for:
- Sympathy, as I can imagine how hard some choices are. I'm currently checking with what I can part, too.
- DCC - one of my absolute favourite RPG's ever.
- Ravenloft - I love it.

That said, good luck with the sorting and listing and whatnot

[Deleted]

Thanks, man! - Actually, the choices seem more "complicated" than really "hard", I'd say. Mostly, I feel like I am snapping out of the circle of consumerism that our hobby is promoting: "You want to stay in the conversation, you got to consume". Wizards and Paizo, they try very hard to sell a subscription-based, aka regular-consumption-based blueprint to partake in the hobby. - While I am happy to say this has left me mostly unfazed, it's still part of the culture of our hobby that we accept. Like, were my games made better by me owning about 30 books that I never even opened, or only opened once?

What I see about this, more than anything, though, is how much of a fixture gaming has become in my life; and that's a good thing. Like, it's rare to find a hobby that is sociable, yet purely, at the end of the day, about self-fulfillment. Gaming is, the way I've done it. I believe, that is. And so, I will go on with it.

[hamurai]

Well said!
I agree, many games these days promote the "more is better" approach, but in the end, you hardly need the material. I made that mistake back in the 90s when we played the World of Darkness games, but I've gotten rid of most of the books by now, apart from some "core" books. Right now I only have two games/systems with more than 3 books which I'm keeping, that is D&D (because I'm still in two active groups as DM and player) and Cypher System (mainly because I backed a Kickstarter a while ago and because we often use the diverse books for one-shots in between of our campaign games).
Most of my collection is core rule books for many different games which I have or had a thing for and which I use as inspiration for house rules and setting ideas. And some I'd love to play but miss the group

[xerxez]

Rafael, if you have a Facebook page and can get the attention of the admin and get him to add you as a member, there is a group I have been a member of for a couple years called RPG Auctions. Usually it is closed and the only way to get in is have a member who has you as a FB friend add you.

You can do straight sales posts but auctioning is the main way, you can set an opening bid or a buyout price though niether is required. All done through PayPal. I have yet to sell there but I have made several purchases there. I should also say I have seen the most amazing relics up for auction, including, not infrequently, books previously owned by original TSR employees.

I love the page but it gets me in some trouble once in while with my lovely wife...just this week I am waiting for a copy of The Compleat Spellcaster by Michael Sechi(Bard Games) and hoping it arrives while I'm home alone during my lunch hour😅