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Sunday, July 15, 2018

A positive Facebook marketplace experience

Last week, I got the hunkering to sell a couple of duplicate cards. I have a big stack of Jeter duplicates and even triples, and figured I'd run an experiment with Facebook marketplace. This is the general buy/sell marketplace, not those cringe-worthy card groups.

My wife frequently uses it to sell old kids clothes and other household items. One time, she sold a clock for $20 that she originally paid $8 for. I think it was a clock from Homegoods too, not some rare antique. The woman who picked it up explained that she collected clocks and showed my wife photos of her house, all decked with clocks.

Back to the Jeters. I pulled a lot of 25, all pretty much common base cards versus anything fancy, and listed them for $15.

Here's what we're talking. Nothing fancy, but a few solid cards for any Jeter or Yankees collector.
After a couple of days, I was a little disappointed. I got three bites total and only about 40 views.

I expected a few inquiries, mostly from people asking me to come down on the price. I also expected a few kooky people. This is Facebook, after all.

One guy told me "nice lot, but these are very common cards." Ok. Not helpful. I responded that I wasn't your average poster who lists my collection of rubber-banded 1987 Topps for $150. I also said that around $.50 per Jeter is pretty fair. He never got back to me. Part of me thinks it might have been Napkin Doon pranking me.

After almost a week, I lowered the price from $15 to $13, and one of the guys who originally reached out messaged me said he'd take them.

We agreed to meet at the community center in my town because I'm not comfortable having a stranger drop by the house to buy something. My wife does the same. The community center is right next to the fire station as well, so feels pretty safe.

The buyer said he was coming from his son's little league game as well, so I put together another team bag full of random Yankees and gave them to the buyer at no charge. He later messaged me thanking me for the extras, saying that his son was psyched. That made me feel good. I know it's common for all of us to throw in extras, so this came as a pretty common courtesy for me. However, not something that most buyers might be used to. It's all about making someone's day!

The transaction ended up being pretty quick and easy, and it was nice to take in $13 cash and not worry about fees or going to the post office. I'll probably list another lot of dupes at some point soon, maybe find 100 or so and see what that can net me.

4 comments:

  1. Cringe Worthy is an accurate description of online Card groups. So annoying to be constantly low-balled and anytime you post a card your selling you have people asking to trade. It's like bro if I was taking trades I would of posted that. I have never tried with FB Marketplace to move Carolina Hurricanes cards but I may try now.

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  2. Seems like a transaction that went smooth.

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  3. I've got a buddy who sells and trades a lot of autographs on Facebook. Don't think I'd ever do it though... I'm still a closet collector to a lot of my friends.

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  4. I have only tried Facebook Marketplace once and had a shaky experience with it trying to by some old Durham Bulls bobbleheads. Maybe I will try it as a seller and see if things go any better.

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