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I have a few armies and some miniatures I´d like to sell. Now the most obvious place is eBay. I went and registered there and found out that ( apparently? ) PayPal will hold on to your money until you have estabilished yourself as a reliable seller or something similiar. Now the idea of using PayPal, especially if it holds on to my money AFTER I have already sent the miniatures out evokes feelings of distrust.

Is there a place/way to sell my miniatures somewhere else without having my payment withheld from me, or is there a way to make eBay not do such a thing?

I´ve never scammed anyone in my life, and only sold nationally before. But now I want to get rid of my stuff faster, and that calls for an EU-wide/global market.

There's plenty of places to sell your minis; the Swap Shop here and on Bartertown being two such places. However, you will struggle to find any method that doesn't involve PayPal as it is more or less the de facto standard for trading with someone you don't know due to the buyer (and some seller) protections.

Didn't know about the restriction on withdrawing money - maybe that is something new they have introduced?

If I use the Swapshop of Dakkadakka and PayPal ( I assume this way PayPal won´t hold onto my payment, as it seems to be an eBay thing ) am I in some kind of risk of being scammed? Any signs to watch out for while being the seller?

When selling nationally, it´s usually "receive payment - send bought miniatures to buyer" but does it also work that way here? Just trying to get accustomed to things.

 RunicFIN wrote:
If I use the Swapshop of Dakkadakka and PayPal ( I assume this way PayPal won´t hold onto my payment, as it seems to be an eBay thing ) am I in some kind of risk of being scammed? Any signs to watch out for while being the seller?

When selling nationally, it´s usually "receive payment - send bought miniatures to buyer" but does it also work that way here? Just trying to get accustomed to things.

Ebay and PayPal are one and the same thing these days - PayPal are owned by Ebay. They may impose the same restrictions on any funds that enter your PayPal account, I don't know. Like I said, I haven't heard of it; it might be Ebay policy or it might be a global PayPal thing.

There are plenty of things to watch out for when trading online. Some good pointers in the sticky thread here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/247459.page#1118410

The key thing to note is that trading via the Swap Shop is entirely at your own risk so if you feel just the slightest bit uncomfortable trading with someone - then don't do it. If you are selling stuff, then the best way to protect yourself is send everything via tracked or recorded delivery with proof of delivery. That is usually enough for PayPal to accept that the item was posted and delivered to the recipient.

Allright. Well, I have a PayPal account. Do I need to do anything spesific to it before I start selling my miniatures?

Not as far as I know. If you have a PayPal account registered and working, then you are free to send and receive money in the standard way.

What about a wargame show? They often have a bring and buy table. It removes all of the PayPal hassle.

That´s a good idea, except that Finland in itself kinda eliminates it. There are only a few Wargame shows here per year, and the mentality here is that people don´t buy stuff while visiting them - infact I´m not sure they even have bartering tables.

Such is the price of living in a country with less population than one big city in the US does, haha.

Just out of curiosity (I can only really say that Ebay sucks), what are you trying to sell?

look on facebook also. Plenty of groups on there

If dealing here on the Swap Shop OR on Bartertown, try to only deal with "established traders" .. someone who has invested time and effort into a reputation.

Here on Dakka, someone with maybe 10+ good trade mentions.. or on Bartertown with a rep of 40+..

On Bartertown, though, you may be expected to do your side of things first.. a common convention for new members to earn trust. IF you go that route, PLEASE try to only deal with members with a rating of 100+.. they are generally ACE about honoring a transatlantic deal.. OR might be willing to do a partial payment to help you raise the funds for shipping.

Definitely make sure for either place you have good photos, and a fairly detailed list of what you have.

Also DO NOT expect to get close to retail, when even NEW GW products can be found for 80% or lower from online retailers.. used, assembled models tend to go for 50-50% retail, and painted can go for less, unless you have a STUNNINGLY painted intact army..

-P

Yes, there's a very good '40k Buy Sell Trade' Facebook group that has around 1000 members.

I'd also echo that, yes, you should be aiming for about 50% retail. Only really amazing paint jobs add any value to this - most people will want to repaint to match their own army, so buying painted models is a disadvantage for them as they'll have to strip them.

Generally, you receive payment, and then you send your stuff. Bad sellers are the reason for any paypal restrictions, and eBay usually side with the buyers, because to do otherwise would give them a really bad public rep.

As a seller, the biggest issue you have to watch out for is selling stuff, and then the buyer saying they never received it. eBay/Paypal get so many of these that they always side with the buyer by default. The best way to avoid this is always send by trakced/recorded mail - this way even if it happens, you can claim the cost back from the Post Office.

Having said that, I've sold hundreds of hobby things on eBay and it's only happened to me once!

To second ArbitorIan's comment, the only times I have sent a parcel and it happened to "go missing", is when it wasn't sent by recorded delivery.

In the UK at any rate if you get a certificate of posting you can claim up to about £25 compensation for a missing parcel even without paying for recorded delivery or insurance.

For Ebay all you do is buy a bunch of low price items and sell a few items. Linking your paypal to your bank account and becoming verified helps. When I started I think I had to do only 4 sales until they no longer kept my money. I can easily transfer the money from my paypal to my bank and I have a paypal debit so I can withdraw from a ATM if I wanted.

As long as you are actively selling regularly there aren't any issues. I stopped selling for about 6-8 months and they held my first sale until it was received.

For miniatures it isn't a big deal. For me because I was selling WoW Loot Cards it was a larger deal. I was always afraid of someone getting their cards, redeeming the loot code and then saying they didn't receive the item. With miniatures there is a bit more tracking and an real physical product along with it.

As long as you are clear in you descriptions on what you are selling. Contact the buyer quickly through Ebay (keep the messages in ebay for tracking), verify the address they are sending through the messenger. Then send and track (USPS flat rate offers free tracking) then there are rarely issues. Avoid sales from people who have no rating, negative ratings or want you to call them to go over details. Do everything through email through ebay so there is tracking.

Having started a previous thread about selling on eBay, it seems that your problems will mostly come from international buyers. Europeans seem to have their worst stories from American/Canadian buyers and Americans have their horror stories mostly due to Europeans. I'm not sure why that is other than a guess that cheats think it'll be harder for a foreigner to pursue a claim against them.

Out of curiosity what are you trying to sell? Also, I echo the eBay sentiments. It may seem rough at first, but get one or two sales and your money will come in. Also, verifying your banking account by linking it will speed it up, and including tracking will usually cut the wait time on your money being freed by half.

I'll disagree with Ian. You should AIM for as much as you can get, but expect to have to take a hit on value for used, painted, etc models.

As a Bartertown Admin, I'm biased... but I prefer trades on BTown to anywhere else. The entire site (as opposed to one forum) is geared around trading, buying and seling gaming stuff. Every member of staff (as opposed to a few) are established traders with good reputations who are knowledgeable on trading and safely doing so. Also, the TRADE audience there is larger than any normal gaming website that also happens to have a trade forum.

The only other site I trade on is Dakka. I trust their SwapShop Mods, who are dilligent and ethical (to say the least!).

If you want to stay closer to home, there's also bartertownuk.com. It's a "sister site" of Bartertown. We allow them to use the name, logo, etc. but, in all other respects, they're separately and independently run. The site leans towards European traders heavily.

Good luck with your trading/selling.

Eric

I definitely think that Bartertown is a good place to go. In part because they work hard to weed out anyone doing scams. You can also check the history of your buyer.

I'd recommend checking their history twice- use their user name and their real name. That way, you'll know if they changed user names or had two accounts (which is suspicious).

Paypal is a very good service- they try to make sure that everyone is happy. They are also worried about scammers, and try to keep things on the up and up.


One note- you won't need a business account for Paypal unless you plan to regularly take a lot of money in through it regularly. Non-business accounts get services for free, but have a throttle on how much money they can transfer out each month (it's fairly high, but not high enough if you want to run a business).

Attaching credit cards and bank accounts to your Paypal account is a good idea (it helps Paypal to trust you, which helps you get paid).

To be honest, I cannot speak high enough of paypal and ebay in regard to helping me with trouble makers and problems, several times they have been very helpful, paypal managed to get me money back from total wargamer as well on one occaision.
From my my experience as long as you are honest and do everything by the book, paypal and ebay provide a very good, but somewhat expensive service.