I see great prices for second-hand games on BGG, but somehow I never seem to get those people looking for my games. I have things listed on the GeekMarket and that’s pretty well all I bother with now.
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I don’t do shipping anymore because then I have to look for a box and go to a Packstation or post office. Just thinking about it already exhausts me. Though it limits the amount of buyers of course if they have to come to me. We will see how that goes with board games.
And you are totally right. It is not worth sending 10 messages back and forth for 20€.
I considered going to the Sozialkaufhaus and donate the games there but not all my games are a good fit for them.
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I have considered donating again but currently the collection despite its size is not yet a space issue.
At some point, I asked the local boardgame club if I could donate some games. I provided a list and said I was willing to give them any they wanted for free and they didn’t even bother answering.
The local charity Kaufhaus is probably not the right address.
And I not sure I want to support the local Kleinanzeigen resellers. I have met one of them twice. Once because I bought something from him (Thurn und Taxis I believe) and once because I made a game too cheap apparently.
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Oh wow yeah, I hate that. I mean, I get it, they are maybe scraping a living in these margins, but I wish there were a more reliable way to use such platforms to get what I have to people who would actually use it.
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I don’t sell a ton of things, but when I do it’s at the twice-yearly board game convention in my city. All I need to do is take them along and slap a price on them along with my contact details. If they sell, they sell. If not I might lower the price if I’m keen to be rid of something, but failing anything else I just take them home, and bring them back again next time. People sometimes haggle, but it’s pretty low effort, and there’s no shipping involved.
The important thing is not to buy a greater volume of boxes than the sales have made space for in my bags :).
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I’m just gonna mention my biggest annoyance in all of boardgaming (apart from Kickstarter prices), which is… second-hand prices.
“I’ve had this copy of Lost Ruins of Arnak for 5 years and played it a bunch and it retails at £60 so I’m selling it for £59.”
NO! It’s a used, pre-owned product, it should be half price!
If I can go and buy new in the shops and save myself the postage, a second-hand copy shouldn’t be anywhere NEAR that price!
(Okay, rant over).
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In theory convention bring and buys would be a good way to get rid of games, but I haven’t bothered recently, because everyone uses the chaotic system: check in your game, stick a label on it, it goes on the table.
If you want to buy a game: you have to look through all the tables and hope you see something you like.
If you want to leave before the end of the convention and take back the things that haven’t sold, or you want to reduce a price in the hope of selling something: you have to look through all the tables and find your game.
And it’s always crowded so just looking through all the tables can take an hour or more.
When I run a convention bring and buy (nobody is stupid enough to let me do this) I’ll do it Argos style: there is a list of games for sale, on the convention web site and posted on paper at the actual location. If you fancy a game, you go up to the desk and they get it out (possibly several if there are multiple copies for sale, but they’re all in the same storage bin not scattered all over the room). You look at it and decide to buy one, or not. Anything you don’t buy goes back in that specific storage bin.
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Well Arnak is not exactly a collectable… it is in print. OOP is a different beast.
I tend to price the mostly unplayed games I sell well below what shops ask for it at that moment and games that have been played so much are usually keepers anyway.
For OOP things I try to gauge what the price could be and try to go as high as possible I admit.
There are ways to evaluate prices before putting games up for sale. It is also one of the most tedious tasks about selling games, setting a price that makes sense to both me and the potential buyer.
I don’t really have a local convention I go to (See above thing with the local boardgame club that organizes the one in town). But maybe I should go to the next one if only to try and sell my pile of games, I no longer want.
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My rule of thumb is that second hand but in good nick (no creases, wear marks, etc. on components, which is not only the condition of most games I sell but that of pretty much everything I’ve bought second-hand) should be about half current retail. I never get this.
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Oh, OOP is completely different. I’d be thrilled just to own it at whatever price I can get.
But totally standard games that are not even very new and were big sellers, and ebay doesn’t have a single person selling at less than 90% the retail price? Ridiculous.
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For games ~40€ and up, I agree.
The issues for me are with the smaller games. Since I usually have to factor in that the buyers will end up haggling about shipping, I am mostly at two thirds for everything below 40€. But then I have not sold anything in years… the continuously rising shipping prices are a real issue with private sales that are not “for pickup”.
In the past, I usually made a list of games with prices and stated that I will pay for shipping if people take games of at least value X. This has helped me make some big sales where both me and the buyers were happy.
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Yeah, in a perfect world it would go to a person who wants to play it and not just resell it for more…
I also have some things which are I believe out of print. Forbidden Stars which I bought used in 2017 for $60 (incl $20 shipping) but never played after getting excited thanks to the SUSD review. One of two times I bought something on BGG (the other one was Zombie ‘15 but that one was a bit meh after playing).
Looking at BGG and ebay it seems I could make a nice profit with it (if I find a seller).
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I always say that I don’t really want to make a profit - but if I give a game to a local charity shop, it’ll sit there for a couple of weeks and then they’ll throw it out. (Ditto books.)
Fortunately the nearby friends I game with every couple of weeks are among the regular contributors to BGG’s Charity Shop Finds thread, so I just offer anything I’m getting rid of and don’t want money for to them first. If they don’t want it, probably the charity shop won’t sell it either. If they do and they sell or trade it on, they can pass some cash to their charity of choice.
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I didn’t buy the game to make profit, it just happened that it probably is one of the games I will sell because I had it for over 8 years and it didn’t get played.
I always sell things for a good amount under market price because I want to get rid of it and not to wait months to find a potential buyer. I always thought of it as a win win situation.
I used to give away stuff for free online but that just opens a floodgate of spam (and bad communications). It feels like some price is needed to just weed out some bad actors. But the good thing with giving away free stuff is that I can just put it in front of our door and not even interact with the buyer after the first messages.
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The thing I missed out above: “I always say that I don’t really want to make a profit”, but ideally I want it to go to someone who actually wants it, rather than a reseller.
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Just sell it at market rate. Or just below it. Your buyers will be the ones who actually want the game, rather than treating it like a PS5 console to resell it right away. Then give away the money if you feel guilty about it.
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Would be very nice if anyone were willing to pay the market rate as shown by BGG’s recent transactions.
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I think I’ve sold over 100 board games on ebay over the years and found it fairly straightforward. It’s when I’ve tried to sell anything that isn’t boardgames that the timewasters emerge.
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I didn’t think of it before but I feel this belongs here too. Warhammer is a tabletop game after all. And I was really into it as a teen and bought a lot on eBay and even some new stuff back in the day.
Some weeks ago I took pictures of all my Warhammer Fantasy miniatures (I have a ton of Imperial and Dogs of War miniatures). It is not the first time I did this (the first time was 11 years ago), they are so many that it is a lot of work and this time I tried to be better organized about it and did it all over again.
I want to sell them but want to keep my time investment low at the same time. So no selling of every single item on Kleinanzeigen or ebay and shipping them. That sounds more than terrible.
It doesn’t help (at least in my opinion) that the miniatures are in very different states. Some are completely painted, some are partly painted, most of it is unpainted, some have a white base color. Some are missing their stands, small stuff needs to be glued like shields.
Also Warhammer Fantasy got discontinued and replaced by Age of Sigmar, so I don’t know how much interest exists for my stuff.
There are some shops which buy used Warhammer figures but I expect them to offer me not really a lot. 2 years ago I took the time and created an excel sheet and checked ebay for prices for everything I have and see what it adds up to. I know it is not a reliable thing to do because ebay prices can be moon prices but I needed some base line. So it was over 3000€ which would be more than lovely to get for all of it 
. On a more serious note I would be very happy with a third of that.
The next step in my plan is to send emails out to different shops to see what they offer me.
Does anyone have experience with selling tabletop miniatures?
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Yes, albeit in Canada.
There are a few stores that work by you pricing your own stuff and when it sells the store takes a small cut and gives you the rest (consession, maybe?).
There are almost no stores that will buy used minis.
Usually, your best bet is a local game group that has a Discord or Facebook page dedicated to the game you are selling, and failing that a local game convention that lets you sell through them.
Painted vs unpainted is almost never an issue. New in box is 50-65% retail, anything else is 25-33% retail. Rare minis (con exclusives, professionally painted, careful kitbashes, etc) are usually eBay prices.
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