Anybody sell records through the post?

I’ve given two big piles of 12” cardboard LP mailers to people in the past, but they keep piling up. I don’t know why, but I have noticed that it correlates with my bank account going down.

So if any of you sell records via the post and want a (very) big pile of used, but good condition mailers, let me know, as you are welcome to as many as you want. Free, of course, although there’s always the chance I’ll gain an LP out of it, if your label falls off, as my address is on the front of them all!

I live in the town centre, off Summer Lane, close to the hospital.

There’s a lot. A quite ridiculous amount really.

 

No worries, just give us a bell when you’re next in town

 

Ah, you’re obviously unaware of eBay’s stealth taxes! It’s free to list on EBay, but eBay now add a ‘buyer protection’ fee of 75p per item plus 4% of the final value fee for private sellers that the buyer has to pay. They also hold the money until the buyer has confirmed receipt of the item.

What this means in reality is that private sellers have to reduce the listing price for most items, to take the buyer protection fee into account. For example, when I sell something, and I only sell my own things I no longer want, I used to look at the prices others are selling the item for and undercut them. As business sellers generally have better deals on postage and can list lower than private sellers, it means I’m generally selling things quite cheaply anyway. However, now they add this buyer protection fee on top of your price, this would mean my price is no longer the lowest and my item would be unlikely to sell. So you have no option really except lowering your price to allow for the fee that eBay bang on top.

But, get this, the actual price it is listed at doesn’t show up in your list of items on sale in My eBay. That only shows the price you listed it at. So if you didn’t know they add this fee you would be none the wiser. So you have to either work it out yourself or do a search for your item and see the actual price there.

So, you’re now thinking “hang on, so it’s effectively the same as it was when you had to pay a final value fee, I.e. it isn’t free to list at all?” No, it’s worse than that!

You may recall I said that eBay also hold your money until the buyer confirms receipt. This means that if you just stick a stamp on something and stick it in the postbox, the buyer can just say they never received it and they get their money back from eBay. So really, you are being forced into paying extra postage for tracking, as that way eBay automatically process the payment once it has been confirmed as received. Ideally, eBay want you to use their delivery option through Evri, and that’s the default option. But if, like me, you don’t want your items breaking on the way, don’t use Evri. So the option then is Royal Mail’s Tracked 48. You can only purchase this from home though, so this relies on you having a printer. I used to just send small things second class and get a proof of postage. I guess I still could, but then you have the hassle of checking that things have arrived and you are also relying on the buyer sending confirmation to eBay that they have received it. It’s easier just to use Tracked 48, which is a little bit more expensive.

So, ‘free to list’ = same price to list + additional postage = dearer to list!!

 

I have more than enough to go around

 

And now’s the time to be buying collections, as the baby boomers shuffle off, leaving partners with cracking jazz, rock & roll and 60s/70s collections. If you’re buying to sell, however, sell quickly, as 80% of your market is disappearing with them. There aren’t many of us who are still buying pre-Beatles records, as evidenced by the prices coming down. Apart from 50s/60s jazz records, annoyingly. I used to think that if I hit the lottery I’d collect all the first press Blue Note LPs, but it would take one of those Euromillions mega jackpots to do that.