Are Transformers Collections Harder to sell

[CKWG]

I find that for 2012 top half of the year , my sales were smooth sailing and there was a lot of interest and things were moving fast. Then the 2nd half of the year, things start to slow down and there is much fewer interest in buying my stuff.

The stuff I sold on Ebay went on that trend as well with prices dropping for similar items as 2012 went along.

I also notice that more ppl are selling nowadays and less ppl have a want list or ppl have a much smaller want list than before.

[Msol]

Do people ever really make money on these things before they're at least 20 years old? I mean, when trying to make a profit it's because you're selling to people who were too young or not yet born to buy it when it was available.

I mean if you're selling a bunch of Energon figures... well I bought all the Energon figures I'd ever wanted at the time. G1s still make money because I was too young to get any more than a few. Those are pricey now 'cause the supply is so low.

Basically, anything new I own -- I'm just gonna sit on it for another 15 years, then sell. Maybe one day some kid'll have nostalgia for TF Prime figures.

[mcmus]

Originally Posted by chovner

Organize your thread into Series with the series name as a bold underlined header... Remove all the NSF stuff, because it doesn't make sense putting stuff not for sale listed in a for sale thread... Re work the thread or start a new one where everything is listing in the first post as opposed to having people looking through multiple pages to see all your stuff for sale.
All the above helps motivate buyers to take a better look at your stuff for sale.
Regardless of what I said, it is harder to sell stuff this past year, in previous years it's been way easier for me to offload stuff. Bayverse stuff seems to have really taken away from buyer's interest, along with an avalanche of awesome expensive 3rd party stuff people save up for to splurge on (I'm currently more interested in all 3rd party stuff than the vast majority of HasTak stuff).

Totally in agreement.
Your sale thread is very difficult to read. It will definitely help if you organize by Series/Line and by class too.

[Hhai]

One good way to sell less sought after figures (ex: movie figures, animated, prime RID) is to target parents in kijiji ads. My ads say : "If you are a parent buying for your child I can counsel you on the best figures appropriate for his age". I had many parents call me and ask me many questions about the transformers their kids were asking for. "what does deluxe mean?", "is it durable?", "can my 5 yr old transform it without help?". Some of them bought 50$+ of stuff from me.

[Alexander Quinn]

I don't want to sound harsh, but here's my 2 cents:

Your thread on here is a disaster. I spent about three minutes looking at it and got annoyed trying to figure out what you were doing and what you were selling. Why do you even have things listed that aren't for sale?? If they aren't for sale, don't list them in a sales thread. All is does is make your wall of text bigger, and annoy a potential buyer if they see something they're looking for and then see it listed as a big ol' raspberry.

Second observation, which has been stated a few times I see, is that your prices are kind of skyward. Some are very reasonable, but they tend to disappear next to the higher prices, like $15 for a random Cybertron scout. Why so much? Is it in package? I know you have pictures posted, but by the time I waded through the wall of text to the random picture postings, I had already had enough. As a shopper, that's the point I would have easily moved on to the next thread.

Organize. Try the suggestions from the above posters. Things might work out. I've had a thread on here and on Kijiji for a couple of years now. I update it when it needs updating, change prices around, add new pictures. Nothing is "flying off the shelves", but it moves at a decent pace to stick some extra money in my pocket for more collecting goodness.

Whatever you decide to do, good luck.

[Robimus]

Movie stuff sells almost exclusively to kids, so getting top dollar for those will be tricky.

[Knockout]

I sell alot of new stuff, left over from cases I get. I sit on it for weeks before actually getting a bite. Between my Monster High and Transformers sales, I'd say TF's are harder to sell.

[dbao123]

Originally Posted by Alexander Quinn

If they aren't for sale, don't list them in a sales thread.

i totally agree. i inquired about a nfs item at the time i didn't know what it stood for. he said nfs means nfs. your list is too long and its hard to read. try organizing your thread better and take out what you don't want to sell. you can't expect people to not inquire about items if you put on your sale thread. try using colours to separate your items into different categories. good luck

[Knockout]

Originally Posted by Akroyer

I'm still downsizing. But I don't plan to update my sales until the spring sometime.

Re-organize it, take new pictures. Re-check all the prices that have changed etc..

Biggest problem I found when selling was Canada Post. Things cost a lot more to ship than people think. I had more than a few hits on $10 to $25 dollar items that need $15 to ship and it falls through. I hate to say well, buy more that's good for me. But generally you can't just buy one or two smaller items. It's not worth the shipping up here.

I want to get it all onto Shelflife, but I dont know when I will have the time to get it done. But it should help a lot with their matching system.

THIS SO MUCH THIS! Honestly, people think it's so cheap to ship. And what's worse, when you ship to the states from Canada. The states seem to think because it's such and such within their country it's like that everywhere. I've ran into more then I would make a sale because the shipping scares them away. Like geeze, I'm sorry and all, but I don't make the shipping prices.

[Mega_Zarak]

What also happens is that buyers want to pay US retail prices, they don't know, or don't care if we pay more here in Canada. Here in Canada, leaders are usually 59.99$+ taxes, and voyagers 29.99$ + taxes. In the USA leaders are around 40-45$ and vogagers around 20$. Therefore you're almost 100% sure you're going to loose money unless you have something in high demand.

Regarding g1 stuff: Contrary to popular belief, I think reissues and Ko's did really hurt the market if you're selling. Stuff that hasn't been reissued like Trypticon, Scorponok, headmasters, etc, are in higher demand and the prices are going up to the roof. I remember 2-3 years ago I sold my headmasters for around 50-60 each, now the headmasters are beeing sold for around 100$.G1 cars have been reissued so many times that they don't sell that well anymore. A good exemple of original g1 lossing it's value is Predaking, now you can get him for around 150$, before the reissue it used to sell for 250$-300$. It's a good thing for collectors if you're buying, but it's not good if you're a collector trying to sell your collection. If you got your stuff before it had been reissued and therefore paid the market price at that time, it really hurts more.