I have not done much trading/selling on here in the past couple of years but now I have too much stuff and no place to move it locally. I know the shipping rules changed a year or two ago when I was still visiting the site but I stopped visiting months ago. I figured before I jumped back into it I'd ask some questions to avoid headaches later.

What's the preferred method of shipping under the new rules and about how much does it cost on average?

Are personal payments still a thing or did Paypal crack down on that? If not, is it unreasonable to charge paypal fees?

Are Ebay prices still the standard around here? I imagine this hasn't changed even with past issues with the price guides. I wouldn't be shocked if people started gravitating to other prices now that there's a slew of price guides out there.

Personal (Gift) payments via PayPal still exist, but if you receive a lot you will get put on suspension from PayPal. I know a few large traders who are no longer able to accept gift payments because of this.

It's not rude to ask the buyer to split the fees with you, although I guess tacking 100% of them on to their bill could be (as it is a sellers tax, not buyers tax). In the past I have offered to split the fees up to a certain sale amount and from there I would just absorb everything myself.

Gift payments make for headaches when things go awry; especially for the buyer who may have been scammed, so I encourage people to use the system traditionally when I sell. I also really appreciate the service PayPal lets me use, and I don't mind giving them a cut of my transactions. People gripe and moan over fees, but without PayPal I wouldn't have the means necessary to make money on the side like I do. I think mostly it's the fees and nickel & dime features from eBay that gets out of hand. I lose 14% to eBay on everything I sell and with PayPal, it's either 5% and a nickel or 3% and a quarter.

Internationally things have gotten expensive and I never know what I'm going to pay at the post office. I take my best guess and am often surprised. PWE is really not an ideal way to ship, but its the only thing that lets me ship cheaply (~$2). If i use the same bubble mail I use in the US it often gets shipped as a package and runs about $6. neither of these methods provide tracking so you'll want to get an explicitly stated waiver of responsibility. If its expensive and you need tracking registered mail is going to run about $20 for something small.

Personal payments are still available on paypal in most countries, but not all. you can get this taken away if you abuse it. I abuse it, still going strong though. I do pass all paypal costs onto the buyer, it allows me to correctly determine what sort of discounts on lots I'm willing to accept when I have a certain amount I want to walk away with. I don't have to figure out what they're paying with beforehand and I'm up front with everything... hasn't seemed to be a problem yet.

I charge $2 for shipping in the US because it almost always costs $1.69 or $1.81 for slightly heavier packages. Toploader and envelope rounds out the remaining cost. Sometimes people really want to save that $1 and ask for PWE, that's fine too.

Internationally I charge $2 for PWE, $7 for bubble envelope, and $20 for registered mail. The problem is that the cost of shipping "small packages" (what bubble envelope is classified as) went way up. It's like $6 to Canada and $7 to everywhere else.

Same thing as already said w/r/t personal payments. I don't specify and sometimes people pay via non-personal, and it's annoying but I'm not going to make a big deal out of a couple bucks in most situations. If it's like a $1000+ deal or something and $40 got taken out, that might be another issue. It's not unreasonable at all to charge an extra 3-4% if the buyer is paying non-personal payments.

Is the MOTL price guide still functional? I know it was slow to update when I was last on here so I unless there is another guide out there that uses Ebay I'll probably use TCGplayer low. Fortunately I'm in a position where I do not have to sell everything now, so I can be flexible on the prices.

Edit: Also what's the deal with people putting "not responsible for lost mail on their posts"? I'm guessing that has to do with people not wanting to pay for confirmation.

quote:

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Edit: Also what's the deal with people putting "not responsible for lost mail on their posts"? I'm guessing that has to do with people not wanting to pay for confirmation.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Havoc Demon:
Edit: Also what's the deal with people putting "not responsible for lost mail on their posts"? I'm guessing that has to do with people not wanting to pay for confirmation.

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There is no delivery confirmation anymore, it's called tracking now and it's free on packages.

And i put it on my posts because i just don't think you should ever be liable for anything that isn't your fault. Lost/Stolen mail is not your fault if you put in the hands of the post office.
That said,

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Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief, and other vampire females oddities (crimp miscut misprint sign testprint alters etc)

quote:

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Originally posted by Sovarius:
There is no delivery confirmation anymore, it's called tracking now and it's free on packages.

And i put it on my posts because i just don't think you should ever be liable for anything that isn't your fault. Lost/Stolen mail is not your fault if you put in the hands of the post office.
That said,

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Wah?

~MM

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Blah, blah, blah werewolf. Smackity-smack not a werewolf. Suspicious of this fruit loop.
My vote this round will be for Player X.

quote:

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Originally posted by MeddlingMage:

Wah?

~MM

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To which part?

__________________
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief, and other vampire females oddities (crimp miscut misprint sign testprint alters etc)

It's free? Later you go on to say

"That said,"

and never continue...

~MM

__________________
Blah, blah, blah werewolf. Smackity-smack not a werewolf. Suspicious of this fruit loop.
My vote this round will be for Player X.

__________________
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief, and other vampire females oddities (crimp miscut misprint sign testprint alters etc)