PLANE JIM

My Feedback: (109)

Hello Guys-I have been thinking about getting rid of all my stuff-planes, engines, radios complete kits, partial builds- basically all my rc stuff-My question to everyone is it better to just sell it as one lot to get rid of it quick or to try to sell stuff one item at a time-there is just so much after 20 years and some of it is not pristine but some is -some is old and some is new-some cars, some boats and a bunch of plane stuff- I am possibly moving and trying to get prepared for the move-thanks

Rob2160

If you are in a hurry then you could advertise a "one price for everything" sale.

Given you have Planes, cars and boats stuff you may find it easier to sell them in seperate groups.

Just advertise the old stuff accordingly and if something is broken, advertise it as such.. somebody might still want it, or you can include it free with a "good" sale..

Depends how much time / effort you want to devote to selling.

You can find a buyer for anything on Ebay.

vicman

My Feedback: (10)

I wish you the best Jim.

jester_s1

Is it better how? If you mean will you get better prices, then no, it's not better to sell it as a lot. To get the best prices, you'll need to take multiple photos of every item, write detailed descriptions, and list everything separately. That's a fair amount of work for you for sure, but that's what it takes. The guys who will buy all of your stuff for one money are the ones who will keep the items they are really interested in and flip the rest in the manner I described above. They won't do it if they can't make money off of it, so you'd be talking prices in the neighborhood of 25 cents on the dollar for pristine stuff and down from there on stuff that's a little bit ragged.

PLANE JIM

My Feedback: (109)

Thanks for the suggestions. Vicman-I sent you a pm.

Hemikiller

My Feedback: (125)

jester_s1

To give you an idea of what to expect, I traded emails a while back with a guy here in DFW who wanted to sell his whole collection. All of his planes were at least 5 years old, some of them 25 years old. IIRC, there were 5 .40-.60 size planes that were airworthy, another 3 that needed some minor repairs and new covering, a 1 year old Futaba 6 channel 2.4 radio, and a 6 foot shelf unit packed full of building supplies, tools, field equipment, a few blueprinted super tiger engines for pylon racing, and 5-6 unopened kits. Everything was dusty in his two pictures and it was hard to tell what all was there. He was trying to get $1000 for it all and had gotten no bites in a month of advertizing it on Craigslist. He offered it to me for $800 and I didn't buy it. I figured if I bought the whole lot, I could flip the kits for maybe $400 total (some are really valuable but you can't count on that), the radio for maybe $150, flyable planes for maybe $75 each, and the ones that needed fixing would have been parted out as the servos and engines are worth more by themselves then they are as a complete airplane that needs work. The planes that needed repairs would have sat in my garage waiting to be thrown into a trade to sweeten the deal for someone I wanted or given to a newbie at the airfield to create some goodwill. Some of the tools and supplies would have done ok on Ebay, but boxes of balsa and covering won't bring much at all. I could have probably gotten $1000 for it all and still had a shelf full of stuff that I couldn't sell but maybe could have used. At $800, it wasn't worth the 10-15 hours of labor it would have cost me to do all of that.
As I see the market, unflyable planes are extremely hard to sell even at ridiculously low prices, good used planes selling individually are worth 30-40% of their new cost, 72mhz radios are worthless if analog and maybe 30% of their new counterparts if they are 6 channel or more and computerized, 2.4ghz will bring usually 70% of retail on Ebay and a bit less in the classifieds, engines and servos are good for about 50% of retail if they are still in current production, tools maybe 30%, and building supplies are lucky to bring 10% of retail. That's all what you get selling items individually. When you want it gone as a package, you are dealing with a much smaller customer base and the prices go down from there. There is the rare buyer who is willing to pay prices that will let him keep a couple of items and flip the rest and break even, but the vast majority of large lot buyers are looking to make a decent profit.