https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/has-ebay-finally-done-itself-in-ss-amp1099-sellers

don't forget ebay takes a 10% cut up to (I think) $750

With Ebay, unless the buyer is picking up and paying cash, mentally prepare yourself to lose your machine and your money. It may sound extreme, but Ebay will side with the buyer damn near 100% of the time.

If you are going to sell via ebay, I would strongly suggest that you start off small. Sell some old toys, tools, spare parts, or other items you don't need. Raise some capital and go through the process a few times. It will get you feedback you will need to sell pinball machines, and will give you an idea on the pros and cons without potentially losing thousands of dollars. Baby steps.

plus a shakedown on the shipping too

Too big of a hassle. Sell locally if you can. Or at a show when they start up again.

Plus 2.9% + $0.30 for the paypal transaction fee. If the buyer has to pay sales tax, you get charged the transaction fee on the entire amount, not just the item's price.

There's also a hidden 10% on shipping fees, if you're shipping something.

There was a time where every morning I would do an eBay search on pinball for the surrounding 150 miles.

That time was about 17 years ago.

I think the best deal I got was a gorgeous BSD for around $700.

Used to be you could contact the seller directly by asking for an email or phone number. Ebay now runs search algorithms to block the exchange of that information because with that contact information, sellers were then able to sell outside of ebay and thus avoid paying the sales fees. Of course there are ways to circumvent that system if you're so inclined.

If you are sneaky enough, you can still pass along your email address in several messages, worked for me a few weeks ago.

I bought a couple games off epay when I was getting started, about 20 years ago. Not the greatest experiences, some creative picture taking got past me and i ended up with an import with screws coming through the pf, a shitload of hacks, etc.

Much wiser now, but there weren't a lot of options back then.

Theres no more paypal transaction fee, as your paypal account is no longer attached to your ebay account. I do think they bumped up their cut to like 11% now though.

the "hidden" 10% fee on shipping, please correct me if I'm wrong, just comes off as part of the 10% (or 11% whatever) of the final value fee. So lets say you sold something for 100 bucks plus 10 bucks shipping, their 10% cut comes from the $110 total. It kind of sucks but they did it because sellers were listing things really cheap but with expensive shipping to circumvent seller fees. Also worth noting that ebay offers discounted shipping rates which is nice.

I also could be wrong about this but I'm pretty sure buyer pays taxes no matter what now. I've been selling a lot of retro consoles/games lately and I have yet to see somebody not pay taxes. I also don't remember the last time I bought something online and didn't pay tax (man those were the good ol days)

Not for everyone.

Sort of, when you think of it as a final total. When you're listing an item, you have to keep in mind that they take 10% of the item's price, as well as 10% of whatever shipping cost you list. Not everyone realizes this, so then they end up being 10% short on the shipping cost after the item sells.

It depends on where the seller is and where the buyer is. A few states don't collect it, but most do now. I sold a couple things to people from Florida recently, and sales tax wasn't applied.

All of this proves that a cash sale at a pinball show is the absolute best option for both buyer and seller.

Now all we need are the pinball shows!

I won't sell a game on eBay anymore but I do sell parts and tools. I have bought several dozen games on eBay but most were many years ago when you could make a side deal off their site or close enough I could look at it before the auction ended.

Here are their listed fees (with paypal):

ebay.com link: fees credits invoices

Fees with management payments:
ebay.com link: fees credits invoices

Their reporting system is horrible for a reason. Always has been. They don't want to make it easy for you to see what you are actually paying per transaction.

This is news to me. I've never gotten a 1099 from Paypal. Why is that?

If you do over 20K with paypal in 1 calendar year you will!

The full scoop, from their site:

PayPal will track the payment volume of your account to check whether your payment volume exceeds both of these levels in a calendar year:

* $20,000 USD in gross payment volume from sales of goods or services in a single calendar year
* 200 payments for goods or services in the same year

Some US States require merchant reporting at a lower threshold:

* Vermont, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland: $600 USD in gross payment volume from sales of goods or services in a single calendar year regardless of the number of transactions;
* Illinois: $1,000 USD in gross payment volume of goods or services in a single calendar year with at least 4 payment transactions processed.

https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/how-does-paypal-report-my-sales-to-the-irs-will-i-receive-a-tax-form-1099-k-faq729

Sooo... in most states you could sell a whole bunch of pins without worrying about the $20k thing. The 1099 only comes if you sell over that amount AND have 200+ transactions.

Now, if you are selling games as a means of income (aka a business) you will want to report it anyway...

Mine is now at this $1000 deal. Greedy lawmakers...

The lawmakers will see it as "greedy tax dodgers"! Just don't sell four things and you're good.

Agreed,

On the page where you print shipping there is a payment option to switch to use pending funds. Then ebay just reduces the payout that goes to your bank account, a lot nicer than being out money for some amount of time.

Without pin shows for quite some time, I've sold a few games the auction sales route. Since I'm close to the auction house, it's just a matter of getting the game(s) to their locale, and then dealing with the seller fee (this can be as much as 30% in some areas). For me I was able to get a deal for 13%, and since the buyer arranges and pays for all shipping from the auction warehouse, that's transparent to the buyer. You do have to wait to receive payment, but that's typically 2 to 3 weeks post-auction. Just another option worth checking out, not for everyone.

I've been selling on ebay for 10 years. I quit when eBay wanted direct access to my checking. I will buy on ebay but I'm done selling.

I have a bunch of saved eBay searches that notify me of new listings. The frequency of new listings over the last couple of weeks has dropped by at least 50%. Probably partially because people are still figuring it out or maybe because they’re done.

The funny thing is, they are making more money than that on the collected taxes.

Back when no one was collecting taxes on line, I helped create a .com business in anticipation of eventual mandatory collection. I addition to fees paid by sellers for hassle free tax services, there were two other money makers:

- States provide discounts to tax 'bundlers' that collect tax across jurisdiction & sellers. In some states and conditions, this could be 10%.
- Filings could be monthly or quarterly, so they get the float on holding the seller's taxes. Granted, not huge, but it adds up.

We got a lot of interest, but not enough funding to continue. No one new how soon it would be before the service was needed. It took about 20 years to get there, so I guess they were right.

Would you rather they didn't handle the sales tax for you, and you had to keep track of (1) what tax was collected for each of dozens of states, and (2) which states wanted it annually, semi‐annually, quarterly, whatever, depending on the amounts, with every state having different thresholds, so you had to file potentially over a hundred small sales tax returns every year? Not to mention the risk any of them deciding to audit you?

12.35% of 5% or whatever is easily worth it.