January 2nd, 2006

Have you ever thought about selling some of your items on ebay, but found that you just don’t have the time to do it?  You might want to consider selling them through a drop off store and have them list, sell, and ship your items for you on Ebay.  One franchise called I-Sold-It offers these services. There are currently 164 stores open across the country with 600 more signed contracts to open soon. 

You drop of the items you want to sell at the local I-Sold It store, and then you wait for them to list and sell your item.  They get a commission on the sale of the item.  You need to have an auction that is valued at least $30 and has to weigh less than 150 pounds, and the Length + the Girth of the item does not exceed 130 inches.  The reason they will not sell $1 items is that they have to make it worth their time too.  You would need to have a combination of items in an auction that could bring up the dollar value.  Or if it really isn’t worth much you might want to have a garage sale or donate the items.  The weight and the size of the package cannot exceed 150 pounds and 130 inches because of ground shipping limits.

I-Sold It will list your auction for a seven day period typically.  If the item does not sell, you can either pick up the unsold item at the store within 10 days after it did not sell, or they will donate the item to charity.  You can ask for a higher minimum bid starting price.  It can take 30 – 45 days to receive the final check for a completed ebay auction, because it can take time for the seller to buy the item.  If for some reason your auction has a non-paying bidder, you will be able to have your auction re-listed for free.

The commission that I-Sold-It will vary from store to store, and from auction to auction so ask for the cost up front.  Generally speaking the I-Sold It website says that you can expect around 30% commission for the first $500 and 20% commission for the remaining amount over $500.  There is a 5.00 minimum charge per commission per item.  You will pay for the ebay listing fees, photo fee is $0.70 and ebay commission is 5.25% for the first $25, then 2.75% up to $1,000 and 1.5% for the remaining amount over $1,000.  You will always pay the 5.25% for the first $25 dollars, so it will combine into a multi-tier commission rate for the higher dollar amounts.  They also charge a $0.30 plus 2.5% of the final selling prices for the payment processing fee.  If you sold an item for $100 I-Sold It estimates that you will get around $63.23 for your cut.

You can check each individual stores auction feedback to see how they list their auctions and how their feedback rating is, it will give you an idea if going through with the I-Sold-It store will be the best.  In the Los Angeles area there are many I-Sold It stores and you could pick which store you would like to deal with the most.