Sign Up For Our Newsletter
We get many questions about how to determine prices for stereo equipment. It is helpful to look at actual online selling prices for the make and model you have. One source for this information is eBay’s Advanced Search: Completed Listings feature. This will show you prices for actual transactions, which is useful data. In contrast, current listings only give you people’s asking prices, which are often not rooted in the reality of the market.
Next, sort these actual sales prices either high to low, or low to high. The highest priced items are ones that have been restored, or at least recently serviced. The lowest priced units are typically parts units or units requiring repairs. The middle priced items typically represent units in “as found” condition. That is, they’ve been sitting around for some time unused, but their condition is known and stated as such to varying degrees in their description. The goal is to align your unit to one(s) that look and sound like yours. This determines their retail resale value on a worldwide market. If you want to sell locally, those worldwide market prices need to be brought into the realm of “local” retail pricing. If you want to sell to Sound Exchange or other reseller, then you need to reduce to wholesale pricing.
The value of your equipment is based on how much time and effort you want to put into each item. The more servicing and cleanup you do, the more you get. The more of the marketing effort you do, the more that you get. If all that you want to do is hold out your hand and have someone put money in it, the less you get. This is where our “value added” comes into play. We service and clean every item (and make necessary repairs) so that we can guarantee it and offer an extended warranty on it. Depending on the item, this requires as little as one hour or as much as ten hours (or more). All of this work is done by professionals. A note here is that it typically doesn’t make any sense (monetarily) to pay a professional to fix a piece of equipment that you plan to resell. If you can’t do it yourself, sell it “as is.” Of course, the lowest effort option is to donate the items to a charitable organization.
The translation of pricing from full retail to wholesale depends a lot on what you can do for yourself. Straight wholesale will range from 30-50% of retail, depending on the selling price and nature of the item. We sell at prices near those that you see online. Local consumer-to-consumer sales will range from 50 to 70% of online prices. Selling online to a consumer will bring the most money, but it also brings the most effort and risk before AND after the sale.
The fees charged by online selling platforms and payment processing companies are very substantial these days, but the biggest downside in selling online is the risk you undertake after the transaction has occurred. If you sell something online, then ship it to the buyer, your potential problems have only just begun. First, you have to hope that your item arrives in one piece, which is far from a sure thing, given the sheer weight of stereo equipment and the potential for mishandling during shipping and delivery. Second, and more significant, is that these platforms’ policies strongly favor the buyer, both honest and unscrupulous ones. All that a buyer has to do is report to the platform, or the company that processed the payment, that your item was “NOT AS DESCRIBED,” and they will refund the buyer’s money, both for the item and the shipping cost. If you want your item back, you will have to pay return shipping. Then there is the real possibility of selling it to a dishonest individual who, before sending it back, will swap out the parts that he needs to fix HIS unit. If this all sounds horrible, that’s because it is. We have learned the hard way not to do business via the big online marketplaces, and we neither ship stereo equipment nor accept inbound shipments of equipment.
We consider ourselves the local alternative to online equipment sales, in that we are face to face with our buyers and sellers. For individuals (non-businesses), “face to face” may or may or not be appealing, based on your tolerance for having strangers in your home and your comfort level in setting up a demo of the stereo equipment you’re selling.
In conclusion: the more effort and risk you’re willing to take on before and after the sale of your equipment, the higher your monetary payout may be. For those individuals who don’t have the time, equipment knowledge, or desire to take on risk, selling equipment to Sound Exchange may be the right option for you.
Questions? Please feel free to email us.