Anyone selling on Whatnot?

[Rictor]

Something cool I realized is that they have a deal with USPS for $8.35 flat rate shipping for medium and large flat rate boxes, which is a pretty good discount. They also match your first $150 in sales if you go live the first week you sign up as a seller.

After being on the site a couple months as a buyer, I did a video game stream yesterday and did around $2200 in sales. Honestly, I could have made more if I took the time piecing everything out on Ebay or Facebook Marketplace, but it would have taken me a lot longer than the 3.5 hours I streamed. Worst part is the same as Ebay, packing up all those boxes and driving them to the post office. I spent about twice as long packing boxes as I did selling the stuff.

I ended up with 15 flat rate boxes and then a bunch of smaller orders for 1 or 2 items. The people that buy 1 item kind of suck, LOL. The guys that buy a box full of stuff make life easy.

I didn't do any $1 auctions because you lose money that way since there's a minimum 30 cent credit card fee plus 11% to Whatnot (they also take a percentage from the shipping money you collect). I started my auctions at $5 or more. If I do more streams in the future, I'll keep to that $5 minimum, I think.

I put about 5% of my items in ahead of the stream with photos and that seemed to help get people to bookmark the show in advance and request the big items. In the future, I'd probably list a lot more items before the show. It makes requests a lot easier. I believe anything that doesn't sell, you can copy over to the next stream.

There are a ton of Pokemon and sports card sellers on there. A few nonsports sellers. Seems to be like Ebay Live, where you have a lot of bidders that don't know anything about sports cards, so you can throw up big lots of junk wax with a couple Michael Jordans in there and do well, but if you try to sell something actually worth money, you'll get like half the Ebay auction price if you have a good crowd.

I've also noticed a lot of scammers on there selling slabs from fake grading companies and talking them up, cheating at gambling games, and selling autographs with bad COAs. Pretty much the same thing you see on Ebay, except for the gambling, which is unique to Whatnot.

[Primo Touch]

I purchased Pokemon cards on Whatnot and they turned out to be Fake. I contacted the seller: Generationspop and he stated the cards were custom cards made to look like Pokemon cards, correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t that make them fake (Counterfeit). I contacted whatnot sent the information on my claim and nothing happened. Just be careful buying Pokemon on the whatnot app there are a lot of fake cards being printed.

[cardmike]

Originally Posted by Rictor

Something cool I realized is that they have a deal with USPS for $8.35 flat rate shipping for medium and large flat rate boxes, which is a pretty good discount. They also match your first $150 in sales if you go live the first week you sign up as a seller.

After being on the site a couple months as a buyer, I did a video game stream yesterday and did around $2200 in sales. Honestly, I could have made more if I took the time piecing everything out on Ebay or Facebook Marketplace, but it would have taken me a lot longer than the 3.5 hours I streamed. Worst part is the same as Ebay, packing up all those boxes and driving them to the post office. I spent about twice as long packing boxes as I did selling the stuff.

I ended up with 15 flat rate boxes and then a bunch of smaller orders for 1 or 2 items. The people that buy 1 item kind of suck, LOL. The guys that buy a box full of stuff make life easy.

I didn't do any $1 auctions because you lose money that way since there's a minimum 30 cent credit card fee plus 11% to Whatnot (they also take a percentage from the shipping money you collect). I started my auctions at $5 or more. If I do more streams in the future, I'll keep to that $5 minimum, I think.

I put about 5% of my items in ahead of the stream with photos and that seemed to help get people to bookmark the show in advance and request the big items. In the future, I'd probably list a lot more items before the show. It makes requests a lot easier. I believe anything that doesn't sell, you can copy over to the next stream.

There are a ton of Pokemon and sports card sellers on there. A few nonsports sellers. Seems to be like Ebay Live, where you have a lot of bidders that don't know anything about sports cards, so you can throw up big lots of junk wax with a couple Michael Jordans in there and do well, but if you try to sell something actually worth money, you'll get like half the Ebay auction price if you have a good crowd.

I've also noticed a lot of scammers on there selling slabs from fake grading companies and talking them up, cheating at gambling games, and selling autographs with bad COAs. Pretty much the same thing you see on Ebay, except for the gambling, which is unique to Whatnot.

Are you still selling on Whatnot? My son started selling on there and is having mixed results.

[Budler]

I know 5 or 6 guys that sell there. One guy says he is doing Great (only been selling for 5 months). One guy quit and the others they say "Well it is OK but not great". Have not talked to them in a while.

As a buyer I have spent a lot of hours looking but have not found anything I'm willing to buy. Due to what I collect and prices of the few I find.

[regionrat]

A couple of years ago I applied to be a seller on Whatnot and they rejected my application. I have heard mixed results from people who sell on Whatnot.

[Rictor]

Originally Posted by Primo Touch

I purchased Pokemon cards on Whatnot and they turned out to be Fake. I contacted the seller: Generationspop and he stated the cards were custom cards made to look like Pokemon cards, correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t that make them fake (Counterfeit). I contacted whatnot sent the information on my claim and nothing happened. Just be careful buying Pokemon on the whatnot app there are a lot of fake cards being printed.

I've bought a ton of cards but had no issues. Anyone selling custom cards on Ebay or Whatnot should be upfront that they are custom cards. It should also be obvious as they usually use artwork that's different than the art on the real cards, which is the point of a custom.

[Rictor]

Originally Posted by cardmike

Are you still selling on Whatnot? My son started selling on there and is having mixed results.

I haven't done any more selling, but I plan to. I have items for an antique tool sale, and I have boxes of old photos, post cards, etc. for ephemera shows. I've just been busy.

I also have thousands of comic books, but that is a very competitive category on there, as are the Pokemon and sports streams. There's very little competition in the nonsports area, so I may try that at some point. Maybe some box breaks.

[Rage]

I just tried out selling on there yesterday to see how it went, streamed for 1.5 hours and had a good time. Mostly cards I would sell for $1 or less normally, with a few better cards worth $10-20. Figured it was my first show and wouldn't have a big audience so I wanted to start with very low end cards. Ended with 96 cards sold - $204 total- 21 different buyers. Will admit it's a bit tough to get started when there's only 1 viewer and no followers but if you stream long enough and have inventory they will eventually show up. I don't think I ever had more than 20 viewers at once so it's not like you need hundreds of people watching to sell stuff. Started the show with 0 followers, ended with 26 and they get notified whenever you go live so that's pretty cool.
Would be interested to hear about anyone else selling on there or thinking about it.

[smanzari]

Originally Posted by Rage

Would be interested to hear about anyone else selling on there or thinking about it.

I did it for a year, hung it up for like 4-5 months, decided I enjoyed doing it so then another 6 months before quitting again.

Definitely had success in moving cards (low to high end), but was super hard to come anywhere close to comps, even with 2k+ followers. I think an issue with this is it seems the actual system tends to favor newer accounts to "get them hooked" as I was never able to replicate the success of my first half dozen shows or so (not for lack of trying with promotions and non-stop give-aways)

I mean it is a great time streaming, especially if you have a good chat, but consistently losing money (either officially or via opportunity costs) really got to me!

[Phishphan21]

As a buyer can you select which copy you’d like if seller has qty of more than 1 for sale?

[Rage]

Update after a couple weeks:

I just finished my 6th live show, this one did $1182 in sales and had 139 orders.

Total orders sold now at 690, once a seller hits 1k in orders they can get early payout so that's the first goal for me.

So far it seems to be better for selling those low end $5 and less cards when doing auctions. Until you get a lot of viewers/followers it's gonna be hard to hit comps on nicer cards but the benefit is the instant sale.

I've also noticed people love to gamble on there with breaks and other mystery pull games. That's probably the best way to stay profitable for now