Tips and tricks for getting started with reselling toys and collectibles
Toys R Us is one of the biggest companies in history, literally, it’s as you know a 50-plus year company, billions of dollars is gone. And you know what it's replaced by? People like you and me, selling toys ourselves, on our own stores online. Who wants to be a person that does that?
Selling toys online. There’s so much money in so many different toys that you really can’t mess up. Toys really have a huge market online, but knowing which toys are profitable really comes down to experience. If you don’t have much experience in toys, then use this as a reference point. I’ve had experience buying and selling toys for really my entire life. Now, one of the big reasons why the toy market is so huge is because it spans across every single age demographic. There’s a market for toys that kids want to play with, toys that have lots of playability and there is the market for action figures that are meant for collecting, meant to stay in the package and sit on a shelf as a collectible item. So, one toy could spark interest in the younger demographic as well as the older collector demographic, giving you the opportunity to sell to a large portion of the market.
Collectibles
To touch on the collectible toy market, it is very similar in many ways to the sneaker market. An item could be worth way more than what it was originally sold for at retail, for example there’s Funko Pop. These are very popular, there are these little bobble head sort of action figures that are meant for display purposes. This is an example of a toy that doesn’t have a lot of playability, but still sparks the interest of the younger demographic because they’re cool collector’s item.
They make them for a variety of different genres of superheroes, movie characters, celebrities, musicians, drawing interest from younger fans to older collectors alike. Another parallel between toys and sneakers is that like I mentioned, toys could be either opened and played with or left in the package, used for display purposes only much similar to sneakers that could be either worn or left in the box or put on display on a shelf.
Typically speaking, items that are meant to be left in the packaging and used for display purposes only are the items that are going to be selling for the most money. Items that are worn like sneakers or played with like toys are going to be subject to wear and tear which means, if in the future they could break then they have a potentially limited lifespan so nobody wants to spend too much money on an item that isn’t going to be around forever and that is essentially disposable. Whereas, items that you intend to keep in their original state forever have an investment aspect to them.
Someone who buys a collectible toy is worth a lot of money, could very well be looking at that item as an investment and therefore be willing to spend more money on it because they have hopes that they could either resell it right away and make some more money off of it or that they could save it for a number of years, 10 to 20 to 50 to 60 years and have the value of it go up tremendously down the line.
Sourcing Toys
Now, onto the subject of actually sourcing the toys, how you’re actually going to get the toys to resell. This is a subject that I’m going to continue to go way more in-depth with in the future.
When I first started selling online, it was primarily reselling my personal collection of collectibles and toys. Like I had mentioned, I was very involved with toys when I was young and throughout my whole life and thankfully, I held on to the majority of my toy collection and didn’t end up just donating them once I got a little bit older. Thus, I was able to sell all my collection of childhood toys and make a considerable amount of money off it which got me started on my reselling journey. I highly recommend starting off with what you already have. If you can remember that box in the attic that has your childhood toys or some container in the basement of your parents’ home, go and look through that stuff. You will be surprised with the value you have in those childhood toys.
It's the action figures, the Lego, the Star Wars, The Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, TMNT, those are the toys that are worth money. Maybe, if you weren’t even into action figures, you had a collection of puzzles, or comic books, or something like that, that’s what you want to look for, that’s what you want to find. You can definitely be sourcing toys like this finding them at thrift stores and garage sales but if you do have a collection already on hand that is definitely where you want to start. Now, if you literally have no background or experience with toys or anything of the sort, then there’s gonna be a lot that you’re gonna have to learn and you’re probably gonna feel like a kid again by researching all this information about video games, comic books, and movies.
For me, after I had sold a lot of my personal collection of these toys, I then was going to the thrift stores and garage sales and simply looking for what I had already sold. Either looking for the exact same toy that I remember that I’d already sold or looking for toys that were from the same sort of series. I was using my previous experience of selling to then look for and find stuff to source that I knew would resell and that I could double my money on.
Once you have a decent amount of sales with toys, you will have all those sold toys as reference points. A lot of what I source is very similar to or like I mentioned, the exact same item that I had already sold in the past so when I source new toys like that, I simply go into my sold listings and I can see the toy that was similar and click similar and that saves me so much time having to put in new titles, descriptions, and all the other information and specifications that goes into the listing.
1 - Start By Selling Toys You Already Have
Alright, so just to recap a little bit. If you’re just starting, then start by selling what you already have. Even you didn’t have this huge toy collection, you probably have at least one toy or one comic or one thing from the past that you could resell and that is what you need to start with.
2 - Learn As Much As Possible For Free
If you don’t have anything to sell and have no experience or no knowledge in this field, then you’re really gonna want to take notes from this. Just learn as much as you can and for reference when you are out there sourcing at thrift stores and garage sales, utilize your phone.
3 - Utilize Your Phone
Use your phone to check sold toy listings, Google different toys if there’s name on the toy or look at the foot of the toy or the back of the toy. Look for the tiny little printing that says the brand of it then Google that. Find some information on it if it’s a toy that has a barcode, use an eBay or Amazon barcode scanner. You can get valuable information from that, and that really should be sufficient enough to get you started finding items that can resell. There are little nuances to watch out for when reselling toys and you definitely don’t want to end up buying the wrong version or something that isn’t actually profitable.
4 - Be Diligent When You Source
Pay attention when you’re sourcing. The toy could look very similar to one that sells for $400 that found online but maybe there is a very slight difference between that and the one that’s selling for hundreds of dollars which you didn’t notice.
5 - Get Experience
Just be diligent, take your time, be patient, you got nothing to lose.
Thank you all, be sure to check out all my other resourceful articles in regards to reselling. Good luck out there, make that money and peace.
If you've been thinking of selling your old toys, consider selling them on FiddlePiddle.com - a toy marketplace which doesn't charge any fees to list or join. Its absolutely free! It's really easy to join (all you need is an email and password) and you get paid instantly! We developed this platform because of the frustrations many people have when trying to list their toys on Amazon or eBay. Go on and give it a try - it's really easy!