How to Determine the Value of an Item Before Reselling

Reselling 101

By RC Staff

01 March 2023

So, you’ve got your hands on a product worth reselling. Congrats! But now you might be wondering how much this thing is actually worth, and how to resell it. Every item is different of course, but it’s pretty straightforward to get a grasp of the average resale value of a product with a little research. While we recommend looking this up before actually buying the item, sometimes that’s not always possible, or necessary.

Why you should research an item's resell price

If you’re serious about making money by reselling, knowing prices is critical. Without a solid grasp of the aftermarket, you could be missing out on profit by pricing too low, or not making sales when an item is priced too high.

Read on for the complete guide on how to price items to resell.

How to find out the value of reselling items

First, the basics. Check for an existing aftermarket. Online marketplaces are where you’ll start for most items. While stuff like cards, collectibles, or jewelry might have an active in-person aftermarket, you’ll generally be looking online for most goods.

Start with eBay, Amazon, and StockX. These generalized marketplaces have the largest volume of products being bought and sold, and will typically provide the most data. Some resell goods may have more specialized marketplaces, like Discogs for records, or Depop for clothes.

How to price an item for resale using eBay

The nice part about using eBay for researching your item’s resell price is the high volume of sales through eBay. Other specialized platforms may be useful for niche items, but most products will record the majority of their sales through eBay.

For this example, we’ll find out the price for the released Panera BAGuette bags. We’ll simply enter the term into the search bar and check what other sellers are asking for their items.

After a bit of searching, we can see that many resellers are listing their Panera BAGuette bags for $200 or more. With some items, there may a bit of discrepancy between what sellers are listing items for, and what they actually sell for.

To check this, you can search for sold listings. On eBay, click the “Advanced” button near search, then amend your search filters to only include sold and completed listings.

As you can see, the list prices and the actual reselling item values are closely aligned. Aside from being a sign of a profitable item to resell, it also indicates that the market for these items is very hot.

When there is less consumer interest, you’ll see that the actual resell prices for items will be lower than the list prices. Resellers will eventually cave and sell their products for less profit if there is not sufficient interest at the higher price.

Use the StockX price graph to find out the value of reselling items

If an item you want to resell is listed on StockX, you can take advantage of their price graph. To find out the price for reselling items on StockX, just enter the item the you want to research, and click a relevant listing. Scroll to the bottom of the listing and you can see the historical price data for the item.

In this example, we can see the price over time for the Wolverine Master Chief Boot. StockX helpfully collates the data show an item’s highest and lowest prices, as well as the average. In the case of the Master Chief Boot, there are only 20 sales recorded through the platform, which you should consider while researching a reselling item’s value.

Also pay attention to the latest recorded sale. An item may display with an overall high average resell price, but recent sales may be less, or have slowed considerably. If this is the case, you may not be able to sell your item for the same amount as previous resellers.

How to determine the value of a resell item with few sales

Sometimes you may have acquired a product to resell with a slow or nonexistent aftermarket. You have a feeling that its a profitable item to resell, but are unsure where you should set the price.

This is a place where having access to an experienced reselling community like RC Elite is helpful. Within a group you can ask other resellers their opinions on what an item is worth, and chances are you will come away with a strong idea of what your item is worth, as it’s likely someone else has had experience with reselling it before.

If this isn’t possible, your best move is to try and compare it to similar items that have resold before. If you’re selling a vinyl record for example, you might want to start with other vinyl from the same artist. Discogs.com has a handy guide that covers why some vinyl are worth more than others.

It’s important to pay attention to all of the characteristics of an item when doing this research. Two items may seem similar at first, but one may have been produced in much more limited than others, or have certain unique features that can’t be found anywhere else. For more information on why some items resell better than others, we recommend looking over our Items Pages, or our Articles for a deeper dive into various items’ resell values.

How to price an item for resale

So, you’ve done your research, and you have a solid grasp on what your item may be worth. You’ve seen many resellers cluster around a particular price, with some sales falling a little higher, or a little lower. Obviously your goal is maximize profit while reselling an item, and the price you set can influence that.

You may be tempted to price your resell item lower than the average list price by other resellers, which is called “undercutting”. This may seem like an easy way to sell your product faster, but reduces your profit. While it may be tempting, undercutting is usually a bad idea, and is something inexperienced resellers often fall for.

When you choose to undercut the established resell price, you are essentially dragging down the price for every reseller, yourself included. If buyers are willing to buy a product at the established price, then there’s no reason to price yours any lower. If enough resellers are willing to deflate the price for a quick sale, then the entire aftermarket will decrease, for essentially no reason.

Usually the average price for an item is on the low end anyways. If you’re truly looking to maximize your profit while reselling, you should be pricing your items at or slightly higher than the average price, and offer same-day shipping, free insurance, and maintain a high seller rating to entice people to buy from you, rather than undercutting.

Think about it. If you were to buy a product from a reseller, would you rather buy it for $200 from a seller with very high rating and same day shipping, or for a few bucks cheaper from an unreliable seller with no clear shipping policy?

How long does it take to resell an item?

This depends entirely on what you’re selling and the price you’re asking. If the market around it is hot and your price is fair, you can expect to sell an item the same day you list it. While that’s not always the case, most items will take only a few days or weeks to move. Sometimes you may need to shift your price down if it becomes clear buyers are not biting.

If you suspect that a reselling item’s value will increase in the future, you may prefer not to sell or even list it until then. Instead, you could choose to “hold” the item, and wait to sell it until the price has risen.

When to hold an item to resell

Let’s go back to the Panera BAGuette bags from before.

While doing our eBay research, an interesting trend came up. While resellers now can expect to get around $200-$250 for their bags, most sales in early February were for around $150. Why the sudden spike in value?

The reason behind the increase in the Panera bags’ resell price was mainly increased social media behind the bags, along with a restock. After the bags sold out on February 7 for $40, there was a rush of social media posts about them, and people quickly began trying to buy them from resellers. Many of the first wave of bags were sold in these first few days.

Panera reacted to this interest with additional posts on their social media, and retweeted influencers styling the bags. Critically, they announced a limited restock on the 9th. Now, generally, a restock is very bad news for resellers, but this was an exception.

The February 9 restock was limited to only around 100 bags, and closed in less than thirty minutes. This wasn’t enough new stock to disrupt the aftermarket, but the ensuing social media attention and hype around them triggered a new wave of fans trying to buy bags.

Resellers benefited from this hype, and were able to increase prices accordingly. However, just because prices increased in this case, doesn’t mean holding is always a good idea. Often, the highest price you can resell a product for will be immediately after its release, when hype is strong.

That being said, here’s what you should consider before holding:

Is a restock likely?

If yes, then you should almost definitely NOT hold. Only in specific cases like the Panera bag, where the restock was very limited and hype very strong, can a restock be beneficial.

Usually if an item restocks, especially multiple times, the resell value will continuously decrease.

Will this item increase in value?

This is obviously tricky to determine. While many resell items will trend upwards in value, some will plummet after release. If an item is deriving much of its value from the hype and exclusiveness of its release, there’s a good chance it will fall in value shortly afterwards.

If you think it’s very likely an item will become more valuable in the future, then consider holding. Otherwise, it’s worth capitalizing on immediate profits.

Can you afford to hold an item?

By choosing to hold and not sell immediately, you are putting yourself at risk. Until the item appreciates in to a price you want to sell it, you are putting your money and time on the line.

Ask yourself if it is worth being down on money for weeks or even months before making a profit. In a worst case scenario you may end up losing money if the item falls below retail.

Join RC Elite for expert advice

One of the benefits of joining an dedicated reselling group is you will generally know exactly what an item is worth before reselling. Usually when an item is posted, the suggested resell price and length of hold will be included as well.

If you’re only interested in making quick, low-risk flips, you can simply avoid everything else. Long holds are less common, but tend to be extremely profitable when posted.

If you want to make money from your phone, it’s time to join RC Elite.