@traineramy asked a question in another thread that I thought deserved its own topic, Why do you sell your own cards?
Today you really don’t have to, especially in auction. There are so many outlets where you can just ship your stuff, they do all the work, and it sells while you sip pina colada’s on the deck of the ss anne. As someone who decides to still torture themselves by selling my own and other peoples cards, I was curious to hear what others think about the topic?
Yes! Selling, trading, buying and definitely interacting with the people on the other end. Call me crazy but I really enjoy the process.
If you want something done right, do it yourself
There are only 2 reasons to not use a consignment service on graded cards:
This way you can take the listing down yourself and not pay the consignment fee to get your card back
For raw cards, especially on the cheaper end, it makes sense to sell yourself
This is definitely a big part of it,
Additionally though, I find that consigning is usually only worth it for higher value cards. On top of that, you are restricted on how cards can be listed. 2 examples:
via PSA: A card I consigned via PSA was poorly listed, with incorrect information in multiple item details. It took a bit of time for me to a) catch the issues and b) PSA to respond and correct the issues. This lead to the card not showing up when searching for it for the first few weeks of being listed.
via Z&G: I was interested in sending a card to Z&G for consignment, but wanted to potentially request to add an additional photo to the listing to show off the crazy holobleed of the card (which is a big selling point for the card). I never received a response, which deterred me from continuing to pursue that consignment option.
Also, once you get enough experience under your belt, the process of listing and shipping individual cards becomes pretty efficient. It’s not that much more of a time sink for me to do it myself versus consigning everything.
Mostly sell raw, slightly niche, and/or cheaper items from my pc to find larger purchases.
When I sell cards, it is typically at a show or on a buylist for ~75% of the cards value. When I sell cards for this it is typically because I have something in mind at that moment that I want to acquire, the card spiked and I am trying to capture the value quickly or with the card show, I just have fun having funds in hand to go around and shop. For the most part I do not have slabs and when I do they’re used to acquire more raw cards. With this in mind, these are not the most valuable cards which I feel should go to consignment. 10% on a $50 slab is only $5 and the time value to me of being able to get the cash right then is more worthwhile. I am moving soon and plan on starting up my ebay page again after the move but my impression based on what I have to sell and seeing fee structures is that the extra time to have it go on consignment is not worth it for me.
Very rarely do I trust somebody to do what I already know I’m qualified to do.
Not to say that they couldn’t do it better; I just prefer to do things for myself. No middlemen, no mistakes, no messes.
I live in a country with a very small market that has no consignors.
Send to consigner, keep funds in USD, and use funds to buy cards in USD, then ship 1 package every 6 months from USA
That would tie my funds to USD, require a lot of effort, and add extra costs for shipping, packaging, consigning, and import tax, as well as the risk of losing the cards when shipping overseas. Also, since the USD is the weaker currency, there would be an additional loss.
I havent sold anything…yet
I don’t like the uncertainty of auctions. I prefer to have the final decision in what my card sells for so I do buy it now with offers on.
I plan on selling more frequently in the coming months to start a small, part time side business with Pokemon cards. I’ve been doing a lot of research and have decided to largely sell on my own eBay page rather than consigning, for the following reasons:
I work a blue collar job so having a hobby where I can sit down and list cards on ebay is really enjoyable to me. I put on a show or YouTube video and just list raw cards from collections I buy. It’s fun and I use the profits to buy more cards!
To prevent consignment services from having a monopoly. 
I don’t want a reality where consigners are the only ones selling. I’m glad their services exist as they do make it easier to move higher-end cards, but there needs to be a balance. Some of the best deals I’ve found have come from smaller sellers, whether it’s locally or their own ebay store. You can’t really find those with the big consigners because everyone and their wife’s boyfriend is watching those.
I just started selling cards within the past couple of months, so my experience is limited, but here is why I personally sell vs using a service to sell:
BIN is 99% of the time usually better for niche items.
Auctions are usually good for buyers, not so much the seller 
The cards i sell would be laughed out of an Auction House for not being anywhere near valuable enough. If i had rare cards for sale then i would definitely use one.
