How to sell 700 McDonald's toys? Advice needed

Raspberry_Queen

I have approximately 700 McDonalds and other fast food toys to sell. They are mostly from the 90's, only two of them are in their wrappers (besides some wrapped up Kellogg's toys), and all of the rest are used. The conditions range from good to bad, most somewhere in between.

My dad is a hoarder, he bought these toys off of a dealer/hoarder for £150. Neither of them checked the toys beforehand. My dad was so excited that he bought £60 of McDonald's toy books from Waterstones.

I have been nagging him to let me sell them for ages as they take up so much room, and are not particularly important to him (compared to other things). He had gone through one box and told me what was in there, and I was under the impression that they were old toys from the 70's, 80's and 90's, all in good condition and a fair amount in their original packaging, and therefore suitable to be sold at auction. However, most of them are from the 90's and 00's, they are almost all used with some in really bad condition, and a significant minority are not even McDonald's. Also I have looked on Ebay, and McDonald's toys aren't that popular. After the fees and delivery costs I would be lucky to make 50p for the best ones, and after the 20 free listings per month, I would probably be making a loss for most toys. That's if they actually sell at all!

My dad gave me the toys to sell for Christmas. It was a big deal for him, as a hoarder. My dad thinks that all of his possessions are worth a lot of money, and if I don't at least get his money back for the toys, he won't trust me to sell anything else of his, therefore affecting the potential to alleviate his hoard. He sees me as a little girl, so if I fail to do well at this, he will just think I'm useless, not that he vastly over paid for them.

My questions are:

1) What is the best way of getting the most money for them?
2) Is it worth going through all 700-ish of them and cataloguing them? (I don't recognise most of the toys).
3) If it is worth selling them online, what is the best site to use?
4) Is there any way of still earning a profit on sites that have extortionate fees, like Amazon and Ebay?
5) Any other advice?

Thank you for taking the time to read, and thanks in advance for any help

campdave

Ebay will get maximum visibility. There may be specialist selling sites or groups on facebook, but the likelihood is that these toys are going to be mass produced and the majority not collectable, especially if they are in poor condition.

The only way you'll know if you have anything rare is to go through each one and compare prices for sold items on ebay.

Some things just aren't worth money I'm afraid, regardless of what your dad paid for them.

Pop_Up_Pirate

Tell your dad that he is mistaken, take photos of how poor the toys are and perhaps get something in writing from a dealer to say they are worthless.

Then throw them in the bin.

SpammyTheSpammer

Sellers give MaccyD's toys away for free around here....

SpammyTheSpammer

or take them to a charity shop, let them worry over them...

RFW

It might be worth trying as one lot as a fixed price with best offer on Ebay.

Take lots of pictures of all of them. Get a count on them, or a slightly more accurate one and list at a crazy price (say £500) and see what offers come in.
Explain the situation in the description.
You'll need to see about shipping but I'd guess it isn't too heavy so you can probably get a decent deal from several couriers.

Failing that you could pull out the better ones, list those in sets and then auction off the rest.

Flyonthewall

Pop_Up_Pirate wrote: »

Tell your dad that he is mistaken, take photos of how poor the toys are and perhaps get something in writing from a dealer to say they are worthless.

Then throw them in the bin.

I doubt someone who believes their items are valuable is going to ever accept that. They'll say the dealer is rubbish. They'll look at the photo and point out good ones or say the others are not that bad. They'll also be very upset to find they've then been thrown!

He's not going to see them the same way as others do no matter what proof you give.

Raspberry_Queen wrote: »

I have approximately 700 McDonalds and other fast food toys to sell. They are mostly from the 90's, only two of them are in their wrappers (besides some wrapped up Kellogg's toys), and all of the rest are used. The conditions range from good to bad, most somewhere in between.

My dad is a hoarder, he bought these toys off of a dealer/hoarder for £150. Neither of them checked the toys beforehand. My dad was so excited that he bought £60 of McDonald's toy books from Waterstones.

I have been nagging him to let me sell them for ages as they take up so much room, and are not particularly important to him (compared to other things). He had gone through one box and told me what was in there, and I was under the impression that they were old toys from the 70's, 80's and 90's, all in good condition and a fair amount in their original packaging, and therefore suitable to be sold at auction. However, most of them are from the 90's and 00's, they are almost all used with some in really bad condition, and a significant minority are not even McDonald's. Also I have looked on Ebay, and McDonald's toys aren't that popular. After the fees and delivery costs I would be lucky to make 50p for the best ones, and after the 20 free listings per month, I would probably be making a loss for most toys. That's if they actually sell at all!

My dad gave me the toys to sell for Christmas. It was a big deal for him, as a hoarder. My dad thinks that all of his possessions are worth a lot of money, and if I don't at least get his money back for the toys, he won't trust me to sell anything else of his, therefore affecting the potential to alleviate his hoard. He sees me as a little girl, so if I fail to do well at this, he will just think I'm useless, not that he vastly over paid for them.

My questions are:

1) What is the best way of getting the most money for them?
2) Is it worth going through all 700-ish of them and cataloguing them? (I don't recognise most of the toys).
3) If it is worth selling them online, what is the best site to use?
4) Is there any way of still earning a profit on sites that have extortionate fees, like Amazon and Ebay?
5) Any other advice?

Thank you for taking the time to read, and thanks in advance for any help

It's a hard situation. I think a good idea would be to go through and find all the ones that aren't McDonalds and find out what they are.

A lot of 90s toys (least as far as listings on ebay go) are seen as retro or even vintage and there are some that sell for surprising amounts. Nothing amazing for most, but if you could sell, for example, a little figure at £5 and it could be sent as a large letter that's a few quid there. Say you had 10 of them, for example, that's going to add up even after fees and postage, especially if you list at a time when ebay are doing an offer on fees.

You could maybe do sets/collections if you have a number of items from one give-away/toy type or (little) bundles of random toys.

Even 10% of that 700 selling at 50p after costs is £35 so a fair amount towards the £150.

You may find some of the things are from Kelloggs. There were numerous little collectable things you could get in the 90s from things like cereal.

See if you can find any markings on them and google it (checking google images can really help), perhaps with a keyword. You could also try asking on a toy forum.

As for the best way, it might be a mix of ways. Ebay , facebook selling pages, Gumtree or even a carboot (although I'd recommend taking more than just them. You may only get 20-50p each for things, but at least that's something).

With 700 toys you need just over 21p each for them to break even. If you could get 50p for half you wouldn't need to worry about the other half.

The other option would be to just throw the lot on ebay under the wholesale category. Do an auction starting at the least you'd like it to go for (so £150+fees and postage, if sending) and see what happens. Even if you only got 1 bid at least you'd know after costs you'd have the £150.

jon81uk

Mount the better ones in a large frame and sell it as retro art.

Sell the middle quality as a job lot on Best Offer on eBay. Bin the rest

forgotmyname

Count them and do a job lot on ebay, let someone else sort them.

soolin

The market for these is pretty much dead, I remember the old days, maybe 10 years or so ago when auction houses would get £10 a sack for them, now they won't even lot them.

So it's as above really, spend some time going through them and checking sold listings on eBay (sold not current listings) but if that doesn't show any value then either try and convince your dad they are not worth keeping, or just put them in the loft for another few years and then dump them.

Raspberry_Queen

Thank you all for your replies, especially Flyonthewall. I also like jon81uk's retro art idea!

I contacted an auctioneers just in case, and at first he said yes, but he hasn't replied after I asked a few questions and gave a few more details, so I think he's been put off.

We did try to sell them on ebay as a job lot, at first we asked for £350, then lowered it to £295 when that didn't work, but no one even looked at it The problem is that, as you all have said, sellers give them away or sell them dirt cheap. Recently there were 300 new wrapped McDonald's toys for sale for only £50. Soolin is correct, they just aren't popular any more. My dad bought them around 8 years ago when they were still a thing (although £150 would have still been a high price back then).

So the plan is, to try to make the money back, I should take the effort to catalogue them, and list the better ones on Ebay and Amazon. After Ebay is no longer useful, I'll sell the rest off at a car boot sale (we do have plenty of other stuff to sell). I could sell the remainder off as a cheap job lot, or give them away.

I have a lot on my plate at the moment, so if the worst comes to the worst I can flog them cheaply and lie about how much they made!