Selling books on Ebay (packing solution)

sooper8

Just got a lot of books out of the loft and have used Ziffit (scanning app on smart phone ) to sell a load of them- pretty straightforward, they give you a price and collect the books and pay into bank account or Payapl. I would recommend it as a quick way to earn some cash. They pay a reasonable amount , but when I check, some of the books I scanned that they wanted to pay £4 for example , might go for £18 on ebay or Amazon second hand.
And , older books with no ISBN bar code and some that are very high value, I am going to sell on eBay. But when I look around for cheapest cardboard packing it would eat into my profit quite considerably.
Does anyone have any super cheap ways of packaging books safely and securely at very low or no cost? Not to send to Ziffit, as they can go in any old big cardboard box - I mean to send individual books if I sell them on eBay.
Listing them on eBay is quite time consuming and the amount made isn't big, so,  any other tips for a second hand /part time book seller ? 
Thanks in advance

kalsha

I have sold a lot of books on Ebay and still selling some now.  I have never bought any packaging for them.   I got a lot of used jiffy bags and those brown book wrappers (amazon uses them) from next door, freecycle and facebook.   A lot of people give them away for free so it is a matter of keeping a look out on these sites.  

neverlikedpeas

For normal sized hardback books i pay £1 per padded envelope (from Rymans)  and about 50p worth of bubble wrap to smother the book in to prevent damage. Home Bargains do big rolls of bubble wrap for £2.50 which should be enough for 5 books.
So about £1.50 packaging per book for me.
For small books they can sometimes be fitted into small padded envelopes (3 envelopes for £1 ) from the cheap stores.

soolin

neverlikedpeas said:

For normal sized hardback books i pay £1 per padded envelope (from Rymans)  and about 50p worth of bubble wrap to smother the book in to prevent damage. Home Bargains do big rolls of bubble wrap for £2.50 which should be enough for 5 books.
So about £1.50 packaging per book for me.
For small books they can sometimes be fitted into small padded envelopes (3 envelopes for £1 ) from the cheap stores.

That' s expensive , look on ebay for cheaper Jiffy style bags no need to pay Rymans prices at all. OK , its also worth checking Amazon for bags and bubble wrap and comparing prices between them and ebay.

I buy huge rolls of bubble wrap on ebay for around £10- enough for 50 books easily, plus around 10p per jiffy bag. Just search carefully. 

theoretica

Is there a local facebook share group or equivalent?  Ours does a good line in recycling second hand packing, including amazon book boxes.

soolin

theoretica said:

Is there a local facebook share group or equivalent?  Ours does a good line in recycling second hand packing, including amazon book boxes.

Actually that’s not a bad suggestion , lots of people are only too happy to recycle card packaging. 

hermante

If you are not a business, just reuse the packaging that comes from your own purchases...  As I am not a business my buying exceeds my selling by a factor of 2 or 3. About half of the packaging I receive is too flimsy or damaged when it arrives, but the rest is as good as new as I take care when opening things.

I have saved 10 years worth of packaging from ebay and amazon including enough bubble wrap to fill the boot of my car. I have never paid a penny for wrapping, jiffy bags or tape in over 500 sales. My feedback contains many variations on the lines of "well packed" (though some people leave the same comments for everything they buy).

It's also environmentally friendly to reuse things and if I had to buy packaging for £1 per transaction I would be losing money on most of my sales, or there would be many more relists until a buyer prepared to bid £1.13 higher comes along.

Obviously if you are a business with 500 sales a month it is not worth the time to do this.

sooper8

Thanks for all the tips, I hadn't  thought of Jiffy bags, my mind was on cardboard.
I dont buy enough of Amazon etc to have enough to wrap my sales in. I am not a business but I have literally 1000's of books and vinyl in the loft that I want to sell. It is hard to balance out spending hours selling individual ones for small 'profit' to sell g the whole bulk and being quids in quickly but then feeling like you let them go for a song....but it has to be one way or the other I guess as I just don't have the time and patience for listing 1000's of items individually

vacheron

I bought 10 books on a site that was selling them for £1.99 with free delivery when the same book sells on eBay for around £12.

When they arrived I noticed that they slid perfectly into the pack of 10 A5 jiffy bags I'd had lying around for ages (like a perfect custom tight fit) so that solved 2 problems at once!

Once your book (plus packaging) is thicker than 25mm though you might as well sell in a bundle because for the amount it will cost to post it second class you can fill a shoebox with 2kg of books for the same postage price!

Could you possibly bundle the books into sets or collections and sell them this way as it is a lot less time and effort (though it does mean a trip to the post office rather than popping them into a post box)?

Grumpelstiltskin

If you are going to buy Jiffy bags then look in Poundland, they tend to be cheapest in the shops.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Personally I wouldn't put expensive books in jiffy bags, even if wrapped bubblewrap. Stating in your listings that you'll pack well with cardboard will appeal to people who love and collect books. 

Convivence stores are good source of small sturdy boxes, big chains sell their cardboard for recycling but if you still have a local independent shop they might be happy to give you a load.