Selling RC equipment

[Saito2]

What is it like trying to sell RC equipment (kits, cars, parts, etc.) in your part of the world? I know outrageous shipping cost cut down on sales between more distant countries, but how about within your own county? Here in the US I think RC stuff is worth less than dirt. I know, like a lot of hobbies, RC and its interest is shrinking, but from my experience, it seems totally dead. I have had items on local trade sites like Craigslist for YEARS without a single hit. Its not a pricing issue as they cars are often times priced less than half their original value. I've received one hit on a Madbull I've been trying to sell and the guy asked if it was gas or electric (despite the info being in the ad).🙄

I guess the flip side is when I buy locally, folks all but give RC stuff to me. I bought a USA-1 awhile back and the nice fellow threw in an RC10 Champ edition just to be rid of it. I'm honestly curious what the buy/sell/trade scene is like in other countries.

[NWarty]

5 minutes ago, Saito2 said:

What is it like trying to sell RC equipment (kits, cars, parts, etc.) in your part of the world? I know outrageous shipping cost cut down on sales between more distant countries, but how about within your own county? Here in the US I think RC stuff is worth less than dirt.

Pfft. Here in the PNW, people think their clapped-out POS 10-year-old RC T-Extreme 3000 1/10 Fusion Nuclear buggy is worth a small fortune. I haven't seen anything realistically priced on either Craigslist or Offerup.com in the last three or four years. I search both sites daily and haven't seen anything worth a poop in ages. 

P.S. RCgroups and RCtech are both a joke when it comes to people and their prices. Every once in a blue moon, I'll see somewhat of a deal, but it's becoming more and more rare. 

[TurnipJF]

I have 4 cars in my fleet, 2 new, 2 bought used, one off eBay and the other off this forum. Both the used purchases seemed reasonably priced but not an absolute steal, and in neither instance did it appear that the seller needed to wait a great deal of time for me to come along as a buyer.  So around here at least, supply and demand seem reasonably matched. 

[Saito2]

I guess I've been a lucky buyer but an unlucky seller. Is asking $45 for a solid used Hornet with bearings too much?

[tamiya3speed]

I find that Tamiya in the USA is very hard to get a good price out of.  I expect to lose half of what I have in it.  Opposite of that is that I have always done well when selling Axial.  People tend to pay closer to retail on those.  

 

[NWarty]

3 minutes ago, tamiya3speed said:

I find that Tamiya in the USA is very hard to get a good price out of.  I expect to lose half of what I have in it.  Opposite of that is that I have always done well when selling Axial.  People tend to pay closer to retail on those.  

 

The thing is, some bozo with a beat up Tamiya goes onto ebay and thinks their pile of poop is worth $$$$$$$$ because they filtered by "completed listings/highest price".

Looking at Tamiyas in my immediate area on Craigslist and Offerup. There's a vintage M38 in which the buyer is asking $200 for, and an unfinished Bruiser asking $600. $800 King Hauler POS, and a decent F102 selling for $120. Yeah....nope.  

[NWarty]

38 minutes ago, Saito2 said:

I guess I've been a lucky buyer but an unlucky seller. Is asking $45 for a solid used Hornet with bearings too much?

Is it complete?

There's currently a vintage Hornet festering here on Offerup. No body, sort of beat up, selling for $25 with Futaba Attack radio. That's pretty cheap/reasonable. I haven't grabbed it since I already have a Hornet. 

[Munchbox]

I don't think there's much demand for Tamiya stuff around here. Most of the (few enough at that) guys I've seen around run modern stuff. LHS is full of ECX, Traxxas, Losi and I once asked if they had any hopups for a Lunchbox and he had never heard of that before.

I've considered getting rid of my vintage Blackfoot but by the time I get $50 for it I might as well keep it. It's a decent runner but doesn't have the original shell and is missing some other parts.

I recently broke my dt03 chassis in half and was going to list the full front and rear ends for sale on here as well but I'm not even sure anyone would want them.. 

I guess it's silly to think I find more value in a car I don't run and or don't even like simply because I can't get hardly a peanut for it if I sold it. 😐

[Saito2]

2 hours ago, Munchbox said:

I guess it's silly to think I find more value in a car I don't run and or don't even like simply because I can't get hardly a peanut for it if I sold it. 😐

I don't think its silly. I feel the same way. On one hand, I don't want to give the car away for something like $10 but I'm willing to part with it pretty cheap. Less than half the price of new for a clean buggy seems cheap to me especially when others are asking stupid money like those NWarty mentioned. I just want to have more space and let someone else enjoy it without feeling like I got totally screwed by selling it. The re-re Hornet I was trying to sell has a 55T crawler motor in it now and went to my daughter. She hasn't quite figured out turning yet...or backing up...or stopping, but hey, she's enjoying it.

[speedy_w_beans]

A few years ago when I was selling finished vehicles and NIBs, I took a multi-pronged approach and listed my stuff on Craigslist, the local RC racing board (for the Carolinas), and RCTech.  For some of the more race-oriented stuff, like M05PRO and M06PRO, those sold pretty quickly on RCTech for maybe $20 less than I paid for them (they were NIBs and still held most of their value).  My finished DT02 Sand Viper went pretty quickly for $80 on Craigslist to some guy an hour west of me.  Another person about 3 hours east of me bought 3-4 NIB re-releases that I had listed on the local racing board; those went for about what I paid for them since they were new kits.

In general I agree finished vehicles maybe get 50% of original value if they are in great condition.  NIBs, depending on what they are, I might lose a few dollars or make a few dollars depending on what the kit is.  Overall if I'm in a selling mood I try to use 3-4 different venues to move stuff.

[markbt73]

That's the main reason I have stopped buying things: I can't sell what I don't want nearly as easily as I once could. For a while, 5 or 6 years ago, I was buying up lots of RC gear from Craigslist, splitting it up, keeping what I wanted, and selling the rest, sometimes after a cleanup/quick restoration. I flipped half a dozen RC10s that way, two Blackfoots, two Clods, three or four Kyosho entry-level cars (Pegasus/Icarus and Raider/Rocky), and some other stuff I have probably forgotten. In every case, I made back more than what I had spent on the lot, and that enabled me to spend some cash on something I really wanted (like the Optima I spent $500 restoring a year before the re-re came out... oh well). And it gave me a chance to tinker with a bunch of cars I wouldn't have otherwise sought out.

But the last couple of lots I've seen listed on Craigslist have been for 90s/00s nitro trucks, and I couldn't care less about those. The vintage stuff seems to have dried up entirely, and what is there has sat for ages. Even the consignment case at the local hobby shop, once good for an occasional vintage surprise (I pulled a Falcon and a Kyosho Icarus out of there for $50 each) is nothing but overpriced drift cars and modified RTR crawlers now.

But still I check Craigslist, and yard sales, and flea markets, because I just know that somewhere there exists a cardboard box full of forgotten treasures, with some absurdly low price scribbled on it in Sharpie, just waiting for me...

[iluvmud]

The reality boils down to this....

buyers want to pay pennies on the dollar for top quality stuff.

sellers can go either way but the most common scenario is a seller is selling hammered poop and asks for 1% less than a nib kit. 

In your case @Saito2 you realize that the 1st scenario is unrealistic so you try to get 50% ish back on your stuff, then deal with people who fall into the buyer’s scenario and it’s frustrating to say the least. 

Myself as a regular buyer/seller can pretty much tell you the price something will go for, as a buyer myself I weigh out what’s being sold and what needs to be replaced etc to meet my standards, if there’s too much additional capitol needed to reach the standard, I will offer them what I am willing to pay. granted 98% of my cars are nib or shelf queens but if it’s for bashing that’s another thing all together.

[Saito2]

52 minutes ago, markbt73 said:

That's the main reason I have stopped buying things: I can't sell what I don't want nearly as easily as I once could

Yep, I'm in the same boat. I used to love buying up lots of old RC equipment from Craigslist. This week I had a co-worker offer a near-new RC10T4 and a pile of Clod parts. Normally I would have been a sucker for it, but I passed on it because I'm running out of room. The T4 is too new and I have more Clod Busters than I know what t do with. Even if I did piece it together, no one would buy it. My Craigslist is totally dominated by Traxxas, broken down Nitro vehicles and the occasional over-priced Axial.

I'm not sure how important the assembly experience is to the average layman nowadays. I always figured if a new Hornet is $100, $45 for one with maybe 10 runs on it plus the benefit of a steel pinion and bearings would be fair. The overall shrinking of the hobby probably isn't helping matters. Hmmm. I wonder if I carefully disassemble my models and clean them, if they'd sell better as assembled, then disassembled kits,lol

[Jonathon Gillham]

Over here there is a pretty active facebook rc sales group and from what I've seen the drifters and stockcar racers are all over the show. They will be asking what must be close to want they've spent on stuff I know nothing about. Full alloy chassis etc. Or there are heaps of cheap rtr cars which seem like ok deals but I bet I could find them cheaper new on aliexpress. And then a lot of old gear still asking good money, like Futaba 4PK for not much less than I could get a 4PV new. Then there are the traders who buy stuff from places like Banggood and try to make 100% markup. It seems there is a lot of worn out secondhand stuff that gets recylced through the same people

The stuff I'm interested in secondhand is for racing and I've got to know who some of the sellers are and keep an eye out for their gear. They sell kits which may have seen 3 - 9 club meets with a few key upgrades for around half what it cost. A TB EVO 7 was listed for $390 the other day and its been run in 2 meets I think. Likewise an Associated RC10 B6 was $350 and that had about $200 worth of Exotek bits too. Parts like savox servos and decent receivers get snapped up quick too for about half their retail price.

I have seen the odd Tamiya get listed but they are few and far between. Personally I would prefer to buy new if they are available as I don't have a big collection and don't plan to, like the build and the money we're talking about isn't huge anyway. A Top Force or Sand Scorcher would be the most expensive I would want at the moment and while expensive the budget can stretch to accomodate one.