Six Essential Items for Reselling on eBay and Amazon

Earlier this year I started a new hobby - flipping things I find at garage sales, thrift stores, and even regular retail stores. Flipping essentially means I sell it elsewhere more than what I paid for. I sell most of these items on eBay, and some on Amazon, which means I need to ship these items. There are a few things I’ve found essential for shipping, and here’s a list of six of them:

0. Postal Scale

How did I forget this? When you ship things on Amazon or eBay, you need to know how much it weighs. This is simply because you’ll be purchasing shipping through Amazon or eBay because they offer a discount over what you’d pay at USPS at the counter.

This is so important I’m making it the zeroth item. Also zeroth so I can keep the title.

(Thank you, WithoutLampsTheredBe for pointing this out!)

1. Scotch 3M Bubble Mailers Size 0 (6” x 9”) - 25ct

DVD cases fit snugly into these. They’re great for other small things, too. If you buy them individually at the store (say, Kroger or Meijer), the cost roughly 70¢ a mailer. Amazon has them for around $7.50, which makes them cost 30¢ apiece, which is less than half the cost. Yeah, I know it’s only 40¢, but it adds up - that’s $10 a box!

I’ve already ordered my second box.

2. Scotch Bubble Mailer, 8.5 x 11-Inches, Size #2, 25-Pack

Same thing as #1, but only bigger. I haven’t used as many as these as the first one - I’m still on my first box. They still cost a lot less than buying them individually at the store - around 80¢ to $1.00 at the store, compared to around $10 on Amazon. A savings of $15 a box!

3. 200 - 10x13 White Poly Mailers Envelopes Bags 10 x 13

I don’t even know where to buy these offline. I’ve only used these a few times, but they’re good for things that won’t fit in the other two items I mentioned that don’t need any bubble protection. For instance, I shipped a Fram cabin air filter that was new in box the other day in one of these.

4. MFLABEL 200 Half Sheet - Shipping Labels - 5-1/2” X 8-1/2”

The best thing about shipping labels is that they’re so easy to apply. Before I got these, I was just printing my labels on regular paper, cutting the paper, and then taping it to my packages. This was a real pain and I frequently found myself cussing at the box. Plus I was wasting a lot of tape.

The trick with these is to set the paper size so that you print on only one label a time.

5. Shipping Tape

This is just a must have. You need someway to seal boxes. Just don’t use it to tape your labels - use shipping labels that stick!

6. Laser Printer

These have come down in price recently, and they’re about the same size are inkjets. So you don’t need a huge thousand dollar printer like you might see at the office. The real advantage to these is they use a lot less ink - actually, toner - than inkjet printers.

Of course, I feel somewhat hypocritical about that last one because I still am using my inkjet printer that I bought a decade ago. Hey, it still works!

Do you think I missed anything? Comment below!