Ship It or Meet Them?

Weigh the item on a bathroom scale. Stand on it holding the thing, stand on it without, subtract. Then measure the box you would need rather than the item itself. Those two numbers settle most of this before anybody's preferences get involved.

Postage is priced on whichever is worse, the weight or the space the parcel occupies, which is why a light bulky object costs more to send than first-time sellers expect.

What posting actually costs you

Money is the smaller half. The other half is finding a box that fits, finding filler, packing it so it survives being thrown, printing a label or queueing to have one printed, getting to a drop-off point during opening hours, and keeping the receipt with the tracking number until the buyer confirms arrival.

Then the messages. Has it shipped. Where is it. Tracking has not updated. It is out for delivery and I am not home. That correspondence is part of the job and it runs for as long as the parcel is moving.

Add the platform's cut if you sell somewhere that handles the payment, and the fact that the money lands in an account on their schedule rather than in your hand. If you need cash by Friday, that timing is the entire decision and nothing else matters.

Where posting stops making sense

Three break points, in the order they bite.

Bulk first. Anything you cannot lift into a box alone, anything longer than your arm, anything awkwardly shaped. A floor lamp, a guitar case, a bike. Carriers price volume as well as weight, and odd shapes get handled worse.

Weight second. Once a parcel is heavy enough that you would not want to carry it to the bus stop, the postage has stopped being a rounding error against the item.

Fragility third, and it is the one people underestimate. Glass, ceramics, screens, anything with a hinge or a spout. If you cannot pack it to survive a drop from waist height onto concrete, you are not shipping it. You are betting nobody drops it.

Large furniture fails all three at once, which makes it a local sale by definition and turns it into a transport puzzle: selling furniture when you have no truck.

Who pays for the postage

Two honest options. Build it into the price and call it free shipping, or state it separately and quote before the buyer commits.

Free shipping reads better in a list of results and removes one negotiation, but if you have not weighed the parcel you have written yourself a bill you cannot see. Weigh first, price second.

If you charge separately, put it in the listing in a sentence nobody can misread. "Pickup available, or I can post at cost, message me your zip code for a quote." That sets the expectation before the conversation rather than during it.

Buyers do not walk away over postage. They walk away over hearing about postage once they have already decided they want the item. Say it early, whatever it comes to.

Damage in transit and the not-as-described claim

Photograph the item before it goes in the box, photograph it packed in the box, and photograph the sealed parcel with the label showing. That is a minute of work and it is the entire evidence file if a claim opens.

Pay for tracking. Untracked postage means a buyer can say it never came and you have nothing to show anyone. Ask whether the carrier's compensation covers what the item is worth and what proof they want for a claim, because that has a real answer and it differs by service.

The claim you cannot photograph your way out of is not-as-described. That is what the listing text is for. Name the scratch, the chip and the missing cable in writing and a buyer's disappointment is not a discrepancy. Leave them out and it is.

Some claims are not claims at all. A buyer asking for a partial refund on arrival, or reporting an empty box, is reading from a script, and recognizing a scam buyer's message is worth doing before you accept the order rather than after.

Local pickup ends when they drive away

Money in hand, item gone, nothing pending. No tracking, no claim window, no chargeback, no message next week saying it arrived cracked. The transaction closes when the buyer's car leaves the curb.

That closure is worth more than it sounds when you need money now. A local sale paying cash today beats a posted sale paying into an account later, whenever today is the constraint.

The cost is the meeting itself: your time, your location, and a stranger. Setting the handover up properly is not optional, and meeting a buyer safely to hand something over covers where to stand and how the cash should move.

When posting is the only buyer pool there is

Some things have no local buyer and never will. A niche part, a collector's item, one specific size in one specific brand, a textbook for a single course. Locally your audience is whoever lives near you. Posted, it is whoever wants that exact thing.

Small, light and specific is the shape that ships well. A phone, a lens, a jacket, a game. Selling clothes you already own leans entirely on this, because a garment costs little to send and the people who want one size in one brand are scattered across the country.

The opposite shape is heavy and common. Books, games and DVDs you already own are the classic trap, because a box of books weighs what a box of books weighs, and common titles have a buyer on every street including the one next to your buyer.

Things you should not post

Anything the carrier prohibits. Aerosols, loose lithium batteries, flammables, some liquids. Look up the prohibited list for the service you are using before you tape the box. Getting this wrong is not a fee, it is the parcel not arriving with no compensation behind it.

Anything you cannot afford to lose. If the item vanishing in transit would leave you worse off than never selling it, sell it locally.

Anything where the compensation cover would not actually pay out on a claim, and anything where postage plus packaging plus your afternoon eats more of the sale than you are willing to give up.

And if you have never posted anything before, do not begin with the most valuable object you own. Send something small and cheap first, learn where the drop-off is and how long the queue takes, and keep the receipt.