You just pulled your old computer with all its peripherals from the loft and have decided to part with it. The easy fix is to sell everything as one big lot, but . The is however a catch: Selling as a lot may imply a significant reduction in the selling price.

The lot-selling discount

Selling your entire collection as a combined lot may save you a lot of trouble, but the downside is that you will be selling your items at a discount. Having spoken to quite a few sellers, it has become clear that many of them tend to grossly underestimate exactly how big that discount has to be.

If you list several items together as one lot, chances of finding a buyer who is willing to sell his kidney to get that exact combination of items are slim to none. Rather, chances are that the buyer will be someone who wants a single item and find it quite inconvenient that he is forced to buy a lot of junk in order to get it.

No matter how the buyer plans to dispose of the remaining items, it goes without saying that his willingness to pay for them is limited. Further, the seller has to consider that potential buyers may have alternative options, including buying those very same items from eBay or the likes.

This means that in order to sell the lot, the seller may have to offer a discount.

Across the nearly 500 retro lots that I have bought over the years, I have kept a record of buying and selling prices. In most cases, I buy the items as a lot but sell each item individually. Across my data, a clear pattern has emerged: The bigger the lot, the larger the discount that the seller had to offer to get his items sold.

Discount at different lot sizes

As a reseller, my earnings come from different sources. Part of it comes from testing, repairing and selling with a warranty. Another part comes from splitting up a lot and selling the items of separately.

But here is the interesting thing: When I calculate my margin at different lot sizes, a clear pattern emerges: The margin increases proportionally with the lot size. In other words, sellers had to offer a larger discount when selling larger lots.

The chart below illustrates this mechanism in greater detail.

Practical implications

Whenever sellers ask for valuation assistance on Facebook and elsewhere, people tend to respond by assessing the value of each individual item and adding it all together. This may be right – or it could be grossly misleading.

For instance, a C64 (€90), a 1541 (€65), a 1530 (€10), a joystick (€30) and 10 cassette tapes (10 x €4) may amount to €235, but only if sold separately. If listed as a lot, the seller should expect to make around €200.

As a rule of thumb, I use the following guideline when assessing the lot-selling discount at various lot sizes:

Needless to say, the discount may depend on other factors such as the type of items included in the lot, but the table above is a good starting point.