A Beginner's Guide to Reselling

     It is very important for newer resellers to pick a certain type of item and understand the market and potential buyers. By understanding the market, you will be able to minimize potential losses that a beginner might face. Two common terms when it comes to reselling are ETS (easy to sell) and HTS (hard to sell). It is usually harder to find discounted easy to sell items as well…they are easy to sell and everyone wants in on them! I would recommend starting with easy to sell items such as paintbrushes or stamps. Paintbrushes or stamps are especially easy to sell because Neopians are always looking to paint their pets and fill up their stamp albums for both a higher count and potential avatar.

     Noticing trends in the market of your items is very important. For example, if you own a popular paintbrush and a new desired colour was just released, the demand – and therefore price of the brush will likely, but not always increase. Understanding when your items will increase or decrease in value will help you maximize your profits. Other examples include but are not limited to: stamps increasing in price due to an album being near completion, Battledome weapons increasing in price due to a plot or even paintbrushes decreasing in price due to it being the beginning of the month when more people use Nerkmid to try and get the vending machine trophy.

     Items on Neopets can be bought or sold three different types of ways: through the shop wizard, the auction house or the trading post. The shop wizard is the simplest form to understand, items are listed for a select price and you can choose to buy it at that price for the listed number of Neopoints. The shop wizard is a powerful Neopian who searches through many shops to find you the best price. However, he can only check a handful of shops at once, usually sorted by shops owned by the username that starts with a specific letter, number or character. On the other hand, the super shop wizard, who is only available if you have Neopets premium membership, can search through all the shops at once. The shop wizard is a great place to find deals, especially if you have access to the super shop wizard where you can see the price difference between the cheapest and second-cheapest of that item in all of Neopia. The limit to items that can be priced in user shops is 999,999. Items that are commonly priced at 999,999 or under (which means they can be found in user shops) are called “buyable”. Common items that you can find on the shop wizard to resell are paintbrushes, Nerkmid, Codestones, stamps, etc.

     The trading post is another way to purchase or sell items on Neopets. A catch with the trading post is, no matter what the item(s) are, you must be getting at least one item back in return. The trading post has a feature called where you can see the newest 20 trading post lots. Resellers often watch the newest 20 lots like hawks to try and snag the good deals, after all an item that has been listed for a long time at the select price likely isn’t as much of a steal or someone else would have snagged it by now. The trading post allows you to list 10 items in a single lot and in your wishlist you can specify users the price you are seeking or if you want them to instead mail you offers. The Neopoint limit to the trading post is 2,000,000. A common form of trading for items that are higher than 2,000,000 are called split trades where a user will offer a combination of the total amount among the requested item and junk item. For example, if a user is trying to purchase a Pastel Paint Brush for 5,000,000, they can request a split trade and offer 2,000,000 on the paintbrush and 2 separate lots with junk items where they can offer any combination of 3,000,000. Scamming via split trades is uncommon but still happens sometimes so do so at your own risk and scamming will get you frozen! Other scams to watch out for are misleading items such as “brush plushies” where users will try to trick you into thinking they are offering paintbrushes. This is also not allowed and will result in your account being frozen!

     The auction house is where Neopians can auction their items for a select price with a starting and minimum increment. The minimum starting price and increment are 1 Neopoint each while the maximum is 50,000,000 Neopoints. The auction house shows an estimated time of how long the auction has left from under 30 minutes to between 1-2 days with several different time increments in between. It is a great place to scour for deals on obscure high-end items or even smaller easy to sell items like secret laboratory map pieces. Because it has the highest starting and minimum increments, the auction house is the most common method used for high-end trading.

     Now that you know how to trade your items, it’s important to know your target customers. Finding collectors/people who want your items is important for moving inventory quickly. For example, if you’re selling books, checking the high score table to find readers who need your books is a good idea. The same goes for if you’re selling cards or stamps! Checking leaderboards is a great way to find people who might want your items. For harder to sell collectables, a good way to find an interested buyer would be to search similar items in galleries and see if there is a user that needs your item but is missing it for their collection.

     Jellyneo is a recommended fan site that has an item database that can be very useful for reselling. It gives history/item notes as well as rarity and previously listed prices. It is important to note that the item database only shows what the item has been listed at and not actual sales prices so it is meant to be used as a guide but not the law. Another resource would be the trading/auctions Neoboards where you can advertise or get advice about what an item is worth. It’s also a great way to make some new friends on your trading journey! It is important to note that working with other users to manipulate a market is not allowed and will result in your account being frozen!

     Reselling can be a great way to make Neopoints to fund your goals and while it may seem difficult, by following these tips, hopefully, it’ll be easier than you thought! Remember to be wary of scams and if it’s too good to be true, it might be well – too good to be true. Remember to have fun and play fair!