You normally wouldn’t want to spend a ton of time trying to sell books and toys because they’re generally not going to bring in enough cash to make a time-consuming effort pay off.
But what if you have a really valuable book? There’s a site for that.
The rest of your books and toys can be sold through the online equivalent of a garage sale. Here are the best sites to sell books and toys.
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Valuable books and magazines
Abe Books is a national retailer that specializes in classic manuscripts, first editions, classics signed by the author or a famous contemporary. It also sells vintage magazines. These rare manuscripts can command substantial sums when they’re sold to collectors. And, as an established rare book site, Abe Books has plenty of regular customers willing to pay thousands of dollars for the right rare books.
The downside? You need to sign up for a monthly membership ($25) to sell here. And, if you sell anything, you’ll also pay a $13.5% commission. The commission rate is pretty standard for similar sites. But, rare books don’t necessarily sell overnight, so you may be paying that monthly commission for a while. That said, if you have a collection to sell, it can be well worth the cost.
You can learn more about AbeBooks by reading our full review here.
Or click here to sign up or browse their site.
Everything else
No valuable classics in your shelves? Just run-of-the mill books and toys that would fetch a few bucks at a garage sale? Naturally, you can host that garage sale — or give the stuff to charity and take a tax write-off.
Or you can do the online equivalent and list it for sale on Facebook Marketplace, CraigsList or Nextdoor. All three sites allow you to list items for sale for free. However, our favorite of these sites is Nextdoor. Like Facebook, Nextdoor is primarily a social media site. However, you don’t have a set group of “friends” that exclusively see your posts. Posts are blasted to any member in a set geographic area.
And, unlike Facebook, which employs mysterious algorithms to determine which of your friends are notified when you post, Nextdoor employs neighborhood moderators to keep posts on the up-and-up. The only complaint we hear these local moderators are sometimes arbitrary. But, mostly, the system works nicely.
You can learn more about Nextdoor by reading our full review here.