Selling board games - or ANYTHING for that matter - is a new experience for me. What started as a general collection of anything cardboard and meeple grew to something that I never thought I would have to manage, and yet here I was, sorting out what I decide to keep and sell, what prices to set them at, and how to negotiate when the asking price is not what I started with. Even all the thought and process to sort and separate the games that I'm willing to part with deserves its own article for a future post, so I'll just discuss my first time attending a board game flea market near my area.
Location
The flea market was being held in Game Kastle, specifically the Mountain View location. It's not a board game store I frequent as much due to distance, but its playing area size is VERY impressive, big enough for internal, air-conditioned flea markets. I knew it was big, but to see so many people barter their goods in a comfortable and open setting was pleasant. In my mind, however, I didn't expect it to be as dense as I saw it that morning. Rewind to an hour before it opens...
Pre-Flea-Market Prep
Good things to have
- Post-It notes
- Water bottle
- Small bills for change
- General good estimates of prices
The last item in that list, I did a general average of sold items from BGG's Marketplace side-by-side with prices on Amazon, and eyeballed the price at something reasonable, somewhere where I'm comfortable to negotiate down from if it came to that. It took longer than I thought, leaving the rest to sort out the next morning. Nothing short of a few trips ahead of schedule, and I figured all this done right before the start of the flea market would be great. Sure, there's an extra hour period at 9 am before the 10 am start, but I'm sure I'll be able to find a table at 10 am. Except, what I came to after 10 am was the image you see above.
Of course, after some inquiry, fortune smiles upon me when a free table was still available. So, after a $15 registration fee, I had my space to set up.
Seller Stories
"I played it a long time ago, and I really enjoyed it." --Person who bought Puzzle Strike
"I'm part of a Tiki Facebook group, and this looks interesting. Mind if I take some pictures?" --Person interested in The Fittest
"I played this years ago and enjoyed it, and am now starting to build my own collection. I have about 10 games so far." --Person who bought Innovation (v1.2)
"This is just $5?" --Person who bought Nintendo Monopoly: Collector's Edition (So very glad I wasn't kicked out just for selling it!)
And, on a personal note, I'm glad to have sold my (secret shame) copies of Tentacle Bento and Kanzume Goddess. They were bad purchases by me years ago, and I'm not anime-and-college me anymore. Kudos for me to selling them to the same person. Also happy to not see said person ever again, if I can help it. :/
End Results
In the end, minus extra expenses and table fees and only 4 titles negotiated down a little bit, I came out with $118, which is pretty good for games I don't play anymore. A list of games sold:
- Sky Tango
- Bears!
- Kitty Paw
- Sushi Go
- Nintendo Monopoly
- Innovation
- Dominion
- Puzzle Strike
- Machi Koro, with playmat
- Ca$h 'N Gun$
- Tentacle Bento
- Kanzume Goddess
I feel much lighter now, and all the better for it (especially those last two).
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