Selling kids old toys - Who gets the money?

[CalicoBlue]

Having a clear out, I sold some of my teenage kids old toddler toys. DS saw me sell a collection he had for £80, he wanted the money. It made me think, I had thought of it as my clearout, but he saw it as me selling his toys and keeping the money. I bought most of them anyway. So I gave him half. AIBU?

MrTumble that was my question too but I've only had answers along the lines of 'But I would never give away a toy wo asking the child first'

The way I look at things, most toys when children have outgrown them, the children aren't bothered about. There is little emotional attachment.
So once a toy has served its purpose, it might be put away for a bit in the loft and then given to a younger sibling. Rules have always been clear in our house and it has never been an issue. Same if we decided to sell the toys to make space (or give them away to charity etc...).
If the child is now old enough to organise the sale (as in preparing and cleaning all the toys, putting abels with prices on and even better goes to the nearly new sale or ebay to sort the sale as such) then the money is for the child because he/she has put the effort into selling the toys.
If this is me or DH doing it, then the money is mine.

I'm at the idea that the teenager would get the money wo any effort at all from their part!
As for 'but is theirs' well... tbh it's not as if you are going to use that money to pay for a spa day on your own are you? It will be used to pay for new toys/outfit/food that the child needs anyway. In that way, the money IS being used for the child as it was intended.

Funnily enough I was thinking about this the other day. My DIL was having a clear out and told me how much she had made. When my kids were younger I always gave them the money.

I would very rarely hand down/get rid of anything that belonged to my children without checking first. We would make joint decisions about handing down, keeping for sentimental reasons, selling or charity shopping. Boot fairs- everybody who chipped in effort got a share of the takings. EBay- proceeds split between owner and person who did the selling. Handing down- some were outright gifts, some long term loans.

Everything's a negotiation.

We have made 1,000's from ebay selling toys. My children were/are very spoilt - two sheds in the garden full of stuff. Lego, thomas the tank engine - everything you can imagine. All the money gets put back into buying them other things. We do not have the space anymore for it all.

The effort that goes into write up, packaging, even finding the little pieces to go with everything is exhausting. We don't take anything from it and to be honest they have never missed a thing.

One of my kids has no attachment at all to possessions, another can't part with anything... Hakulet would you let a 7 yo choose to be a full on hoarder?

Do you explain to your kids that they can pass their toys down or sell them? Or just pass down or keep? If you have a 3 year age gap does your 5 yo get to sell the duple rather than pass it on to the 2 yo? Then you give 5 yo the cash and buy 2 yo more duplo? Or do you buy the duplo off the 5 yo to cut out the middle man?

Bit dubious about that being carried through with every toy in practice! :o

We don't sell, what we don't need we give to charity. With my little monkeys, stuff gets pretty much trashed anyway.
DS1 tried to sell some of his old junk on a garage sale. He didn't make that much.

When I sell kids stuff I keep the money. They invariably profit out of the extra cash we now have. They don't get pocket money so are treated regularly to DVDs, cinema, days out etc so that money will get recycled into that.
I got nearly £200 from a bootsale of their old clothes and toys. We put it towards the summer holiday - more touristy things that we couldn't / wouldn't normally have the cash for.
My two get lots of 'things' anyway. Whether or not I 'kept' their £200. Perhaps I should've taken off pitch fees, petrol, and time spent sorting out

Our clearouts go to younger sibling, younger friends, or charity. So never had to think about the money.

However every year DS earns the money (via chores) to get a new football kit, and passes the old one down to his sister (who doesn't care if its 'old') - I tend to do a little deal like buying him the socks as a thank you for thinking of his sister. Not sure they'll be bothered about this when they are teenagers though!

I think you were more than fair in the circumstances, I would not have blamed you for keeping it all (let's face it I bet you've spent £1000's on him over the years).

My parents when clearing out any of my old toys would always say 'there's a load of your old stuff the back room, sort through and keep what you want, we'll dispose of the rest'.
I obviously kept sentimental items but beyond that my parents might have thrown , donated or sold them it was none of my business, I'd given up ownership of them by not taking them from the pile. Perhaps you could do than next time?

As it's toddler toys he probably hasn't thought about, let alone wanted to play with in years, I would be a bit about him suddenly just claiming money when you're the one who's gone to the effort of selling it. Half is more than fair IMHO.

Agree with a pp who suggested in future, give him a set amount of time to sort through and decide what he wants to sell/keep. He then needs to organise the selling and then he can claim the money for himself.

Hmmm. Mine are still little and I keep the money. It hadn't occurred to me not to but I do agree that the toys are their property and I'd want to respect that. I don't feel guilty about keeping the money as it's bound to be spent on them anyway, not as though I'm going for a spa day with it. But as they get older perhaps it should be their money. I certainly wouldn't object to them selling their toys and keeping the money. I second the point that it would be hard to know whose toys were whose. Four dc here and toys are passed from one to the other all the time.

It depends, with the younger two the money tends to be used on them. With the older ones, if it's their idea to sell they keep the money less any fees. They will often choose to sell something current to fund something better IYSWIM.
If it's my idea to sell something that's been gathering dust unwanted for years and I've done all the donkey work, sifting through all the random 'hm Hun' or 'will u take 10p and deliver 50 miles away' messages then I keep the money. They often benefit from my profits in the long run anyway.

We haven't sold anything until both children have had the use out of them, and if they've still been worth selling, we spend the money on treats while on our family holiday. We've been doing it that way since they were little after the yearly car boot sale just because it's an easy way to help teach them the value of money. They're teenagers now and are very happy with it because we make a point of spending it on ice creams all round, or a particular day trip, and some of it is split between them as their holiday spending money.

When we had a clear out the DTs took the unwanted stuff to a car boot sale. (We helped but they did the selling and so on). They shared the proceeds and put them into their savings accounts.

well i think the money should go to you but as their older half is fair i have sold old baby toys but then used the money of the dc's to get them something else so kind of selling to raise money sort of thing my dc are only 5 4 and 1 tho

Up until now, any kids stuff sold, the money has gone into our savings account as we were saving get up to buy a house which is for the benefit of the DCs as me and DH alone would have been perfectly happy in our old tiny house.

However now we are in, I am thinking that when I do sell their stuff I am going to put the money in their ISAs for when they are older. I don't think I can justify it being my money now and I would like to think they will get a bit more when they are an adult.