What’s the most ridiculous price that someone has offered you?

[PinkMoscatoLover]

Currently selling a pushchair for £70. It was used for less than a year as I got pregnant again and had to purchase a double buggy, so it’s in great condition!

Guess how much someone offered to purchase it for? £15😂 like really? Come on now.

It just made me think, what’s the silliest price someone has offered to pay when you’ve tried to sell something?

I remember listing a jacket on eBay for 100 quid (similar and 1 identical one sold for around 80-150) in the last couple months so went by that. I sold it for 90 after about 2 days.

As soon as i listed it though, someone offered me 15 quid because, and I quote 'I'm actually offering you 70 but I need to spend 55 on the train for a return ticket to pick it up'. It was free postage...

I've posted about this elsewhere so apologies. It's a few years ago now but it's a painful memory. When my dad died at the other end of the country, I relied on a local estate agent for advice. He valued the flat at £175,000. Two months later he came back with an offer of £125,000. Which I refused. Came back with £135,000, told me it was a cash buyer who had already sold and was living in a caravan and I might have to wait a long time if I didn't accept. I believed him. He was a property developer and got my dad's flat, which he'd worked all his life for, for £135,000. I could really do with that money now.

So the EA was a legit EA but also a property developer who lied to buy your dad’s flat? Wow, that is truly criminal. How did you end up finding out that there was no cash buyer who was living in a caravan but it was him instead?

There is no ‘issue’ - the OP asked a general question about ridiculous prices readers may have been offered.

But £15 is an insult.

so my pram bought for over 1k wouldn’t be worth £70. You have no idea what pram it was.

Everyone "can afford" to give anything they buy away - they parted with the cash when they bought it and there's no guarantee something will be in a saleable state after use.

What you mean is they'll be worse off if they don't sell everything.

Not really. Could you afford to move to a new house without selling your old one? Could you get a new car without relying on the value of your old one to put towards it? How is it surprising that less well-off people also have to factor in the value they can get back from the old one of anything in order to buy a newer/bigger/better one?

Yes, something could get destroyed/damaged and then be worth little/nothing, but you might be able to claim on insurance for that. Even so, most people don't make plans based on the very worst scenario. If it happens, it happens; but it's far from unreasonable to plan around selling your existing item and then putting the proceeds from it towards the next one.

There are things like pianos and heavy furniture where literally it will cost you to dispose of them, to have them taken away. I'd imagine these are the scenarios. I had to pay for 2 sofas to be taken away by the rubbish men - put them on local sites for free and got no interest at all. Second hand goods can be worth little even if you paid a lot for them, if no one wants it.

Oh, yes, very true. But if somebody is advertising an item free to anybody who collects it that you deem to be worthless - and you don't want to have to dispose of it for them - by far the simplest thing you can do is to ignore their advert and get on with your day.

In PP's case, the chap was looking for more stuff to take to 'sweeten the deal' - so if he was a legitimate waste disposal person wanting to earn money by offering his services, why would he want additional stuff to have to take away; all without earning a single penny for it?!

Keep all baby stuff if you're not having more and have a garage sale. We made about £300, way less than what we'd paid but had cash in hand and alot more space. We'd put up homemade posters around the local area about 5 days b4 our 'sale'. Not much left so donated everything else ...

So the EA was a legit EA but also a property developer who lied to buy your dad’s flat? Wow, that is truly criminal. How did you end up finding out that there was no cash buyer who was living in a caravan but it was him instead?

Was it the EA who scammed the vendor, so that he could buy it at a knockdown price, or was the property developer a different person who managed to hoodwink the (granted, not very competent or honest-sounding) EA?

If the latter, you'd expect any half-decent EA to know not to trust any buyer without proof. The sheer volume of people who will brazenly lie about being 'cash buyers' when they most clearly are not, in order to get one over the other would-be buyers who are honest about needing a mortgage from the outset, is immense.

There's also a parallel with this flat buyer and the other CF who expected the seller to take account of her travel costs. Why would anybody genuinely believe it to be of any concern to the seller whether a would-be buyer has to travel a long way or is currently living in a caravan (even if they genuinely are)? That's your problem; not the seller's!

I had a nice wooden side table for sale at a garage sale. Solid wood, good condition. I had $5 on it. I had someone offer me $1. I declined. I’d sooner give it to goodwill than sell it for that.

@FatherJackHackettsUnderpantsHamper

or was the property developer a different person who managed to hoodwink the (granted, not very competent or honest-sounding) EA?

Ah good point, I didn’t even think of that. Bloody hell that’s awful. So the property developer would have bought the house to flip it and sell it on again or something like that? I don’t know much about selling houses but that’s an extremely shitty thing to do

Not way off the mark in my case but ridiculous none the less..

DH and I did a boot sale in the early days of togetherness and by midday we'd had enough so he decided that the lovely hardback books we had for sale could go for 10p each so we could go home and started calling to the crowd about the newly reduced 10p books. A woman came up, squinted at the books in lovely condition and tutted and huffed as if contemplating spending millions and said, 'will you take 5p?'. Normally mild mannered DH looked daft at her and replied 'to be honest, for that much, I'd rather take them home and wipe my f*kin arse with them!' I didn't know where to look! 🤣

I got the opposite once. I’m giving away a loft bed as I can’t dismantle it or transport it. Clearly states who ever wants it must be able to dismantle and take away. First message comes in. Can I pay you to dismantle it and deliver? 🤷🏻‍♀️🤦‍♀️. No I’m also giving it away as it’s got wear and tear and and I’ve seen people trying to sell the same thing and it being listed for months. Went to a lovely bloke in the end who was prepared to dismantle and take away.

Sorry no, the buyer was a property developer. But the estate knew him because he'd sold a flat in the same block to him some months previously when he did flip it and sell it again. It was the caretaker of the flats that told me. And believe it or not, it was him who recommended the estate agent. I was a naive idiot with no experience of selling property and I paid for my ignorance.

I think the 'ease of selling' via social media pages these days has flooded the market with items that are worth less second hand as a result.

I buy and sell vintage hifi and vinyl.

I was selling a very nice set of hifi, from the 70s. Beautiful condition.

I posted it for sale on gumtree for £350. That was actually lower than it's worth but when I got it as part of a clearance with other bits, the person who wanted it gone didn't know if it worked and actually thought it didn't. It also didn't have speakers. If it did, it would've been worth a silly amount.

Anyway, I post it. I get a guy text me.
First question is "what's the best price?" Now this is a question I don't mind. So I replied, "well, make me an offer".

He comes back with £25, and he can collect straight away.

I respond with, sorry, it's a job lot I'm not selling bits individually because that's what I assumed. Oh no. He was offering £25 for the lot. When I was asking £350. And it was worth probably about £450-500.

I said no. He told me he was doing me a favour. Blocked him.

I had a few very low ball offers then a guy traveled for 2 hours to collect and happily paid what I asked.

A long time ago now, but a friend had a house valued at £125k by the smartest estate agents in town. My friend asked/insisted that they market it at £175k.
It sold in 10 days, so I suspect may EAs do favours for mates, particularly when dealing with relatives who live far away.

i advertised something for £50 and was offered a removal of it if I paid them £80!

I do have another car one, which I didn’t post last night as outing but fuck it. It was such cheeky fuckery I don’t care.

just after lockdown one I decided to replace my car. It was a small one, typically popular with young girls. I’d posted something on Facebook about it and a school friend, who I’d know for nearly 40 years, messaged me.
Her daughter had worked in an industry that went tits up in covid and had lived down south. She’d had no choice but to move home and had taken a regular job that she was struggling to commute to. She was desperate for a car but didn’t have a huge budget, mother however, has never had money problems in her life.

Now at this time the price of small second hand cars was rocketing and similar low mileage, immaculate cars of the same year were fetching £6k upwards. I felt for the daughter, she was the same age as my own DD and I’d known her all her life.
’ok’ says I. ‘Bring her over for a test drive and if she wants it I’ll go down to £5k to help her out a bit ’. She comes over, absolutely loves the car. Her mother, my ‘friend’ rather than snapping my hand off at this deal says she’ll get back to me and they leave. Her DD looks upset.

Half an hour passes and I get a FB message from her, her DD does indeed love the car but, and I quote ‘I can only give you £4k as I’m about to press order on a new kitchen, can pick it up tomorrow’.
When I’d picked my jaw up off the floor, I hit post on the FB marketplace advert and sold it later that afternoon for the £6k I initially thought it was worth. Some people have more front than Blackpool.

Oh sweetie I couldn’t tell you that, suffice to say he got a damned good slap round the face told to fuck off & that I’d make sure everyone knew what he’d done; next time I saw him he could not look in my direction; bloody car salesmen trying to buy my fou fou for less than the going rate; the cheeky fucker x

I sold a £500 cot bed for a tenner. I just wanted rid of it, it was taking up room. It was already a sunk cost so a tenner was better than taking it to the tip!

This one will always make me laugh

i advertised something for £50 and was offered a removal of it if I paid them £80!

Goodness!! Some of these CFs/scammers really do invite the response "I might have been born at night, but it wasn't last night!"

They're truly horrible people, though, as although most people can see straight through them (which I'm sure they realise), they will catch some vulnerable/unwary/desperate people out on a fairly regular basis - especially when they aren't just trying it on with a vague hope, but actively gaslighting people by aggressively insulting them and telling them blatant lies about the true value of their goods.

These are the exact same people who will tell your 95yo grandma that they've noticed a loose slate on her roof that they'll mend for a tenner, and then 'discover serious problems' that mean her house will fall down tomorrow and kill her inside it if she doesn't pay them £20,000 now to 'fix' it. Absolute scum.

Back in the day I bought an Emmaljunga pram system for $650. It was an imported item and something I'd always wanted if I ever had children.

Had no plans to sell it until the family was complete. One of the Mum's at my playgroup offered me $50 for it because her sister really wanted one but they were so expensive!

My youngest is now 29 and the Emmalunga is in storage in the basement for when I'm a granny