NCT Sales

[daftwit]

A local sale is being held in March, has anyone experience in selling at the sale ?

Am I correct in believing that you drop your items off and the NCT volunteers sell them ?

I know they take 25% commission, this sounds okay as they are putting in alot of work.

Each NCT is different. Some are table top where you 'purchase' a table and sell your goods yourself. Ours runs as you describe but take 30% plus a small charge (£3 ish) for the pricing labels. Yes you can drop your stuff off but I usually stay and volunteer to help and to keep an eye on my stuff!

Sell it cheap if you don't want it coming back!

Our local one takes 30% commission and sells for you. It's extremely well organised, and I love volunteering as the pre shop always means bargain clothes and toys in fab condition. Recent years I've found it hard to sell anything at a decent price. People are looking for serious bargains. It's surprising how little people will pay for good, well looked after, well made clothes, toys and equipment just because it's second hand. They are fabulous for buying, but I haven't had a huge amount of success with selling

I've done well with sales but only because I have had loads to sell and I priced really cheap. Lots of clothing items at £1, t-shirts from as little as 50p and no clothing item over about £3.50. My toys sold well at the autum NCT but again I was selling them for about 25% of the RRP so heavily discounted. I made £160 at the last sale, after the NCT deduction, but this reflects the quantity I sold rather than high price. I had no designer stuff, all George, mothercare, m&co etc no not high value goods.

Don't expect to get the prices you would be selling on ebay. Best way to see the nct sales is a way to get rid of stuff, whilst making a bit of money, rather than getting a high amount.

I think it helps if you bought what you are selling at an nct sale in the first place. If it was cheap when you bought it you don't mind selling cheap. If you can't bring yourself to sell your breat pump which cost £25 for less than a fiver, it's not for you as you will price too high and have to take it all home again.
Be prepared to be bargained down on price too. People will offer less and if you want to get rid of the stuff you'll have to sometimes take that lower price.
Sales do differ, as others have said. I think the best ones allow the seller to be there because then there can be bargaining on price and more gets sold. Totally rigid prices mean more is left at end.

Also, round my way, nct sales are the best local sales for selling. There are other groups that have them, such as toddler groups and play groups, but they get less buyers coming, so again you make fewer sales.
I always found nct sales, with the prospect of bargains and bartering quite exciting. Hated the ones that allowed buggies in though. Total chaos. Got nearly all of my stuff from nct sales, gave lots of friends when I didn't need it and sold the rest at nct sales again. I like to think people are using stuff 3rd hand and got it cheap. Everyone really is a winner.

The only reason I joined the NCT was to get early access to the twice-yearly sales as a helper!

Stuff went ridiculously cheaply. The heartbreaking thing was the beautiful handknitted baby stuff, lovingly made by various grannies and aunts, which never seemed to sell at all. Neither did soft toys unless obviously never used.

I got a lot of big ticket equipment - high chairs, playpen, garden toys, the toddler stage stroller double buggy, etc etc, and mountains of clothes.

I did dispose of some stuff as a seller, mostly clothes, but decided to advertise privately with the bigger stuff, and made more for the double buggy and playpen than I'd paid for them.

At ours, you don't need to pay the expense to join. If you volunteer to help at the sale as a seller, you get first dibs (half an hour early) to buy before the general public are let in.

I have sold stuff at NCT sales and also bought - buying is better as the stuff is really cheap. Selling is a bit of a faff as you need to bring it along, then you need to come and pick up anything that hasn't sold within an hour slot at the end. Also I found it was worth actually being there, then you could price down any items you were keen to get rid off.

Have you tried gumtree for selling babies/childrens items? I found that sort of stuff sold reasonably quicky on gumtree - no selling fees, and person comes to pick up. May be worth giving it a go.