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You're welcome :)

I agree, but I think there is more money for counterfeiters to make stamps for utility, than there is for faking expensive collectable stamps. I haven't collected stamps in a long time, so I'm not sure how prevalent it is. I know that it is rife with coins, but luckily most of them are horribly obvious. But not all.

Hi, that's a great question, but this is one of the reasons I don't sell game codes or game items any more - you can contact Steam support and ask them when the key was used (if it was a Steam Key) and they will tell you the time and date, so if it was after you sold it, you can show this to the buyer and prove that they are a scammer. Another way you can do it is to record your screen with OBS or similar, showing the eBay order and then you sending the key to them. However, in doing this through eBay messaging , you will be showing eBay that you are selling things that you aren't technically authorised to sell - this might not be an issue if you are a private seller, but if you are a business and / or you sell the keys on eBay but don't buy them until someone has bought it from you (dropshipping from retail, also not allowed under eBay T's and C's) then you might get suspended by eBay or worse. If you sell keys for more than £10 / $10USD many of the purchases will be scammers. If eBay have to get involved in too many of your transactions they will eventually ask you for receipts or start looking into your sales and listings, and will probably banning or suspending you. I have made a more up-to-date video on this, check it out in the pinned comment. Good Luck :)

@@JamesDoesThings but the problem is that I buy from websites like eneba and cdkeys and sell to eBay this what I do when I sell keys

@@Nikomusic1996 yes, this is what I used to do and I got all my listings taken down by eBay because it's against their Terms and Conditions. I was lucky not to get banned completely. The only way to stop getting scammed is to stop selling the new / expensive keys and sell older / cheaper keys or DLCs for <£5 / $5 USD games like Crusader Kings or Cities Skylines where the target market is people who think a bit harder. This means you are less likely to get scammed and if/when you do, it's not such a big amount so you can take the loss and refund & block them without needing to get eBay involved and show them that you are breaking lots of T's and C's. If you value your eBay account and/or use if for other things, I would consider stopping selling keys and switching to something else, as per my later video. I hope you don't get banned or scammed :)

@@JamesDoesThings thanks for your advice for sure try different way

Great question - to which the answer is "Maybe, but probably not in this case". If they are being unresponsive to all messages then you might be ok doing an 'item not received or shipped' case as you will only have to wait for 3 days to get your refund, as long as they don't respond with "it's already being shipped" and as long as the expected delivery date has passed. The rules are that now you can ask for a refund as soon as the delivery date has passed and you can demand the refund from eBay 3 days later if you get anything other than tracking info or the item itself. If the buyer promises to sell it to you or promises a refund if you close the case, DON'T close it yourself, it will close when they issue the full refund or when eBay steps in, or if eBay get proper tracking data which shows it as 'delivered'. The chances are that they were frustrated that it didn't go for the price they wanted (like the 2 previous times) and they are expecting you to demand the refund and they will just ghost you and eBay and pretend the whole thing never happened. I hope you get your money back soon, good luck! :)

@@JamesDoesThings Thank you very much! Also, what happens if I ask for a chargeback from my bank to get the money back earlier? Or is that not something I should do and just wait it out

@@cymbelinaa I think chargebacks can take a while too, so you might not get the money faster, but it depends on the bank / card issuer. I would leave that as the last resort because if you try to get a refund via eBay and then do a chargeback there is potential for you to get both and then your chargeback might get reversed later and it would make you look like you are trying to scam eBay, which might affect they way that eBay / the bank look at you next time you try to do a chargeback when you really need to. Hope this helps :)

You're welcome, I hope you get lots of sales! :)

It's good that you reported it, but they rarely do anything unless you've bought the thing and open a case. Most sellers who know they're caught will offer a swift refund / return and deny they are fake. I made a video a while back about reporting someone. There are a couple of sellers, one in particular, who deliberately faces bundles of older low value coins with fake high value 'gold' and 'silver' ones and calls them 'Attic Finds' and 'House Clearance Finds' . He usually has 10-30 auctions on the go at any one time and people who don't know any better get swept up in them and bid them up between £40 and £100 each (they are worth £10 tops) and I reported a load of his listings and eBay did nothing, and he's still doing it. Might be time for another video.... :) Thanks for the comment.

Hi, if it's an auction then there isn't much you can do, but if it's a buy-it-now you could always decline the offer and see if it will let you. If someone is asking to see a specific picture, you can just send it to them. The only other option I can think of is to end the listing, but doing that will make you look a bit shady in eBay's eyes if you do it often. Hope this helps :)

Hi, I'm honestly not sure for a business account because I closed my eBay shop / website and took a break from selling. I'm back on it now, but I'm still not at the level where I could get a Business account, but I think if you took a 10% discount off the standard prices it would be a conservative estimate. I think it also depends on things like no. of parcels per month, average size / weight, what service you use. The more you do and the more standardised it is, the cheaper it is. There are also savings by paying on account / monthly, and savings in time by paying for an average weight, instead of having to weigh each item in front of them. My items tended to be letter or large letter (for trading cards) which wasn't very interesting to them, but now I do slightly bigger things, but not enough of them. The current retail prices can be found here: send.royalmail.com/send/youritem?country=GBR&format&weight=&weightUnit=G and if you contact them they will usually ring you back in a few days and ask you some qualifying questions. Hope this helps :)

Hi, that's a great question - my take on it is that most of the money for fake stamps is in modern ones because of the cost and demand for actually sending things, both in the UK and the US. I went through a brief period of collecting stamps about 10 years ago and I was surprised how easy it was to come by unused / un cancelled stamps from 50+ years ago. If you think they could be fake there are a few things you can try: 1) How trustworthy was the seller? Pro Stamp Dealers > Hobby People > "house clearance finds" 2) Try google lens on them (on your phone) and see if you get any hits from places like Ali Express or Temu - or just try searching there if you know the exact name / year of the stamps. 3) Was the price stupidly low? Buying poorly described items on eBay auctions at stupidly low prices is valid, but if they are labelled well (and have multiple lots of the same thing) and they are 20%-50% cheaper than the going rate as Buy-it-Now, that is always a bad sign. I hope this helps :)

Hi, great question - sadly you do have to pay for the shop subscription to get the 'free' 100 listings. Since I started selling again, I'm paying the 36p per listing and just keeping 10 - 20 bigger listings, rather than 100's of smaller ones like I did before. This is mainly because I've got a lot going on at the moment at home and I'm not planning to dedicate a lot of time to it, just a few hours per week. If I knew I would do 2+ hours per day, then I would commit to it and get the subscription again. I think having the shop subscription becomes better value after 65 listings - those 100 are good value, but they aren't really 'free'.

Hi, that's a really interesting point, as there was a prolific ebay seller who has a massive TH-cam Channel and he was effectively booted off the platform for not having any / enough receipts. He was selling $1M+ USD / year though, so I think unless you are doing massive numbers or are involved in high-risk items or have a lot of failed transactions then you should be ok. Hand written receipts might be a way though? or a picture / video record plus excel as evidence (?). I think it's for tax purposes, so if you keep records of every purchase / sale that might help if they ask for receipts, but I'm not sure tbh. My best guess would be that if you register as a company / sole trader and then buy some stuff from a wholesaler (or even a bulk lot of something off eBay) and then put that for sale on eBay so that you have a receipt and full traceability for it. I'm going to have a look at the T's and C's this weekend because I've not checked them for ages. The last time I got asked for receipts by eBay was when I was dropshipping steam keys from a retail PC game site and selling them on eBay (which was breaking at least 2 eBay rules) and they kept being bought by hacked accounts and eBay had to refund the transactions, so naturally they looked for ways to stop it from happening, so they hassled me for things they knew I didn't have. This was a few years ago, so not sure if they are stricter now. Good luck :)

@@JamesDoesThings Thanks James for answering. Really helpful.

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It's nice to hear from someone who is making it work - I can tell some sellers are doing well from their feedback, but I've had a few messages and comments from people who have struggled. Thanks for the comment :)

Hi, that's an interesting one - I've never had that happen to me as a buyer or as a seller; did that happen to you? How would they get your address if you didn't bid?

@@JamesDoesThings you know you could either save your payment detail or pay as you go I did the latter and yes it happened to me

I would send them a message and then just cancel the order if they didn't respond within 24 hours. eBay will ask you for a reason, you have to put something which lays the blame with the buyer, like 'Buyer requested to cancel' otherwise you will get a defect against your seller account. You can put a 'personalisation' box in the listing which helps, but with some games you can have a display name which is different to your username which can also cause problems.

You're welcome! Glad it helped, and yes, yes they do! :)

Thanks for the comment and pointers, I really value them, but since I made this video and actually tried playing the game properly with a bond, I honestly I think it's better to just play a game you enjoy or create something (like a game or maybe a bot) than get deeper into the world of trying to outsmart the devs and ultimately unbalance the game economy. I tried playing properly and it was addictive at first, but then the grind was so bad that it didn't feel fun any more so I decided it was more productive to do something constructive (or at least, less destructive) and play a game I liked or make my own games / videos / eBay listings etc. Good luck, whatever path you choose :)

@@JamesDoesThings Ive never botted. just pointing out my thoughts on it. but im glad you found out the real point and fun of rs, its a great game and brings me enjoyment playing and futhering myself on my adventures

@@JamesDoesThings But one thing I dont get is your talking about unbalancing the economy when just a couple weeks ago you released your third video on real world trading game currency and item

@@jkrules4161 Fair point, but the reason is that the videos I made about botting and selling in-game items are the ones I get the most comments on, so I made the videos more to answer questions and because of updates to what has changed on eBay and also the things that I missed when making the videos. I haven't done any botting or selling of in-game items for ages. As far as the economy in the game goes, I'm not sure I've seen a popular MMO that didn't have an economy which wasn't dominated to some degree by outside forces, so I'm not exactly poacher-turned-gamekeeper either - I think if you have an MMO this type of problem is a nice problem to have because you have made a successful game :) I think it can be a problem if left unmanaged though, as people can get fed up if there is a big disparity between the The Grind / Pay to Win / Black Market. When I played WoW back in the WotLK days it was all "oh FFS China bots everywhere WTF" and now with OSRS I think the bots come from everywhere and there are also lots of real people in places like Central America where the ACTUAL economy in their country has gone down the toilet and there are people who can make a living selling hand-reared and/or botted characters and gold in OSRS. Ultimately I don't want to be judgemental about it because I can see (and have tried) both sides, but I did catch myself thinking "wtf I am doing this for?" and thought maybe I should be putting my creative juices to make a game, rather than abuse someone else's. Thanks again for the comments ;)

You are welcome! Thanks for the comment and best of luck with your eBay business :)

I just looked and there is a new one (to me) called OTHER ITEM BASED SERVICES which is full of in game items, boosting services and game accounts, so maybe that's a place to try - I haven't seen that before, thanks for the tip! :)

@@JamesDoesThings are you saying Theres a category called other item

@@tf3366 There's a category in Everything Else>Item Based Services which I don't remember seeing before - I don't know if it's new or I just didn't look there. It's more relevant to things like Boosting and accounts, but I don't know if it is any better if you are a seller, ie better protected.

Oh no I was asking you if that’s what you was taking about in the comment?

Not that im against rmt but it would be nice if the platforms could support it in a way, but theres no real free market they have to prioritize their money and it would also break the economy. The way it is now a random kid could turn into a scammer in an instant because theres no trustworthy middleman unless roblox does it themselves. They wanna prohibit it but also ignore the demand instead of addressing it, thats an issue. Its just risky demand from the players 90% scam rate for roblox, if you dont get scammed they were too lazy. Cant speak on other platforms.

Indeed! I try to make the point that it's not really worth doing (selling items, that is) in several of the videos I made on this topic, whether it's Roblox or Steam or MMOs. I will fully admit to not having done enough research on Roblox and I do keep learning new things about it as my son plays it a lot. I also don't see Roblox declining anytime soon, so I don't know if I gave that impression in the video but the platform is the go-to place for all kids who play games and it will always be a part of them as they get older, like SNES and Gameboy are for me. Individual games will rise and fall, but I agree Roblox itself is only going to get better. I have toyed with the idea of making a game and I have dabbled with Roblox Studio a few times, but I'm thinking I might give it a proper go and maybe do a video about - I think playing the long game and creating things (games, assets, UGC, Code, whatever) is a better way of doing it than selling items and risking bans on whatever platform. Thanks for the comment :)

Player Auctions is the biggest that I am aware of, but plenty of people sell on Etsy and they are more geared up for digital selling, so you could try there too.

Hi, to answer your questions: 1) Don't offer eBay GSP shipping, but offer free domestic and international shipping (fast options with no tracking) and then make sure you opt out of the discount eBay shipping / postage programme if you are enrolled in it (it's in the account settings) and you should be able to offer free shipping to anywhere in the world without eBay charging you or the buyer any extras. 2) I thought it was 21 days but maybe they increased it. If your account looks suspicious (new, only selling high risk items like digital pets, not buying normal physical things etc) then they might hold it longer. Try selling some physical things which you own but don't need any more and maybe buy some cheap stuff (even if only to sell again) at auction maybe joblots of something. Good luck!

@@JamesDoesThings Thanks for a detailed answer, also could you tell that why some of my funds that are on hold show estimated release date early but some show late even though I made the sale after.

i'm interested to know more about your techniques when it comes to deciding to buy a lot or set of sprues! I'm getting into the reselling thing myself and want to find a happy medium where I'm still offering a better deal than James, but still making some money.

@@okkogono ha ha :) I like your style! I'm still learning really; I think some types of item sell better than others and also some armies sell better than others too. My first 'test' is that f I can look at the photos and I reckon I could double my money if I split it some how into auctions (not considering eBay fees, postage at cost to the buyer) then I would put a bid on. My ideal bundles are: -Bigger bundles, £50 to 100+ usually auctions but if you can catch a good BIN when they are fresh, they can be amazing -Listings where you have to dig through a lot of photos to see everything -Mixture of armies, but Space Marines Orks and Chaos ftw -All / Mostly Unpainted -Still on Sprue is best but not essential -bits from higher value units like dreadnoughts / terminators / leadership I think bigger bundles tend to be better value, plus the more expensive they are, the less competition you have as a bidder. With that said, I've bought small bundles for £10-£15 and still made money. Armies which are more popular tend to have higher demand and would sell easier, also things like weapons sell well, whereas more abstract pieces less so. The best bundle I've bought so far was huge but it didn't have the photos it deserved in the listing, which hid it's true value from most bidders. The bundle I bought for around £70 has already paid for itself and I reckon I've got another £150 to £300 in sale from it depending on how I split it, but I don't think that's the norm, I think I was quite lucky really. Given how much I just wrote about this, I think I may have to make a video ;) Thanks for the question and good luck with selling!

Thanks for the comment :) I used the RM Collection twice this week for eBay stuff (but haven't used it in ages) and it was excellent - postie came at the same time both days, when they said they would, would have brought a label too if I'd needed it. I tend to take most of mine to the PO just because the walk in a morning is good for me, but it's just the right distance ;) I know Evri are a bit cheaper for some things, but still find them hit and miss as a seller - I've had a few occasions where the local shop which does collections has run out of the bar codes, so they can't accept the order, or the automatic postage locker is either full or on the blink. Our local Evri delivery drivers are amazing though; they're a husband and wife team and they are very reliable and friendly, but again that is just me and my area - when I lived in London it wasn't always a good experience. I've got to send something to the eBay Global Shipping Warehouse this morning and it's delicate so it's going RM tracked 48 as a very well-padded small parcel :)

Hi James. Two points I’ll like to touch on with your comment. RM bringing the labels to your home, that has rarely worked for me personally (Return labels) RM don’t get notified. Regarding Evri, the drivers are excellent but as you say the service could be better, if your a business with high volume, RM wins on reliability and overall service imo. Small question on packaging, do you have any experience using Kraft paper tape? Thinking of swapping my default brown tape to Kraft, brown tape is great but Kraft to my eye blends in better with the cardboard giving a neat and tidy appearance.

@@Eddie-r2d Since I bought a label printer I've not had to ask RM for a label, I think I've only done it twice and it was fine, but the one and only time I tried a Hermes / Evri print-your-label-in-the-shop service it was a disaster. Regarding the Kraft tape, I've never tried it tbh. I noticed a while ago that Amazon were using something like that on their boxes which seemed a bit more eco-friendly than standard stuff, but I still have quite a lot of the standard parcel tape left to get through, so I didn't look into it....until just now :) It looks a bit more expensive than parcel tape (after nearly 30 seconds of research) but it's not too bad so I might give that a go next time. I have finished all my bubble wrap now so I am hoping to just use paper products for all my packing eventually. I can feel another video coming on...... :)

Yes, Kraft is a few extra quid more than standard tape, that is one of the downsides switching to paper products they do typically cost more. Good substitute to bubble wrap is Hivewrap, but being paper based it costs more. Don’t think the average customer really cares what packaging is used as long as the order arrives in one piece. Cheers

Hi James. Wondered if you have used ID8000 labels on any of your parcels before and how strict RM are with implementing the rules around it. Reason for asking is, you can buy the labels online and put them on your own parcels etc but they require you to take anything with that label on to the nearest post office, pain in the backside if you use home collection for example, only way around this it seems is having a RM business account.

Hi, so the transaction fee is for eBay and in the UK it's about 13% but really it's 10.9% plus our UK 20% sales tax aka VAT. If you live in the US or somewhere else it might be different, but it doesn't sound like postage / shipping. If eBay asks you to enter postage / shipping details for the item when you list it (like size or weight), there is a chance it will ask the buyer for shipping payment and also force you to buy postage when you've sold it. Also, if you are new to selling on eBay, eBay will hold your money for 21 days for the first payment, maybe several payments. I have had messages from people who sold a few digital things as their first sales and eBay held a lot of their payments like this, because it has a lot of trouble with scams and digital goods. You might want to try selling some physical things too if you have anything at home you don't use any more. If a human from eBay looks at your sales history and only sees digital items, it's not as trustworthy as physical goods. Hope this helps :)

@@JamesDoesThings also it says my funds are on hold because they can't charge any additional costs om the card this because I have it turned off for the card does this mean there are more additional costs they want to charge me?

@@ErikBawani-u9h I'm honestly not sure - eBay are usually worried about new sellers making accounts, selling something and then disappearing, leaving eBay to refund the buyer if there is a problem, so that is why they put restrictions on new accounts. They might not want to charge you any more money for that transaction, but in theory the buyer could do a chargeback on it any time in the next 6 months, so if you have taken your payment method off eBay then they won't like that, so I would make sure that there is a way that they can take money from you and also a way they can send it to you. If I were you, I would look at eBay as a long-term thing, even if you don't sell many game items, it's very useful for making extra money on the side with physical items you don't need any more so I would put your card details back into eBay and see what happens. If you already delivered the item (in game) I don't think they will take any money from you for postage, but if they do, you learned the lesson and you will find the settings which turn off the postage and the next sale you make will be smoother and more profitable. If switching your card back on in ebay doesn't help, try going to customer service in eBay - if the chat bot or help pages don't tell you what you need to know, try getting a call back from the customer service agent, as I usually find that resolves most problems quickly. Good luck :)

@@JamesDoesThings thank you

@@JamesDoesThings Hi sorry to bother you again but it says "your payouts are on hold because the payment method you have on file could not be charged for any outstanding selling costs please add one to get paid " what does this mean because I have a card on the ebay set up but It still says this.

Hi Yes it is! You have to open it and give the heating thing a wipe now and again if your labels and barcodes get patchy, but I've been through nearly 2 full stacks of labels and it's still working fine. I also left it idle for a couple of months when I took a break from selling and it sill works fine now that I've started again. Still one of the best tools I've bought :)

Cheers James, that has helped make my mind up. 👍

Hi, yes eBay is more likely to get it's money that way, as the seller could simply say that they 'cancelled' the order and eBay would lose out on £25. If you pay online, they will let you send your phone number / contact details freely with the seller in the eBay message system. Sometimes eBay might send you a code to go and collect the item with and then the seller can type that code in and that makes it all official and easier to communicate with the seller, but perhaps because it is a large amount of money (or if you or the seller have relatively new accounts?), they are forcing you to pay online. If you can pay online, that would make it easier, if you only have cash, you could try to send a photo of your phone number to the seller in a message, but I would be SUPER discrete about it ie take a picture of a related item in your house with the number written on a bit of paper next to that item and don't write "Here's my phone number" in the message, write something like "Do you think <that thing you just sold me> would look good next to this this <related item>? See picture" as if the message is reviewed by a human they might ban or suspend you. Hope this helps, good luck!

Hi, thanks! Generally YES! I think it is worth pursuing, as long as you have a plan. If you are starting small and can't compete on price or ad spend with your competitors, you can always compete (and beat) on customer service and just by giving away advice for free via a blog or social media. I think if you are consistent at something in the business which has potential to bring customers in (like cold outreach, social media, ad spend) you will be successful in the long run as long as you don't give up or place too much pressure on yourself financially. It's quite a topical point for me actually, because as a family, we are thinking about getting into a related (and very competitive) niche together later this year - it's not really a passion project for me, I'm just doing the techie stuff, but we face a similar problem and we've decided to approach it with the following in mind: 1) Small start-up spend, probably less than £300 including stock and materials 2) Low running costs (no ads, cheapest website ecom solution) so that there's not as much pressure to be successful in a very short amount of time. 3) Niched down within that bigger niche, serving people with a specific health problem who look for this type of product - not quite a 'Unique Selling Point' but pretty close within that niche. 4) Will probably sell on etsy too to begin with, to build up clients and send them to our website 5) Planning to do blog posts and TH-cam videos to target the questions which our target audience will ask on google, but this is time-consuming so it will be as-and-when. We are planning to make that product ourselves, so it might not be quite the same if you are reselling, but I think having a plan to succeed in the long-term is key. I hope this helps, best of luck!

Thank you for the detailed reply, all points are noted and very much appreciated. Good luck with your business adventure later in the year James and I look forward to following your journey on here.

Thanks for letting me know - It's good that this is an option too, because I think getting access to human customer service reps on the phone is harder in some countries than others.

Duly noted, but some people like / need context :)

oh no! I remember watching some youtube videos of people farming a particular area which was full of bots picking up loot from PK ers and the guy making the video was having a hard time figuring out who was or wasn't a bot. I played OSRS again about a month ago for the first time since making this video ( I wasn't botting this time but I was F2P) and a guy threatened to report me for being a bot until I told him his mum's face was a bot and I reported it every night :)

@JamesDoesThings I contacted the support and they unbanned me, I think the high levels must have been annoyed I was taking all their loot 😂

Thanks for the offer, but I'm done with OSRS for the foreseeable future - I made a new video about all this sort of stuff yesterday so I will put it in the pinned comment shortly :)