I’ve talked a fair amount about culling board games before. The idea that as you acquire more and more, it can start to take over everything and either you have to stop buying as you hit capacity, or you need to sell some stuff, like your house, to make more room. But if selling your house is too extreme then maybe you want to sell board games instead.

So You Want To Sell Your Board Games?

I don’t have hard and fast rules for this, just some suggestions, because really that is more useful than any sort of rules. Your situation for selling games is going to be very different than mine is. I live in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, a large metro area. What is near me might be hours away for you, but hopefully there is some useful in this.

But where do you start?

You start at your shelves. Look what is on there that you haven’t played in a long time. This drops into the side of culling games from your collection. I just want to say that is where you start and now that you’ve started pulling games off your shelf to sell, you are ready to go.

Next I want to ask:

– Are there Game Stores in your area that buy used?
– Are there used book stores in your area that buy games?
– Do you want to use Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist?
– Do you want to have a garage sale?
– Are you willing to ship games?

Local Game Store

These are all starting points for where you can sell. For me, I do a mix of most of those, or at least the first two. Most of my games, I sell to my LGS (Local Game Store) for store credit which I immediately use to buy some more games. Now, that doesn’t free up too much space on my shelf, but often a little bit of space. But I also know that an LGS buying games is not that common.

The amount of work that goes into buying a game is pretty high, so if there is one in your area, I suggest supporting them. But understand, with the work they do with piece counting, it might not be the best price option out there for you.

Book Store

If you just want to move them quickly, book stores are often a great spot. Where I’m at Half-Priced Books will buy a lot of different board games and sell them. The downside to selling here is that they are even less likely to give you market value.

Book stores aren’t always where people would look for a game, and they want to do volume of sales because, well, people sell books more often than board games. So their model is built on getting in and getting out books fast and having that inventory that turns over quickly. While that is what most businesses want in general, it does mean if people aren’t coming specifically for board games, they will value them less.

Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist

If you want to get the best money this is likely going to be your best bet. Though, I am talking about this as local pick-up right now. You can certainly ship with both of them. The big thing with both of these is the amount of leg work that there is. You need, especially for Facebook Marketplace to take pictures, write up a description and figure out what you want to price it at.

And figuring out what to price it at can be tricky. The best bet is to go on eBay and look to see what other people have asked for them. But not even that, there are listings where people want to a ton that just won’t sell. Battlestar Galactica is an expensive game but if you want $200 for the base set, it won’t sell. Instead look at the recently sold items to get your pricing.

All of this should seem like a lot of work, and it is, but it is also the spot where you will make most of your money. And in fact, the next two options will likely be as much work probably without the payoff. So let’s move onto them.

Garage Sale

If you have enough, just create your own sale. A garage sale with a lot of games, advertised on some board game selling groups in Facebook or posted about anyways, is another way. Even Board Game Geek threads for the area that you live in are a great spot to post.

Now, this might seem like it’ll be as effective the issue is that you need to be able to target your buyers. Will the person who is looking that specific game show up? A garage sale is going to target the gamers who are either looking for a deal or just there to browse to see if you happen to have something that they want. But it is a solid way to get rid of games, especially if you can share enough to target buyers and get the hobby gamers to show up.

Ship Away

Now, finally you can sell games anywhere if you are willing to ship them. This is very much like that Facebook and Craigslist part that I wrote, except now you have added in more work for yourself. You need to figure out shipping.

Now, this doesn’t have to be too bad. A fair number of games, especially smaller will fit in more standard sized boxes and therefore be more of a consistent shipping price. That is not going to be the case for a lot of games, though. A lot of games are going to cost a fair amount to ship.

Another thing to note is that buyers now need to factor two numbers, game price and shipping price into their purchase. While this is what you do on eBay or the likes as well, it does determine some for a buyer. If you offer a $45 game at $25 with $15 shipping is that worth the $5 difference for someone buying it new. It depends on what you can find for shipping but it might mean that game prices have to be cheaper or shipping might need to get added into the game cost.

So Which Is Best?

Honestly none of them are the best or worst options. If you need to sell stuff fast and don’t care as much about maximizing your money, a LGS or Book Store are great. However, that is less money overall. If you want to make the most money, you are doing this to make room, then list them yourself. Especially if you don’t care if it takes two weeks or a month to sell them all.

For me, I generally sell to my LGS. It is the easiest for me, but I am going to be doing a Minnesota Tabletop Market in a week. This is basically the Garage Sale idea, but instead of me having to put the work into advertising what it has. Now, that means I don’t know what it has, what the prices are. But it gets people through the door, not me, which is nice.

This is something available to me because I am in a city and someone else wanted to put on the work. For you, if you want to try or find that. But, most likely it’d be you running it. Which I think for some people, that’d be fun, but it is also a lot of work. It’s important to think what will work best for you in your area.

Other Resources

Now, I am not an expert on this. If you are interested in more on selling games and shipping, I recommend you checkout BoardGameCo on YouTube. Also BoardGameCo the company buys games used to sell again. So if you don’t have an LGS in your area, that is another option.

Also, if you go to conventions, head to BGG (Board Game Geek). Often times trades or sales can be arranged with other attendees with a bit work. But, it would give you a bigger audience without needing to ship games.

How have you found to sell board games?

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