What should you buy to resell, and what's the most to pay for each?

Which of these finds should you buy to resell, and what's the most to pay for each?

A $15 price tag is a bargain or a loser depending on fees, shipping, how likely it is to sell, how long your cash sits, and the hour you spend listing it. Paste what you found with what you expect each to resell for and your own chance it sells, and get the expected profit after all of that, the walk-away price for each item, the sell chance each needs to break even, and the exact best set to buy when your cash, your item count or your hands-on hours are limited.

Your estimates, not a price guide and not a forecast. This page knows no resale prices and predicts no sales: every value, chance, fee and time is a number you type. For eBay, Poshmark, Mercari, Etsy, Depop and Marketplace resellers buying at thrift stores, estate sales, auctions and liquidation. Nothing is uploaded: the text boxes are analysed in this browser and never leave your device.

1. Paste what you found

One row per item: name, ask (what you'd pay), expected resale price, your chance it sells at that price (0 to 1 or a percent), then optional shipping, hands-on minutes, days to sell, note. Up to 120 items.

2. Your fees, time and money

Marketplace fee (%) Fixed fee per sale ($) Default shipping per item ($) Supplies per item ($)

Default hands-on minutes per item What an hour of your time is worth ($) Default days to sell Annual cost of cash (%)

Share of resale recovered if it doesn't sell (%) Minimum return on cash (%)

Cash to spend ($, blank for none) Max items (blank for none) Max hands-on hours (blank for none)

3. The shopping list

Buy (best first)

#	Item	Asking	Pay up to	Expected profit	Return on cash	Breaks even at sell chance	You said	Chance of a loss	Worst case

Pass

Item	Asking	Why	Worth paying at most

Against simple rules

Rule	Items	Cash	Expected profit

Nothing here is a prediction. Expected profit is your own numbers multiplied out; any single item can sell for less, or not at all.

Prefer a CLI?

Same logic, zero dependencies, one command — reads a file or stdin:

node cli.mjs pick haul.csv --budget 80 --max-hours 2
cat haul.csv | node cli.mjs pick - --fee 13 --hourly 20 --json

Get cli.mjs and engine.mjs — Node 18+, nothing to install, no network call. More: How much to pay for a thrift find you want to resell.

What's recognised

Input	Handling

The answer is exact for the numbers you type (closed-form walk-away price and break-even chance; exact best-set search under your caps). It does not know resale prices, sold-listing history, seasonality, returns, a marketplace's rules for an item, or whether an item is authentic or safe to sell.

Common questions

Is this a price guide or a sales forecast?

No. Every resale value, sell-through chance, fee and time figure in the answer is a number you typed. It does not look up sold listings or predict what anything will sell for. It does the arithmetic on your own estimates and shows which items need a better estimate or a lower price.

Does it upload my list?

No. The browser page works on the text you paste, in your own browser, and never sends it anywhere. The CLI reads a local file or stdin and makes no network call.

What is the most I should pay for an item?

The walk-away price: the ask at which your expected profit, after marketplace fees, shipping, supplies, the value of your time and the cost of tying up cash, equals the minimum return you set. It is solved exactly, not searched for. Above it, you are paying for the privilege of working.

How does it choose between items when cash or time is limited?

With a cash, item or hands-on-hours cap it searches subsets exactly (branch and bound) instead of ranking and cutting off. One big-ticket item can crowd out two smaller ones that together earn more; ranking misses that.

Which marketplaces and sources does it cover?

Any: eBay, Poshmark, Mercari, Etsy, Depop, Facebook Marketplace, your own store. Enter that marketplace's fee percent and fixed fee. Sources can be thrift stores, estate sales, garage sales, auctions or liquidation lots.