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You Can’t Just Sell Anything?

I’ve forever seen eBay as a dreamland where absolutely anything is possible. Reselling over there earned me a lot of money before I discovered Amazon FBA, so I’ve got a lot of love for it. What I especially like about it is that you have the freedom to sell so many different types of products. In my early reselling years, I took full advantage of that liberty.

I’ve sold things for the collectors – including ‘70s Garfield memorabilia, a vintage railway magazine collection and rare vinyl. I’ve sold things for the bargain hunters – second-hand clothes, furniture and computer monitors. And I’ve sold all kinds of new condition freebies that I didn’t want for myself – toys, books, DVDs and more. But there are limits.

eBay has a whole list of the prohibited items on their site, but it’s probably best that I extract the highlights.

Weapons

Anything that looks and acts like it was made to inflict damage on another person can’t be sold on eBay. Beware as single knives fall under this category.

Alcohol

One thing about alcohol that you need to know is that you’re not allowed to send it via Royal Mail. Or Hermes. Leaves you limited it, doesn’t it? eBay isn’t the place to sell your vintage wines. Just accept it.

Animals and Animal-Based Products

Animal fur coats? No. Ivory brooches? Nope. Your pet cat? Nah. There’s no leeway with this whatsoever. They don’t want it on the site. You can’t list anything along these lines.

Counterfeit Items

Currency, stamps, clothes, electronics and fake versions of anything else aren’t welcome on eBay, so you shouldn’t even think about listing if you think there’s a chance that they’re not genuine. Put yourself in the buyers’ shoes.

Used Cosmetics

Once you’ve used a brush, sponge, or whatever other applicator on yourself, you can’t just go and list it on eBay. If it’s not for you, it’s probably one to add to the boot sale pile.

Raffle and Lottery Tickets

If you were running a raffle online and wanted an easy way for people to enter, an easy way would be to do a multi-unit listing on eBay. Unfortunately, eBay and CAP don’t trust the public to operate these things fairly, so don’t think about listing them on here. The same goes for lottery tickets.

Event Tickets

eBay owns a separate website for those – StubHub – so would prefer that you kept that away from their auction site.

Offensive Materials

They’re flaky with this one. While they’re not going to let you sell a t-shirt that glorifies white supremacy, they’re perfectly happy to let you list as many golliwogs as you fancy.

Tobacco

Much like alcohol, there are too many bits of legislation getting in the way of a random person like you selling tobacco to the highest bidder on eBay. As such, you won’t find any on their marketplace.

Human Remains

I’m not asking any questions. Just know eBay isn’t the place for that kind of thing.

UK Properties

Foreign ones seem to be fine, but you can’t go cop a 2-bed semi in Devon on eBay in an auction, unfortunately.

Stolen Property

There are laws against selling handling and selling stolen property, so if you know you’re in the possession of it, it’s in your interest not to publicise it through this site.

Surveillance Equipment

CCTV cameras are welcome, but anything like keyboard trackers, wiretappers, and phone bugs will get taken down if spotted on eBay.

Used Underwear

There are places online where you can make some decent money by selling underwear you’ve already worn (including socks). However, you’re going to have to delete eBay off that list of marketplaces.

Mailing Lists

Heard of GDPR? If you have, I don’t need to say any more. If you haven’t just know you don’t want that smoke.

Medicines and Drugs

No form of drugs can be sold on eBay, whether you originally bought them on the high street or from a guy on the corner.

Lock Picking Devices

There are legitimate reasons why someone may want to have a lock-picking device, but there are also thousands of people that would love to use those devices for illegitimate reasons. To stay on the safe side, eBay’s decided not to allow them to be sold on their site.

So Where Do You Go From Here?

You make sure that you stay on the right side of the bossman. If eBay tells you that they don’t want you selling those kinds of things on the site, just go along with it. They will suspend your account at the sight of anything dodgy, so it’s not worth trying your luck. If you want to sell items that eBay won’t allow, look on other marketplaces.

As I mention, the full list can be found on their website. However, note that it’s not a straight up ‘no’ for all of the things in the list. Depending on the nature of your business, you are allowed to sell a number of the product types that they cover.  

Chiino
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