Consigning sails

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Oct 24, 2008
10
Macgregor 25 Cleveland
I have recently cleaned out some sails from my garage, and thought I would make some money consigning them to a sail house. I found Atlantic Sail traders online, and they said if I mailed them to their store, then they would evaluate them, call me with their value, and hopefully a check for their discounted value so I could just sell them outright to thier store, rather then trying to consign them myself. This sounded easy enough to me, and would put some money in my pocket quicker then waiting for them to sell. SO, I sent three sails, called three times over the next 5 weeks, never got an answer more than 'we're evaluating them now' 'we'll call you back' and finally had to call again last week for the fourth time. This time, I held on the line as they 'finished evaluating' the sails. The value of the three sails was $550, according to the guy on the phone, and the owner was happy to send my $80 for the sails since I had chosen to sell them outright, or I could pay to have them shipped back to me. (I had already paid to ship them to FL).
Granted, I should have been more leary from the beginning. I would hope to be offered more than 20% for my sails. Take away from this story what you will. I hate to throw things out that someone could use, and I should have just given them away rather than be mislead and not given a fair cut of the value of the sails. (After all it was almost free inventory for them.) I kind of felt over a barrell.
Next time I'll use this site to give away things or give my stuff to chairity.
 
May 23, 2004
3,319
I'm in the market as were . Colonial Beach
A friend of mine had good luck selling older sails on Craigslist. Another friend sold them on ebay.

I know that the places that do consignment are a rip off.

Sorry to hear about your story. It sounds like piracy!
 
Nov 8, 2007
1,590
Hunter 27_75-84 Sandusky Harbor Marina, Ohio
This site

I posted my old 110 on this site 5 or 6 years ago, and got a decent price ($150 for a very used sail) on a clean transaction.

David
 
Dec 1, 1999
2,391
Hunter 28.5 Chesapeake Bay
Over many years, I have sold sails a number of ways. The problem I had with consignment was not the "cut" that I got (which was 60 per cent of the sales price at Bacons), it was that it took forever since Bacons always has a large inventory. I did much better selling sails on eBay and found that if I described the sail accurately and included pictures, the sails sold quite quickly and at a fair price.
 
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