The short version
- Typical range: £20 – £120 — see the full dolls house value guide
- What decides your price: condition, and how well you evidence it in photographs
- Cost to sell here: nothing, at any price
- Category: Toys & Games
Before you photograph it
Ten minutes here is worth more than anything else you will do. Buyers are deciding between your listing and someone else’s, and preparation is what visibly separates the two.
- Check the structure for loose joints and a warped base, which is the common fault on older wooden houses.
- Test any lighting. Wired dolls houses with working lights command a premium, and non-working ones need saying.
- Sort the furniture by room and count it, then decide whether you are selling the house with or without it.
The photographs that sell a dolls house
Four photographs do almost all the work. Shoot in daylight, near a window, with the item against something plain — and do not use the flash, which flattens texture and hides exactly what buyers are trying to see.
- The house from the front, closed, whole and upright
- The house open, showing every room and any furniture in place
- The roof, base and back, showing structural condition
- All the furniture and figures laid out together, plus any wiring, lights or maker’s mark
Photograph the flaws too. It feels counterproductive, but a listing that shows the worst of an item gets fewer questions, fewer withdrawn offers and fewer arguments at handover. Buyers who can see the damage stop imagining something worse.
Writing the title and description
Material, scale and contents: “Wooden Dolls House, 1:12 Scale, Furnished, 5 Rooms”. Scale is a genuine collector search because furniture has to match, and the words furnished or empty save a great deal of correspondence. Name the maker if there is one — Lundby and Sylvanian are searched directly.
Then state these in the description, because a buyer who has to ask is a buyer who might not bother:
- Height, width and depth in centimetres, and the scale if known
- Number of rooms, and whether it opens at the front, back or both
- What furniture, figures and accessories are included, counted
- Whether it has working lights, and the material and structural condition
What buyers will actually ask
You will receive the same three messages about a dolls house. Answering them in the listing itself removes the back-and-forth, and answering them well when they do arrive is what turns an enquiry into a sale.
State it in the title as well as the description. It is the single most misunderstood point on these listings, and it changes the price by a wide margin.
Measure a doorway or a chair and say. Buyers are usually adding to a collection they already own, and the wrong scale makes it useless to them.
Test them and answer honestly. Rewiring is fiddly, so a buyer will price a non-working system in rather than walk away — but only if they know.
Pricing it so it actually sells
Start from the honest condition grade rather than the price you hope for. WishThrift listings use five grades — New with Tags, Like New, Good, Fair and For Parts — and what each grade means is worth reading before you choose, because grading up is the most expensive mistake sellers make. It does not raise the price; it produces a buyer who arrives expecting something else.
The dolls house value guide prices all five grades for this item. Pick your grade, take the figure, and if you sit between two grades price toward the lower one. Items priced honestly sell faster than items priced hopefully, and on a free platform there is no fee eating the difference anyway.
What you keep, compared
On a £70 sale — roughly the middle of the range for a dolls house — here is what the commission-charging platforms would take, and what you would keep on each:
| Where you sell it | Fee | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| WishThrift | £0 | £70 |
| Poshmark | −£14 | £56 |
| eBay | −£10 | £60 |
| Mercari | −£7 | £63 |
| Etsy | −£5 | £65 |
Seller-side rates verified 26 Jul 2026 — Poshmark: 20% commission on sales of $15 and above; eBay: 13.6% final value fee, plus a per-order fee; Mercari: flat 10% selling fee; Etsy: 6.5% transaction fee, plus a listing fee and payment processing. Percentages are applied to the sterling figure above; the fixed per-order and processing charges those platforms add are quoted in their own currency and are not included here, so the real deductions are slightly larger. Full breakdown: marketplace selling fees compared.
Timing and getting it to the buyer
Strongly seasonal, peaking from October to Christmas. A furnished wooden house listed in November sells quickly; the same house in March can sit for a month.
Bulky and awkward, so collection is usual. If you post furniture separately, wrap each piece — miniature furniture is fragile and arrives broken when it is loose in a box.
WishThrift does not process payments or arrange delivery — you and the buyer agree both directly — so confirm payment has cleared before the item leaves your hands, and keep the conversation on the site so there is a record of what was agreed.
Ready to list it? It takes about two minutes, costs nothing, and there is no commission when it sells — create a free account or see how selling works.
Frequently asked questions
What is a used dolls house worth?
Typically £20 to £120 unfurnished, and considerably more furnished or from a collected maker. See the dolls house value guide for the condition bands.
Is it better to sell it furnished?
Usually yes for a family buyer, who wants something ready to play with. Collectors sometimes prefer the shell alone — if the furniture is genuinely collectable, check what it fetches separately before bundling it.
Should I repaint an old dolls house?
Not if it is a recognised vintage maker, where original finish matters. For an unbranded homemade house, a tidy repaint genuinely helps it sell.
See also: what a used dolls house is worth · browse live toys & games listings · condition grades explained.