Selling Broken & Damaged Items

466 guides to selling something that is broken, damaged or incomplete. A defect is not the end of a sale — repairers, restorers, people replacing one component and people who want the material all shop deliberately at this end of the market.

What a faulty item is actually worth

Two of WishThrift’s five condition grades apply once something is defective. Fair covers an item that is heavily used, or has a described fault or a missing part, and prices at roughly 45% of the working value. For Parts covers something not working or incomplete, sold as seen, at roughly 25%. Buyers can filter for both, so the grade you choose decides who sees the listing. Grades are seller-declared and nobody inspects them for you — what each grade means is worth reading before you pick one.

The one thing that decides the sale

Describing the defect completely, and photographing it directly. It feels counterproductive and it is the single thing that makes a faulty listing sell, because it is the evidence that everything else in the description is honest. A buyer who discovers a fault after paying is a buyer you hear from again; a buyer who read about it first is one who arrived expecting it.

When the answer is no

14 of these guides advise against the sale outright. Where damage defeats something whose whole purpose is to stop a person being injured — or where the sale is regulated, or the item cannot be made hygienic again — the honest answer is not a listing guide, and these say so and explain what to do instead:

WishThrift takes no fee and no commission on any sale, so there is nothing in it for us either way. Credibility is worth more than one transaction.

Free to list, no commission, and neither side pays a buyer-protection fee. Create a free account to list yours, or read the full selling guides for items in working order.

What a faulty item is actually worth

The one thing that decides the sale

Browse by category

When the answer is no