Beta yourself ebay

How to sell all your old tat (then buy everyone else’s) on your PC, tablet or phone: Craig Grannell shows you the tricks, while resisting the urge to price up the entire contents of his house

Become the best bidder on the web

Watch and learn

Your watch list appears on the ebay app’s main screen, and it’s as easy to scroll through here as it is in the ‘My ebay’ section of the website. Use the watch list to track items without bidding on them, so you don’t push up the price early on. If you find several auctions for an item you fancy, watch them all. Often there’s a bidding war as the first ones finish, and you can snap up one of the others for less.

Go for sold

Don’t make the mistake of only watching live auctions to see how much stuff sells for. Perform a search, filter it for sold items, and then sort by price or date. Now you can see how much that ZX Spectrum you found in the loft really is worth at the moment – or how much a new one might cost you.

Keep yourself biddy

On a PC you might have several ebay windows open at once, preparing yourself for a last-second snipe-a-thon. On mobile it’s one at a time, so plan your attack. Bid close to the end of an auction, as ever, but don’t mess around – just enter what you’d be happy to pay, and then add a few extra pence to increase your chances over people who bid using round numbers.

Call on the search

If you’re looking for something rare, refine your search using filters and then save it. These searches can be perused at any time in the Saved tab. On Android, you can also tap Edit to quickly toggle email and phone notifications for when new items are listed.

Hit the post

Fortunately, ebay doesn’t forget shipping costs during searches – when sorting by price, the app adds postage. Remember this yourself when selling, and don’t rely on ebay’s suggested costs: they’re often wrong. Invest in scales, and have a chart of courier prices handy.