I’ve searched here, but can’t find anything that is exactly this question in the past couple of years.
I have a 2020 MacBook Pro i5 2Ghz, 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD. I haven’t used it a ton since I bought it as I now work from home and I have almost the same machine for work, sitting on the same desk, always plugged in.
I’d like to sell it now and get an M2 MBA while it seems I can still get some good money for it.
I went to my local Apple Store and they said they’d give me $490 for it, but the guy who was helping me said “between you and me, you can get so much more for this if you sell privately.” Seems like they’re selling between $600-$700 on eBay and FB Marketplace is all over the place.
If I sell on eBay they take something like 13% and I have to ship it… so in the end I could be making not even a $100 more to sell it that way. I checked out Swappa which suggested in the $800s for it, which I think is unlikely.
I’m overthinking this and wondered what those of you with experience selling/trading-in would do. I do want the most $$ I can get for it, but also the weighing the hassle of dealing with other people/shipping/fees.
You could definitely get high $700s on Swappa. Here’s the recent sale history for 512GB 13" 2020s. The ones over $800s are mostly M1s, but the i5s aren’t far behind.
FB marketplace or Craigslist if you’re used to one of them, even if the prices look all over the place
Letting family/friends/colleagues know
If you know a few budget-minded business owners that routinely need hardware, that’s the best
Options that IMO are rarely better than Apple:
Non-Swappa sell-your-Mac sites.
Ebay (too risky for occasional sellers of electronics)
Local computer shops
The last thing I’ll say is that reselling equipment is a bit of a lifestyle, and also a personal reputation you develop. If you never resell, your first item is not likely to go for an optimal price and will take longer. If you’re in the habit and people know you for it, you’ll be used to keeping everything handy, taking photos and communication is quicker, and you’ll get more predictable prices and also won’t be bothered when something occasionally doesn’t work out.
@cornchip this was the best answer. Thank you so much. I have it teed up for Swappa, but I wanted to wait and hear what folks said - I hadn’t even looked at the prices of recently sold ones (which was silly of me).
While I have sold things on eBay (even Macs), I haven’t in the past 10 years for sure. So my account likely looks pretty outdated.
For future readers of this thread who may be considering trade-ins vs selling privately: not related to OP, but if you are running a business of any kind and you claimed the Mac in question, there may be tax implications to accepting the lower value from Apple on the trade in that could render the difference in price moot. Talk to an accountant if you’re ever in doubt on the matter.
I’ll share the outcome! I have it listed on Swappa now and they actually reached out to me before approving it because they thought I had priced it too low. I thought that was cool - I thought I was being competitive… and I also forgot to include a photo of the charging cable. So from a customer service perspective, I thought that was pretty great.
But I’ll let you know if someone actually buys from me!
Swappa doesn’t. They do have to approve listings before they can be published, but sellers have to agree to basically telling the truth about what they’re selling.
@wweber - I sold it! I had it listed at $721and someone offered $705 and I said yes.
Swappa makes it really clear what amount they take out from the seller (I think it’s 3%) and then any tax or PayPal fee. I had the money in my PayPal account this morning and shipped it this afternoon. So once the buyer receives it and is happy, I’m all set!
I ended up making around $175 more than what Apple wanted to give me for a trade-in.
