Which Items to Crosslist to Etsy: Sorting Your Resale Inventory

You can crosslist vintage items (at least 20 years old) and craft supplies to Etsy. Other items in your resale inventory (new or contemporary secondhand items) cannot be sold on Etsy, because a reseller did not make them, and they remain on the other marketplaces (i.e. Poshmark, eBay, Mercari, Depop, Facebook Marketplace, etc.). For every item, you must be able to show it was created at least 20 years ago.

Before you start: what Etsy accepts and what you need on hand

Compared to the other major resale marketplaces, Etsy places a lot of restrictions on the items that a reseller can sell there. Etsy’s policies allow three main categories: (1) Items that you made or designed yourself; (2) crafting supplies and tools; and (3) vintage items that are at least 20 years old. Anything outside these categories is prohibited, and items that do not meet Etsy’s policies, even if they are great items, still need to be sold on the other marketplaces. Read Etsy’s creativity policies in the Etsy Help Center to be sure you understand their policy language before your first listing, because their policies and standards can change at any time.

Prepare your active listing links, a measuring tape, a camera with good close-up ability and good lighting, and your open Etsy shop with your shipping profile completed. If you have fewer than 200 listings, an Excel sheet with 4 columns (item, current marketplace, evidence of age, Etsy yes/no/research) will work.

Finding evidence of age can be the hardest part. A seller's guess is not evidence, so you need to rely on things you can touch or see in a photo.

• Brand Labels/Tags: Changes in graphic designs and logos over the years often help date a brand.
• Union Labels: Some American-made clothes over the years have Union Labels. Changes in designs over the years can often help narrow down the time period.
• RN numbers: The US FTC gives businesses RN numbers, and a registration lookup tells you the business who owned the company at the time. Lower numbers usually means it was given earlier.
• Care Labels: many items prior to the 1970s often do not have care labels because care labeling regulations were introduced in the US in the early 1970s.
• construction: single-stitch hems, metal zippers, hand-finished seams. Older clothes have several clues together.
• Hallmarks and maker’s marks: stamps on jewelry and silver, back stamps on Pyrex, and other ceramics and glass, and dates on game cartridges, albums and books.
• Printed dates: the year on album covers, game and board game boxes, and book covers.

The following are the best categories on which to focus for your Etsy shop. The strongest fits are toys, records, and kitchenware. There are general rules, and exceptions to them. The following is a basic guide.

Steps: sort the inventory, then build each Etsy listing

Your work will be divided into two parts. The first is a sorting pass. You only need to do this once for your entire inventory. The second part is repeated for each flagged item. Follow these steps in order.

1. Copy your active listings to a spreadsheet.
2. For items made within the last 20 years, or for which you cannot find evidence for the age, mark as ineligible and leave listed.
3. For items for which you have evidence for the age, mark as eligible for Etsy.
4. For items for which you have mixed or no clues, set these aside for further research. Before doing more research, use label histories, RN lookups, and maker’s mark guides.
5. Check Etsy for items for which you have evidence for the age, and list similar items and note prices.
6. Set your Etsy price.
7. In your Etsy listing's About section, indicate that your item is complete as is and made by another person or company. Also include the approximate decade represented by your evidence.
8. Pick the most specific category and complete all attributes Etsy allows you to add, such as color, material, size and era style.
9. Optimize your title for Etsy search.
10. Use all 13 tags.
11. Adjust description to include your evidence of age and age range.
12. Set quantity to 1, add your shipping profile, and publish.
13. Immediately deactivate the listing when the item is sold elsewhere.

This is your current title, so work with it for now. A Poshmark title is short and brand-first; an eBay title is keyword packed; an Etsy title is 140 characters and searchers are influenced by eras and styles, so lead with decade and item: 1980s Pyrex Spring Blossom mixing bowl, then details. Titles allow 20 characters per tag, so phrases can be broken into tag phrases: 80s pyrex, green kitchen, retro mixing bowl. In the description, measurements and flaws can be added as well as deleting the platform-specific lines, like bundle offers. Add a line with the method of your dating, like a backstamp or label.

As for price, Etsy has listing, transaction and payment processing fees, plus a fee for offsite ads for some sales. With current numbers on Etsy's fees page, and with your shipping in mind, play with prices. A price can be the same across all platforms, or ever so slightly higher on Etsy to cover the fees. This is up to you as long as you meet your bottom line.

An ineligible item can get your listing removed and your shop restricted on Etsy. If your item gets flagged by Etsy, respond through the notice rather than relisting it. If you notice the issue, take it down as soon as you can.

Worked example: a 10-item batch sorted and three items listed

The following is a real-world example of the process for part-time seller on Poshmark and eBay with 140 active listings who tested a batch of 10 to see how they'd sell on Etsy.

Three items qualified right away. The Pyrex bowl came from an eBay listing for $38. On Etsy, it was listed as: When was it made? 1980 to 1989, category Mixing Bowls, color green and white, material glass. The eBay title, Vintage Pyrex 402 Spring Blossom Green Mixing Bowl 1.5 Qt Corning, became 1980s Pyrex Spring Blossom Mixing Bowl, 1.5 Quart Green Vintage Kitchen Bowl 402. Tags used were pyrex 402, spring blossom, 80s kitchen, and green glass bowl. After checking Etsy’s fees against the shipping cost, the seller listed it for $40.

The price on the concert tee was $55 on Poshmark. From 1990 to 1999, this era’s clothing was listed on Etsy, and a photo of a tour date was added as the second image. A Super Nintendo cartridge was purchased on eBay for $30 with the label’s copyright date in the description. Items that were dated were listed on Etsy, and items that were ineligible were kept where they were. Overall, it took about 90 minutes to complete the batch, with most of the time spent on the three listings.

Checklist for every item before it goes on Etsy

• The item is 20 years or older, or is a craft supply.
• You can name the evidence of its age and it is in a photo or the description.
• The About section states that a different person or company made it, with the correct decade.
• The category is the most descriptive one available and all attributes are filled.
• The title leads with era and item and is less than 140 characters.
• 13 tags are used and each is 20 characters or less.
• Platform-specific text from Poshmark or eBay is removed.
• After Etsy’s fees, the price is what you need.
• The quantity is 1 and the item is still live on other sites if you are going to delist promptly.

Crosslist your vintage items to Etsy with PrimeLister

In this example, the time-consuming part was not sorting. It was reproducing three existing listings on eBay and Poshmark, remembering to pull each listing when it sold, and then repeating the process for 30 items. PrimeLister does the copying and clean up, so eligible items sell to the Etsy customer without having to type the same information over and over.

• Comes with crosslisting from existing Poshmark, eBay, Mercari, Depop, and Facebook Marketplace to Etsy, allowing edits to titles, tags, and eras instead of starting with a blank slate.
• Have inventory auto-sync and auto-delist, so when an item sells on eBay, the Etsy listing delists.
• Useful bulk actions on multiple listings to crosslist an entire flagged batch at once.
• Understand your items' sell through rate and time on market with analytics.
• Free find-duplicates tool to catch items listed twice.

Poshmark Bot, with automated sharing, relisting and a 7 day free trial with no credit card, can help with your Poshmark items.