Free tool
Bid ceiling calculator
The most useful number in reselling is not what an item is worth. It is the most you can pay for it and still make the profit you decided on before you walked into the room.
Gross received $90.00
Marketplace deductions $0.00
Net proceeds $90.00
After your shipping costs $82.00
Maximum bid $57.00
The commission and per-order fee fields start at zero on purpose. Take your own rates from your most recent payout statement rather than from a summary — they vary by category, country, and standing, and they change.
Why it runs backwards
Most sellers price forwards: they buy something, add a margin, and discover at payout that the margin was smaller than they thought. Running the arithmetic in the other direction removes the surprise. You start from a sold price you can actually evidence, take out everything that will be deducted from it, subtract what it costs you to ship, and take out the profit you require. What is left is your ceiling.
Using it honestly
The realistic sold price is the input people get wrong. It is not the highest completed sale you can find, and it is certainly not an active asking price — it is what a comparable item in comparable condition has been achieving recently. Pricing strategy for resellers covers how to read sold data without fooling yourself.
A ceiling is only worth having if you hold to it, and the moment of bidding is the worst possible moment to revise a number you calculated while calm. Valuing inventory before you buy it is the guide this calculator belongs to, and buying collections and job lots extends the same arithmetic to a pile you cannot itemise.