How to Price a Liquidation Pallet Before You Buy It
Most people lose money on liquidation because they price the pallet against its supposed retail value instead of against what they can realistically sell it for. Here is the arithmetic that actually protects you.
Step one: cost per piece
Divide the load price by the approximate piece count. A 1,500 dollar pallet at 500 pieces is three dollars a piece landed, with freight already included if you are buying from someone who includes it.
Step two: your realistic sell-through
Sell-through is the share of the load you will actually sell. New resellers assume 90 percent. Experienced ones plan for 50 to 70 percent and treat the rest as write-off, donation or bulk-lot disposal. Use the lower figure until you have data from your own loads.
Step three: your true average sale price
Not your best sale. Your average, after discounting the slow movers you eventually dump. If you sell online, subtract fees and postage before you write the number down.
Putting it together
Pieces multiplied by sell-through multiplied by average net sale price gives your realistic revenue. Compare it to the load price. If the ratio is not comfortably above two to one, the load has no margin for the bad week that always comes.
Costs people forget
Your own labor sorting and listing. Storage. Packaging. Disposal of the unsellable share. Payment processing. None of these appear on the invoice and all of them come out of the same margin.
Why we do not publish retail values
Because we would be guessing, and a guess printed next to a price is marketing. We publish the price, the category, the approximate piece count and the condition basis. Everything else is your judgement to make.
More guides
Liquidation basics
What a liquidation pallet actually is, what unmanifested means, and who should not buy one.
Amazon returns
What is really inside an Amazon returns pallet, and why the unboxing videos mislead.
Freight delivery
How a pallet actually arrives, and the one paragraph that protects a damage claim.
