Never Price One Dollar Under: Why $100 Pays $15 More Than $99

Charm pricing is the most reflexive habit in retail: $99 rather than $100, $499 rather than $500. On a consignment platform it is close to the worst thing you can do with a listing.

The reason is that commission is tiered. The platform's cut falls as the sale price rises, and it falls in steps — so crossing a threshold changes not just what you sell for but the rate you are paid at.

Every threshold, and what one dollar is worth

List at	You keep	Payout	Payout at the threshold	Difference	Increase
$99	40%	$40	$55	$15	+37.5%
$499	55%	$274	$350	$76	+27.7%
$1,499	70%	$1,049	$1,200	$151	+14.4%
$4,999	80%	$3,999	$4,250	$251	+6.3%

At the first threshold, $99 pays $40 and $100 pays $55. One dollar of price is worth $15 of payout.

At the $1,500 threshold it is worse: $1,049 against $1,200, a difference of $151 for the same single dollar.

Why the schedule works this way

Handling a listing costs a platform roughly the same whatever it sells for — photography, authentication, storage, shipping, customer service. On a $60 top that fixed cost is most of the value, so the commission has to be large. On a $5,000 bag it is a rounding error.

So the tiers are not a loyalty scheme. They are a fixed cost expressed as a percentage, and the percentage falls because the fixed cost stops mattering.

The rule this produces

Never list at a price that ends just below a threshold. If the honest value of your item is $95, listing it at $100 and accepting slightly slower interest pays $17 more than listing it at $95.

Round up to the threshold, not down to the charm price. The difference in how many buyers click is small. The difference in what you keep is not.

Check the threshold before negotiating. Accepting an offer that drops a $500 listing to $490 costs you $80 rather than $10 — because the discount crosses a tier.

The negotiation trap, in full

This is where sellers lose most. A buyer offers $1,450 on a $1,500 listing. It reads as a 3.3% discount and it is a 15.4% cut to your payout — you receive $1,015 instead of $1,200.

The counter is simple and works: hold at the threshold and offer something else. Free shipping, the dust bag, the original receipt. All of those cost you far less than $185.

Platforms that quote a flat rate

Some do, and then this whole problem disappears. The payout calculator takes a flat commission too, so you can compare: a flat 25% on $1,500 pays $1,125, against $1,200 on the tiered schedule — while the same flat 25% on $300 pays $225 against only $165 tiered.

Which wins depends entirely on where your item sits. Below $500 a flat rate is usually far better; above $1,500 the tiered schedule generally wins. Run both before choosing where to list.

What the calculator does not include

Listing fees, shipping, authentication charges and payment processing all vary by platform and none of them is in this model. They matter most at the bottom, where they can exceed the commission itself.

The practical test: work out your payout here, then subtract every fee the platform names. If the result on a $60 item is under $20, the honest answer is that the item should not be consigned at all.

One number to take away

Write down the four thresholds — $100, $500, $1,500, $5,000 — and check every listing against them before it goes live. It takes seconds, it is the only free money in reselling, and almost nobody does it.

Pricing above a threshold you cannot reach

The obvious worry: what if the item is honestly worth $85 and listing it at $100 means it never sells?

Then it never sells, and you relist lower having lost nothing but time. The asymmetry is in your favour — an unsold listing costs a few weeks, while a listing one dollar under a threshold costs $15 the moment it succeeds.

The exception is anything time-sensitive: a seasonal piece, a size that sells in a narrow window, or an item you need gone before a move. There, sell it and accept the rate.

How far above is too far

A useful bound: if the threshold is more than about 15% above what the item is honestly worth, stop stretching. Above that the listing stops being optimistic and starts being ignored, and a listing nobody looks at does not get a second chance at the top of the feed.

Within 15%, round up every time. The resale estimator will tell you the honest figure; the thresholds tell you which way to round it.

The same logic when buying

It runs backwards for a buyer, and it is worth knowing. A seller who has priced at $1,500 has a strong reason not to accept $1,450 — it costs them $185, not $50.

So offers just below a round number are the ones most likely to be refused, and an offer of $1,500 with a request for free shipping will frequently do better than an offer of $1,425. Both sides are reading the same schedule; only one of them usually knows it.

Where the thresholds come from

They are round numbers because platforms pick round numbers, and they cluster where the cost of handling an item stops dominating: around $100, $500, $1,500 and $5,000.

Different platforms put them in slightly different places, so check the actual schedule you are selling under. What does not vary is that they exist, that they are steps rather than a slope, and that the step is always worth more than the dollar that crosses it.

The mistake in the other direction

Pricing at a threshold and then discounting through the platform's own "make an offer" feature undoes the whole exercise. An accepted offer of $95 on a $100 listing pays what a $95 listing would have paid — the threshold is about the price the item actually sells at, not the price it was advertised at.

If you want room to negotiate, list above the threshold by enough that the expected discount still lands on it. List at $1,650 if you expect to accept $1,500; do not list at $1,500 and hope.