Short answer: you hand over the things you want sold, we photograph, price, list and ship them, and you get paid for what sells. In Close The Deal’s own records, the middle item sells in 15 days, and 43.6% of what has sold went in the first week. There is no setup fee and no monthly fee. We take a commission only when something sells.
I run Close The Deal, a small online consignment business here in Durango. People ask me how this works all the time, usually while standing in a garage full of stuff they are tired of looking at. So here is the whole process, start to finish, the way I would explain it across a table. The numbers in this post are our own results since we took in our first items in July 2026. They are not an industry average and they are not a promise about your things.
What happens when I bring things in?
You bring the items to us, we look them over with you, and anything worth selling gets checked in under your name. Most people drop things off. If you are dealing with a whole house, a storage unit or a big collection, ask about a pickup when you call.
Not everything is worth selling online, and I will tell you that up front. Some things sell for less than the time it takes to list them. If you are not sure what you have, our page on whether something is worth selling is a good place to start.
Once your items are checked in, the work is ours. You do not photograph anything, write anything, answer buyer questions or stand in line at the post office.
How do you decide what something is worth?
I price from what the same item has actually sold for recently, not from what other sellers are asking. Asking prices are wishful thinking. Anyone can list anything at any number and leave it there. Sold prices are what buyers really paid.
That means a lot of looking things up. Brand, model, size, maker’s marks, labels, the tag sewn into a jacket. Those details are what separate a $20 item from a $300 one, and they are also what buyers search for. Getting them right is most of the job.
To give you a feel for the range, the median sale price across everything we have sold is $27. The highest single sale so far was $800. Most of what people own sits closer to the first number than the second, and that is fine. Lots of $27 sales add up.
Where do my things get listed?
Your items go up on several marketplaces at once, not just one. Different buyers shop in different places. Someone hunting for vintage clothing may never open the same app as someone looking for hunting gear or trading cards.
Here is where our sales have actually come from so far:
| Marketplace | Share of our sales |
|---|---|
| eBay | 56.4% |
| Poshmark | 20% |
| Depop | 13.6% |
| Whatnot | 6.4% |
eBay does the most volume for us, but close to half of our sales came from somewhere else. That is the whole reason to list in more than one place. When an item sells on one marketplace, we take it down everywhere else so it cannot sell twice.
Every listing gets clean photos with the item itself up front, a title written the way a buyer would search for it, and every detail filled in that the marketplace offers. Blank fields mean your item does not show up when a buyer filters by size or brand. If you want the longer version of why that matters, I wrote about it in our free guide.
How long does it take to sell?
In our records, half of what has sold went in 15 days or less. A quarter sold within 2 days of going live. At the other end, a quarter took 43 days or longer. Overall, 65.5% of what has sold went within 30 days.
One thing surprised me. The higher priced items tend to sell faster, not slower. Here is the median time to sell by price, from our own sales:
- Under $25: 18.5 days
- $25 to $100: 10.5 days
- $100 to $250: 7 days
- Over $250: 6 days
My opinion on why: a buyer looking for a specific $300 item is searching for exactly that thing, and when a good listing shows up they act. Cheap items are more of a browse. They sell, they just take a little longer to find the right person.
What sells changes with the season, too. This fall, hunting gear and hunting clothing have been our busiest categories, which makes sense for Southwest Colorado in October.
When and how do I get paid?
You get paid on the 1st and the 15th of each month for items whose sale has cleared a 14 day hold. Once the hold passes, the sale goes on your next payout.
Our commission is a percentage of what each item sells for, and it gets smaller as the price goes up:
| Item sells for | Our commission |
|---|---|
| Up to $25 | 40% |
| $26 to $250 | 35% |
| $251 to $1,000 | 30% |
| $1,001 to $5,000 | 25% |
| Over $5,000 | 20% |
In plain dollars: if an item sells for $50, you keep $32.50. At $100 you keep $65. At $300 you keep $210. And as I said up top, you pay no setup fee and no monthly fee. You can read the full details on our services page.
What happens if something does not sell?
Each consignment runs for a 90 day term. Anything still unsold at the end of the term comes back to you.
Not every item finds a buyer, and I would rather be honest about that than pretend otherwise. Some things just are not in demand right now. Our commission comes out of what sells, so we only do well when your things do.
If you are sitting on a closet, a garage or a parent’s house full of things and you are not sure where to start, that is exactly the situation this was built for. You do not need to sort it all first or know what anything is worth. That part is my job.
If you would like me to take a look at what you have, ask for a free evaluation here.