I’m not really a doll dealer — I’m a doll collector — so sometimes I worry about getting burned when I sell off my unwanted dolls and clothes online and at doll shows.

eBay has some protections and is reasonably safe for sellers, but unfortunately there are some good reasons why not to sell on eBay, having to do with high fees and the many complaints against eBay (not protecting buyers or sellers as well as they claim they will, suspending people’s accounts for no good reason, etc.). The only other alternatives for a doll collector to resell unwanted dolls are a community website such as Craigslist, a sales website of their own, or various local (but infrequent) doll shows.

The biggest problem with these choices is that they don’t feel very secure. Of course, if you sell on Craigslist you can — and should — insist on cash, because of all the scams that go on there. At a doll show a lot of people write checks, which can be risky too, but you can’t really say no. I usually get their driver’s license number and a phone number, and I always scan or copy the checks before I deposit them in the bank, but I think that probably only helps so much.

Selling on my own site is a problem though, as PayPal is owned by eBay — so if you can’t trust one, it follows that you can’t trust the other, either. I really need to look into some kind of merchant account processing or credit card processing services, but I’ll have to compare rates for low-volume accounts, because I don’t sell as much as a dedicated seller would.

Of course, the people who show up at doll and toy shows or order dolls from a website are not all that likely to be con artists — but still, you never know, and it pays to protect yourself!

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