The Questions to Ask a Seller Before You Buy

There is a particular kind of regret that comes from unpacking something and realising the answer was one message away. The jacket that was hemmed. The figure with a replacement weapon. The box that was resealed. In almost every case the seller would have said so, accurately and without fuss, had anyone asked.

The skill is in the shape of the question, not in suspicion. Below are the questions that reliably produce information, sorted by what you are buying.

The rule underneath all of them

Ask for a number or a photograph, never for an opinion.

Compare two versions of the same concern. Is it in good condition? can be answered honestly with yes by someone whose standards differ from yours, and now you have exchanged messages without exchanging information. Can you photograph the lower left corner of the card? can only be answered with the photograph, a refusal, or an explanation. All three outcomes tell you something.

This is why measurements beat descriptions and close-ups beat adjectives. A number and an image both survive the gap between two people's standards. An adjective does not.

One more framing note: ask before you buy, not after. A question sent beforehand is a normal part of trade and most sellers answer it gladly. The same question sent afterwards is the opening of a dispute, and everyone's posture changes.

Questions for clothing and shoes

Apparel is where a single question saves the most, because the label on the garment is often the least reliable thing about it.

What are the flat measurements?

The essential one. Flat measurements are taken with the garment laid down and unstretched: pit to pit across the chest, length from the base of the collar down the back, shoulder seam to shoulder seam, and sleeve from shoulder seam to cuff. For trousers, waist laid flat, inseam, rise and leg opening.

Ask for these instead of trusting the size label. Labelled sizing has drifted over the decades, varies between countries, and differs between brands within the same country, so a labelled medium is a category rather than a measurement. Meanwhile you can measure a garment you already own and like, and compare directly. That comparison is the single most reliable way to buy clothing you cannot try on.

Has it been altered, hemmed or taken in?

Extremely common on older and better-made pieces, precisely because they were worth altering. An altered garment is not a worse garment, but it is a different one from what its label claims, and alterations are hard to see in a photograph. This also explains measurements that do not match the size.

How does it smell, and how has it been stored?

Not a delicate question, and worth asking anyway. Smoke and mildew are the two that persist, and mildew in particular signals storage conditions that may have caused damage you cannot see yet. No photograph will ever tell you this.

Are there repairs, thin spots, or damage under the arms?

Underarms, elbows, collars and cuffs go first, and they are the areas most easily missed when photographing a garment flat. Ask specifically about them rather than about damage in general.

For shoes: how do the soles and the heel counters look?

Uppers photograph well and wear slowly. Soles and the stiff structure at the back of the heel tell you how much life is actually left, and they are the two shots most often absent.

Questions for figures, toys and boxed pieces

Is any part of this a replacement?

The most valuable single question in the whole hobby. Accessories are small, they get lost, and reproductions are widely available and often sold honestly as reproductions before being resold as originals by somebody further down the chain. A seller who knows will tell you. A seller who does not know will say so, and that is a useful answer too.

Do the joints hold a pose?

Loose joints do not show up in photographs at all, and they are the difference between a figure that stands on a shelf and one that slumps. Some lines were loose from the factory; others loosen with play. Either way, ask.

Has it been repainted, restored or customised?

Some of the finest-looking examples of older figures have been touched up. That is legitimate work, and there is a market for it, but it is a different object from an untouched one and should be priced as such. Our practice is that customs, repaints and one-off builds are named in the title rather than buried, and we do not repaint figures to make them photograph better.

Does it still work, and did you test it?

Anything with electronics, sound, light or a wind-up mechanism. Note the second half of that question: did you test it is a different question from does it work, and the answers frequently differ.

Questions about the packaging

Worth separating out, because on sealed and carded pieces the packaging is often the half carrying the value.

• Is the seal factory, or has it been resealed? A resealed box is not automatically a scam, but it is not a sealed box, and the two are priced very differently. An honest seller who cannot tell will say they cannot tell. That is what we do rather than guess.
• Can I see all four corners? Corners are where compression damage lands and where photographs conveniently end.
• Is there fading on one side? Shelf-stored items bleach on the side that faced the room, and even light can conceal it.
• Is there sticker residue or a price-sticker tear? Removed stickers often take a layer of the printed card with them.
• How will it be packed? Reasonable to ask on anything boxed. Pickup or shipping for fragile collectibles covers what a good answer contains.

What a bad answer sounds like

Answers carry as much information as facts, sometimes more.

A good answer is specific and matches what was asked. It contains numbers, or arrives as the photograph you requested, or says plainly that the seller does not know. That last one is a good answer. Nobody knows the full history of a secondhand object, and a seller who admits the edge of their knowledge is telling you the rest of what they said is probably reliable.

A weak answer is reassurance in place of information: it's in great shape in response to a request for measurements. A pivot to a different, easier question. A stock photograph offered where a photograph of the item was asked for. Urgency introduced from nowhere, especially other buyers who materialise the moment you ask something specific. None of these are proof of bad faith. All of them are reasons to slow down.

And if the answer is a flat refusal to photograph something ordinary, treat that as the answer, because it is one.

Ask us. We would rather answer than take a return

That is not a courtesy, it is arithmetic. A returned item costs us the handling twice and costs you the wait, and a question answered beforehand costs both of us one message. So ask about a measurement, a corner, a joint or a seal, and if we do not know we will say we do not know.

Two things worth knowing before you write. Everything here is pre-owned, including pieces described as sealed or new with tags, because we are a resale business and those words describe wear rather than provenance. And we describe condition, we do not grade or authenticate it, which is set out on our authenticity and condition page. Those two facts shape what we can honestly answer, and it is better that you know the shape in advance.

The categories where these questions pay for themselves fastest are the apparel ones, since measurements do the work photographs cannot: men's clothing and women's clothing are the deepest shelves we keep, with shoes, accessories and bags and kids and baby alongside. On the toy side, action figures is where replacement parts and joints matter most.

Related reading: what a good listing shows you covers everything you can settle without asking anybody, and starting a collection without wasting money puts these habits into a wider plan.