list on craigslist. Agree to meet in a public place (bank lobby, etc). Cash only. No negotiations. No reservations either; the first person to say yes and show up with $$$ in hand takes the item. The buyer can inspect the item in person, and if agreeable, pay cash. No checks / wires / bank checks. If the buyers try to negotiate in person -- and some CL buyers will -- just refuse the sale.

Obviously this isn't a worldwide market, but for used phones or mac laptops it works.

On the "public place" note, many police stations provide locations for safe transactions of this nature. If a buyer or seller balks at meeting at a police station it's probably not someone you want to deal with.

For a phone one might meet at your wireless providers retail outlet.

Definitely also a good suggestion. Especially for Verizon (and maybe also Sprint?) to make sure the phone can register to your account.

I really like this idea.

Genuinely useful. I did not know this.

That is a very low volume alternative.

It seems like a good alternative for selling your second hand phone though (as in the blog post linked).

Dealing with the average buyer on Craigslist is exhausting. "What's your best price?" and "Will you accept <10% asking>" are by far the most common queries.

Come on, you know these people aren't punctuating or contracting like that. I can't count the number of "item still available???? will u take $10 and ship 2 me??" messages I've received.

However, the average Craiglist seller is often just as insane.

$500 for a Mesa Boogie Subway Rocket amplifier--maybe, if it's pristine

"It has new tubes"--that are never standard Mesa tubes "Just got it serviced"--never has a receipt etc.

On an amplifier that the reverb is clearly not working, knobs are cracked or replaced with generics, the jack is flaky, looks like it has been thrown down several stairwells (at least try to fix the Tolex as that's cheap unless you try to do a full re-covering), etc.

And then they get really incensed when you show them that the last successful ebay auctions were all under $350.

Have some realistic expectations, dude.

Tell me about it. I'm selling a MacBook Pro in Tokyo, and the thought of dealing with those queries is pretty depressing. Plus the fact that the items on this list are not moving at all:

https://tokyo.craigslist.jp/search/sys?query=macbook

In Japan they use Yahoo Auctions.

Is there anything else? Etsy maybe... but it's more for hand crafted stuff, so you won't get the same buyers. Craigslist, but that's more of a local, in person marketplace. I can't think of one eBay replacement.

That's why they think their business model is fine...

> Etsy maybe

Charge you to list stuff, whether or not it sells. Would not use again.