Selling vintage furniture online in the UK, from one listing

The difference decides what happens when a piece sells. Direct means one click publishes the listing and Artifactly takes it down when it sells. Ready-to-List means Artifactly prepares the whole listing, you copy it all in one click or download a CSV, and you put it on the site yourself. Vinterior, for example, is a curated marketplace for vintage and antique furniture and homeware with its own delivery service.

Sales on eBay and Etsy are checked about every 5 minutes. You choose one eBay site per account; UK is the default. Fees are set by each site: on a £100 order, a business seller in eBay UK's Antiques category pays £11.65 and Etsy takes £11.18 plus a 0.20 USD listing fee (eBay business fees, Etsy fees, Etsy payment processing, Etsy regulatory fee). eBay's rate depends on the category you list in, and private sellers pay no final value fee (eBay private seller fees).

1. Add your photos and a few notes: maker or designer if known, timber, any label or stamp, any repairs.
2. Let the AI draft the title, the description with its history and provenance section, the category, dimensions and condition notes. Correct anything you would not stand behind.
3. Publish to eBay: fixed price, Good 'Til Cancelled, using your eBay business policies. Artifactly flags any required item specifics that are missing.
4. Publish to Etsy: it needs a price, an Etsy category, and a processing and a shipping profile in your shop. It sends who made it and when it was made.
5. Open Ready-to-List, press Copy All and paste into Vinterior, or download the CSV. Repeat for Pamono, and note which sites you will need to mark sold by hand.

Already listed on eBay or Etsy? Import from eBay, Etsy, Shopify, WooCommerce or a CSV and pick items by SKU. Stock quantity is not imported, so set 1 for a one-off piece. There is a fuller walk-through in how to cross list from eBay to Etsy.

• Width, depth and height, plus whatever decides whether it fits: seat height, knee room under a desk, depth with the doors open.
• The maker or designer and how you know: a label, a stamp, a catalogue match. If it is "in the style of", say so.
• Timber or veneer, handles, glass, upholstery.
• Condition in plain words: marks, veneer lifts, refinishing, replaced parts.
• Photographs of the back, inside drawers, any label, and close-ups of damage.

Titles are tight: 80 characters on eBay, 140 on Etsy, and Artifactly shortens rather than rewrites them, so lead with the object, maker or style, and period. eBay takes up to 24 pictures and some categories require item specifics; Etsy allows up to 13 tags and 20 photos. On Etsy, vintage means at least 20 years old and Etsy may ask how you dated a piece, according to its vintage policy, so note how you dated each one.

Older pieces sometimes have ivory escutcheons or inlay. Under the Ivory Act 2018, advertising counts as dealing. One exemption covers items made before 3 March 1947 with less than 10% ivory by volume where the ivory is integral; registering an item costs £20; breaking the rules can mean a fine of up to £250,000 or up to 5 years in prison. Read the gov.uk guidance first.

"The current requirements for second-hand upholstered furniture are unclear, divergently interpreted and in some cases inconsistently complied with."

That is the government describing its own rules. The consultation is about changing them, and its outcome is still pending. So we are deliberately not telling you what the law requires for a second-hand sofa or armchair.

Before you sell upholstered pieces, ask your local Trading Standards office what they expect. You can find yours on gov.uk, and the page says it offers business advice about trading legally. Keep a note of the advice and who gave it, and check the consultation page again, because the answer may change. Artifactly does not check fire safety, and nothing in a listing it drafts should be read as saying a piece complies.

The Global Shipment Manager connects you to specialist fragile-item couriers and white-glove shipping providers across the UK, EU and worldwide. Compare rates, generate packaging labels and packing slips, produce customs declarations and commercial invoices, and send live tracking updates to buyers, all from the same record as the listing. AI weight estimation helps you avoid underquoting postage. Measure the piece as it will be packed, tell the courier about stairs and access at both ends, and if you offer collection for the biggest pieces, say so in the listing.

A room setting helps a buyer judge scale and style. Use it as one image among several: your own photographs still need to show the piece, its condition, its labels and any repair, because that is what the buyer is paying for.

Artifactly checks eBay and Etsy for sales about every 5 minutes. When the last one sells, it ends the eBay listing, removes the Etsy listing, archives the Shopify product and sets the WooCommerce product to draft. If you have more than one in stock, the count goes down and the listings stay live.

Two gaps remain. The check is regular, not immediate, so there is a short window after a sale. And sales on Vinterior, Pamono and the other Ready-to-List sites are not seen at all, so mark them sold and take the piece down elsewhere yourself.

eBay allows only one fixed-price listing of an identical item at a time, so a matching pair is one listing with a quantity of 2. On Etsy, auto-renew sold reposts a sold listing and charges another listing fee, according to Etsy's fees page, so switch it off for one-off pieces.

gov.uk's eligibility page lists second-hand goods, works of art, antiques and collectors' items. A 1960s sideboard is not an antique for the scheme but may be a second-hand good, so check with your accountant. The VAT registration threshold is £90,000 over 12 months.

gov.uk says the stock book should show, for each item:

• Stock number, in sequence
• Purchase date and purchase invoice number
• Purchase price
• Name of the person you bought from
• Description of the item
• Sale date and sales invoice number
• Selling price, or how else you disposed of it
• Name of the buyer
• Your margin
• The VAT due

Keep the records for 6 years. At the standard rate the VAT is one-sixth of the margin (16.67%): a chair bought for £600 and sold for £900 has a £300 margin and £50 VAT.

Vinted and 1stDibs are marked coming soon in the app. If cost and location tracking matter more than listing, see our page on antique dealer software, or compare cross-listing tools.

Shopify, WooCommerce, Ready-to-List (Vinterior, Pamono and the other specialist sites), White Background and Virtual Staging start on The Dealer. Full pricing details. Selling smaller pieces too? See vintage homeware sellers, or browse all seller types.