You're pricing what you paid, not what it's worth and the buyer doesn't care what you paid

Most expensive habit in resale, and nearly everyone does it without noticing: you price from your own wallet. You paid £40, so you list at £25 thinking 'that's a steal, how generous of me'. Or you paid £3 in a charity shop and feel odd asking £18, even though that's what it's worth.

Either way the number in your head is your cost — and you're letting it set the price. Here's the brutal bit: the buyer doesn't know what you paid, and wouldn't care if they did. It's invisible to them and irrelevant.

The only number on their side of the screen is 'what's this worth to me, right now, against everything else I could spend a tenner on'. Your purchase price isn't in that sum at all — it only lives in your head, biasing you. And it bends you both ways.

Mostly too high — you're subconsciously chasing your money back, so you cling to a price the market left behind months ago, and it sits unsold while you 'wait for the right buyer'. Occasionally too low — you panic, decide you 'just want rid', and dump a £20 item for £8. Same mistake both times: pricing off your cost, not the item's value.

Mostly too high — you're subconsciously chasing your money back, so you cling to a price the market left behind months ago, and it sits unsold while you 'wait for the right buyer'.

The cure's almost embarrassingly simple — detach the price from what you paid and pin it to what comparable items are actually selling for. A data-led price suggestion helps for one dull reason: it doesn't know what you paid, so it can't be biased by it. It tells you what the thing's worth, minus your emotional baggage.

You stay in control — adjust it, ignore it — but your starting point is the buyer's reality, not your own receipts.