Where to Buy and Sell Used AV Gear Online: An Honest Map of the Market

There is no single best place to sell a used mixing console or buy a used moving light. There are about six kinds of places, each with a different trade between price, speed, reach, and safety — and most bad outcomes in used AV come from putting the right gear on the wrong kind of platform. This is the map we wish someone had handed us when our own production company started turning over inventory: what each option is actually good for, what it really costs, and where the risk sits.

A note on honesty up front: we operate one of the marketplaces below, and this guide names our competitors because you should know they exist. The rest of the entries are written the way we would describe them to a colleague.

Decide what you are optimizing for first

Every venue trades off along the same four axes. Price: private-party sale to another professional gets the most money; a cash offer from a dealer gets the least. Speed: a dealer pays this week; a niche marketplace listing can take months on a slow item. Reach: a generalist platform puts your listing in front of millions of casual buyers; a specialist platform puts it in front of thousands of the right ones. Safety: platforms differ enormously in what happens when a package arrives broken, a buyer disputes, or a seller disappears — and that difference matters more as the price climbs. Rank those four for the specific item in front of you and the venue usually picks itself.

The generalists: eBay and Facebook

eBay is still the biggest pool of buyers for anything that ships in a parcel, and its auction format is genuinely useful for odd items with no obvious market price. The trade-offs are equally real: final-value fees plus payment processing take a meaningful double-digit percentage of most audio sales, casual buyers return things professionals would not, and heavy or fragile production gear — line array elements, consoles, LED wall panels — sits outside what parcel-shipping generalist buyers want.

Facebook Marketplace and the used-gear groups are the opposite trade. Fees are zero, local pickup solves freight entirely, and regional production communities are full of knowledgeable buyers. But there is no payment protection worth the name, no dispute process, and every experienced seller has stories about no-shows and lowball resellers. Facebook is a fine venue for local, inspect-in-person deals at prices where you can absorb a bad day — and a poor venue for shipping five-figure gear to a stranger on a promise.

The music-gear specialist: Reverb

Reverb owns the online market for musician-facing gear: guitars, synths, pedals, studio outboard, microphones. Its buyers are educated, its pricing data is deep, and for backline-adjacent items it is often the fastest path to a fair price. Where it thins out is exactly where production gear begins — touring PA, rigging, power distribution, staging, and large-format anything. A line array listed next to boutique pedals is in front of the wrong audience, and freight-sized items are not what the platform's buyers or tooling are built around. Sell your Jazzmaster there; think harder about your subwoofers.

The pro AV marketplaces

A newer group of platforms exists specifically for production and AV equipment. Gearsupply, launched in 2020, runs a peer-to-peer marketplace for used pro audio, video, and lighting aimed at event professionals. GearSource, around since 2002, operates globally with a broker-style model that leans toward larger production and touring packages. GearDepot — our marketplace, and the newest of the three — is US-only by design and built around one specific problem: making high-value used-gear deals safe between strangers. Every seller is identity-verified, listings are staff-reviewed with serial checks, payment is held by the platform rather than paid straight to the seller, and the buyer gets a 72-hour inspection window after delivery before funds release. The transaction fee is 5% of the item subtotal, with a $5 minimum and a $750 cap, and listing is free. The honest trade-off across all three specialists is the mirror of eBay: exactly the right audience and freight-capable tooling, but smaller buyer pools than the generalists, so slow-moving items take patience.

Dealers and cash-offer sites are not marketplaces

Several well-known used AV names are not marketplaces at all — they are dealers who buy your gear outright for cash or resell refurbished stock with a warranty. As a buyer, a good dealer is the low-risk option: inspected gear, someone to call, a price that reflects both. As a seller, understand what you are accepting: a dealer must resell at a margin, so a cash offer typically lands well below what a patient private-party sale brings. That is not a scam — it is the price of immediacy and zero effort. Take it when speed matters more than the last thousand dollars, and skip it when it does not.

Where should you actually sell?

Match the item, not the habit. Musician-market items — guitars, synths, pedals, studio pieces — belong on Reverb or eBay, where the buyers already are. Standard touring audio and lighting in parcel-shippable sizes does well on the pro AV marketplaces, where condition-literate buyers expect road wear and understand what a scan of the serial plate means. Freight-class items — arrays, wall panels, staging, large consoles — belong on a platform with real freight support, or in a local deal where the buyer inspects in person. Cheap, heavy, awkward gear is Facebook-local almost every time; the shipping would cost more than the item. And anything you need converted to cash this week goes to a dealer, eyes open about the discount.

What buyer protection actually differs

Read past the word protected and ask three questions anywhere you deal. Who holds the money while the gear is in transit — the seller already, or the platform? What happens on arrival — is there a defined inspection window before funds release, or does the clock only start when you file a complaint? And who referees a dispute — a human process with evidence, or an algorithm tuned for retail returns? Generalist platforms answer these tolerably for parcel-sized retail-style purchases and badly for freight and high-value gear. The specialist platforms were built because of that gap; on ours, the payment hold plus the inspection window is the entire safety model, not an add-on. Whatever venue you choose, keep the payment on the platform — the moment a deal moves to a wire, a Zelle, or a friends-and-family payment, every protection listed above is gone.

The short version

Dealers buy fastest and pay least. eBay reaches the most buyers and suits parcel-sized items that fit retail expectations. Facebook is for local pickup at prices you can afford to walk away from. Reverb owns musician gear. The pro AV specialists — Gearsupply, GearSource, and GearDepot — put production equipment in front of the right buyers with freight and protection built for it, at the cost of smaller audiences. Pick the venue by the item and by which of price, speed, reach, and safety you actually need — and never let the payment leave the platform.