Three ways to split the price of a job lot
When you pay £40 for 10 pieces at a car boot sale or for an eBay job lot, there is no buy price per item: you have to set one. The total cost of the lot never changes, whatever method you use. What changes is the profit you see on each piece, and so your pricing, what you bin and what you buy again.
| Method | The sum | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Equal split | Lot price ÷ number of pieces | Pieces of similar value: a bag of T-shirts, jeans in the same range |
| Pro rata to resale | Lot price × (item resale ÷ total resale of the lot) | A mixed lot with one or two good pieces among the rest |
| All on the star piece | Whole lot on the piece you wanted, £0 on the rest | Avoid: the rest looks free, so you undersell it |
Pro rata is the fairest method for a mixed lot: each piece carries a share of the price in line with what it will earn, and every piece shows the same percentage margin. You can then see straight away whether your resale guesses were right, piece by piece.
Worked example: a 10-piece lot for £40
The lot holds a jacket you expect to sell for £32, 4 jumpers at £12 and 5 T-shirts at £4. Expected resale: 32 + 48 + 20 = £100. The lot costs £40, so 40 ÷ 100 = 40% of resale. Each piece therefore costs 40% of its resale price.
| Piece | Expected resale | Cost, equal split | Cost, pro rata | Profit, pro rata |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jacket | £32 | £4 | £12.80 | £19.20 |
| Jumper (x4) | £12 each | £4 each | £4.80 each | £7.20 each |
| T-shirt (x5) | £4 each | £4 each | £1.60 each | £2.40 each |
| Total | £100 | £40 | £40 | £60 |
Either way, the lot costs £40 and makes £60 profit if everything sells at the expected price. But with an equal split, every T-shirt sold for £4 shows £0 profit and the jacket shows £28. Pro rata, the T-shirt leaves £2.40, the jacket £19.20, and every piece keeps 60% of its sale price before packaging.
Why an equal split skews your decisions
With an equal split, small pieces look worthless and good pieces look like miracles. That is a quirk of the maths, and it has real effects:
- You give away or bin the small pieces, even though they pay back part of the lot. In the example, the 5 T-shirts cover £8 of the £40 you paid.
- You cut the price of the star piece too fast, because it has "already made its margin". In fact it carries the lot: if it goes for £20 instead of £32, the lot loses £12 of profit.
- Your stats by brand or category go wrong: T-shirts look like they earn nothing, jackets look like they earn almost everything.
- You compare your sources badly: a car boot sale where you mostly buy lots looks less profitable than it really is.
Simple rule: if resale prices in the lot vary by a factor of two or more, use pro rata. Otherwise an equal split is fine.
Before you buy: the most you should pay
The same reasoning, run backwards, tells you what to offer. The seller's asking price doesn't matter: only what you can resell and what you want to keep.
- Sort the lot and price each piece at what your comparable items actually sold for, not what other sellers are asking.
- Take out stained, torn or dated pieces straight away: count them at £0.
- Add up your costs: packaging per piece, fuel, or postage on the lot.
- Set the profit you want to keep, for example half of the resale value.
- Maximum price = likely resale − costs − target profit. Above that, haggle or walk away.
With the example: one T-shirt is stained, so likely resale drops to £96. Packaging at 50p for 9 pieces is £4.50, plus £5 of fuel. You want to keep £48. Maximum price: 96 − 4.50 − 5 − 48 = £38.50. At £40 the lot is just over your ceiling, so offer less. At £55 it only works if the jacket really sells for £32, and any unsold piece eats your margin.
The amounts in this example are made up. Swap in your own past sale prices: they are the only figures that show what you actually sell, and for how much. To then set the sale price of each piece, our guide "How to price items on Vinted" walks through the method.
Damaged pieces, lots by the kilo and big lots
- An unsellable piece you find after buying: set its cost to £0 and spread the lot price over the remaining pieces. The lot isn't cheaper; the sellable pieces pay for it.
- A lot bought by weight: price per kilo × weight = lot price, then count the sellable pieces when it arrives. 5 kg at £8 a kilo for 20 sellable pieces is £40 ÷ 20 = £2 a piece with an equal split, before adjusting pro rata.
- A piece you keep for yourself: take it out of the lot with its share of the cost. Otherwise your other pieces look more profitable than they are.
- Unsold stock at the end of the season: when you bundle it into a new lot or donate it, record the loss. It belongs to the result of the original lot.
- A very big lot: split it into several smaller lots by type of piece, and share the total price between them in line with their resale value.
Where to find job lots, and Vinted's rule
Lots mostly turn up away from selling apps: car boot sales, charity shops clearing stock, vintage wholesalers selling by the kilo, "job lot clothes" listings on eBay or Facebook Marketplace, and people clearing a whole wardrobe. On Vinted too, some sellers offer bundles or multi-buy discounts.
Mind what you do with them next. Vinted keeps buying items to resell at a profit for Vinted Pro accounts, and repeated this on 24 September 2026. Reselling lots bought for that purpose from a standard account breaks its rules, whatever the number of items. Our guide "Can you buy to resell on Vinted?" covers the rule, the Pro account and the sole trader or company registration it asks for.
Keep proof of what you paid
If you resell as a sole trader, HMRC expects you to keep proof of your costs, including all receipts for goods and stock, and to keep your records for at least 5 years after the 31 January submission deadline of the relevant tax year. A job lot is one purchase: keep its receipt, invoice, or a screenshot of the listing and the payment.
The split per piece is for your own tracking: knowing what each piece earned. Keep it alongside your records, not instead of them. This is general information: if you're unsure about your situation, check with HMRC or an accountant.
Track a lot in ResellStats
ResellStats, an iPhone app for tracking resales, has a lot mode that does the split for you:
- In the Stock tab, tap + then Is this a lot?
- Fill in Place (for example "Car boot, Sunday"), Total paid and Platform (applies to all).
- Add each piece with Add item. The app shows: "Split across 10 items: each item's buy price is £4.00 by default."
- To go pro rata, tap a piece's price and type its share, for example £12.80 for the jacket. The pieces you haven't changed share whatever is left of the total.
- If you set the price of every piece and they add up to less than the total, the app says so ("£3.00 left to spread across your items") and waits until it all adds up. Then tap Save 10 items.
Each piece then carries a "From Car boot, Sunday" tag. Tap it to show only that lot: a strip shows the total paid, the number of items, how many have sold and the net profit on the pieces sold so far. You can see when the lot has paid for itself, and which sources earn you the most.
Two limits to know: a lot holds up to 15 items, so split bigger ones into several lots. And the app doesn't connect to your Vinted account: sales are entered by hand.