Reselling News: Poshmark Stops Covering Overweight Packages October 26, and Mercari's New Label Prices Land Today

The scale on your packing table is the cheapest tool you own. Over the next eight days it turns into the one that decides whether a heavy item is worth listing at all, because both platforms in today's news just repriced weight.

Poshmark stops covering overweight packages on October 26

Poshmark's notice, published October 8, sets out the ladder. A standard label covers up to 5 pounds. An upgrade runs $5 for 5.01 to 10 pounds and $10 for 10.01 to 15 pounds. Above the upgraded label's ceiling it is $15 for 15.01 to 25 pounds, and the full USPS cost past 25 pounds.

Those prices are not the change. The change is what happens when you skip the upgrade. Poshmark used to absorb the difference when a package went out heavier than the label it shipped on. From October 26, in the platform's own words, "if you ship a package over 5 lbs without upgrading your label, the required upgrade cost will be deducted from your earnings."

The dollar amount lands in the same place either way. What changes is whether you saw it coming. Buy the upgrade first and the cost is a line in your math before you agree to a price. Skip it and the same money leaves your payout after the sale is closed, on an item you had already written down as profitable. Coats, boots, bundles and anything with hardware in it are the usual offenders, and they are exactly the items sellers eyeball instead of weighing.

Worth noting that this is the second cost Poshmark has handed back in a month, after its $50 hazmat fee protection ends today. One change you can argue with. Two inside of three weeks is a direction.

Mercari's new label prices take effect today

We flagged this one when it was announced, and today is the day it lands. Mercari's shipping change notice is plain about it: "Starting October 19, 2026, Mercari will update prepaid label prices for select weight categories." The short version is that the flat $7.97 Best Rate for qualifying UPS and FedEx economy packages up to 5 pounds becomes weight-based pricing topping out at $9.39, and some heavier UPS Ground and FedEx Home rates climb by more than half.

The piece we did not have in October is the exception, and it cuts the other way. Mercari is shipping single trading cards and paper collectibles free in a First-Class envelope up to one ounce, and charging 49 cents for that envelope up to three ounces, both running through January 4, 2027. Mercari says its labels overall still average 53 percent below retail rates with up to $200 of shipping protection included.

If you have been meaning to list the shoebox of cards and loose paper goods that never felt worth the postage, the next eleven weeks are the cheapest that category is going to be. And if your Mercari closet leans heavy, today is the morning to open your active listings sorted by weight and read what the buyer now sees for shipping.

The takeaway

Put the two side by side and both platforms are saying the same thing. Light and small is getting subsidized. Heavy is getting handed back to you. Neither company will tell you which of your own items just crossed that line, and a closet full of five dollar leaks is how a profitable month quietly becomes a break-even one.

The fix is boring and it is free. Weigh the item before it gets a price, not after it sells, and know what a label costs at that weight on the platform you are listing on. Turning that habit into a pricing system that shipping cannot quietly eat is one of the first things we set up inside The Income Lab.

Hero image: photo by tales of a wandering youkai, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.