Reselling News: Whatnot Is Worth 20 Billion Dollars and Mercari US Is Finally Growing Again

Three things happened this week that have nothing to do with a policy change and everything to do with where you should be listing next year. Money moved, and money moving is the earliest signal a reseller gets about which apps are going to be worth the effort.

Whatnot raised another 545 million dollars

Live selling did not slow down. On Friday, August 7, Whatnot closed a 545 million dollar Series G that values the company at 20 billion dollars, led by ICONIQ, Lightspeed, and Avra, with Kleiner Perkins and Wellington coming in new. CNBC reported the valuation is close to double the 11.5 billion the company carried after its Series F last October. Whatnot says it moved more than 6 billion dollars in sales during 2025, roughly twice its 2024 figure, and the new money is earmarked for seller tools, AI in the selling flow, and new markets.

Two years ago it was fair to call live selling a niche for card breakers. A company that doubles its valuation in ten months while doubling its sales is not a niche anymore.

What to do about it: you do not need to become a live seller. You do need to know whether your category sells live. Cards, comics, toys, sneakers, vintage tees, and anything with a grade or a size that people argue about tend to move well in a stream. Slow-turning categories that need a search query to find a buyer do not. Watch two streams in your category before you decide, and count how many items actually sell in an hour rather than reading the follower number.

Mercari US grew users and volume in the same quarter

Mercari closed its fiscal year at the end of June and reported the numbers this week. US gross merchandise volume in the fourth quarter came in at 208 million dollars, up 15 percent year over year, with 4.2 million monthly active users, up 4 percent, per Value Added Resource. Full year US GMV finished at 810 million dollars, up 11 percent, and the US business turned a core operating profit.

Why that matters more than the raw dollars: after two years of fee experiments, layoffs, and leadership churn, this is the first quarter in a long time where both volume and active buyers grew at once. A lot of us pulled back from Mercari during the zero-fee-for-sellers mess in 2024 and never went back. The buyer pool that made us quit is refilling.

Mercari also said it will absorb half of the new USPS hazmat noncompliance fee, leaving the seller on the hook for 25 dollars of the 50 rather than the whole thing.

What to do about it: if Mercari is sitting dormant in your crosslisting rotation, push twenty items back through it and watch what happens over thirty days. That is a cheap test. And label anything with a battery, an aerosol, or a fragrance correctly, because a 25 dollar mistake still wipes out an average flip.

eBay is not moving to buyer-paid fees in the US

On the Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked whether the fee model eBay rolled out in the UK and Germany, where selling is free and the buyer pays, was coming to the States. CEO Jamie Iannone said the company has no current plans to change fees in the US, per the call transcript.

What to do about it: nothing, which is the point. If you have been holding inventory or delaying a store subscription decision because you heard free selling was coming, stop waiting. Price your listings against the fees you pay today.

The takeaway

Two platforms just got a large vote of confidence from people who look at these numbers for a living, and the third told you its economics are staying put. That is enough information to plan a listing rotation around. Working out which platform deserves your next hundred listings, and in what order, is exactly the kind of decision we sit down and run the math on inside The Income Lab.

Hero uses the Mercari wordmark, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.