Shipping is taking a bigger bite of every eBay sale. Here is what 3,931 of our own sales show.

• Our USPS parcel labels went up 28%. The average went from $6.75 in 2024 to $8.65 in 2026, close to what USPS announced over the same stretch.
• Our FedEx labels went up 27%. We ship few FedEx labels, mostly large items, so treat that one as a rough number.
• Our Media Mail labels barely moved. They averaged $4.72 in 2024 and $4.84 in 2026.
• So we moved much of our store to media. Predictable label costs let us offer free shipping on nearly every media sale, and books, discs, and records are easy to store.
• Cheap items carry the most. On items that sold for under $15, labels came to 39% of the sale. On items of $60 and up, 11%.

Most of our labels are USPS, so these are the changes that set our costs. The percentages are the averages USPS announced; a single label can rise more or less depending on weight and zone.

• January 21, 2024: USPS Ground Advantage up 5.4 percent, Priority Mail up 5.7 percent, Priority Mail Express up 5.9 percent.¹
• July 14, 2024: no increase for Ground Advantage, Priority Mail, or Priority Mail Express. That summer's parcel change was to Parcel Select.²
• January 19, 2025: Ground Advantage up 3.9 percent; Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express up about 3.2 percent.³
• July 13, 2025: Ground Advantage up 7.1 percent and Priority Mail up about 6.3 percent; Priority Mail Express unchanged.⁴
• January 18, 2026: Ground Advantage up 7.8 percent, Priority Mail up about 6.6 percent, Priority Mail Express up 5.1 percent. USPS said the First-Class Mail stamp would not change.⁵
• April 26, 2026 to January 17, 2027: a time-limited 8 percent increase on base postage for Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, Ground Advantage, and Parcel Select, which USPS tied to its transportation costs. USPS said no other products would be affected.⁶
• July 12, 2026: USPS said it would align its divisor for dimensional weight pieces with industry standards for its parcel services, which changes how a light but bulky box is priced, and would drop ounce-based price steps from published commercial Ground Advantage prices.⁷
• October 4, 2026 to January 17, 2027: temporary holiday prices for the same parcel services, pending review by the Postal Regulatory Commission when USPS announced them.⁸

Compounded, the Ground Advantage increases announced after our first sale in this data (3.9, 7.1, 7.8, and the temporary 8 percent) come to about 30%. That is our arithmetic, not a USPS figure, and it leaves out the holiday prices. For a wider view, the Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price index for courier, messenger, and postal services rose about 24% from December 2023 to September 2026.⁹

Our average USPS parcel label rose 28%, in line with the roughly 30% in announced increases. An average label also moves with what we ship, how heavy it is, and how far it goes, so it will never match USPS's percentages exactly, but the direction is the same. FedEx rose about as much, from $26.11 to $33.20, on far fewer labels.

Media Mail is the exception. Our average Media Mail label went from $4.72 to $4.84 over the same period, close to flat, and the April 2026 increase named only the four parcel services listed above.

When parcel labels kept climbing and Media Mail did not, media became the easiest part of the store to price. Our Media Mail labels land in a narrow range (95% of them cost $7.47 or less), so we can build the label into the price and offer free shipping without guessing. Nearly every Media Mail sale we made shipped free (at least 98% in each year), against 11% to 21% of our parcel sales.

Media is also easy to store. Books, CDs, DVDs, and records are small and stack well, so more of them fit on a shelf than almost anything else we sell. Over the period, Media Mail went from about 16% of our labels to about 49%.

Media Mail has rules: USPS limits it to books, recordings, and a short list of other media, and a parcel can be opened for inspection.¹⁰ The Media Mail guide covers what qualifies.

With more free shipping, buyers paid less toward postage and we paid more. Free shipping went from 26% of our sales to 55%, labels grew from 17.1% of our sales to 20.9%, and the shipping buyers paid went from 16.1% to 15.3%.

Per sale with a label, buyer shipping minus the label went from -$0.59 in 2024 to -$2.26 in 2026. That is mostly the choice we made, not money lost: the postage is built into the item price. It does mean every label increase comes straight out of what an item keeps unless the price goes up with it.

A label costs roughly the same whether the item inside sold for $8 or $80, so the cheaper the item, the bigger the share. On our sales under $15, the label was 39% of the sale. That is where a postage increase turns a small profit into none, and where it pays to check the numbers before buying. The max buy price calculator takes the label into account when you work out what to pay.

eBay's final value fee is a percentage of the total amount of the sale, which includes the shipping the buyer pays.¹¹ So when you raise the shipping you charge to keep up with label prices, part of the increase goes to eBay. The same is true if you fold postage into a free shipping price. Either way, the eBay fee calculator shows the fee and your payout for a given price and shipping charge, and the table of what eBay takes shows the fee at common prices.

• More media, shipped free. We keep sourcing books, discs, and records, ship them Media Mail where they qualify, and build the label into the price.
• Pricing small items with the label in mind. On a low-priced item, the label can be the biggest cost. We check the label before we decide on free shipping.
• Measuring boxes, not just weighing them. With USPS changing how it prices bulky parcels, a smaller box can matter as much as a lighter one. The shipping supplies guide covers box and mailer sizes.
• Bundling. Selling small items as a lot pays for one label instead of several.
• Cards in the Standard Envelope. For eligible low-priced cards, the Standard Envelope guide explains eBay's option and its limits.
• Watching the temporary dates. The 8 percent change and the holiday prices are both scheduled to end on January 17, 2027, so we will check label costs again after that date.

None of this changes what USPS charges. It changes which labels we buy and how we price around them.

Every figure about our store comes from our own eBay store, Stroop Stash, synced into Strooply. It covers every sale from April 24, 2024 to October 31, 2026, with 2026 counted through October. Label costs are the labels bought through eBay; a sale shipped with a label bought elsewhere has no label in the data and is left out of the label averages. USPS parcel means every USPS label other than Media Mail, so mostly Ground Advantage and Priority Mail. The label averages leave out the most expensive 5% of labels for each service, using one cutoff per service for the whole period, so a few heavy parcels do not swing a year. Shares of sales and free shipping counts use every label. Refunds and returns are not counted here.

This is one seller in one part of the country, selling mostly low-priced secondhand goods, so your own numbers will differ. It is an account of what happened in our store, not a forecast.

We could only write this because every sale, label, and buyer shipping charge was already in one place. Strooply's eBay profit tracker shows profit after fees and shipping for each item, and the overview of shipping for resellers explains how size and weight set the price.

For what our flips made after every cost, not just shipping, see what 271 thrift flips made us on eBay.