Whatnot bulk listing: how to bulk upload comics with Whatnot's CSV
Whatnot bulk listing, the short answer. It is a CSV file you import with Whatnot's own bulk upload in Seller Hub: one row per listing in Whatnot's twenty one column template, and the rows come in as drafts. Put every comic fact in the title and description, give each a whole dollar price, name a shipping band that fits the packed parcel, use public https photo links, and upload one row before the whole file.
Whatnot's bulk upload is a CSV, and a much smaller file than eBay's. The file is easy. The work is in fitting what you know about a comic into a format that has nowhere to put most of it.
This is written from Whatnot's own published bulk template and the values on its Values tab, plus my own Buy It Now rows live on Whatnot. I have not run a live show off one of these files yet.
The file: twenty one columns, and not one is an item specific
Here is the whole file. Coming from eBay File Exchange, notice what is missing: no publisher, no series, no issue number, no character, no creator, no era, no grade.
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
Category | Whatnot's top-level category. Comics and manga sit under one; graphic novels, magazines and novels sit under Books. |
Sub Category | The leaf under it, by name. Books itself is marked as taking no inventory in the published taxonomy, so expect a file that names the parent to be refused rather than broadly categorised. |
Title | Up to 200 characters in Point and Sell's files. Whatnot allows far more, but a long title is hard to scan. |
Description | Up to 1000 characters, and on Whatnot this is where the publisher, the year, the era, the creators, the characters, the story title and the grade go, because there is no column for any of them. |
Quantity | How many copies. Zero is a real answer and means do not list this one; it is not the same as a blank. |
Type | What kind of listing the row is. See the two files, below. |
Price | The asking price on a Buy It Now row. On an auction row it is the opening bid, which is a different number. |
Shipping Profile | One of Whatnot's weight bands. It is the PARCEL's weight, not the comic's, and it is the column that costs money. |
Offerable | TRUE lets a buyer send you an offer. An auction cannot take one. |
Hazmat | "Not Hazmat" for everything this writes. |
Condition | One value from Whatnot's ladder, below. Not a number. |
Cost Per Item | What you paid. Your own number for your own accounting, and blank is a fine answer. |
SKU | The custom label from the eBay listing. This is the column that makes the post-show report reconcilable against your eBay inventory, and it is the one never to leave blank. |
Image URL 1 | A public https:// image. Whatnot fetches it itself. |
Image URL 2 | As above. 8 is the cap; eBay takes 24. |
Image URL 3 | As above. 8 is the cap; eBay takes 24. |
Image URL 4 | As above. 8 is the cap; eBay takes 24. |
Image URL 5 | As above. 8 is the cap; eBay takes 24. |
Image URL 6 | As above. 8 is the cap; eBay takes 24. |
Image URL 7 | As above. 8 is the cap; eBay takes 24. |
Image URL 8 | As above. 8 is the cap; eBay takes 24. |
On eBay, C:Publisher, C:Series Title,
C:Issue Number, C:Character and
C:Artist/Writer each have a column buyers filter on. On Whatnot
nothing about a comic is filterable.
Everything you know goes in the description
Publisher, year, era, writer, artist, cover artist, characters, team, story title, grade: none of them has a column, so write them into the description or the buyer never sees them.
A shape that works, facts first, your standard blurb last:
Amazing Spider-Man #300
"Venom"
Marvel Comics · 1988 · Copper Age (1984-1991)
Creators: David Michelinie, Todd McFarlane
Cover: Todd McFarlane
Featuring: Spider-Man, Venom, Eddie Brock
Condition: VFA buyer on a phone reads the top three lines, so the series and issue go first. If the blurb does not fit the character limit, drop the blurb, not the facts.
Categories: name a leaf, never the parent
Whatnot's categories are much shallower than eBay's. Where eBay splits Golden, Silver and Bronze Age, Whatnot has one Vintage bucket. The leaves are Anime & Manga, Comic Art, Vintage Comics, Modern Comics, Pop Culture Memorabilia under Comics & Manga, and Graphic Novels, Magazines, Rare & Vintage Books, New & Used Books under Books.
The CSV wants the label, not the taxonomy slug: it is
Vintage Comics, never bronze_age_comics. And name a
leaf, not the parent: Books is marked as taking no inventory, so expect a file
that names it to be refused.
Where does Vintage end? Point and Sell draws the line at 1992: a cover year of 1992 or later is Modern Comics, 1991 or earlier (the Copper Age included) is Vintage Comics. It is a judgement call, and you can move any row.
Condition is a word, not a number
Whatnot's ladder, in order: Graded, Gem Mint, Mint, Near Mint, Very Fine, Fine, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor.
It is the CGC scale with words instead of numbers, so a raw comic maps cleanly: 9.4 is Near Mint, 8.0 is Very Fine, 4.0 is Very Good. Two traps:
A slab has nowhere to go. There is no certification field
in the CSV. The condition is Graded, and the grading company, the
grade and the certification number go in the title and the description.
A note is not a grade. If your condition reads "reading copy, some wear", nothing should read a grade out of it. Point and Sell uses whatever the same comic says on eBay, so the two listings agree, and names those rows when it builds the file. Writing the CSV yourself, pick the word rather than letting a spreadsheet guess.
Prices are whole dollars
Whatnot refused a Buy It Now file of mine, 33 Captain America comics, over the cents in 2.99. The same file with 3 imported all 33 as drafts, and Whatnot's own template shows a whole number. So round up: 2.99 is 3, never 2, or a $4.99 comic sells for $4. Point and Sell writes every Whatnot price that way and tells you how many it rounded up. To see what a whole dollar price leaves you after Whatnot's seller fees, the free Whatnot fee calculator works it out. To weigh it against listing the same comic on eBay, Whatnot fees vs eBay fees puts one sale on both.
The column that costs money: Shipping Profile
Read this one twice. Whatnot makes the shipping label, so the band you name is what the buyer is charged and what you are billed. It is not eBay's weight field. eBay's weight is the item; Whatnot's band is the parcel: comic, bag, board and mailer. Point and Sell adds 3 ounces to every comic or book parcel for that. It is sized for a single comic, not per comic: a lot of a hundred gets the same three ounces, so pack one the way you ship it, weigh it once and set it yourself. A record, game, Funko Pop, movie or CD is different: its eBay weight is already the packed parcel, mailer and all, so nothing is added to it.
| Parcel weight | Shipping Profile | Note |
|---|---|---|
| up to 1 oz | 0-1 oz | |
| 2 to 3 oz | 1-3 oz | |
| 4 to 7 oz | 4-7 oz | |
| 8 to 11 oz | 8-11 oz | |
| 12 to 15 oz | 12-15 oz | |
| 16 oz | 1 lb | |
| 17 to 32 oz | 1-2 lbs | |
| 33 to 48 oz | 2-3 lbs | |
| 49 to 64 oz | 3-4 lbs | |
| 65 to 96 oz | 4-6 lbs | |
| 97 to 224 oz | 10-14 lbs | There is no band between 96 oz and 160 oz, so a parcel in that gap is labelled 10-14 lbs and your buyer is quoted more postage than the parcel needs. This is the heaviest band here, and it is not a ceiling: a parcel over 224 oz still goes out labelled 10-14 lbs, and the postage above that is yours. |
A lot of a hundred comics is about eighteen pounds, over the top band, and every sale of it loses you the postage above the band. A lot of roughly thirty five to fifty comics falls in the gap and is quoted to your buyer as ten to fourteen pounds, which is how a lot stops selling.
For both, set those rows' shipping by hand in Whatnot after the import.
Photographs: eight, and they have to be public
Eight image columns, against eBay's 24. If you shoot ten photos of a comic, two will not reach Whatnot, so put the shots that sell the comic first.
Images must be reachable over https:// with no sign-in, because
Whatnot fetches them during the import. A file of private image links
imports perfectly and gives you drafts that can never be
published, with no warning. Check one listing after your first import.
Two files, not one: the show and the Buy It Now
Whatnot is not a second export of a box of photos. It is a later stage of stock you already have listed elsewhere. In practice that is three files and one rule:
- The show file. Every row is an auction, built from what is still live on your other marketplace, in SKU order so the show walks the box in shelf order. The Price column is the opening bid.
- The Buy It Now file. The leftovers after the show, at their asking price. This is the file where Offerable can be TRUE.
- The end file for the other marketplace. Not a Whatnot file at all, and the one that costs you money if you skip it. See below.
Whatnot auctions have no reserve. The opening bid is the floor. Open everything at its listed price and nobody bids; open everything at a dollar and a forty dollar book sells for a dollar. A fraction of each listed price is the usual answer: at 0.4 a ten dollar book opens at four. Pick it once, for the whole show.
After the show, end the sold ones where they were listed
Every comic that sold in your show is still live on eBay until you end it. The next eBay buyer buys a comic you no longer have, you cancel, and eBay counts the defect against you.
So the routine after a show is two steps, and the second is not optional:
- Take the SKUs from Whatnot's post show report and turn the rest of the box into a Buy It Now file.
- Take the SKUs that sold and end those listings on eBay the same day, which File Exchange does in one upload.
Try the end file with one SKU first and check that listing shows as ended in Seller Hub before you send forty.
This is why the SKU column matters. A Whatnot row with no SKU cannot be matched back to an eBay listing, and matching a show by title, by hand, at midnight, is how comics get sold twice.
Upload one row first
The Type column's exact values are the one thing I would test
before a big file. Upload one row, check it, then upload the rest.
If you would rather not type any of this
Point and Sell builds the show file, the leftovers file and the eBay end file from one box of photos and your eBay active listings report. It writes the item specifics into the description in the shape above, maps your grades onto Whatnot's ladder, and warns you about what needs a look: photos that are not public, or a lot whose parcel does not fit its band. Records, video games, Funko Pops, movies and CDs go into the same files under Whatnot's own categories for them (Music, Video Games, Toys & Hobbies and Movies), with each one's own condition ladder; those are new here and no upload of them has been checked yet.
With crosslisting on, there is more. Show prep picks comics by box, label, days listed or price, each with no more copies than you have. Live-show mode shows fewer copies on your other sites while the show is on, so a sale that settles late cannot sell a copy twice. And Show over works out what did not sell from the sales the log heard, and puts the ones not live on eBay in an eBay file.
Whatnot bulk listing questions
Is there a Whatnot bulk listing tool?
Yes. Whatnot's bulk upload tool is its own bulk CSV import in Seller Hub: it takes a file in Whatnot's twenty one column template, one row per listing, and the rows come in as drafts. It does not write the file for you.
Point and Sell is a Whatnot bulk lister for that part. It makes the Whatnot file from a batch of photos, or a show file from a box still live on eBay. Each row is a Buy It Now listing or a show auction at the opening bid you choose, with the comic's facts in the description, a whole dollar price, a title of up to 200 characters, a description of up to 1,000 and up to eight public photo links. It warns you first about what needs a look: a photo link that is not public, more photos than Whatnot takes, or a lot whose parcel does not fit its shipping band. You upload the file in Whatnot yourself. Point and Sell does not post to Whatnot or read sales from Whatnot, because Whatnot declined to give Point and Sell API access.
Can I bulk list on Whatnot from my eBay listings?
With Point and Sell, yes. Pick a box and get the show file and the run of show sheet from what is still live on eBay, in box order, or make the Whatnot file from any finished batch. Once eBay has the batch, the file leaves out what it knows has sold. The other road runs through a Shopify store: moving eBay listings into Shopify, and from there to Whatnot. To keep the same comic live on eBay as well, cross posting to Whatnot from eBay has the steps.
Does a comic I bulk listed on Whatnot come off eBay when it sells?
Not by itself. Whatnot declined to give Point and Sell API access, so nothing reads a Whatnot sale on its own. Mark it with one tap, Sold elsewhere, on Inventory. With crosslisting on, eBay is lowered to match where sending to eBay is switched on for your account; otherwise the log says what to change. After a show, paste the sold labels and send the eBay End file instead. Cross listing on Whatnot has the rest.