Selling unprocessed skins

I was curious if anyone had any general price ranges for selling skins straight off of the rabbit. I have so many in the freezer right now and just not enough time to process them all. I was thinking of posting something on Craigslist to see what kind of interest I get.

Never heard of people selling unprocessed skins around here so I'm afraid I can't be of help.

I thought about selling them once upon a time, but after filling the freezer with hides, I finally tossed them in the trash. I couldn't even give them away. There were some people here that mentioned that some folks might want the hides, but I doubt there would be any money in it.

Of course, once tanned, they become a nice commodity.

I'd be hard pressed to sell them raw or processed. The rise of the "humane" movement makes it too complicated.

You might try just drying the skins instead of taking up freezer space. I let them air dry on clothesline but not when flies are in season. Flies lay eggs on skins and the maggots destroy them.

I nail mine to a half piece of plywood, pull the hide to the top of the nails so the fur - its fur side down when I nail it - is clear of the wood. Then I prop it up under the ceiling fan in the dining room.

They are dry within two days.

I then pack them into a box with layers of cedar shavings until I get round to doing anythign with them.

One day I will be through the frozen back log of hides and just have fresh ones to dry! :lol:

Mailing them frozen can get expensive, dried skins are less costly to ship. But there are pros and cons.

Tanning by hand is tedious and labor intensive. So few people are going to be able to buy raw skins, tan them and sell them for more in a very profitable way.
That leaves people tanning raw fur just because that's what they want to do.

People don't feel the same about rabbit pelts as they do furbearers (fox, raccoon, coyote, mink, etc). Generally rabbit skins are more acceptable, especially if they came from meat rabbits raised for human food.

I can only speak from personal experience.

But here is what I know about BUYING raw skins. (I raise my own rabbits, so I only ever buy buns if they are from a fur breed that I don't have)

I won't buy air dried or "trapper dried" skins for tanning. I find them the least pleasant to work with, the biggest pain to rehydrate, they tend to have dried-in grease, and they are the most likely to slip.
I prefer fresh, raw frozen or salted skins to work with instead, and do go out of my way or pay more to get them in that condition.

I also do sell raw skins to other tanners sometimes, and in general I only ask
2-3 dollars each for raw fryer pelts, and a bit more if it's a prime pelt from a fur breed.

The market is small so reputation is everything. The best bet is to find groups to work with. You might even check on facebook or meetup for hobby, re-skilling, or primitive skills groups. Certainly toss an add on craigslist since it's free..it can't hurt.
As far as I'm aware, there are no state laws against selling raw domestic rabbit skins within the US, and no federal ones. But you might want to be VERY careful giving out your address in case an AR group sees your add.

If you ever want to sell them and you have whole skins (head/ears/feet/tail included) I'd likely be interested. I'm a taxidermist so I'm always looking for a good supplier of whole furs that have minimal skinning holes in them, lol! Unprocessed skins usually go for around 2-5$ though, and you have to ship them in a particular manner or they get ruined.

Just not enough of a market and I found the hand tanning process too tedious. I tried salting rather than freezing so they would take up less space but they were still too greasy and grew bugs even indoors. It's a waste product now and I've slowly been throwing out the ones in the freezer.

I'm not sure about selling them raw. If they are tanned you can get $4-6 a piece for them on ebay plus whatever the shipping is. One auction I was looking at sold grey 12" x 16" pelts for $6.99 each plush shipping. They have sold 317 in that auction. I have no clue on how much it costs per hide to do them. I'm surprised there isn't more of a market for them. I'd personally love to make a rabbit blanket/throw. Rex fur seems to be pretty popular

I have no clue on how much it costs per hide to do them.

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I'm not really sure what most tanneries charge / rabbit skin either.

I do know that hand fleshing and breaking leather is going to cost you more time than you will ever see out of it selling finished skins at $6.99.

But when you are done hand tanning a few 100 hides you will have awesome hand strength or arthritis and carpal tunnel. One of those.

ckcs":3jbka0k6 said:

One auction I was looking at sold grey 12" x 16" pelts for $6.99 each plush shipping. They have sold 317 in that auction. I have no clue on how much it costs per hide to do them.

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It would be interesting to know how they prep the pelts to be able to
sell at that price. The ebay expenses would add up. It's 10 % of the selling price
and then an additional 10 % of the postage. Then paypal gets 3 % of the TOTAL
money moved, which is price item sold for, plus the postage. And paypal gets .35 per transaction also in addition to their 3 %.

TwoAcreDream":1nx8xq20 said:

ckcs":1nx8xq20 said:

One auction I was looking at sold grey 12" x 16" pelts for $6.99 each plush shipping. They have sold 317 in that auction. I have no clue on how much it costs per hide to do them.

Click to expand...

It would be interesting to know how they prep the pelts to be able to
sell at that price. The ebay expenses would add up. It's 10 % of the selling price
and then an additional 10 % of the postage. Then paypal gets 3 % of the TOTAL
money moved, which is price item sold for, plus the postage. And paypal gets .35 per transaction also in addition to their 3 %.

Click to expand...

I believe selling tanned skins in bulk would only be profitable if you had a tanneries machines to do the work...and there are already so many more higher return pelts to be working on instead (like fox, or shearling). I think that is really why there isn't much of a market for raw rabbit skins in the US. Perhaps if someone had really high end pelts they could convince a tannery to give them a try.

TwoAcreDream":2jn3k4mz said:

ckcs":2jn3k4mz said:

One auction I was looking at sold grey 12" x 16" pelts for $6.99 each plush shipping. They have sold 317 in that auction. I have no clue on how much it costs per hide to do them.

Click to expand...

It would be interesting to know how they prep the pelts to be able to
sell at that price. The ebay expenses would add up. It's 10 % of the selling price
and then an additional 10 % of the postage. Then paypal gets 3 % of the TOTAL
money moved, which is price item sold for, plus the postage. And paypal gets .35 per transaction also in addition to their 3 %.

Click to expand...

Since the skin will easily ship first class and this seller charges $4.99, at $6.99 they will walk away with around $7.75 a skin after everything. They are running around $2.50 in handling on the first skin. They charge $3.75 for each additional skin which is a hefty amount of handling there too. I suppose if you could do 2-3 an hour that would be ok for a job you can do at your leisure. They don't say how they prep them though. Auction number 390494759962

It says they are fully tanned. noveltwholesale? These could very well be tanned commercially in another country at a much lower labor cost.

I suppose if you could do 2-3 an hour that would be ok for a job you can do at your leisure.

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I'd like to see someone produce 2-3 fully tanned skins by hand in an hour

Zass":36obq3mq said:

I'd like to see someone produce 2-3 fully tanned skins by hand in an hour

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I haven't a clue how long it takes, I gather I am way off lol

Can't be done in an hour with home tanning methods. I do mine in large batches - no point doing the solution, soak and softening for just one hide. Now 10 or 20 at a time, that's worth doing. We also do deer hides so, it's rare that we don't have something at some stage of tanning around here.

Any I know I won't get to I dehair and rawhide, then shred to make chew toys for the dogs. Easy enough to make. Shredded rawhide, wet but not dripping, press to shape and weight til dry again. Dog Chew.

Instead of putting them up on craigslist, where I gather people have had bad experiences, I know there are a LOT of primitive skills meetup groups in my area, as well as an active leathercrafting guild attached to the SCA. An email to the organizers of those groups might get you a decent, steady stream of buyers, or you could possibly host a tanning workshop where you charge people to show up and tan your hides, and if they want to take more home to practice, you can sell them to workshop participants at a discount.

Kitty102":1qa2xusu said:

I was curious if anyone had any general price ranges for selling skins straight off of the rabbit. I have so many in the freezer right now and just not enough time to process them all. I was thinking of posting something on Craigslist to see what kind of interest I get.

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Depends on breed and colour, if you're going through craigslist it might be harder unless your area is big on pelts. There's a flemish giant breeder here I met when she listed 12 raw hides for free. Swooped those up and she contacts me every time she has more, I get em for free. She actually sold me my Giant boy Jack for $15 when I picked up the first round of pelts. My friend in Wisconsin breeds pet Flemish Giants, she skins out her culls as mountable hides, sells them tanned at 20 - 30 $, I don't know if she ever does capes. She tans them herself and I don't think she sells raw. For just capes you can probably get about $5 a piece but it really depends how you've skinned it out, the size of the pelt, your buyer and the market in your area.

Shipping frozen is a pain in the ass, I have a fully mountable red coyote pelt (If you aren't familiar, this means she has her face, feet, paw pads, claws, tail, ears) lips and eye lids) I have to ship to California frozen that's an expensive one but for the tanned pelts I'm trading for it's worth it. (Well the pelts aren't near the value of the coyote I'm sending but I've had the yote for a year + in my freezer and won't do anything with her. I'm getting 2 red foxes, already tanned in return)

Edit:
What I was getting at with my Coyote ramblings was, there's a Taxidermy group/community on Facebook I can send invites to that you can post them for sale or trade (if you work with fur or want a tanned hide/ antlers/ skulls of some sort) or there is a taxidermy community on an art site called DeviantArt where you can sell the hides frozen, dried or tanned and even the skulls or full skeletons if you wish. You basically post photos of the pelts/bones for sale, there's a description area you post information in like what kind of rabbit it's from/ what colour it's considered, your asking price, shipping requirements/restrictions and methods of payment (many prefer paypal). It's worth looking into if you have a lot to sell, mostly they look for mountable skins but even capes will get interest from crafters.