The price difference between Excellent and Very Good condition clothing is not a fixed percentage. It varies by category, and it is widest where buyers can see and feel condition: denim, leather, and outerwear. It is narrowest on commodity basics. Treat the gap as a range you test against your own comps, not a rule.
We want to be clear about the limits. We are not publishing a universal discount table, because we do not have a dataset that would support one and any single number would be invented. What we can give you is the pattern we see in sold listings, the marketplace mechanics that create the gap, and a method to measure it for the categories you sell.
Why one tier step moves price at all
An Excellent (8) garment and a Very Good (7) garment can look close in a thumbnail. The difference is in the details a buyer checks before paying. Excellent means minimal wear with no meaningful defects across Fabric Condition, Structural Integrity, Cosmetic Appearance, Functional Elements, and Odor & Cleanliness. Very Good means light, honest wear: a faint pill patch, slight collar softening, a small cosmetic mark that does not affect use.
Buyers price that uncertainty. A Very Good listing asks the buyer to trust that the wear is as light as you say. Excellent asks for less trust. On eBay, that shows up in who bids and who sends an offer. On Poshmark, it shows up in how low the offers come in. The gap is partly the real condition difference and partly a risk discount.
How the gap behaves by category
Condition sensitivity depends on how visible and how functional the wear is. Here is the directional pattern we see, ranked by how much a tier step tends to matter. These are qualitative comparisons, not measured percentages.
| Category | Tier sensitivity | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vintage denim | High | Fade, seam, and hardware wear are visible and drive collector pricing | |
| Leather jackets and shoes | High | Creasing, sole wear, and zipper function are hard to hide | |
| Wool tailoring and outerwear | High | Shine, lining, and shoulder seams are checked closely | |
| Vintage band and graphic tees | Medium to high | Collectors pay for print and fabric condition, but fade can add value | |
| Knits | Medium | Pilling is common and buyers expect some | |
| Modern basics and fast fashion | Low | Replacement price caps what any grade can earn |
The logic is simple. Where a buyer is paying for scarcity or craftsmanship, condition is part of the product, so a tier step moves price more. Where a buyer is paying for a basic they could replace new, the ceiling is low and the gap compresses.
The marketplace mechanics behind the gap
eBay
On eBay, condition lives in two places: the Condition field and your description. The sold-listings filter lets you see what similar items actually closed at. The trap is that sellers use Excellent and Very Good loosely, so a comp labeled Excellent may not be. If you pull comps without checking the photos, you average across inconsistent grades and the gap looks smaller than it is. Returns also matter. A Not as Described return on a Very Good item sold as Excellent costs you shipping both ways and often a fee you do not get back.
Poshmark
Poshmark has no granular condition scale beyond NWT and Good used, so the tier gap shows up in offers and in the Offer to Likers discount. Buyers negotiate. A clearly documented Excellent piece holds firmer against lowball offers than one with vague wear language. Here the grade is a negotiating tool more than a listing field.
How to measure the gap for your own category
Do this instead of trusting a rule of thumb. It takes about twenty minutes per category.
- Pick one narrow category, such as a specific brand and garment type, not a broad one like jackets.
- Pull 10 to 15 recent sold listings from eBay's sold filter.
- Open each listing and read the photos, not the label. Assign your own tier using the same five factors every time.
- Discard anything you cannot grade from the photos.
- Split the remaining comps into Excellent and Very Good groups and compare the median sold price of each, not the average.
- Note the spread. If the groups overlap heavily, the tier barely matters in that niche.
- Repeat quarterly. The gap shifts with demand.
Use the median because a single outlier sale, such as a bidding war on a rare piece, can distort an average. If you have fewer than five comps per group, treat the result as a hint, not a finding.
When the grade is worth the gap
Knowing the gap is half of it. The other half is deciding whether to chase it. Ask three questions.
- Is the item above your effort threshold? Documenting and photographing every defect takes time. It pays on pieces where the tier gap exceeds the cost of that time. It rarely pays on a low-ticket basic.
- Is the garment borderline? A piece sitting between Very Good and Excellent is where an honest, standardized grade earns the most. Calling it Excellent and eating a return is worse than pricing it as Very Good and selling cleanly.
- Does a defect drag it down a full tier? A functional failure, such as a zipper that drags or an elastic that will not recover, can push a piece to Good regardless of how clean the rest looks. Fix or disclose, then price accordingly.
The cost of getting the tier wrong
Overgrading is the expensive mistake. Say you list a Very Good jacket as Excellent and it sells at the higher price. The buyer opens the box, finds collar wear, and files a Not as Described claim. You refund, pay return shipping, and take a hit on seller metrics. The premium you captured is gone, and then some.
Undergrading costs less but is not free. If a genuinely Excellent piece goes up as Very Good, you leave the gap on the table. The goal is not to grade high. It is to grade consistently so the price you ask matches the item the buyer receives.
Where standardized grading fits
The weak point in all of this is consistency. Your Excellent drifts from week to week, and other sellers' Excellent means something else. A standardized grade fixes the scale. GradeThread scores a garment from 1.0 to 10.0 across the five weighted factors and produces a report and a certificate a buyer can verify. That gives you one defensible number to price against and one document to point to when a buyer questions condition.
It does not guarantee a sale or a specific price. It removes an argument and gives your comps a cleaner baseline. Over time, graded sales also give you your own data on what a tier step is worth in your niche.
Try it on one garment
Pick one piece you are unsure how to tier, an Excellent or Very Good borderline you have been going back and forth on. Run it through GradeThread, read the factor breakdown, and compare the result to what you would have written in the listing. If the grade matches your gut, you have confirmation. If it does not, you just avoided a return.