I wish I can settle with my asking price, like you do. 😱 I've not had a single good luck in being able to find the "right" buyer since I started selling my stuff (whether it is Macs or something else). 🙁 I've always ended up losing a substantial amount of money in my sales. 🙁 There was also once where I got scammed on eBay, losing both the money I should be receiving from the sale as well as the notebook. eBay, Paypal, & UPS basically cannot be bothered to help me out at all. 😡 I doubt you'll ever come across any other seller who has worse luck than I do. 🙁
For my previous sale, I ended up selling at the price I did because of simple (or you can call it stupid) logic. If I had already waited for 3 weeks without even finding a buyer take my deal for the listed price, what are the odds of me being able to get what I want? 😕 I may sound pessimistic, but I seriously can't see me being able to sell at the price I want if I had gone for so long on my local CL. 🙁 I reluctantly sold it (& some other Macs in similar situations before it) for fear that keeping it longer down the road will only decrease the price I'll be able to get.
Sometimes, it is really very depressing when I think about the amount of losses I made when selling my Macs, especially when everyone are saying that Macs have great resale value, which I simply don't see based on my Mac sales.. 🙁 Maybe when it is time for me to sell my current MBP, I shouldn't stress over my bad luck selling on CL & instead just go dump it at one of my local pawn shops & take whatever amount of money they offer to me. 🙂
Dude seriously?
If you have a MacBook Pro in pristine - I'm talking PRISTINE - condition...regardless of whether it's a 2009 or 2010 or 2011 - and you offer it for a fair price, there will always be someone to buy it. Even if you don't get the money you'd like to get, don't lowball yourself. You have to get a backbone.
TO me, the 2010 MacBook Pro is still worth $2000. I know I won't get that much, because plenty of people say "but Apple's refurb is only" so I one-up them by setting my price just beneath Apple's refurb price. Then they have nothing to say about it. I even go so far as to guarantee that if they can show me a non-eBay price lower than mine, I will beat it. Nobody ever does.
Problem is there are sharks out there who think they're entitled. If all you do is undercut yourself then no, you'll never sell anything. And eBay's heavy handed "you're required to use PayPal" BS is just not an option like it was 10 years ago. Nor is their "if you do a local transaction we're not covering jack" BS.
Advertising is a big part of it. I take my 17" everywhere with me, it serves as my work and personal laptop, and people are initially shocked that I would do something like that, but when they see that it's easily half the thickness of my old Gateway and 4 pounds lighter, and how simply gorgeous the thing is, I get people interested. There's a guy at work right now who bought a MacBook Air from me last year - his girlfriend destroyed it (we call her Schleprock...she's on her 35th cell phone and she's in her early 20's, mind), so I told him about my 2010 17" being up for sale. At first he said the price was way out of whack, but every time he sees the screen on my 2011 and the fact that it handles everything I throw at it, he gets more and more tempted.
Your locale does play a big part. If you live in an area where everyone is basically richer than you (which I so happen to), it makes it hard to do like garage sales or something. Also there are a lot of PC diehards who are just not sold on Mac, even the hardware. But there IS someone out there who wants your machine for the price you ask for it, as long as it's fair.