How FigStead works

Every listing has a Save listing button. Saved listings collect under Saved listings in your account, and saving an auction is also how you get reminded before it ends — worth doing on anything you actually intend to bid on, because auctions do not wait for you.

Sold items shows completed sales and their final prices. This is the honest answer to “is this a fair price?” — asking prices tell you what sellers hope for, sold prices tell you what buyers paid.

1. Open the listing and find the bid box.
2. Enter the most you would pay in total for the item.
3. Press Place bid. You will be told immediately whether you are the high bidder or were outbid.

Being outbid instantly is normal and does not mean anything went wrong: it means someone already had a higher maximum in place before you arrived.

The minimum increment scales with price, so a $2,000 lot does not advance a nickel at a time. Cheap lots step by cents; expensive ones step by dollars. The next acceptable bid is always shown to you before you commit, so you never have to work it out yourself.

Some auctions have a reserve — a hidden minimum the seller will accept. The listing tells you whether a reserve exists and whether it has been met, but never what it is. If an auction ends below its reserve, there is no sale.

While a reserve is unmet you can press Bid the reserve instead of typing an amount. Your maximum is set to the reserve itself, so you go straight to the price that makes the auction sell, without being told the figure first. You see it the moment your bid is in, because the current price jumps to it. It asks you to confirm first: if you win, the reserve is what you pay.

Bid late all you like — you cannot steal an auction here. If a bid lands in the final 5 seconds, the clock resets to 30 seconds and the auction keeps going. That is Overtime, and it is on for every auction on FigStead.

Think of it the way a game goes to overtime. Score in the last moment and play continues; it does not end the match on the spot. Everyone who wanted to answer that bid gets a fair 30 seconds to do it.

It can happen up to 10 times, so an auction can run at most 5 minutes past its posted end time. Each time it triggers you will see TIME EXTENDED on the listing. On the last one allowed, that changes to FINAL EXTENSION — Make your bid count: after that the clock runs out for real, and the highest bid at zero wins.

If you are buying: you never have to sit on the page waiting to pounce. Enter the most you would genuinely pay and let it ride — we bid on your behalf in small steps and only go as high as we must to keep you in front, so nobody sees your ceiling and you never pay more than you had to.

If you are selling: this is what stops a lot going for less than it was worth because somebody happened to bid with one second left and nobody could answer. Bidding ends when interest runs out, not when the clock does.

Fixed-price listings have a Buy now button and no auction clock. Where a seller has several of something, you choose a quantity. First to pay gets it.

Some listings accept offers. Use Make an offer to propose a price; the seller can accept or decline. An accepted offer is binding on both sides, exactly like a winning bid, so do not offer a number you would rather not pay.

Some growers sell cuttings by the piece from a single list, one row per variety. Cuttings Galore shows every grower with a list, and the same growers appear in a band at the top of the cuttings category.

1. Open a grower's list.
2. Enter how many you want against each variety. Leave the rest blank.
3. Check the total and pay once for the lot. It arrives as one order and one parcel.

Postage is priced by the cutting, not by the variety. The grower sets a charge for the first cutting and a smaller one for each cutting after it, and the list shows both before you order. Sold-out varieties stay on the list, at the bottom, so you can see what the grower usually carries.

If a grower doesn't post to some states, you'll need a ZIP code in your account so the site can check yours before you pay.

Checkout runs through Stripe. Your card details are entered on Stripe's own page and go straight to them — FigStead never sees or stores a card number. Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Apple Pay and Google Pay all work.

A pickup order gets a confirmation code. The buyer is shown the code; the seller enters it at handover to mark the order collected. That way the record of collection comes from the person who actually received the plant.

Do not give the code out before you have the plant in your hands — it is the only proof of collection either of you has.

When a seller enters a tracking number, the order links straight to the carrier's own tracking page. FigStead detects the carrier from the number, so there is nothing to configure.

Once an order is complete you can rate the other party. Ratings are what the next buyer uses to judge a seller, so leaving an honest one is the main way this marketplace polices itself.

Before you can be paid you must complete onboarding with Stripe, including its identity verification. Start this from account settings — do it before you list, not after you sell, because an unonboarded seller cannot receive money.

1. Go to Sell.
2. Photograph the actual plant you are selling — not a stock image, and not last year's tree.
3. Choose auction or fixed price. For an auction, set your starting price and, if you want a floor, a reserve.
4. Set your shipping cost, or offer local pickup, or both.

If you have cuttings of many varieties, don't create one listing per variety. Put them on a Cuttings Galore list instead: a single page with one row per variety, where a buyer can take several and pay once.

1. Go to your Cuttings Galore list. You can also get there from Cuttings Galore, Sell or Your listings.
2. Fill in one row per variety: name, a short description, price ($5 minimum), how many you have, and 1 to 4 photos. Press + at the end of a row to add another.
3. Set your postage once for the whole list: what it costs to send the first cutting, and what each extra cutting adds. Or offer free shipping.
4. Tick any states you won't post to, then press Publish list. Your list goes live straight away.

Not finished? Press Save as draftinstead. A draft keeps everything, including rows without photos yet, and opens again next time you go to your list. Buyers don't see it until you publish.

Come back to the same page to restock, change prices or remove a variety, and save again. When a variety sells out it stays on the list as sold out, so you only have to raise its quantity to sell it again. You can save up to 60 rows at a time. To add more, save and then keep adding.

Listing is free. The selling fee is 0% until Mar 1, 2027, after which it is 2% of the item price — never of shipping. The card processor's own fee is separate and is theirs, not ours. The current rate is always shown to you while you list.

FigSteaddoesn't sell you a label — you buy your own postage, which keeps the money entirely between you and the carrier. The cheapest way to do that is a free label service like Pirate Ship, which charges no fee of any kind and gives you USPS commercial pricing — well under what the post office counter charges. Buy the label, then paste the tracking number into your sale here so the buyer is notified automatically.

On the sale page, Copy addressputs the buyer's full ship-to block on your clipboard so you can paste it straight in rather than retyping it.

You set one flat shipping cost, but the carrier charges you by distance — so the same parcel can cost noticeably more to the far coast than across town. The listing form has an estimator that shows you both ends of that range and suggests a figure that covers every destination.

Two things catch plant sellers out, and both are about box size rather than weight. A box over one cubic foot is billed on its size if that works out heavier than what it actually weighs — which is why a light potted plant in a big box can cost a surprising amount. And a box longer than 22 inches picks up an extra charge, with a bigger one past 30 inches. Packing tighter is usually the cheapest change you can make.

Anyone with an account can list, but the sellers we feature have been through a review of their track record. Apply to sell to be one of them — it takes about five minutes.

Turn it on from settings, especially if you sell. A seller account is a payout destination, and an account someone else can log into is a payout destination for them.

You can block another member from their profile or from a conversation. A block stops them bidding on your listings, buying from you, and opening conversations with you. It works in both directions, so you cannot buy from someone you have blocked either.

• Read the seller's ratings before you bid, not after you lose money.
• Check sold prices so you know what a variety actually goes for. Wildly cheap rare cuttings are the oldest trick there is.
• Keep the transaction on FigStead. Someone steering you to pay off-platform is removing your protections on purpose.
• Ask questions before bidding. A seller who will not answer a plain question about what they are selling has told you something.

Most problems are sorted out between buyer and seller within a day or two. Open the order from your account and press Problem with this order?for these steps with your own order's details filled in.

1. Message the seller from the order, with photos if you can, and give them a few days to reply. Most problems are a misunderstanding.
2. If it can't be fixed, ask them to refund you. Sellers can refund straight from the order, and it's faster than going through your bank.
3. Still stuck? Dispute the payment with your bank. Every way of paying here ends at a card: Apple Pay, Google Pay and Link all charge a card (or, with Link, sometimes a bank account), so it's that card's bank you contact, not Apple, Google or Stripe. The order page tells you which card you used. Card networks usually allow about 120 days, so keep the order, the photos and the messages. Don't file while the seller is refunding you.
4. Tell us, with Report a problemon the order. We can't move the money, but we can act on the account: a seller who repeatedly ships dead material, ships the wrong variety or does not ship at all loses the ability to sell here.
5. If you believe you have been defrauded, that is a police matter and should be reported as one.

Report a problemtells us about rule-breaking so we can remove bad actors. It isn't a refund request and it doesn't open a claim. The full position is in the Terms of Service.