Man, what a thoughtful and thought provoking post. Thank you!
Something that I've seen on other boards may work for you, so I'll toss it out.
Group all the sticks into lots of approximate value. Make a different WTS post for each. List them at one price "per stick" but make 5-ers a little bit less (e.g., small discount for buying in bulk). Be sure to mention who pays for shipping and figure that into the price.
This way, people can find lots of singles of approximate equal value and mix and match as appropriate. Any that don't move from the different threads can be rebundled later into 5-ers or what-have-you lots.
The goal, of course, is to sell them in 5-ers or better sized lots. Let's say that you have a whole group that works out to, maybe, $20 for a 5-er, you can have a thread title like "Pick and choose $20 5-er sale" (or perhaps something better, since I'm no good at thread titles).
I see these here every once in a while. I don't spend much time on the sales anymore (too busy buying boxes
), but I'm sure that others can jump in with their experience as to whether or not this is a successful strategy. Just seems like a cool strategy to me, so I thought I would mention it.