Two ways, and they suit opposite situations.
One buy-now listing with stock
Set the quantity. Twenty people buy from the same listing until it runs out.
Right for: anything where the price is known and the item is identical. New stock, consumables, a design you make repeatedly.
The constraint: buy-now listing slots are capped by tier — 5 at Starter, 10 at Verified, 20 at Pro, unlimited at Brand Partner. One listing with twenty in stock uses one slot, which is the real advantage. How to get verified
Twenty separate auctions
One per item, run in a show.
Right for: anything where the room should set the price, or where the items are not quite identical — twenty sarees of the same design in different colours, twenty cards in different grades.
Why it works in a show: each one is an event. Twenty identical auctions in a row is tedious; twenty with a visible difference is a show. And auctions are not slot-limited the same way.
The risk: the price falls as the room learns it can wait. If you run twenty identical things one after another, the last few go cheaply because everyone who wanted one has one.
The approach most sellers end up with
Both. A few in the show to find the price, the rest as a buy-now listing at roughly what the show paid.
That is genuinely the strongest version: the auction discovers what people will pay, and the listing sells the remainder at that price without you having to guess.
If the items vary
Use variants on one listing — size, colour, option — with stock counted per option. The screen says it: Stock is counted per option below — {n} in all.
Better than twenty listings for the same thing in different sizes, and far better than one listing with "message me for size".
What not to do
Twenty identical auctions in one show. You will watch the price decay in real time.
One listing with quantity twenty, run as an auction. An auction sells one thing to one winner; quantity belongs to buy-now.
Relisting the same item over and over after it fails. If it did not sell three times, the problem is the price or the photograph, not the number of attempts. Can I relist something that did not sell?
The practical sequence for a new design
- One auction, low start, in a show. See what it fetches.
- A buy-now listing at that price, with your stock in it.
- One more auction occasionally, to check the price has not moved.
More: how do I sell several things as one lot, how to price for auction, can I sell without doing a live show.