Selling Your Broken TV
On Facebook Marketplace?

Common Misconception #1:
“It’s just a cracked screen, it’s got to be easy to replace.”

In modern televisions, the screen is the television.

The display panel is a single, factory-assembled component that includes the glass substrate, liquid crystal or OLED layers, polarizers, bonded driver circuitry, and alignment films. It is not a removable “faceplate,” and it is not designed to be serviced at the component level.

Replacing a panel requires a model-exact part, specialized handling, and careful alignment. The panel alone typically accounts for 70–90% of the cost of the entire TV when new. Labor, shipping, and breakage risk add even more.

For this reason, panel replacement is almost never offered outside of warranty coverage, and when it is, the quoted cost commonly exceeds the price of a brand-new television of equal or better performance.

This is why cracked-screen TVs are classified as total losses by manufacturers, insurers, and authorized service centers.

Common Misconception #2:
“It’s only a little crack / Damage is hardly noticable / Sound works but no video”

With flat-panel televisions, display damage is binary, not cosmetic.

A cracked or internally damaged panel cannot be “partially” repaired. Even hairline cracks, pressure marks, vertical lines, black sections, or a completely dark screen with working sound indicate structural or electrical failure inside the panel itself. Once that happens, the panel must be replaced as a unit.

The electronics that control sound, inputs, networking, and power are separate from the panel. That’s why audio can still work while the screen does not. It does not indicate a minor problem, and it does not reduce the cost of repair.

From a repair standpoint, “barely noticeable” damage is irrelevant. The panel is either intact or it is not. If it is not, the television is not economically repairable.

This is why manufacturers, insurers, and service centers treat any panel damage as a total loss—even when the TV still powers on or produces sound.

Common Misconception #3:
“The panel is broken, but there’s good parts that are worth money to a repair shop.”

This is a very common assumption, and it used to be true in limited cases. Today, for modern LCD, LED, QLED, and OLED televisions, it almost never is.

Professional repair shops do not stockpile used circuit boards, power supplies, Wi-Fi modules, speakers, or bezels from consumer TVs. These parts are low-value, model-specific, and widely available as pulls or surplus for less than the cost of testing and handling them. In many cases, brand-new replacements are cheaper than the labor required to verify a used one.

The only component in a modern television with significant standalone value is the display panel itself. When the panel is cracked, shorted, or internally damaged, the television loses essentially all resale and repair value at the wholesale level.

From a repair shop’s perspective, buying a broken-panel TV means assuming labor, storage, liability, and e-waste disposal costs in exchange for parts that may sell slowly—or not at all. As a result, reputable shops decline them outright or accept them only as free donations for training or scrap.

In short: if the panel is bad, the remaining parts are not “worth money” in any practical, repeatable way to a professional repair business.

Common Misconception #4:
“I paid thousands of dollars for this television not even X years ago, it’s not worthless!”

What you paid for a television in the past has no bearing on what it is worth today. Consumer electronics depreciate based on replacement cost, not original purchase price.

Large televisions in particular lose value rapidly because panel manufacturing improves every year while retail prices fall. A TV that cost $3,000 five or six years ago is often functionally equivalent—or inferior—to a brand-new model selling today for under $800. When the display panel fails, the cost to replace it commonly exceeds the price of an entire new television.

From a repair or resale standpoint, value is determined by what it would cost to make the unit whole again and then resell it with warranty and liability attached. Once that math goes negative, the item’s market value drops to zero regardless of its original MSRP, brand, or perceived quality.

This isn’t a judgment about how good the TV was or whether it was “worth it” at the time. It’s simply how depreciation works for modern flat-panel displays.

Paying a lot for something does not make it retain value. It only reflects what the market looked like at the moment you bought it.

Common Misconception #5:
They sell it online on Amazon/Crutchfield/Best Buy, so its not obsolete!

Retail availability does not equal repair value or resale value.

Major retailers sell new televisions at scale with manufacturer warranties, return policies, logistics infrastructure, and pricing negotiated directly with the manufacturer. None of that applies to a broken, used television in a private sale or repair context.

When a TV is listed for sale by a retailer, it is being sold as a complete, warrantied product priced against today’s market. That listing says nothing about the cost or feasibility of repairing a damaged unit, and nothing about what a repair shop can recover from its parts.

In fact, the opposite is usually true: the continued availability of new TVs at low prices is exactly why broken ones have no value. If a brand-new, warrantied 70-inch TV can be purchased for less than the cost of a replacement panel, there is no economic reason to repair or part out the old one.

“Obsolete” in this context does not mean unsupported or unavailable for purchase. It means uneconomical to repair or resell once the panel is damaged.

A product can be actively sold at retail and still be worthless in a broken state.