Sales Section - A couple of suggestions

[T 20]

the thread remains intact but it just flags the thread title as item sold. If you see its sold them you skip on happy in your pink socks like pinko Cooper. Or you open it to see the information like prices and level of interest...pics and tech spec etc.
The OP doesnt close the thread or lock it. It is just a flag.

The easy way of flagging the item as sold would be for the vendor to simply edit his first post with the word sold written in prominence between the heading and advert content.
That way you only waste a couple of clicks while viewing the sales section, with the volume of items being sold on here then reading the sales section and closing threads when an item is sold would be a full time job for someone.

Don't forget that the Admin and mods on here work as unpaid volunteers.

[Citizen K]

It's actually dead easy to write a plugin that will mark a thread as sold, sorted, withdrawn, solved or whatever with a one button click on the thread tools menu. You can easily script it to auto lock the thread or not as well.

[Steyr]

The easy way of flagging the item as sold would be for the vendor to simply edit his first post with the word sold written in prominence between the heading and advert content.
That way you only waste a couple of clicks while viewing the sales section, with the volume of items being sold on here then reading the sales section and closing threads when an item is sold would be a full time job for someone.

Don't forget that the Admin and mods on here work as unpaid volunteers.

Which is what I actually said in my first post. I am a member of another forum and they have set up so a sale can be flagged as for sale...sold and wanted .
Apparently its easy to script a flag system whatever the hell that is. I reserve judgement on that as I have no knowledge
IMHO..a bit of due dilligence on the part of the OP would not go amiss but if its easy to flag then that is a better step as you dont have to open a load of diatribe at all. It allows you tomscan quickly or investigate if you so choose