Selling towers - keep getting bad actors/scammers when doing local pickup only.

Selling tower speakers and other high-$ gear locally just takes more time, usually to find a buyer.  Any local ad I make always includes "Cash or Zelle in person" in the ad.

In y experience, the serious buyers are usually easy to spot when they ask a simple question like, "When can you show/ demo these."  On FB, you can also see their profile, what town they live in, if local, sometimes they list their employer, etc.  You can see that they are a real person and perhaps someone with means if they have pictures of their other audio gear in their FB page.

Is Zelle really safe? I read where the buyer could tell the bank the transaction wasn't authorized and that would be a chargeback with Zelle

Another option you can explore that I’ve taken advantage of is selling speakers through a local dealer who sells used and vintage equipment as well as new equipment.   That way, you can still put an ad online, but you don’t have to mess with the buyers. Also, people have the option to listen to the speakers, and it exposes the speakers to a wider audience.  They charge 10% commission but it’s worth it.  

I too have heard about bad things with Zelle and some of these other bank to bank transfers, wire transfers are safest. Cash is king, counterfeit bills, carrying a lot of cash could be issues. Can't believe people aren't mentioning issues dealing with mountains of scammers, yeah, their mostly just pests if you're familiar with selling on web, but they never cease to bother. Tire kickers another form of pest, some of these are complete phonies, trying to see if you have other items worth coming back to steal. I know any number of people who now refuse to sell on these platforms since they're rife with scammers. At this very moment I have old riding lawn mower for sale on Facebook, there are scammers even for this $250 old dog. Gave up practically trying to give away tons of old audio magazines, only bites were fake Facebook entities inquiring about audio equipment I may have. I gave up tossed all the mags in garbage.

If it's big and heavy enough, I always do local pickup; sold speakers and amps that way through Agon or USAM, the buyer came by with cash, we did the transaction, and everybody was happy. It takes longer to sell, of course, but it's worth it to me to not have to deal with shipping these things.