Monday Morning Miles Talk is a regular series that has some smaller, more quirky ideas to kick off the work week. These are essentially random ideas that I wanted to share with you. Here are the previous entries.
- How To Maximize Your Flexible Spending Account
- Increase Spend For American Express Sign Up Bonuses
- Mining For Lost Rewards
- How I did Selling Those Kohl’s Personal Appliances
- Reselling Apple Airpods at the End of Their Life Cycle
- Unexpected Ways I Have Earned Points
- Can You go to Disney for Free?
- Why I Love Those Best Buy Gift Card Deals
- My love hate relationship with the Google Express offer
- Kroger Gift Card Sale Results
- My 100th Post
- How to get $30 Worth of Free Merchandise at Best Buy
- How to get discounted Chick-fil-A
- Are Amex Offers that pay out MR a good deal?
My SNES Reselling Results Are In
With Christmas behind us and the 4th quarter reselling banaza coming to an end I wanted to go over how I did reselling the SNES systems. I wasn’t able to get the system for the first month or so, which hurt my margins. I went out the first night to try to snag one, when reselling prices would be the highest, but I missed out by 7 people.
After the first night I did not actively seek them out, I would simply check the electronics department when I was at a store for something else. I was able to get a total of 5. Nintendo amped up production for these compared to last years NES system, which lowered the reselling prices. I sold a most of them on eBay and a few on Craigslist. Facebook Local produced nothing but angry troll ladies…
Reselling on eBay
I ended up selling 3 of the 5 SNES systems on eBay. They brought the highest price but also a lot of fees. The prices fluctuated some, actually getting lower the closer it got to Christmas because stores seemed to be getting better stock.
For the three systems I had an average sale price of $129.97. The PayPal fees averaged $4.01 for each system. eBay took another $13 in fees per system. I was able to barely fit the systems into a flat rate padded envelope which put the shipping costs at $6.50 per system. Getting them into a flat rate package was huge and saved me a lot of money on shipping. The average cost for the 3 systems was $83.71. Walmart sold these slightly cheaper than Target did but you could use your Target card for 5% off. I got 2 from Walmart and 1 from Target.
Here is a final breakdown:
Reselling on Craigslist
I listed every SNES on Craigslist along with eBay and I went with whichever one sold first. For my very first SNES I tried pricing it out at $150 but that got me no where. I then reduced it to $125-130 to match my eBay sales. That also got me no where. I kept reducing the price until I got to $110. That ended up bringing in offers for $100. I refused these for the first month or so but ended up taking 2 of them over the final week and a half before Christmas because the eBay sales had dried up as well.
I sold the two on Craigslist for $100 a piece just to unload them. The purchase price on these were a little bit cheaper since I was able to use a 10% off Target gift card to purchase one of them. The average price of purchase was $80.03. This brought me a profit of $19.97 per unit.
Here are the results:
Facebook Local Issues
I have sold small things on Facebook local before but had some issues trying to resell these. Some members of these groups seem to think it is a crime reselling for a profit. I received 20-25 comments on my post and all but two were people complaining about me selling for a profit. They warned that Nintendo will be releasing a ton of these and you could get them at the store. I am not sure why people cared or thought it was worth their time. If someone wants to pay more for convenience why would you care. Some thought it was their personal mission to prevent the sale and I found it annoying and ultimately hilarious. If you are in need of a chuckle look no further!
Conclusion
When it was all said and done I was able to clear $108.19 for the 5 systems with a rate of return of 26.31%. Not bad overall but definitely not as good as the NES system last year. The sale prices were better if you were able to get your systems early on.
I don’t know if my area was saturated or if people just weren’t all that interested in the system since I struggled to sell them via Craigslist and Facebook Local. The margins were better selling it via eBay even with the increased costs. I expected higher sales figures on eBay, since it reaches more people, but I thought the rate of return would have been better with person to person selling.
With these results I am not sure if I will get involved when the Nintendo 64 one comes out in a year or so. I think a lot of people still have the original 64 in their houses, I do, and there won’t be as much demand. I am surprised Nintendo didn’t start making more NES systems to be honest. The nostalgia was highest with that system and that is why it sold so well.
How did you end up doing with your SNES sales? Did you end up running into similar issues? Let me know in the comments!
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You really need to pay for an Ebay store. You would save a ton on fees
That is true. I am more of a niche reseller so I have never really considered it because of that. But I should probably look into it more and see if it makes sense.
valid article. Reselling is an important to hit sign up bonuses.
Thanks for reading Dan!
What the hell does this have to do with travel? Also scalpers like you are scum.
Reselling earns a lot of miles and points which in turn gets you free travel. Resellers provide a service to people who don’t have the time to track an item down. Do you think a $15 mark up is unreasonable to not have to spend time looking for an item? I guess so. Most people would value their time above $15 an hour.
Maybe this is not the right group for you. When we buy products in high demand to resell, we spend our time getting them when some people don’t want to or can’t spend the time required. I value my time very highly so, I charge accordingly. It’s not like we are selling sold out bottled water during a hurricane, what we sell are wants, not needs. What we do is for a certain audience, obviously, you are not part of it. Move on, I wish you the best.
I personally like it when I am able to buy hi demand underpriced products from resellers. Saves me time, effort, and worry, which all have value. My wife on the other hand, thinks that resellers of such items are, well I can’t use those words on a public forum. I think you guys provide a valuable service, she thinks you keep poor kids from getting their dream toys.
I can definitely see it from both sides Steve. If someone wants to put in the effort then they can usually get what they want and if they don’t want to this opens up the opportunity for them to get it without hassle. It all depends on how much that person values their time. Thanks for the comment!