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 4 most recent topics.
- 5 Mistakes Experienced Travel Hackers Still Make
- The Chase IHG card is being discontinued – what should I do?
- Harrah’s New Orleans Unique Lounge Policy
- Reselling Kids Fire Tablets
If you would like to read even more articles in the series you can click HERE.
My Results from Reselling Amazon Fire Tablets Round 3
I took advantage of the latest American Express Membership Rewards Amazon offer that came out a few weeks ago. It wasn’t as good as the first on that had Fire tablets for around $15 but it was still a profitable deal.
This is my 3rd go around selling Amazon Fire tablets from these types of sales. You can check out those results as well:
Purchasing the Fire Tablets
I ended up buying 5 Fire 7 tablets on my Amazon account and 5 on my wife’s account. I also bought 5 Fire 8 tablets on my account but I ended up selling all 5 to one buyer for minimal profit. Selling them all to one buyer up costing me on the profit side because shipping killed me (couldn’t use flat rate shipping) and I took a lower price on all 5. Even though I knew it was going to be razor thin margins I did it because of it’s simplicity.
So let’s focus on the Fire 7 tablets. I was able to get all 10 for a total cost of $211.90 when sales tax was included.
I tried to go through a portal, Top Cash Back, to earn an additional 6% but it didn’t track. It is probably because I was lazy and didn’t go incognito…don’t be like me. Top Cash Back told me if it doesn’t track they are unable to file a claim with Amazon so I missed out on that $12 or so.
I also used Amazon gift cards for a majority of the purchase. I bought the gift cards from Gyft with my Chase Ink Plus card racking up a little over 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points.
Pricing the Fire Tablets
I listed the first five right after ordering since I have prime shipping on my account and knew they would be delivered in 2 days. All 5 sold before Amazon shipped them to me. I priced these ones fairly aggressively in the $38 range to move them quickly. This was actually a higher price then I went with last time but it was probably still a little too low. I ended up needing only one trip to USPS because they all sold right away which was nice.
The 5 ordered on my wife’s account took around a week to be delivered (I took the $1 movie credit). I priced those higher since the first 5 covered the bulk of my cost. All 5 sold in the $42.50-$44.00 range with one multiple tablet order mixed in. They did take a little over a week to sell all 5 though.
I was able to ship them out for $4.95 a piece First Class mail since they came in under 16 ounces. For the 2 double orders I had I shipped them for $7.10 in a padded flat rate envelope which saved me a little bit of money.
Crunching the Numbers
Here are the numbers after selling all 10 Fire 7 Tablets:
Add in 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points as well and I would call this a success. People with an eBay store would cut my eBay fees in half. I also missed out on the 6% portal bonus which would have brought the rate of return to over 50%.
If the deal comes around again I think I will price them all at the higher rates and just take a little longer to sell them. The rate of return for the second batch of 5 was in the 55% range which could have been in the 60% range if the portal would have tracked.
Conclusion
I love these deals because it is a product in high demand and it comes with relatively low risk. Especially with Amazons lenient return policy. I think that these types of deals are what people just starting out should be doing.
Make sure to follow us on Facebook or Twitter so that you are alerted to the deals as they are happening. You can also join our Facebook Travel Group or Reselling Group to get some more inside information.
I was able to apply what I learned from the first two Fire tablet sales and apply it to this round. Hopefully there is a round 4 so I can finally get the portal payout on these things :).
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Hello Mark,
Thank you for providing valuable feedback on the resales.
So you need to go on incognito mode so that Top Cash Back will be able to track Amazon.com sales?
It is a good idea since cookies can mess up tracking.
You should get yourself some USPS regional A and B boxes. You could have easily fit 5 in one of those.
To be honest I have never messed around with the regional boxes because of the zone pricing etc. but I should probably check them out – thanks!
I had good luck with these. Bought 5 7s and 5 8s. Sold all 7s for $40-$43 on eBay. Sold 3 8s on eBay for $63 and two in person for $50 each. After cash back, I’ll have earned approximately $145 in profit, not including the value of points earned (which was nothing pretty much). I enjoyed this process since they were easy to move.
Nice work – I try to stay away from p2p as much as possible even if it gives the best return out there lol. I do always enjoy these deals…let’s hope for a couple more!
is there any reason you are refraining from P2P. I am afraid of selling it on ebay as seller claiming faulty tablets.
Not really just personal preference. P2P has such a high PIA factor that I shy away from it if I can. But for others it is perfectly fine. I use it for bigger items like gaming systems etc. that are hard to ship. I have sold around 60 tablets on eBay and only had one fraud claim which I won. Just make sure you ship with tracking and you SHOULD be ok. But if you want to do P2P that is a great option that will probably be a better return. May involve longer carry and take longer to sell but that is about it.
“Selling them all to one buyer up costing me on the profit side because shipping killed me (couldn’t use flat rate shipping) and I took a lower price on all 5.”
I do not get it. You could not use a Flat Rate box? The medium box (longer flatter one, not squarish) should have been able to fit five of those easy, I would think. If you needed a large box, they never mention it anywhere hardly ever, but the USPS has a “Game Sized” flat rate box (Goes at Large rate). Designed kinda for board games, it can be very handy for certain items.
I couldn’t fit them into the medium box…and I am assuming the game sized box needs to be ordered? Which wouldn’t have gotten to me in time. But I will order up a couple now for next time – thanks