Today I sold the TI-92 graphing calculator I bought back in November for a total profit of $30.40 on Amazon.
When I bought the calculator in November, I did not intend to sell it on Amazon because the market price was then around $22, which would have made my profit around $16 which isn't really worth my time. I listed it on Craigslist for $45 with no success and periodically checked the Amazon price. When I checked the price again in December, I found the prices had "split," meaning that there were, strangely, two price floors: one at $25 and one at $36. I am currently doing some experiments with other items I have listed that will prove very interesting if my hypotheses regarding these double-floor situations are correct, so maybe this time in March I can offer some more insight into the nature of these splits.
I ended up listing the calculator at $44, deciding to wait for the entire bottom floor to sell out and for the upper floor to rise. However, many sellers started listing their calculators between $39 and $44, so I dropped mine to $38 (which by then was the higher floor) for the quick sale; all I had to do was wait for the last two or three items at the lower floor to sell so my calculator was then the lowest-priced.
You may have noticed that $30 is slightly less than the estimated resale value I have listed in my "Most Recent Deals" sidebar. I definitely could have made more had I waited, but I have noticed that waiting too long on Amazon can sometimes cause prices to drop because new sellers flood the market with their items. I decided to go for slightly less money now rather than to risk having to wait for prices to rise again after new sellers entered the market.
I'm pretty happy with this sale. I made a $30 profit off of a $1 investment and I got a free game out of the deal, a game that would have cost me about $14 on Amazon. Those are pretty good returns. Add $30.40 to last year's profits.
No comments:
Post a Comment