A couple of weeks ago, there was a sale on 1st gen iPad Air 16GB from Best Buy. Deal here. I bought both a gray and white one since the limit was 1 per order. I wanted to buy them since I still had a lot of Best Buy gift cards from the Amex offers deal from November/December, so my primary motivation was liquidation of Best Buy gift cards at cost and not really to make money. Well, I just sold my last one on Ebay today, and so I wanted to share the math from this deal:
- Best Buy price – $299.99
- Tax – (9.5% inWA) – $28.50
- Total cost – $328.50 per iPad
Sale price
- My Ebay sale price – $369.99
- Ebay fee – $14.80
- Paypal fee – $11.03
- Shipping fee – $5.35 (fits in a padded flat rate envelope; no signature confirmation since it’s under $750)
- Net sale price – $338.81
Cashback
- 5% Discover cashback portal on $299.99 – $15 (I chose 5% cash instead of 1X miles from other portals)
- 2% Best Buy Rewards zone – $6
Conclusion
As you can see, my profit was only $10.31 (margin 3%) from the sale. However, due to the miscellaneous items, I earned another $21 per iPad. Therefore, I made $31 per iPad (9% margin) and liquidated $600 worth of Best Buy gift cards. You could even argue this was easier than buying $200 Visa gift cards at Best Buy for a loss of $5.95 per $200 ($18 for $600) since I spared myself a trip to the armpit of America – Walmart.