First off, I have 2 Chase Freedom cards. One card was was from way back in the day. The second one came from a Sapphire downgrade a couple of months ago. On one of the Freedom cards, I think my wife and I will meet the $1,500 in spend on restaurants alone. So the question is – how can I maximize the other 2nd Freedom’s $1500?
Option 1 – Buy $1,500 of gift cards at a restaurant.
This is ridiculous, but if you really love one particular restaurant and have the float, this isn’t a bad option. Plus, if the restaurant has some kind of promo where if you buy $XX in gift cards, you get an extra YY, then this is actually a money-maker. I had actually planned on doing this. Cost – Your waistline!
Option 2 – Buy $200 Visa gift cards at BBB
Trevor came up with this idea (if he didn’t, then be mad at him for not HT’ing the right person.) Anyway, this is definitely the easiest liquidation method. I even commented on the post saying that if you still have Ink capacity, then this doesn’t really help you much. Cost – $6.95 x 8 cards = $55.60 for 7500 Chase UR miles ($0.7 cent per mile).
Option 3 – RESELLING!
This was actually an accidental find. When you resell and scour shopping sites as much as I do, happy accidents happen. Here’s the backstory – Bloomingdale’s actually had these on clearance a month or 2 ago for $39.99. I had bought 4 and posted them on eBay for $60. No action whatsoever. Then fast forward to eBay banning me and me moving to Amazon FBA. Well, I shipped 2 to FBA and both sold almost instantly for $79.99 each ($60 after fees). I then sent the next 2 to FBA and they also sold immediately for $89.99 ($68 after fees). Look, I’m not stupid. If they sold that fast the first time, OF COURSE RAISE YOUR PRICE!
Now that I had no inventory left, I Google’ed to see which store still had them in stock. Well the only store that had them in stock was BBB. They currently have them listed for $69.99 (must be old inventory). And of course I used those 20% off coupons (quick tangent – BBB will accept expired 20% off coupons, so don’t throw them away. Secondly, you can use multiple in an order, so no need to break up your transaction). So the math works out to be $69.99 * .8 = $56 * 1.095 (WA sales tax) = $61.32. That means my profit is $68.16 – $61.32 = $6.84 per item. I’d have to buy 25 of these to max out the quarterly spend. That means I’d make $171 from my $1533 in spend, a profit margin of 11%, not including the 5X UR. I think Philip Hall would approve of this one.
Conclusion
How many have I bought so far? 8. I’ve cleaned out my 2 nearest stores. I’ve been too lazy to drive around and buy the remaining 17. Plus, I’m running out of 20% coupons. So what is this mysterious item? You guys should know by now that this is a teaching blog; not a feeding blog.
I must have read the paragraph 10 times – WHAT did Bloomingdales have on sale? You wrote “these” on sale. You are buying something and selling it on Amazon but what was it? (Is it a secret?) Thanks.
Julia, I don’t like to reveal the items I sell unless I know it won’t change the economics of the resell. This item is still available and I can still easily make money off it, so that’s why I’m not revealing. Sorry, hope you understand.
Oh, yes – I totally understand. I thought I was going crazy (probably, unrelated to your post) or you might have a broken link. I am enjoying reading your trip reports this morning – thank you. 🙂
I just saw that Ebates has 8% back on Bloomies today if that helps you.
Bloomies has banned me. 😉
Bummer. I don’t know how that happens. Sorry.
MPD, how are you getting the 20% coupons? lol After my 1st order they stopped sending me them. I think they still giving me the instore ones.
I don’t know. They still snail mail me the 20% off coupons and I signed up for their .com account and now they email them to me too. It’s neverending.
Either of you attending Trevor’s Reselling DO?
No, I think I’m traveling at that time.
I’m confused. I thought BB&B was until June?
Yeah, this was more of a ‘post mortem’ post. I originally was going to post it in early June, but forgot. The deal however is still alive.
Ok, that makes sense. I also resold stuff from BB&B to max out Chase Freedom, but them I realized it would be more lucrative to buy gift cards from raise at 8-10% with AMEX gift cards.
Oh that’s a nice play. I’ll do that now then since the 5X quarter is over. If you think about it, 5X was essentially a 10% rebate, so your Raise/AGC combo at ~15% beats out 5X UR.
I have an alert on Raise anytime BB&B gift cards are 8% or more off. They go fast.
I’ve been trying to nab a Kohls one >= 10% and they also go lightning fast. I wonder if these guys have script kiddies buying them all up cuz they go in literally seconds.