How I did with those Sphero Star Wars BB-8 toys

Introduction

A while back, I wrote a post about reselling the Star Wars Sphero BB-8 toys.  I figure I’ll recap what happened.  I sent all 18 of them to Amazon FBA around the first week of September.  I priced them at $192.  I sold 2 pretty quickly.  Then there was lull.  I wasn’t actively checking prices, but apparenlty a couple of things happened – a) Amazon got stock in at $150 and b) other sellers undercut me.

Price Cut

Like I said, a week had passed and I wasn’t getting any sales.  At this point, prices had fallen to $185.  I got antsy and changed my price to $184 (a whole dollar less than the other sellers.)  I immediately sold 12 of them at $184.  Then I guess someone else undercut me.  Eventually, I sold the last 4 for the same price over the next 5 days.  DONE!  I had sold them all!

Return

Sure enough, 3 weeks later, I got a return on one of them.  I was lazy and didn’t check on it.  I figure I’ll wait 30 days, wait for all the returns, and then ask them all to be sent to me.  Luckily, no one else returned them.  Just when I was ready to retrieve it back to me, it sold by itself for $184.  That means the buyer returned it in NEW condition, and FBA was able to sell it as NEW.  The reason it took so long was once again, prices had dropped and thus it never sold [because the price was too high.]

Profit?

I had gross sales of $3300.  FBA fees and inbound shipping amounted to $500, thus my net was $2800.  My cost was actually $2800, and in actuality, I lost $6 on the entire deal.  However, once I factor in portals and gift card discounts, my actual profit is around 15% (I don’t have the exact figure, sorry.)