Back in early 2019, Google decided to discontinue their Chromecast Audio devices down to like $15 per unit. And to be honest, even as I’m typing this, I stil don’t know what it does, so I looked it up. “Chromecast Audio is a small media streaming device that plugs into the AUX input of your speaker,making your speaker WiFi enabled. Use your iPhone, iPad, Android phone or tablet, Mac orWindows laptop, or Chromebook to cast your favorite music, radio stations and podcasts to anyspeaker in the house.”
Surely there must be newer or better devices doing this; I think Google put out a new version later in 2019 or in early 2020. Anyhow, since I love discontinued electronics, like the iPod Shuffle story, I decided to buy A BUNCH of them. I started to slowly sell them for $40 gross on Ebay, which was a decent ROI after fees and shipping. As the months went on, I kept increasing my price on them and by Christmas time, I was up close to $70 gross per unit. Then of course my Ebay ban in early 2020. Once I got back in 2021, I was SHOCKED that they were still moving close to $125 per unit. Not too shabby at all.
Then for some reason, the market tanked around Christmas 2021 and I’m not sure what happened, but as I’m writing this post, I see them NEW going for $50 on Ebay and Walmart. This doesn’t make sense since they’re discontinued, so I’m not sure how/where these sellers got the devices unless Google brought them back. Luckily I’ve sold about 80% of my inventory and even now, if I move them at $50, I’m still in the green.
The lesson learned here – discontinued electronics are usually great flips.
Awesome flip!
My guess – if you really had the unique use case for this, you’ve purchased it by now and perhaps panicked as supply ran low. These were/are ideal if you have an existing audio setup and want to add streaming music. This is mainly for older stereo receivers at this point that are not connected to a TV with an HDMI input – most new receivers have Google Home or at least Bluetooth built in, so you don’t need these at that point, or they are connected to a TV with HDMI – in that instance, you can use the newer Google Chromecast devices and get streaming music PLUS streaming video.