On Sunday, HP had a firesale on their TouchPad tablets. They did not sell well at high prices over the past year or two, and this is their last batch that they’ll be selling. I wanted to buy a tablet for $100 because at that price, I could use it sparingly and still get my money’s worth.
I knew there would be a lot of competition, so at 7pm EST sharp, I went to HP’s eBay page and tried to purchase the $99 16GB refurbished tablet. The site was slow, and while I was able to get to the checkout page, it hung up there. I tried in several different tabs and browsers, but with the same result.
I got a tip from a twitter user to use ebay.co.uk, and that site was working much faster. However, I was too late to snag the $99 version. All that was left were the $149 32GB version. At that price, it didn’t make much sense, but I figured I could worry about that later and sell it for a little profit if I decided it wasn’t worth it.
I was able to check out successfully and I had a $149 version on the way. I immediately listed my item on eBay to see how much it could get. I was hoping for $200 so that I could turn around and buy a Kindle Fire tablet (which costs $200). The total price for me would effectively be $149, which is great for a tablet that would have much more value to me.
After half an hour, I refreshed the page to find that the price has skyrocketed from the initial $0.99 price to a whopping $212. I had to double check that I was reading it properly, but my eyes weren’t deceiving me. 30 minutes later it had reached $232.50.
Well, that worked out well. The final price ended up being $250, which meant a $101 profit before fees (but the buyer paid for shipping).
This whole operation took no more than 20 minutes of my time on a Sunday evening. It was the easiest $100 I ever made and it allowed me to get the tablet I really wanted for effectively $100, which is a no-brainer.
Readers, what is the easiest $100 you ever made?
The real question is why you would want a crappy Kindle Fire. Especially when the Asus Transformer Prime is about to come out in about a week, and it will kill every tablet out there (including iPads).
You’re smarter than that!
@Kevin @ Thousandaire.com, because knowing how much use I’ll get out of it, I’m not ready to throw down $500 on a tablet! Cheaper is better.
Lot of eBay sellers did that with the Nintendo Wii when there was a scarce supply. The easiest $100 I ever made was picking one off the floor.
I was thinking about getting a refurb Acer Iconia 16gb from Best Buy for only $229 (which was like $150 off retail), but like Kevin said, I’m holding out for the new line of Androids that are going to start coming out next month. For me it would be worth it since I will be using it for a bunch of things that I currently use my desktop for.
Getting back to the original question, I could be a wise-ass and say that just being born since I got money for my birthday every year ;-) Seriously though, probably the easiest money was getting paid to post a link on the blog. Took less than a minute to cut & paste code and…done.
Good job, I am impressed with the quick turnaround!