Categories: Money

The Easiest $100 I Ever Made

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?

Sweating the Big Stuff

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