Turnover Tuesdays - Headphones, Lots of Headphones

For those who are not familiar, I started a series a while back called Turnover Tuesdays. Every Tuesday I like to highlight one item that I have resold. This will include profitable and non profitable sales. I hope that there is always something to learn.

Week 1 - First attempt at reselling
Week 2 - My second straight fail
Week 3 - My iPad mini collection
Week 4 - Bed Bath and Beyond
Week 5 - An iPad Idea for Your Staples Gift Card Collection

Week 6 - An iPad Idea for Manufactured Spending
Week 7 - The Great iPad Deal that Wasn't
Week 8 - Lenovo Tablets
Week 9 - iPads at Staples
Week 10 - Loving that Groupon iPad Deal
Week 11 - iPads on Sale at Sears
Week 12 - Roombas at Bed Bath and Beyond
Week 13 - My Sam's Club iPad Collection for the $20k Challenge
Week 14 - Best Buy Gift Cards Fail
Week 15 - Staples Ink Recycling and Staples Rewards
Week 16 - What Happened to My Surface Pro 3?

Week 17 - Dell - Love that AmEx Offer
Week 18 - XBox Saves the Day
Week 19 - Using Amazon Chat and the Importance of Organization

Week 20 - The Impact of Returns
Week 21 - Apple Watch is the Best Watch

The Item - Sennheiser HD 449 Headphones

Back on September 10th, I posted a deal to buy 5 headphones on eBay for $20 each.  I said that the payoff would be about 100% and there weren't left. They sold out very quickly since they were such a good deal.  I was able to buy 5.  Let's see how I did.

I paid $100 for the 5 headphones.

Credit Card Points 

I didn't have time to mess with gift cards so I bought them on my Arrival Plus for 2.2%.  That's $2.22.  

Shopping Portal

The purchase was made with Inbox Dollars at 5%.  So far I have not received anything from them.  Hopefully that starts to get paid soon.  Let's call that $0 for now.

Loyalty Points - eBay Bucks

I had already maxed out my eBay Bucks for the quarter ($500) so I didn't earn any new eBay Bucks.

Fulfillment by Amazon Fees

I paid $10.55 commission per unit and another $1 per unit for shipping, approximately.

The Haul  

I sold all 5 headphones extremely quickly for $50 each, even before I had the chance to raise the price, which I would have.

That's a profit margin of 93.55% for the sale price.


Here is how the numbers work
Cash = $93.55
Credit Card Points = $2.22
Portal Points = $0
Loyalty points = $0 in eBay Bucks


When you combine the credit card cash and portal cash, you earn an additional $2.22

My return is now 95.6%.  Not too shabby!  It is likely my best profit margin.

Other Headphones

I have sold other headphones as well, to solid profit margins 10-20%.

However the takehome lessonfor me is that I have more than 15 units of headphones in Amazon Fulfillment centers.  More than 50% of them have been there for more than a week, which is much longer than my regular turnover.  Pricing and ranking really have to make sense with everything you buy before you pull the trigger, otherwise you are wasting your float sitting in a fulfillment center and maybe not making nearly as good a margin as you thought you would.