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.
Here in the manufactured spending world, we look for Unicorns. Well, we finally found one ;)
The Item - FurReal Friends StarLily My Magical Unicorn
The holidays are a very interesting time on Amazon. Some items can be sold for far more than retail price due to lack of supply.
The Unicorn is such an item. Ask any manager at Target, Toys R Us or any toy store and they will tell you that Lily is hot. You can't find Lily anywhere. She's so hot that when Lily comes in the room, there are 5 people fighting over her. Pie Face might be her only rival.
Someone tipped me off about Lily's availability from Sears (I didn't even know who Lily was at the time or how hot she was - shame on me).
I bought 15 Lily's at ~$85 each after tax. If I knew what I know now, I would have bought 1,500 Lily's.
Credit Card Points
I used Discover for 1% back (doubled to two percent in one year). That's $0.80 per Lily. Negligible. I also hadn't used my 5% quarterly benefit. That's $4.25 now and $4.25 in a year. This conveniently worked out to about $1,300 to use up almost all of the 5%.
Shopping Portal
I used Discover Deals for 10% cashback now and 10% cashback in one year. $8 per unit now and $8 in a year - not bad!
Loyalty Points
I earned 1% in Shop Your Way Rewards per Lily. $0.80
Fulfillment by Amazon Fees
Fees are highly dependent on how much you sell at. In this scenario my fees were ~$38 + 5 shipping per item. (Lily is a large lady). $43 per unit.
The Haul
I didn't sell any Lily's for at least two weeks. I saw that one particular seller had over 400 of them - Blast you and your Ivy League ways! Then another one had over 100! That's a lot of Lily's. I watched and waited. It seemed as if around 100 were sold every day! My time will come. I priced myself at about $179, outside of a couple days when I was closer to $200. I waited a little bit and it was finally my turn. All my Lily's sold in rapid succession! Lily goes fast.
So that's a take home of $136 for each Lily after fees compared to paying about $85 so a ~$50 gain per Lily.
Here is how the numbers work
Cash = ~$50
Credit Card Points = $5-9 ($5 now and $4.25 in a year)
Portal Points = $8-16 ($8 now and $8 in a year)
Loyalty points = $.8 in eBay Bucks
When you combine the credit card cash, eBay Bucks and portal cash, I will earn an additional ~$25 after 13 months. That's about $75 per Lily.
Return on investment is about 58% on the sale and about 88% in total! Multiple 88% x $1300 and you have a nice number :)
Did I sell too Early?
I sold on December 20th. I know that people sold for close to $200 yesterday! Did I sell too early? This is the funny thing on Amazon. When I look at my prices, most have dropped in the last week as sellers are looking to unload. Something hot like Lily, prices keep going up since supply can't meet the demand.
I'm not upset, I can't read the future. I'm very happy with my profit. I could have gotten a lot more but that's also a lot of risk. What if you don't sell at all or have to sell for much cheaper because you waited to long?
On to the next Unicorn!
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