Turnover Tuesdays - Apple Watch is the Best Watch! A Lesson in Pricing and Patience

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

The Item - Apple Watch Sport Band - 38mm and 42mm 

I bought quite a few (and posted quite a few deals) Apple Watches over the last couple of weeks and they were quite interesting as learning experiences for me in terms of pricing.

For example:

August 16th - 42mms x2
August 27th - 42mm x 5
September 9th - 42mm x 5
September 15th - 38mm x 5
September 23rd - 42mm x 5

I bought the max every time except the 15th since that had tax in NJ.

Overall, I bought 29 watches (using multiple accounts - different names, different shipping addresses and IP addresses - different everything - This practice can get you banned so I don't recommend it)

I paid ~$10,470 for the 29 watches.

Credit Card Points 

I won't include the extra points from the sign up bonuses I earned.  Let's just assume I earned 2% for everything.

Credit Card earnings -  ~$210

Shopping Portal

The purchases were made when different shopping portals were better than others.  I earn ~$90 from Shop at Home.  I earned $165 from Top Cashback (5% match to Inbox Dollars) and theoretically I earned $~93 from Inbox Dollars, if they ever pay out.

I have already been paid by the others so that is $255 from Shopping portals with potential for more.

Loyalty Points - Shop Your Way Points

I earned $140 in eBay Bucks since I maxed out on eBay Bucks in many accounts when the purchases were made.

Fulfillment by Amazon Fees

I paid ~$1,225 in shipping and FBA fees for all 29 watches.

The Haul  

I sold all 29 watches for ~$12,500.  Takehome of $11,300 after fees.  That is a profit of $835 on the sale price (an average of $29 per watch).  Profit margin of 8% just for the sale.



Here is how the numbers work
Cash = $835
Credit Card Points = $210
Portal Points = $255
Loyalty points = $140 in eBay Bucks


When you combine the credit card cash and portal cash, you earn an additional $605

Your takehome is now $1,440 or a return of 13.75%.  Not too shabby!

Pricing

As I said earlier, I learned about pricing and competition.  After each successive sale, the price of the 42mm watches went down.

I sold my first two for $467.50
I sold the 10 38mm ones for $390
The next 10 were sold at ~$447 which was a bit of panic sell.  I certainly could have gotten more.
After I sold the ones for $447, the prices went down even further to $435, which I noted in my post and I warned that prices would likely fall further.

I bought anyways.  By the time I sent in my 5 watches (I was quite confident enough to buy 10), there were almost no sellers at all with FBA.  I was able to sell my 5 watches at $464 again.


The glut of resellers were gone and not many bought again so prices rebounded.  This was an important lesson to me when it comes to fast sellers after a good sale.  I've used it for other products as well.  There will be a lot of people selling and the price will drop but if it is a good seller, the price will rebound.