Back on February 24th, I posted about an Amazon sale on Fire tablets where you could get up to a $40 discount when you purchase with American Express Membership Rewards points. That wasn’t such a great offer, just decent for those who wanted to buy one of these tablets for personal use. Then about a week later, it suddenly got much better. Amazon lowered the price of some tablets and by stacking it with the Membership Rewards offer, you could save as much as $80. Now it was time to buy for those into reselling.
The biggest discount was for Fire HD 8″ 32 GB Kids Edition Tablet With Kid-Proof Case. Regular price for that tablet was $129.99, down to $89.99 during the Amazon sale. With Amex discount, the price dropped to $49.99. Limit was five per tablet so I bought 5 of them right away. Thanks to sales tax in NYC, those five tablets cost me $272.15. I listed them the next day on eBay for 84.99, and they sold right away. Should have priced them higher.
Crunching the Numbers
Here’s my calculations:
| Purchase Price | $272.15 |
| Cashback | $13.61 |
| Amazon GCs | $5.00 |
| Final Cost | $253.54 |
| Selling Price ($84.99 each) | $424.95 |
| eBay fees ($8.50 each) | $42.50 |
| Shipping ($6.55 to $7.20) | $34.30 |
| PayPal fees ($2.76 each) | $13.80 |
| Final Selling Price | $334.35 |
| Profit | $80.81 |
| 29.69% |
Guru’s Wrap-Up
Not a crazy profit since I only purchased 5 tablets, but a decent return rate. Tax and shipping cut into my profits a bit and I could have priced a bit more and would have probably still sold them pretty quickly. At least this way I only took one trip to the post office for all 5 shipments. I could have bought some more Amazon gift cards to get a better discount also.
I’m sure some of you guys did even better, especially if you have an eBay store. Let me know if you jumped on this deal.
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