Wasn’t going to link to FB marketplace…
Oh crap, busted!
LOL. If they are made in Germany, I’d probably give them a look.
I think only the twin print knives are made in Germany, the single dude print are made elsewhere.
I’m going to try and buy a set of Magic the Gathering cards today. There’s a store nearby (25 minutes) that’s selling the set for $159. Amazon has it for $205. Individual cards in the set are worth about $700 total at last count, so my aim is to get the set, scrape out those cards >$1.00 that the store would buy (for $0.50 on the dollar cash, $0.60 on the dollar for store credit) and come back tomorrow to sell them back.
Current estimate of value of cards > $1.00 is $385, which would put credit about $230, cash about $190. If I actually get an offer of something like $150 cash, I’ll probably take it.
(last week the estimate of those cards > $1.00 was around $600, so this was a much more obvious arbitrage opportunity. The catch is those cards were only valued so high because they were unavailable last week, only able to actually be bought today. Demand > Supply => Price inflation.)
I say try, because the sets are sold out online and the store said they’re holding a few for walk-in customers on a first-come, first-serve basis. I’ll probably get them today, but whether those values will still be holding up even as soon as tomorrow is very uncertain.
So, the store is planning on losing money? They are planning to lose this deal (to use an old AO phrase)?
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They’ll make it up in volume.
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Yeah, their list price of 159 is under the competition, and I asked if they were going to honor that price for customers. The guy grudgingly agreed. Though I have bought other stuff from them before that’s similarly underpriced relative to competitors. There’s also the chance that they low-ball me on the buy offer and I choose not to accept, walking away with a bunch of stuff I don’t really want.
wait a tic! Just checked their website and it’s up to $190 for an online order. I think I’m still gonna stop by the store and see if they’ll honor the offer they were making yesterday. (Not likely.)
Store honored the $159 price for walk-in customers, I didn’t even have to haggle.
After more thought, I realize they are not planning to lose any money.
If I do my scraping and come back tomorrow, and they pay me $180 in cash for cards that are market-valued at $360, then they’ve automatically gotten a 50% profit margin to be realized in the future. So even if the $360 devalues some to, say, $240 by the time all those cards are sold (which is highly likely), they’ll still be looking at a 33% ROI. Pretty solid.
Plus I’m sure they already made their 20% markup on the original case, so it’s not like they’re hurting for margin anywhere.
I must have missed a step or something, it’s Friday and I’m day drinking already:
(80) purchase initial package of cards
160 sell cards to you
(180) buy cards from you
360 sell cards to others
NET: 260
OR
(80) purchase initial package of cards
360 open box and sell cards
NET: 280
the (20) differential is the “fee” they’re paying me to open cards for them. So your second needs to look like:
(80) purchase initial package of cards
(20) open box [subcontract]
360 sell cards
NET: 260
How long does it take to open a box?
(Did you pull the trigger this weekend?)
Got a new phone. I’m not super into phones, other than I did quite like the cameras on my iPhone 11 Pro, huge step up from the one I had before it. Battery life is nice, and the newer phones have quite a bit more of that. Anywho, Verizon offered me $700 for my old phone in trade-in, so I got a 13 Pro for $400 ($300 price difference plus sales tax on a grand).
I figured the other option was keep my old phone for a couple more years but then I’d get next to nothing on trade and I’d be out a grand.
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I just bought a Dewalt Table Saw - It was on sale for $529 with a stand. Hell yea!
First thing I plan on making is a ladder to hold some plants and pictures for my living room - SO MANY PROJECTS!!!
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I have a version of that from like 2010, it’s a great saw. The job site type saws are nice because you can store them easier, and I like the rack & pinion setup DeWalt uses for the fence. It’s not what you’d use if you were making fine furniture but it does an amazing job - in fact, my finish carpenter uses one, so it’s pretty darn good.
I was just contemplating trying to clear out some wall space in my garage and using the saw to rip down some 1" stock to make a French cleat wall system to organize all of my crap.
So this past week I bought a DeWalt cordless lawnmower. No gas, much quieter, but cuts like a gas powered mower. So was surprisingly happy about it.
Bonus - it takes two large batteries that are the same as the batteries for all my cordless dewalt tools.
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For now…
Just sayin’…I said the same thing when I upgraded from 6 to X and X to 12. Battery life was a nice improvement but over time it became not-as-good-as-it-once-was.
That’s exactly what my thought process was…sure, I could’ve held onto the X for another few years, but they were offering so much money for the trade-in that it seemed like a no-brainer.
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Maybe I’ve been lucky, I’ve noticed some degradation, but nothing major on the phones I’ve owned. I handed one phone down to my son, and around the four year mark battery life turned south, but that’s a good run I think.
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I’m curious as to how well that cordless mower works out for you.
Last year I invested in an EGO cordless string trimmer based on the recommendation of a fried, and I am a little disappointed in the power to whack through taller grass that’s adjacent to a fence line that my mower cannot reach. The thing was pricey, and I appreciate the avoidance of gas and oil, but the power is just underwhelming.