71040 - Disney Castle

[ravenb99]

4 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

Gonna tell you what you all are doing wrong : discussing this on the DD . Take it to the 71040 thread . 

At least the use or lack of use of vip points argument wasn't replayed

[TANV]

 

9 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

Gonna tell you what you all are doing wrong : discussing this on the DD . Take it to the 71040 thread . 

Woohoo! Moved!

[BrickLegacy]

Hey guys, the mop is taking the day off.  Feel free to keep the QFLL Castle chatter going here.

[ravenb99]

18 minutes ago, BrickLegacy said:

Hey guys, the mop is taking the day off.  Feel free to keep the QFLL Castle chatter going here.

Don't crack...

[Alpinemaps]

Hey guys, the mop is taking the day off.  Feel free to keep the QFLL Castle chatter going here.

Thank you sir.

[Mathew]

3 hours ago, Serejai said:

If it takes you two hours to mail out a sale on eBay you are doing something terribly wrong. Five minutes to list it, five minutes to pack it once it sells. What are you spending the other hour and fifty minutes doing when you make a sale?

I think there are much better things to spend the money on at the moment but there's really no need to make up fake numbers in an attempt to drive your point across. $20-30 in profit for ten minutes of actual work is hardly close to minimum wage.

Eh, you don't understand.  Making $20 on the sale is the equivalent to working two hours at minimum wage.  Of course you can sell and ship in less than two hours.  Though I would highly question it only taking ten minutes.  Do you make a new ad with original photos displaying the actual item or copy someone else's work?  Do you live next to the post office or a UPS store?  Do you ship in the original shipping box and slap a new label over the old one?  Trying to make $20 profit means cutting corners.  

Edited October 11, 2016 by Mathew

[Serejai]

9 minutes ago, Mathew said:

Eh, you don't understand.  Making $20 on the sale is like working two hours of minimum wage.  Of course you can sell and ship in less than two hours.  Though I would highly question it only taking ten minutes.  Do you make a new ad with original photos displaying the actual item or copy someone else's work?  Do you live next to the post office or a UPS store?  Do you ship in the original shipping box and slap a new label over the old one?  Trying to make $20 profit means cutting corners.  

I don't think any corners need to be cut at all. You're selling brand new LEGO in retail packaging; all you need to do for the listing is use the stock photo and description. There's really no need to type up anything special, or take your own photos - it's going to sell. eBay has an entire catalogue of stock photos for exactly this type of sale. You just scan the box with a barcade scanner and all the info pulls up. For shipping, the USPS will pick up packages from your house for free and UPS/FedEx do it for about $3 if you're on a business account (which you can usually get for as cheap as $12-15 a year when they run promotions for it). Either way, in this day and age you shouldn't need to leave your house to ship anything. I ship out anywhere from 50 to 200 packages a week and I can't even recall the last time I had to visit a post office. For packaging, it takes all of 2-3 minutes to bubble wrap the LEGO box, stick it in a shipping box, throw in some air pillows, and slap a label on it. I'm not sure where in that process you feel corners are being cut, but I won't argue that a lot of sellers do get sloppy when they rush. It's quite possible to do things quickly, efficiently, AND correctly though.

With the castle, I agree that it's not the best deal in the world. I bought four and stopped; I've already unloaded two locally on Craigslist and expect the remaining two to be gone this week. When selling on eBay, it's high risk and low reward. There is nothing at all wrong with making $20 for 10-20 minutes of work. The issue is that you're also throwing up $370 to do so, which is not ideal at all. It's certainly low-margin - even for retail arbitrage - but if people have the money laying around and can't find anything better to spend it on, it's still free profit.

Also, $20 is just the minimum cash profit you would get. You can increase that quite a lot, depending on what you have available to you. For example... I got 8% off from tax exemption, another 5% off from discounted gift cards, 10% back in VIP points, 3% back on my credit card, and no shipping costs or fees since I sold locally. My profit is closer to $100 per castle at the moment after everything is accounted for.

I dunno. I don't entirely care how other people spend their money, but for me I spent $1,400 upfront and will come out with around $1,800 when all is said and done. That's almost a 30% profit margin and I spent less than an hour of my time for it. I'd be a hypocrite if I told other people the castle was a bad purchase.

[Mathew]

You must have the luxury of working from home then.  I wouldn't think that leaving a $350 Lego set on the front porch for the mailman to pick up is the wisest shipping decision.  In fact I wouldn't ship anything less than UPS or FedEx with insurance for such a thing.  My point is that buying up this set for a quick flip and only coming out $20-30 ahead doesn't make much sense from a business stand point.  Unless you're purposely doing it drive up demand.  But really a thousand BP'ers are really just doing a disservice to the business  by quick flipping for such a measly amount.  If you really are rolling in the cash (as you seem to be) then sitting on this set till at least Black Friday is a much, much smarter business move.  The Disney Castle will be hot item this Christmas and I can guarantee that it will be sold out and only sporadically come back in stock till January.  

[hockeyweasel]

Back in stock on SAH.  Who's going to call their local store to see if they got resupplied?  The ones I bought last week are arriving today, so I expect to see a bump in the number of sellers.

https://shop.lego.com/en-US/The-Disney-Castle-71040

 

[marcandre]

Amazon is a race to the bottom right now. Yesterday I had the cheapest listing, this morning I am bumped off the first page.  

 

[zskid00]

That's what happens when you play the QFLL game.

[TANV]

7 hours ago, Mathew said:

You must have the luxury of working from home then.  I wouldn't think that leaving a $350 Lego set on the front porch for the mailman to pick up is the wisest shipping decision.  In fact I wouldn't ship anything less than UPS or FedEx with insurance for such a thing.  My point is that buying up this set for a quick flip and only coming out $20-30 ahead doesn't make much sense from a business stand point.  Unless you're purposely doing it drive up demand.  But really a thousand BP'ers are really just doing a disservice to the business  by quick flipping for such a measly amount.  If you really are rolling in the cash (as you seem to be) then sitting on this set till at least Black Friday is a much, much smarter business move.  The Disney Castle will be hot item this Christmas and I can guarantee that it will be sold out and only sporadically come back in stock till January.  

That sounds fairly reasonably. Oh, if only I was able to take on more credit card debt to get another one of these...

[Loghamel]

9 hours ago, Serejai said:

I don't think any corners need to be cut at all. You're selling brand new LEGO in retail packaging; all you need to do for the listing is use the stock photo and description. There's really no need to type up anything special, or take your own photos - it's going to sell. eBay has an entire catalogue of stock photos for exactly this type of sale. You just scan the box with a barcade scanner and all the info pulls up. For shipping, the USPS will pick up packages from your house for free and UPS/FedEx do it for about $3 if you're on a business account (which you can usually get for as cheap as $12-15 a year when they run promotions for it). Either way, in this day and age you shouldn't need to leave your house to ship anything. I ship out anywhere from 50 to 200 packages a week and I can't even recall the last time I had to visit a post office. For packaging, it takes all of 2-3 minutes to bubble wrap the LEGO box, stick it in a shipping box, throw in some air pillows, and slap a label on it. I'm not sure where in that process you feel corners are being cut, but I won't argue that a lot of sellers do get sloppy when they rush. It's quite possible to do things quickly, efficiently, AND correctly though.

With the castle, I agree that it's not the best deal in the world. I bought four and stopped; I've already unloaded two locally on Craigslist and expect the remaining two to be gone this week. When selling on eBay, it's high risk and low reward. There is nothing at all wrong with making $20 for 10-20 minutes of work. The issue is that you're also throwing up $370 to do so, which is not ideal at all. It's certainly low-margin - even for retail arbitrage - but if people have the money laying around and can't find anything better to spend it on, it's still free profit.

Also, $20 is just the minimum cash profit you would get. You can increase that quite a lot, depending on what you have available to you. For example... I got 8% off from tax exemption, another 5% off from discounted gift cards, 10% back in VIP points, 3% back on my credit card, and no shipping costs or fees since I sold locally. My profit is closer to $100 per castle at the moment after everything is accounted for.

I dunno. I don't entirely care how other people spend their money, but for me I spent $1,400 upfront and will come out with around $1,800 when all is said and done. That's almost a 30% profit margin and I spent less than an hour of my time for it. I'd be a hypocrite if I told other people the castle was a bad purchase.

How the heck you get exempted?  I don't have the cajones to ask the LEGO employee to exempt me from taxes because I will be reselling my purchase.

Guess I should also point out, if you get a tax exemption and then sell locally, you will owe that 8%.  I know you don't "have to" report it, but legally, you lose that bonus by not selling online.  I'm not trying to be holier than thou or anything, just pointing it out.

Edited October 11, 2016 by Loghamel

[zskid00]

9 hours ago, Mathew said:

If you really are rolling in the cash (as you seem to be) then sitting on this set till at least Black Friday is a much, much smarter business move.  The Disney Castle will be hot item this Christmas and I can guarantee that it will be sold out and only sporadically come back in stock till January.  

Just a couple years ago we encountered the same situation with the Tumbler being in short supply for the holidays, but LEGO kept a steady stream of inventory coming to stores with strict buying limits.  The secondary market prices did not see big gains during the holiday shopping season even with increased demand at that time.  I know the Tumbler is no Disney Castle, but I wouldn't bank on prices going up by November/December if LEGO keeps resupplying stores and online inventory as regularly as they have 

[Mathew]

31 minutes ago, zskid00 said:

Just a couple years ago we encountered the same situation with the Tumbler being in short supply for the holidays, but LEGO kept a steady stream of inventory coming to stores with strict buying limits.  The secondary market prices did not see big gains during the holiday shopping season even with increased demand at that time.  I know the Tumbler is no Disney Castle, but I wouldn't bank on prices going up by November/December if LEGO keeps resupplying stores and online inventory as regularly as they have 

The Tumbler was aimed at much more specific demographic:  20-30 year old male AFOLs.  The Disney Castle OTOH is aimed at boys and girls of all ages.  And of course it's the "Disney Castle".  And there isn't a comparable toy to this on the market this year.  Lego will be pumping these out as fast as they can.  However, when the upper-middle class start doing their holiday shopping in the next month and see it on display at Lego Stores I can guarantee that demand will outstrip supply.  

 

[zskid00]

Let's not forget this is a $350 product that needs to be sold for $400+ to make profit on it so your potential buyer pool is somewhat restricted.  There are only so many people who will pay that price for a Christmas gift.

[TANV]

41 minutes ago, zskid00 said:

Let's not forget this is a $350 product that needs to be sold for $400+ to make profit on it so your potential buyer pool is somewhat restricted.  There are only so many people who will pay that price for a Christmas gift.

Well, don't forget you also have to determine the market to sell to as well. I mean you have Amazon and eBay being the most popular marketplaces and also you have to include fees. The balance is determining a reasonable profit margin as well as reaching the largest number of possible consumers.

[Agsimpson13]

Recieved my shipment today.  One Disney Castle and one Countdown Calender.  This thing is huge. Mint boxes....what a relief. Will order again when available.

[marcandre]

So I got a bite on amz last night. For any qfll noobs here's a math lesson.

Item sale price  + 479.99

shipping credit  + 10.99

Set cost with NC tax - 376.24

fedex with sig to Oregon - 29.36

Amazon fee - 74.67

Profit $10.71

This does not include packing costs (fyi the 10188 shipping carton works great). Basically did this for the double vip ($35) and 40222.

 

Edited October 12, 2016 by marcandre

[Darth_Raichu]

15 minutes ago, marcandre said:

So I got a bite on amz last night. For any qfll noobs here's a math lesson.

Item sale price  + 479.99

shipping credit  + 10.99

Set cost with NC tax - 376.24

fedex with sig to Oregon - 29.36

Amazon fee - 74.67

Profit $10.71

This does not cost packing costs (fyi the 10188 shipping carton works great). Basically did this for the double vip ($35) and 40222.
 

Kind of like working at McDonald's but without the verbally abusive 19 year old high school drop-out assistant manager.

[Val-E]

15 minutes ago, marcandre said:

So I got a bite on amz last night. For any qfll noobs here's a math lesson.

Item sale price  + 479.99

shipping credit  + 10.99

Set cost with NC tax - 376.24

fedex with sig to Oregon - 29.36

Amazon fee - 74.67

Profit $10.71

This does not include packing costs (fyi the 10188 shipping carton works great). Basically did this for the double vip ($35) and 40222.

 

You´ll make more money on the LB.

[marcandre]

5 minutes ago, Darth_Raichu said:

Kind of like working at McDonald's but without the verbally abusive 19 year old high school drop-out assistant manager.

Not really. If someone returns a trashed big mac I wouldn't have to eat the cost. I didn't get to sneak any french fries while I was packing it either. 

[exciter1]

5 minutes ago, marcandre said:

Not really. If someone returns a trashed big mac I wouldn't have to eat the cost. I didn't get to sneak any french fries while I was packing it either. 

You left the fun factor out too.

[BrickLegacy]

Gang,

I hid a few posts.  Let's not wander into some politic conversation in the Disney Castle thread.

Thank you.

[Serejai]

I had a completely different experience with my Amazon FBA sale.

Sale price of $514.99
Amazon Fees - $90.04
Shipping - $5

Profit: $69.29 + the points and freebie, which I have yet to do anything with. Will easily clear $100 profit on each castle, which is about the same as I've been getting selling them locally.