Thursday, March 05, 2015

The Truth About Third-Party Amiibo Sales


For anyone curious, I ended up selling a lot of five amiibo (Lucario, Ike, King Dedede, Sonic, Mega Man) on eBay for $140 as a best offer. I had multiple offers but the guy who ultimately won out was willing to negotiate and pay straight up. So this is why there's no real money in these amiibo scalpers...

$140.00 gross sale.

$14.00 eBay fee (10%) but no listing fee as I don't sell near enough to expend my free supply.
$5.76 PayPal fee (2.9% + $0.30) and an additional 1% currency conversion fee (that I get - which is a little douchey for that dude) due to the buyer being in Mexico although they have a US address.
$11.39 shipping (Priority was actually going to be over $40 due to dimensional weight - insane this year).


$108.85 net sale. Wow David, that's a lot of money! No, no, wait a minute...

Now factor in the cost of the amiibos, which was only as low as it was due to a total sale coupon and membership points coupon, at $53.78.

$55.07 profit. All that legwork for $50.

Without the coupons and discounts I had, it would have been $34.57 profit.

Granted, it's kind of like $50 for nothing, and I understand it's all about small margin - that's how all my eBay sales have been this year and in essence is my extra cash plan for 2015 - but it equates to $10 extra per figure - $7 per if I didn't have the savings at point of sale.

...and I get called a scalper sometimes.

Alternatively, I was able to snag an extra Lucario and Ike for a forum member. I sold them for $40, which means I made $8 on those two after fees and shipping and that's only because I had a 15% off coupon at point of sale - $4 bucks per figure. I guess you HAVE to sell hundreds upon hundreds of these on eBay to make any money.