STEP EIGHTEEN: Mr. Coffee is in my trunk.

$1,946.40 becomes $2,118.40
This, plus 52 more just like it could have been all yours...


At a hotel liquidation sale, I found "Mr. Coffee" brand single cup coffee makers and there were 53 of them for sale. They retail for $22, the man offered to sell them to me at $6 each. I bargained him down to $4 and I had an overflowing trunkload of coffee makers.  I tried selling them on Ebay:  I first listed them at $15. That would have been a great windfall.  No luck there. I lowered the price to $12. Nothing.  How can the world pay $6 for a cup of Starbucks each morning but not pay twice that for their own coffee maker that makes perfectly hot water in 2.5 minutes any time they want?

Out of desperation I went to the locally owned motels around town. No one wanted them, mostly because their reaction to a guy who just drove up with a trunkload of coffee makers seems strange as a way of shopping for your "preferred guests".  But I did stumble upon one motel owner who agreed to buy them but couldn't pay $12, or $10, or $9, or even $8.50. I know because I asked.

He did agree to buy all of them at $8 each.  So, not quite the huge profit I was hoping for when I bought them, but doubling my money is what this is about and that's what I did this time.


Step Eighteen: Bought for $212 (plus $40 auction house commission), sold for $424
Project Profit: $2,118.40

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