Selling Old Tech. Only 2 Places to Go. Whoops!

Before writing this blog article, I wanted to explore the two websites which were going to be the focus of my attention. Gazelle and eBay Instant Sale for Electronics.  Much to my surprise, eBay no longer offer Instant Sale!!! Most people assume selling on eBay requires auctioning or setting your own "Buy It Now" price which may or may not lead to a sale. It's great that eBay doesn't charge you to list items that don't sell, but you want your item to sell! For a while, eBay Instant Sale gave you an actual monetary offer for you electronic device. I took full advantage of this when I wanted to sell my original iPad for the iPad 3. eBay Instant Sale gave me $200 for my 16GB black iPad when it was two years old.  That's a pretty sweet deal.

However, when I went to sell my iPhone 4 to eBay, they found "damage" to the mute/unmute slider and refused to pay me the $200 I was expecting. They were nice enough to mail back my iPhone and I sold it to Gazelle for $150, no problems. Gazelle really is fast and easy and they pay comparable prices, although to get the most money, auctions on eBay and setting a price on Amazon would be more profitable, albeit risky. Gazelle is great because they mail you the shipping materials for free. All you have to do it send it back with your device and you get your money through a PayPal deposit.

To avoid the risk of selling your device yourself and to get more than Gazell offers, I see only one alternative, an Amazon giftcard exchange.  For example, I can sell my iPhone 5, 16GB on AT&T for $320 for "Good" condition or $350 if "Flawless" through Gazelle. That would go along way to purchasing a new phone out of contract. But Amazon would offer me $365 in an Amazon gift card and $430 if my iPhone was in "Like New" condition. And because Amazon also sells pretty much every smartphone available on the market, this becomes a very enticing alternative. Plus, Amazon sells EVERYTHING, so that money won't be wasted or sit for very long.

Also note if you're planing on selling a phone within your two-year contract, you can switch out the SIM card from one phone to another without much difficulty, if you stay with the same carrier. And your carrier will assist in the process. You have to buy the new phone at full retail price, but if you get a couple hundred dollars from your old phone, your wallet won't hurt quite as much.

Summary: Gazelle gives you cold hard cash (through PayPal) and makes the process simple and fast. Amazon give you more cold hard cash, but it's not cold hard cash, it's a gift card. But on Amazon, that's almost more valuable.

http://www.gazelle.com/sell/cell-phone
http://www.amazon.com/Electronics-Trade-In/b?ie=UTF8&node=2226766011
http://pages.ebay.com/instantsale/announcement.html (no longer exists) :-(