I sold my Apple Watch and made (a tiny) profit!

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Apple watch

Business Insider

After a little over a month with an Apple Watch, I decided I'd had enough.

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Last week, I put the watch - a Sport edition with a white band - up for sale on eBay.

While the watch is nice, I think the watch is still two years away from being a great product.

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The apps are slow to respond. Getting texts and emails buzzed to my wrist is useful, but also a bit stressful. The fitness tracking was helpful, but not terribly informative. I already use the step counter on my phone, which gives me roughly the level of inspiration to move around as the watch's fitness features.

Also, I have a two nice traditional Swiss watches that I inherited from my father. They were sitting on my dresser collecting dust, and that felt weird.

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So, up for sale it went!

Apple is about to increase its supply of watches, so I wanted to sell before people could walk in the store, get one, and walk out.

Tim Cook Apple Watch

AP

I started the bidding at $300, and had a "buy it now" price of $400. (Somehow someone did something weird with the bidding and my "buy it now" offer was wiped off the auction.)

I had initially tried to sell it on Craigslist for $500, but nobody was biting. I lowered that to $450 and still got no takers. After I wrote about selling the watch, offers started rolling in, but they were mostly trying to get me to sell for $300.

The watch costs $399 new, but with taxes it was $431. I would have been happy getting $400. I would be paying a $31 rental fee for the month.

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So, I was positively delighted when the final bid came in at $465. I only set my sale for the US. People on Twitter told me that if I opened to bidding to international users, it would have been even higher. After fees from eBay and PayPal, I should eek out a tiny profit.

What's the moral of this story?

If you have a watch but you're not in love with it, sell now! You'll be able to recoup all your money. In a year, my guess is you'll be lucky to get $200 for it.

Also: For now, demand for the watch remains strong. I can't think of many (if any) products you can buy then sell a month later and make money on it.

While there is a lot of doomsaying around Apple and the watch, it seems people are stoked by it. That's a good sign for the product in the short term. The question is whether people drop the watch after a month of use, or they stick with it for the long haul.

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