Sixteen Years Old, $1.7 Million in Revenue: Max Hits It Big as a Pandemic Reseller

It's irrelevant to my point. It could be anything. Concert tickets, dildos, whatever. Just doing what you can to control the supply so you're the only one that is selling it.

I find those that sell the Tickle Me Elmo's and similar hot items just as bad. Buying for the sole purpose of selling at a highly inflated, artificial price point because you reduced the supply.

Sure, it's legal. It's making money. I just don't find it very cool. I won't support it, I won't buy from them, I won't say "great job!". They're successfully manipulating the market and the market conditions for their benefit at the expense of others. I'll let those that find GPU's, Xbox's, etc. essential and I just won't buy until I can get one new, warranty, MSRP or less.
Except no person is controlling the supply of GPUs. Most people are lucky to get a couple to resell. GPUs and tickle me elmos aren't cases of a few actors buying up all the supply and reselling for profit as they are the only holder of them. That almost never works and certainly never with mass produced products. These are cases of demand greatly outstripping supply (at MSRP) and the resellers moving the price to the equilibrium price between supply and demand.
 
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It's irrelevant to my point. It could be anything. Concert tickets, dildos, whatever. Just doing what you can to control the supply so you're the only one that is selling it.

I find those that sell the Tickle Me Elmo's and similar hot items just as bad. Buying for the sole purpose of selling at a highly inflated, artificial price point because you reduced the supply.

Sure, it's legal. It's making money. I just don't find it very cool. I won't support it, I won't buy from them, I won't say "great job!". They're successfully manipulating the market and the market conditions for their benefit at the expense of others. I'll let those that find GPU's, Xbox's, etc. essential and I just won't buy until I can get one new, warranty, MSRP or less.
You make it sound like I can choose a random product, completely buy out all of the current supply , raise the price, and be guaranteed a profit.
 
everyone else already said this but now MY TURN

A - screw this brat. Gaming the system / scalping is not a proper way to run a legitimate business
B - 100k profit on 1.7 million is terrible margin. He should have been clearing double revenue on the consoles and such. Something is fishy here
C - stupid kid better have bulletproof documentation on all of this or the IRS is going to be up his ass without lube. AND his parents since he's a minor
D - what kind of parents ALLOW their MINOR child to buy 1.7 mil of ANYTHING unless they were already rich to begin with and this is chump change
E - lets pretend this was legit blah blah blah... as a parent, I would take HALF (after taxes) and call it parental repayment for a lifetime of meals, rent, clothes, etc etc

Kid should have got a real job at Taco Bell or delivering pizzas...
 
As much as I am against scalping, the kid has potential. If he can manage via push/pull of that much inventory the kid is going to go far with a caveat.. Everyone needs to start somewhere, he started big even as a used car salesman....

Although his profits do not make much sense at all other than the cost of shipping suuuuuuuuuucks, but it shouldn't cut that much into profits. Something sounds fishy there, even a use car salesman can convince the news.

The Caveat: I'm sure greed will get out of hand and he will land himself in trouble like mentioned in another post.
 
B - 100k profit on 1.7 million is terrible margin. He should have been clearing double revenue on the consoles and such. Something is fishy here

Not really. People need to learn that just because an item is sold for $100 doesn't mean they make $100 in profits. There is the cost of the item itself, shipping, transaction fees, shipping supplies, gas & time to drive there and more. Why should someone work minimum wage when they can learn to run an at least semi-organized operation that gets them 5 times as much money?
 
Not really. People need to learn that just because an item is sold for $100 doesn't mean they make $100 in profits. There is the cost of the item itself, shipping, transaction fees, shipping supplies, gas & time to drive there and more. Why should someone work minimum wage when they can learn to run an at least semi-organized operation that gets them 5 times as much money?

It doesn't change the fact that the actual percentage of profit after expenses was something like 6.47%. The point Burticus is making is that if he sells a PS5 for $1000 and bought it for $500, he doesn't think that only $35 of that was profit. Shipping, transaction fees, shipping supplies, gas, etc. doesn't cost $465.

Either way, IMO, there's way too much risk associated with reselling $1.7 million worth of goods to only make $110k. I can't even imagine trying to manage cash flow with that little amount of profit out there.
 
It doesn't change the fact that the actual percentage of profit after expenses was something like 6.47%. The point Burticus is making is that if he sells a PS5 for $1000 and bought it for $500, he doesn't think that only $35 of that was profit. Shipping, transaction fees, shipping supplies, gas, etc. doesn't cost $465.

Either way, IMO, there's way too much risk associated with reselling $1.7 million worth of goods to only make $110k. I can't even imagine trying to manage cash flow with that little amount of profit out there.
We don't know the average markup he made per product. Selling at twice the original price is probably the upper bound. He sold various products, not all of them are going to double in price. Some of them may have even turned out to be mistakes which he barely managed to sell at original cost (or maybe even below?). Who knows.
 
We don't know the average markup he made per product. Selling at twice the original price is probably the upper bound. He sold various products, not all of them are going to double in price. Some of them may have even turned out to be mistakes which he barely managed to sell at original cost (or maybe even below?). Who knows.

And that is how commerce works. Sure you can sell a $100 item for $200 and take in those margins, but you might find that you make more money overall selling 10 times as many at $130. Maybe he could've gone better but he is likely new to this. $110K isn't bad at all.
 
Never understood the targeted hate for sellers of non-essential items during peak demand...it's the buyers that choose to open their wallets for such prices that give these sellers such profits.

For those buyers with pockets deep enough: more power to ya! Your money, your choice.
It's envy of those who can afford the increased prices and a sense of entitlement that they should be able to get what they want just because they want it.
"It's not fair"... buck up kiddo, life isn't fair. Work harder. Make your own breaks.

What are you, 80? Latin and cursive? Lol. This post is the embodiment of a large portion of our problems in the US of A. When teaching the next generations is looked at less favorably and with less value than some zero value add “business” and business for the sake of business is worth more than an education … yeah, there are some fundamental structural and cultural problems.
Oh, there are problems... but this kid and his hustle is not part of them.
 
110k profit on 1.7M of goods sold. He's a real Jesse Pinkman alright.
 
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They control the product during the high demand. They then charge 5x the normal market value because of that.

So kind of like how an amusement park or concert sells drinks and food for 4-5x their normal cost right?

If it was a natural disaster and something vital to health like water I'd agree. Selling laptops, consoles, games, legos or whatever he sold? Please. You see this all the time with all kinds of things. Once supply runs out, you can sell an item for more than you paid for it.
 
So kind of like how an amusement park or concert sells drinks and food for 4-5x their normal cost right?

If it was a natural disaster and something vital to health like water I'd agree. Selling laptops, consoles, games, legos or whatever he sold? Please. You see this all the time with all kinds of things. Once supply runs out, you can sell an item for more than you paid for it.

Except in that analogy you can always buy food/pop elsewhere at msrp at any given time. Also, are you giving kudos to that practice?

I think that's what the bigger grievance here is, not that the kid did the thing, but that it's looked on as a positive.
 
Except in that analogy you can always buy food/pop elsewhere at msrp at any given time. Also, are you giving kudos to that practice?

I think that's what the bigger grievance here is, not that the kid did the thing, but that it's looked on as a positive.

I honestly don't have a problem with it. People selling things goes back to the time we started to form the most basic of civilizations. Commerce and trade are isn't anything new and I don't see any problem with it. I really don't have a problem with a kid taking a limited Pokemon card, and then selling it for whatever someone is willing to pay for it. How much should one legally be allowed to sell it for? The manufacturing cost? The retail cost? Likewise for a crappy inflatable pool.

I also don't see why you must be a large corporation like Walmart to sell something for a profit, but an individual can't. I suppose some people just enjoy billionaire CEOs getting more cash flow over an individual or small business.
 
He obviously had help from his scumbag parents.
It's not like he invented his own product and is selling it.
He's a piece of shit for scalping.
I hope the IRS taxes him.
Such fierce, emotional value judgements of people based on a single article.
Most people earning a living selling/reselling stuff haven't invented their own product. Walmart? Grocery store? Car dealership?
The IRS will tax him on that 110K. Hopefully his ledger is clear. Based on the article, I'm betting it is.

So kind of like how an amusement park or concert sells drinks and food for 4-5x their normal cost right?

If it was a natural disaster and something vital to health like water I'd agree. Selling laptops, consoles, games, legos or whatever he sold? Please. You see this all the time with all kinds of things. Once supply runs out, you can sell an item for more than you paid for it.

Actually - there's studies that show if you let the prices for those commodities go up, they get distributed better as people can't overbuy and hoard them, which is worse for distribution than letting prices rise. There's arguments against it of course, but price controls in a disaster do have the consequences of those things that have the controls on them tending to disappear quickly, and not to a lot of people, but to the hoarders. See also: Price controls in Venezuela. Price controls in the former USSR. etc etc.

Except in that analogy you can always buy food/pop elsewhere at msrp at any given time. Also, are you giving kudos to that practice?

I think that's what the bigger grievance here is, not that the kid did the thing, but that it's looked on as a positive.
Uh, in a natural disaster... no you can't. Do you even remember the early days of covid? And that wasn't even an emergency, it was a slow burn.

Hustle, hard work, finding a supply and a market for that supply IS positive. Nothing he was selling was anything but a luxury item. Price what the market will bear.

Its the same reason I haven't bitched about video card prices. I'm simply not willing to pay the market price, so I wait. Maybe forever. Oh well. There are other things to do.

BB
 
Frankly, this had to be started with a huge amount of help from his parents for multiple reasons. Somehow the kid had "5k in savings" that he used to "start a business" at 16? Sure. Thanks Dad.
 
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everyone else already said this but now MY TURN

A - screw this brat. Gaming the system / scalping is not a proper way to run a legitimate business
B - 100k profit on 1.7 million is terrible margin. He should have been clearing double revenue on the consoles and such. Something is fishy here
C - stupid kid better have bulletproof documentation on all of this or the IRS is going to be up his ass without lube. AND his parents since he's a minor
D - what kind of parents ALLOW their MINOR child to buy 1.7 mil of ANYTHING unless they were already rich to begin with and this is chump change
E - lets pretend this was legit blah blah blah... as a parent, I would take HALF (after taxes) and call it parental repayment for a lifetime of meals, rent, clothes, etc etc

Kid should have got a real job at Taco Bell or delivering pizzas...

Yes I love Taco Bell but it does not love me back LoL ask the toilet room after an hour .. or less

But he definitely won't be making $110k delivering pizza. I think this kid has a bright future.

Yes a bright future in being another asshat scalper I would not mind at all if he actually made his own items if this was the case I would say good job kid!

So kind of like how an amusement park or concert sells drinks and food for 4-5x their normal cost right?

If it was a natural disaster and something vital to health like water I'd agree. Selling laptops, consoles, games, legos or whatever he sold? Please. You see this all the time with all kinds of things. Once supply runs out, you can sell an item for more than you paid for it.

Yes I remember after 9/11/01 (damn almost 20 years since this act of coward terrorist's) some business were charging like $20 for a bottle of water this is not nice and I think for actual necessities this is illegal to do! I know I'm going to get flamed for this even though I hate scalpers a video card or a game console is not necessary to live therefore a luxury item. Sorry
 
Frankly, this had to be started with a huge amount of help from his parents for multiple reasons. Somehow the kid had "5k in savings" that he used to "start a business" at 16? Sure. Thanks Dad.
You don't need a large amount in savings. You need access to credit. A little tricky at 16 and almost certainly where his parents helped. But using credit to buy inventory is fairly low risk for the parents.
 
He obviously had help from his scumbag parents.
It's not like he invented his own product and is selling it.
He's a piece of shit for scalping.
I hope the IRS taxes him.
If you are selling that much you're almost certainly going to receive a 1099-K and will have to account for it to the IRS. Plus, he created an LLC and is paying employees. No doubt he is paying taxes. How is what he is doing any different than say, Walmart?
 
It isn't that hard to come up with $5000. I made more than $5,000 mowing lawns in the summer (which is like 3 months where I live) when I was 16, all I needed from my parents was to borrow their lawn mower.
 
Frankly, this had to be started with a huge amount of help from his parents for multiple reasons. Somehow the kid had "5k in savings" that he used to "start a business" at 16? Sure. Thanks Dad.
I have several friends are have made millions with seed money from their folks. They had ambition, started businesses, bought properties, established themselves, and set themselves and their families up for life.

Short story here, but my grandfather built his first house at 16. Went to the bank for a loan for the drywall. He was too young to take a loan. The guy that worked at the bank met him outside and lent him the money personally. Grandfather sold the house not long after, and repaid the money plus a bit more on top of it as a thank you. After that, he went on to build entire streets and homes all over the county. All because of that suit behind the desk offered him a chance to start because he saw what my grandfather was capable of doing.

So good on the kid if his folks offered him help to start a million dollar business.
 
I have several friends are have made millions with seed money from their folks. They had ambition, started businesses, bought properties, established themselves, and set themselves and their families up for life.

Short story here, but my grandfather built his first house at 16. Went to the bank for a loan for the drywall. He was too young to take a loan. The guy that worked at the bank met him outside and lent him the money personally. Grandfather sold the house not long after, and repaid the money plus a bit more on top of it as a thank you. After that, he went on to build entire streets and homes all over the county. All because of that suit behind the desk offered him a chance to start because he saw what my grandfather was capable of doing.

So good on the kid if his folks offered him help to start a million dollar business.
Yes. Exactly. Seed money from parents.

Don't act like any of this is "self made."
Generational wealth is never "self made."

It's not just having access to 5k at 16, it's the support and stability that having a family that can spare 5k means. It's having a house big enough with access to garage. It's about being able to make money at 16 for profit instead of having to work at McDonald's so the rest of the family can eat.
Not having to stay home and watch younger siblings so parents can work night shift, etc.
 
Yes. Exactly. Seed money from parents.

Don't act like any of this is "self made."
Generational wealth is never "self made."

It's not just having access to 5k at 16, it's the support and stability that having a family that can spare 5k means. It's having a house big enough with access to garage. It's about being able to make money at 16 for profit instead of having to work at McDonald's so the rest of the family can eat.
Not having to stay home and watch younger siblings so parents can work night shift, etc.

LMAO are you really trying to say getting $5,000 and working for a year to turn that into $100k isn't self made?
 
Lol, scalping and reselling, what the wonderful American economy is becoming.
 
Yes I remember after 9/11/01 (damn almost 20 years since this act of coward terrorist's) some business were charging like $20 for a bottle of water this is not nice and I think for actual necessities this is illegal to do!

That is illegal in most countries. People were being fined for doing it with hand sanitizer and toilet paper in early 2020.
 
Who gets to dictate the prices during troubling times?

The people causing the troubling times.


¬.¬
 
Never understood the targeted hate for sellers of non-essential items during peak demand...it's the buyers that choose to open their wallets for such prices that give these sellers such profits.

For those buyers with pockets deep enough: more power to ya! Your money, your choice.
Yeah and if its not him its going to be someone else. Operating at that level is difficult and really easy to end up in the red. Most people don't realize that there are hundreds of thousands of resellers competing for this merchandise and spending anywhere from 60-2k+ per drop. Managing bot configs, proxies, selling platforms, and shipping is way more difficult than people think it is. The fact he moved that volume and still made some money at 16 took brains.
 
Yeah and if its not him its going to be someone else. Operating at that level is difficult and really easy to end up in the red. Most people don't realize that there are hundreds of thousands of resellers competing for this merchandise and spending anywhere from 60-2k+ per drop. Managing bot configs, proxies, selling platforms, and shipping is way more difficult than people think it is. The fact he moved that volume and still made some money at 16 took brains.
But its not fair!
 
But its not fair!
I spent some time learning the process last year and have been able to get stuff for myself, friends and family. That kids parents clearly enable him with a large line of credit, and he could have made way more flipping collectables vs. scalping. If you have a decent job you are likely going to make more money working than scalping. But if you are one of those people that is about to lose their mind not getting a ps5 or a video card, spend a little time to learn their methods and get what you need. This problem is going to be here forever.
 
I spent some time learning the process last year and have been able to get stuff for myself, friends and family. That kids parents clearly enable him with a large line of credit, and he could have made way more flipping collectables vs. scalping. If you have a decent job you are likely going to make more money working than scalping. But if you are one of those people that is about to lose their mind not getting a ps5 or a video card, spend a little time to learn their methods and get what you need. This problem is going to be here forever.
Harbor Freight had a line of generators going for STUPID cheap. I used a 20% coupon on them too. I bought I think eight of them. Put them in the loft. Winter rolls around, state wide power outage, I made freaking BANK. XD

I do that crap all the time too. Buy a motorcycle in the dead of winter, throw a new tire on it, peak riding season, sell it for twice what I paid.

Not a new concept.
 
Harbor Freight had a line of generators going for STUPID cheap. I used a 20% coupon on them too. I bought I think eight of them. Put them in the loft. Winter rolls around, state wide power outage, I made freaking BANK. XD

I do that crap all the time too. Buy a motorcycle in the dead of winter, throw a new tire on it, peak riding season, sell it for twice what I paid.

Not a new concept.
whatever about the used bike, but "making freakins bank" during emergencies by scalping generators is greasy

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