Right now there are few good deals out there on iPads that are decent reselling opportunities.
The sales are at the usual suspects Best Buy, Target, and Staples.
- Best Buy is offering $125 off
- Target is offering an $80 gift card
- Staples is offering 15% off.
In absolute terms the best deal is at Best Buy. If you are reselling you will want to leverage these deals a bit further. It is possible to leverage each of these sales to increase our profit. It is even possible to turn use my Target 15% Perpetual Discount to turn a money loser into a $90 profit.
The easy one is Staples, as I have explained before with every other Staples sale it is possible to leverage an additional 15% off via Staples Rewards, uPromise Shopping Portal, and Chase Ink. When the discount is a percentage I prefer to buy the most expense iPad so I can get the greatest discount. Here I would be looking at the iPad Air 2 128GB. Here is how the Staples deal would break down.
- iPad Air 2 128 GB
- MSRP – $699
- Sale price – $594
- uPromise 5% cash back – $29.70
- Staples Rewards 5% cash back – $29.70
- Ink 5x – 2,970 UR points
- Net Price – $534.60
- Amazon Price – $650
- Fees – $45
- Profit – $70
So $70 and 2,970 UR points per iPad is pretty darn good. Now lets take a look at Best Buy.
Best Buy is a straight up $125 off deal. In that case I will buy the lowest priced model, i.e. the 16 GB version, so as to reduce my Amazon fees and increase my profit. To leverage this deal your best bet is through the Discover Deals cash back portal which is offering 5% cash back. But this is only open to those of you with Discover cards. Since I boycott discover I do not have a Discover card. You could also leverage this quite well if you had a discover card and combined it with Apple pay in the store for 10% off plus double points at the end of your first year. If you are playing the Discover Apple Pay game this could be a great deal for you. The deal would break down as follows.
- iPad Air 2 16 GB
- MSRP – $499
- Sale Price – $374.99
- Apply Pay + Discover – $37.49
- Best Buy Rewards – $7.5
- Net Price – $330
- Amazon Price – $440
- Fees – $31
- Profit – $79
So if you have a Discover card and are doing the Apply Pay promo this can be a lucrative deal. For me, I don’t do Discover so my best bet is using a 2% cash back credit card so the profit for me is not nearly as lucrative.
Now on to the Target deal. On it’s face this deal is a loser. You are paying full price for the iPad, then selling it for a loss. You will not recoup your loss until you can cash out the $80 gift card either by a resale opportunity or selling the card straight up. The deal as is looks as follows.
- iPad Air 2 16 GB
- MSRP – $499
- Sale Price – $499 + $80 Target GC
- Amazon Price – $440
- Fees – $31
- Loss – $90
I am not using a portal here because I don’t like using multiple portals and uPromise does not offer cash back at Target. Assuming you can cash out the GC for face value you are looking at a $10 loss on the deal. Not good. But what if we use my Perpetual 15% Target Discount?
- iPad Air 2 128 GB
- MSRP – $699
- Sale price – $594 + $80 Target GC
- Amazon Price – $650
- Fees – $45
- Profit – $11
Again, assuming you can cash out the Target GC at face value we are now looking at a profit of $90. So the Perpetual 15% Target Discount turns the money loser into the most profitable deal. So that’s cool I guess.
In the end I am still choosing the Staples deal. I don’t like the added complication of having to cash out the Target GC. Since it takes a few weeks to generate the 15% promos I will save that for a straight up sale as opposed to getting a GC.