Theres a site called slickdeals.com and ppl post about great deals such as a discount on many items. Such as if a laptop is say $600 and then on sale its $500. Or if its some tablet or phone thats on sale and lot of ppl buy it. Say its $150 or so on sale when retail price is $200 to that effect and lets say the item is pretty good.
Are there ppl that buys a ton of these on say newegg, staples.com etc and then sell it back on ebay/amazon for profit? If so, wouldn’t the selling fees eat a lot of the profit up where you can almost have no more profit? Obviously ppl who buy it on ebay wouldn’t know about the deal on the other site or they buy it from there or if these deals last for very short time like a day or 2 and then prices go back up.
But for items like this, would it be possible to buy a lot of these with the sole purpose to sell it immediately on ebay or amazon? I assume a product is $200 and on sale $150. Lets assume if a person wants to buy it on ebay it will cost around $180 or so.
If a person sells it on ebay for $180, wouldn’t the selling fees be close to $25 or so , so basically one profits just $5 maybe on an item like this? Now if you buy 100 of them that would be more profit but problem is you would have tough time selling it. Now only that, what if the prices drops later on and then you have 90 of them that you can’t sell but at a loss.
But for someone that buys say 10 of it, would you say its even profitable to buy it on sale just to sell later on amazon?
I the the OP has largely answered his/her own question.
I’ve bought things from various websites (including eBay itself), to sell on for a profit. And in most cases, after eBay fees the profit I’ve made hasn’t really been worth the time spent.
In one case I even bought 25x an item for the equivalent of $1.60 total, then sold them for the equivalent of $8 each. But it took ages and was a PITA. Gazillionaire would call it a Great Deal, but I’d rather sit in an office for a few hours, pretending to work but actually Doping 
Of course you could make a living if you had a complete supply chain, economies of scale etc, but in that case why not buy wholesale and just be a regular business?
First of all, I think the thread belongs in IMHO, as you’re seeking personal experiences. So I reported it.
Second, about ten years ago, I worked with a guy who would buy deeply discounted items from places like Staples on Sundays. They would have a special discount on, say, a Western Digital hard drive, selling it for fifty bucks when it normally retails for over a hundred dollars, but only have a couple in each store. He would turn around and then offer then items on eBay.
Also, around 1999, when The Phantom Menace was being released and eBay was still relatively new, I saw an article about a married couple who would go into Target stores, buy up the action figures associated with the movie, and then take them home. They’d list them on eBay at three times retail. If they sold, great. Otherwise, they’d return them within thirty days. I think there was a limit on how many toys you could purchase, so first the husband would go into the store and then the wife. I marveled at the idea that people were selling stuff on eBay that was easily available at retail stores.
On sale? Rarely. On clearance sale? Sometimes. I’ve picked up Harley parts and stuff off of final clearance tables for 20% and had them go on eBay sometimes for 80% or better. You just really have to know your product and marketplace to make it work and accept that no one bats 1000.
There are some booksellers on Amazon that price their product at $.01. Sure, they can charge $3.99 for shipping, but that’s a pretty thin margin cause their packing and shipping isn’t free. They must know something I don’t.
Since the OP is looking for personal experiences, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Often times, I’ll buy eggs at 7 cents apiece and sell them for a profit at 5 cents each.
I’ve sold a lot of stuff on ebay. While the fee structure is complicated, a good rule of thumb is: expect to lose 15% of your net (after paying for shipping) to ebay and paypal fees. If the deal is still good with that in mind, go for it… (I’ve done this often with clearance rack board games. It helps to know your market. I wouldn’t dare try with electronics. The market changes too quickly.)
A lot of the stuff you see people buying on slickdeals and then selling is going to be a form of “debundling” - where you say, buy a graphics card that you want, and sell off the games that come with it free, giving you a very low net cost for the stuff you want (but not a profit). Only the very very best deals have real profit potential straight up where you just buy it one day and turn around and sell it the next. Those tend to go absolutely crazy like the HP Touchpad firesale, where it was easily a $50-100 net profit if you could get one @$99 in the first place.
I got in on a custom-made item for myself and considered ordering more to sell on eBay at near 100% profit. Then I realized that the project’s spearhead would probably want to do that himself and I didn’t have the money for extras anway.
next time there is a great deal, wait a fee days and check ebay. lots of other people will do the same thing, glutting the market and driving prices down. I did that sometimes, there would be tons of items for sale new in box, except the upc code had been cut out.
some people do well buying at yard sales or estate auctions (or buying in bulk) then selling individual items but you have to know the market in question.
Milo, is that you buddy? It’s been years…how are things going?
I sell a lot of items on ebay doing exactly this. Everyone has pretty much mentioned all the metrics and cautions about purchasing these kinds of items. The bottom line is unless I can buy it for at least 70% off retail (because ebay will be 40-50% off retail) AND I have a reasonable expectation I can resell it reasonably quickly, AND I know I’m not going to being going head to head on the item with a zillion other bargain buyer-resellers I don’t bother with it. I’ve been doing this for a number of years and while I generally choose well I still regularly get burned with some items.
The other question you need to ask yourself if why is it being closed out in the first place? If it has bad performance reviews good luck re-selling it not matter how much of a deal it is.
The only part not addressed in the other posts is that if you sell these times on ebay you are effectively a store and you are personally guaranteeing the fit, performance and speedy delivery of the item. Dealing with returns is a PITA.
WAG: Fishing for good seller reviews to build up their business.
I have a book resale business, and have some books listed on half.com, which is a division of eBay. Haven’t sold any that way yet, but the ones I have listed are the ones for which I could potentially get a LOT more than I could anywhere else.
Example: Wilton’s “Celebrate!” cake decorating books from past decades can sell for $100 or more if they are in mint condition. Not bad for my initial 50 cent or so investment! 
I have some other antique and rare books that could be quite valuable to the right person.
Half.com’s minimum price is 75 cents plus shipping. I have a nice stock of padded envelopes stowes away in case I do sell anything, and I got them for almost nothing at an estate sale.
When my brother’s kids, who are now 12 and 13, were little, he would buy designer outfits on eBay for less than he would pay for regular clothes from, say, Target, and those were their portrait clothes. He would then re-sell them for approximately what he paid for them.
You’re probably right, and also a way to clear out books without discarding them. Smaller books can actually be profitable to ship this way, when sent via media mail.