As soon as I saw the Best Buy flyer this past weekend, I knew it was time to sell my iPad 2. The big-box retail chain is offering Apple’s tablet for $ 50 less this week. That’s great for buyers, but not good for sellers, as values are dropping in anticipation of the next iPad announcement in March. But my son, who’s also selling an original iPad, and I each earned an extra $ 100 over what we thought we’d get for our devices. Why? Because we didn’t jump on the first offer.
When I’ve sold gadgets in the past, I’ve dealt often with Gazelle: I’ve always received what I think are fair offers and have never had an issue getting paid. But our good-condition devices, a 16 GB Wi-Fi iPad and a 32 GB Wi-Fi iPad 2, were only worth $ 140 and $ 240, respectively, to Gazelle. That seemed low to me, simply because people that I know who are looking for used iPads seem willing to pay more. The hunt was on for a better price.
It didn’t take long to do a Google search for the phrase “sell iPad” and find numerous third-party sale options. We could have gone the eBay route, but I prefer a fire-and-forget strategy to get the best price and move on quickly. Various sites were all offering different amounts for used iPads, which I presume reflects a limited market supply coupled with strong demand.
Ten minutes into our hunt, we found a gadget-purchase site willing to give us $ 241 and $ 349 for our two iPads. That was the best deal we could find, so we jumped on it and committed to selling our iPads. We have two pre-paid boxes on the way and just need to pack up our slates, drop the boxes off at a local UPS store and wait for our money.
We may not have the proceeds before the iPad 3 arrives, but at least we’ll have more money for our upgrades than we thought. If you’re going to sell your iPad in advance of the next model, I wouldn’t wait much longer if you want to get the maximum value for it. And by all means check the various offers out there for iPad buybacks, which can change daily; a little bit of time and effort could put some extra money in your pocket or towards your iPad 3.
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