My wife just sold our son's baby bed on Craig's List the other day. Actually this originally belonged to our older son and was handed down to one of our twins when they were born. So, after 6 years in service, the bed fetched $180, slightly less than half the price we paid for it six years ago.
If you think about it, this is very similar to a financing transaction - we didn't really buy the bed, we sort of leased it for a few years... Every year of use cost us less than 10% of the value of the bed with most of the depreciation probably occurring in the first year or so...
There is one more bed remaining to be sold. That one is being offered for $150, which is about the same price we bought it - on Craig's List - 3 years ago. If that deal goes through as planned, our cost for the bed will have been nothing more than the opportunity cost of not investing our original purchase price over the period the bed was used. That's what I call practically free furniture.
The same trick works for the buy side as well. Earlier in the week we bought a new race car shaped bed for the twins (we already had one from our older son) - and paid $40. A new bed would have cost $300.
You gotta love Craig's List. Of course, there is also a darker side to this website (as for any peer to peer market place), so always use common sense in dealing with folks you don't know.
4 comments:
That's a good deal. Yeah, you just have to be on guard when you're on the Net. Also, if it's something you're not planning to sell, Freecycle.org is a great place to giving it forward.
Actually, thanks for the tip on recycling. I always wonder what to do about junk that no one will buy. I'll give it a shot and let you know what I think.
Post a Comment