I sold my Apple Watch and made (a tiny) profit!
Last week, I put the watch - a Sport edition with a white band - up for sale on eBay.
While the watch is nice, I think the watch is still two years away from being a great product.
The apps are slow to respond. Getting texts and emails buzzed to my wrist is useful, but also a bit stressful. The fitness tracking was helpful, but not terribly informative. I already use the step counter on my phone, which gives me roughly the level of inspiration to move around as the watch's fitness features.
Also, I have a two nice traditional Swiss watches that I inherited from my father. They were sitting on my dresser collecting dust, and that felt weird.
So, up for sale it went!
Apple is about to increase its supply of watches, so I wanted to sell before people could walk in the store, get one, and walk out.
I had initially tried to sell it on Craigslist for $500, but nobody was biting. I lowered that to $450 and still got no takers. After I wrote about selling the watch, offers started rolling in, but they were mostly trying to get me to sell for $300.
The watch costs $399 new, but with taxes it was $431. I would have been happy getting $400. I would be paying a $31 rental fee for the month.
So, I was positively delighted when the final bid came in at $465. I only set my sale for the US. People on Twitter told me that if I opened to bidding to international users, it would have been even higher. After fees from eBay and PayPal, I should eek out a tiny profit.
What's the moral of this story?
If you have a watch but you're not in love with it, sell now! You'll be able to recoup all your money. In a year, my guess is you'll be lucky to get $200 for it.
Also: For now, demand for the watch remains strong. I can't think of many (if any) products you can buy then sell a month later and make money on it.
While there is a lot of doomsaying around Apple and the watch, it seems people are stoked by it. That's a good sign for the product in the short term. The question is whether people drop the watch after a month of use, or they stick with it for the long haul.