I’m not a big fan of the stock market but I do enjoy buying goods and reselling them for a profit. This can be done fairly easily with a bit of research and there usually isn’t much risk involved. This 2013 holiday season I enjoyed a nice Christmas bonus compliments of Sony and Microsoft when they released their new PS4 and XBOX One game consoles. By anticipating a large demand I was able to buy low and sell high which is usually how you want to do it. While these opportunities don’t come often, they usually carry big rewards.

While we all want to own the next big tech device to hit the shelves, there are others who want to own simply to short the supply and sell it to someone who can’t wait another day. These products can be hard to predict and usually the profit window is pretty short, but with some creative purchasing and a little patience, you can make a tidy profit.

Back in November Sony and Microsoft both released their latest and greatest new game consoles, the PS4 and the XBOX One. Both were highly anticipated and long overdue. Past history has shown me that new gaming consoles rarely ever stay on the shelves when they get released. This is partly due to supply shortages, production that can’t keep up demand and further artificial demand from people like me who want to flip them. While some people may disagree with this practice, I believe it’s no different from the stock market as the market dictates its own price to those who are willing to pay. Having anticipated shortages, I thought it would be a good idea to pre-order a few of each console way in advance. Because of the high demand, most stores will only allow you to pre-order one console, so I pre-ordered from a few different retailers to maximize my profit. I played it safe and only ordered two of each console, but as expected, both consoles were immediately sold out upon release.

I placed a few local ads on Craigslist and was able to sell three of the consoles. But because I got greedy and tried to get top dollar for my wares, I priced myself out of the market on my last console and was unable to sell it before it was readily available at most stores again. Rather than sell at a loss, I simply returned the console to the retailer and took a $5 shipping hit.

Between the sales of the consoles, Ebates rewards and my credit card rewards, I made a total profit of $258.77 for doing very little work. This worked out to about a 13% return on my initial $1900 investment, far better than any bank investment I could have done.

It’s hard to predict what products will create a stir next, but do your research and keep your investments smart and you could be profiting too!