Updated: January 2021

If you have an eye for a bargain, you can make some extra cash by buying and selling video game bundles for a profit, by splitting them out. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the steps of how to flip them.

In my recent blog side hustling from hospital, I told you how I bought multiple video game bundles, and resold them for a profit. It’s actually a pretty simple process if you wanted to do it too, with many bargains to be had on eBay and local selling sites such as Facebook Marketplace and Shpock. Some of my best flips include:

A HUGE Wii bundle including 15 games and 10 accessories on Facebook Marketplace (which I made mum go and get)!

• Bought: £50
• Sold for individually: £125
• Total profit: £75

A Limited edition Wii mini bundle including 2 games and 4 accessories on eBay

• Bought: £33
• Sold for individually: £60
• Total profit: £27

This just shows the kind of flips that can be made! The reselling part doesn’t have to be painful either. If you pick up a bundle cheap enough, you can simply take the whole lot of CEX and make a quick flip.

The key is to obviously buy low and sell high. Here is a break down of my method on doing just that:

Step 1) Find the bargains

Listings from people flogging their unused video game consoles can be found on sites such as eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Shpock. Some are already priced cheap to sell, whilst others may need a bit of negotiating or bidding on.

To get the best bundles for the lowest price, I suggest looking for listings close by to you. Finding a listing that you can pick up in your local area, not only do you save on high postage fees, but also 95% of potential buyers are out of the picture, due to it being collection only. Here are the best ways to find those local listings:

eBay

You can sort your listings on eBay search by ‘distance first’ in order to see the ones closest to you. If you find a bundle where it is listed as ‘free collection only’ – that’s your holy grail. Zero postage costs and barely any competition. You may also see bundles on auction that are close by to you, but charge a postage fee. On these listings you could always message the buyer and ask if you could collect for fee (and most likely they’ll say yes, as it saves them hassle)!

Here’s a link to a search for Wii bundle listings. Be sure to change the search to ‘auction only’ and sort by ‘distance first’.

Suppose you don’t have a car, or can’t collect in person (like me in hospital at the moment), there are still ways to search for cheap bundles. You can filter your searches in a few different ways to find auctions, each with their own benefits:

• Ending soonest – You may be able to place a ‘snipe bid’ at the last second of an auction, and grab a bargain if it is going for cheap. (Wii bundles ending soonest)
• Newly listed – Occasionally you may find someone puts a bundle on ‘buy it now’ for a cheap price, simply because they don’t know its value. (Wii bundles newly listed)

Facebook Marketplace/Shpock

One of the newest but most lucrative ways to finding cheap video game bundles. Both of these sites show you listings from sellers close to you for local pick up, so you eliminate a lot of the competition.

With the Facebook app installed on your phone, there should be an option to search the marketplace. Both Facebook Marketplace and Shpock order their listings by the ones closest to you, but you can filter down further if you wanted to.

Once you find a bundle going for cheap, you can message the seller and ask to collect it. If the price they have listed it at is too high, you have the ability to negotiate on price when you message. Bundles on these sites can go quite quickly, and its usually first come first served – so you’ll need to get in quick if there is a bundle you like the look of!

Step 2) How to Look up the value

Once you’ve found some options that look promising, you’ll need to get a rough idea of the value before you submit an offer or place a bid. To do this, I have been using the buying and selling retailer CEX to research prices and look up the value. On its site, you can use the search tool to see how much they would buy each item for.

Repeat this until each item in the bundle has been entered and numbers added up. If you sign up to a CEX account, it allows you to add all the items to your selling basket by choosing the ‘I want to sell this item’ button. That way, it should give tally for you, and give a total at the end of how much it is all worth.

I’ve just written a brand new guide about how selling at CEX works – so there are plenty of hints and tips to get more for your money.

Lets look at an example. From a quick search of ‘Wii bundle’ on eBay listings sorted by distance first, I found this option. It includes a console (including all cables), two official wii controllers, two nunchuck controllers, a Wii Fit board, two Wii wheels and 9 games.

It’s worth noting – be sure to check the images and description first to check everything that is included (and more importantly, that it all works)!

I can see from the outset, this bundle has some high value games. There are many high value games to look out for, but as a rule of thumb, any game in the Mario, Sonic, Lego or official Wii game series are your safe bets. If you see any of these titles within a bundle, there is value there.

In order to get a rough estimate in price, it’s time to look it all up on CEX. By searching for all of the items, it tells me the value is £43.41 in cash or £66 in CEX vouchers. Here is a breakdown:

Step 3) Placing your bid

Now that you know the rough value from CEX, it’s time to place your bid. From the totals you’ve just seem, come up with your highest price you’d be willing to pay, in order to still make a profit. For me, I try to make at least 50% of what I spent, so for the bundle above, my maximum bid would be around £30 if I wanted cash, or £40 if I wanted a voucher.

On eBay auctions, you’re able to set a maximum bid where it’ll bid up to that price for you, so you can bid once at your highest price – and wait for the auction to play out. If the bidding goes over your maximum price, then you just won’t win the listing (don’t be tempted to bid more… stick to your maximum)! If no one else bids past your maximum price, the bundle is yours, and you could end up paying less than your maximum if bidding doesn’t reach that high.

Buying from Facebook Marketplace or Shpock? Once you have your maximum price in your head, send them a message to start the conversation. I recommend starting by offering them a little less than your maximum, so there is room to negotiate. If it’s already listed at a good price however, negotiating might scare the seller away, so use your judgement.

Step 4) Reselling your items

Once you’ve successfully picked up a cheap bundle, and you know you can make a profit from your CEX search, there are a few ways you can resell.

Sell to CEX

CEX will pay either cash or a voucher for your items. You can either take your haul into a shop OR online by printing out a free postage label to send to their warehouse. They will then process the items and send you payment.

If you wanted to make a quick flip for not much effort, you can package everything up and sell to CEX immediately, though you might not get the best value for every item. CEX offers very poor value on some games (such as 1p cash) – so it’s worth leaving those out. Anything with a value of less than £1 at CEX, you can likely get a better price elsewhere, such as back on eBay.

See my full blog on selling to CeX for lots of  tips.

Sell back on eBay

For consoles and accessories, the place you’ll get the highest price is actually back on eBay. I usually list my items as a ‘Buy It Now’ for 30 days and set a price. On most occasions, if it’s priced right, it should sell within the 30 days.

There is a way to check the average price your item is selling for on eBay too. When searching for an item, you’re able to filter down to ‘completed and sold’, to see the prices they have sold for in the past. That gives you a clearer picture as to what yours should sell for, and what the list price should be.

Remember that eBay do charge fees however. They take a 10% fee from the sale price (including P&P), and if the transaction is through PayPal, there’s another 3% in fees.

There are several items you might pick up in bundles where you’ll get a higher value on eBay than CEX. These are the main ones:

• Wii consoles: traded in at CEX require you to hand, as you need to trade in the console, all cables and a wii controller to get £11 in cash. You could make double that by splitting these up. Wii controllers can be traded in to CEX for £7 each or £10 in vouchers alone. Selling just the console with wires back on eBay could make you between £10-20.
• Wii Balance Boards: You’d only receive £4 at CEX for a balance board and a measly 1p for a Wii fit game, yet on eBay you can sell a Balance Board and game bundle for £15-£25 pretty easily.
• ‘1p’ games: For any item CEX offers you peanuts for a group games, try sticking them into a bundle yourself. I had a bunch of 18 games I bundled together that CEX offered 20p or less for each one. I put them on an eBay auction, and they sold for nearly £30! A huge difference from the pennies at CEX.

Cash VS Vouchers

When selling your items on to CEX, you’ll need to decide whether you’re being paid in cash or vouchers. Each has their own pros and cons – the main one being, if you are flipping the items for cash… you may need to declare this to the taxman.

The same can be said if you are selling things on eBay. If your sole purpose of buying an item is to resell, you may need to fill out a self assessment tax form at the end of the year – so be sure to keep a tally!

If you were wanting to purchase a high value item from CEX, then you can easily by-pass this, by opting for the voucher. Not only do you get a higher price for your items… the taxman is left out of the equation.

So there we have it! I think that’s everything you need to know to get started. If you liked this blog, check out my guide to matched betting if you want to side hustle even further. Also, be sure not to miss out on the launch of my new couponing book Secrets to Saving: The Ultimate UK Couponing Guide!

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments below, Tweet me @Jordon_Cox or ask me on Facebook. Happy reselling! 😀

About Jordon Cox

Jordon Cox is known as Britain's Coupon Kid, and has been saving money since age 15. In that time, he has taught others how to do the same through blogs, public speaking and appearing as a TV expert.

He is best known for doing some crazy things to save money, including getting £600 of shopping for 4p using coupons, and travelling from Sheffield to Essex via Berlin, because it was £8 cheaper than the train.

View all posts by Jordon Cox