A few weeks ago on Tuesday, the day before trash day, I saw someone put a black reclining chair outside next to the trash barrels. The chair was fully functional, but it had a tear on the front of the cushion (which by the way, was also removable). Even though I already had a bigger, more comfortable couch-like-chair in my apartment (the previous tenants were going to throw it out, so I asked them to leave it), I decided to bring this reclining chair inside.
A few weeks went by and I realized that not only don't I lounge around, but also that it simply takes up too much space -- it was getting in the way of my morning stretching routine. So I told myself I would put it back outside with the trash. But trash day came and I forgot to put it outside. Then I thought, "Hey, CraigsList doesn't cost anything. Why not list it there and see if, by some chance, I can actually make money from this.". So I listed the chair on CraigsList this past Wednesday. The following day I received this email:
Hi Raam,
I would like to have the chair please , if it is still available? Is it very heavy?What is your adress? just wanted to see if its walkable with the chair...
Thanx so much
cheers
Atreyee
I replied, and after going back and forth a bunch of times, we settled on $7. The extra $2 is for me dropping the chair off at his house, which just so happens to be even closer than my office.
I picked up the chair from the trash. To figure out how much profit I made by selling the chair, there needs to be a cost associated with it. Lets assume the chair somehow cost me $0.01. I sold it for $5 (which is 500 pennies), so I basically made 50,000% profit. Calculate in the extra $2, and its even more than 50,000%!
If you're wondering how I did the math, here it is: 500/1*100 = 50,000% (Five hundred pennies, divided by one penny, multiplied by one hundred, equals fifty thousand).