How to Turn Old Car Parts Into Paypal CASH

This is no gimmick, im not trying to sell you anything. Im just giving away this little nugget I figured out a couple years ago. Maybe someone can make good of it, add some extra cash to there wallet, pay a few outstanding debts. Maybe you can expand the idea into something huge but as i know it its small potatoes.

First I have to tell the story of how I learned this and its the way my brain seeks opportunity that gave me the ahha moment.

So i bought a used 98 Toyota corolla and I wanted to install a single din CD player.

If you dont know the term din its size. One din is like 3 inches wide and a double din is like 6 aprox. your standard cd player is 1 din your new touch screen units are double din.

Anyway so this old car had a old double din cd player towards the bottom of the center console and at the top it had the single din radio. So the CD player would go were the single din radio was at. So if i replaced that then i would have this old double din cd player doing nothin looking stupid so i did some research.

it turned out some of the 98 models didnt come with that cd player instead they had a nice double din storage compartment and i wanted that for my car to replace the stupid cd player it had.

So I called a few auto parts store, toyota dealer. I think a new one cost around $100 or more and I didnt want to pay that much. So I look on ebay ok there selling for $50 and im like yes
I will pay that. I felt inside the conviction of yes im going to buy this but I remembered there is this self serve junk yard in my area. You pay $2 at the gate you take off your own parts and pay cheap rates at the window.

So i get out there in the winter with my overalls on and a tool box and sure enough found a nice one 2-4 bolts easy removal. I go to pay and end up paying like $5-$8 total including the $2 gate fee. At that moment I realized i could buy these for $5 and sell them for $50 on ebay.

Now that $50 includes free shipping and you have to pay ebay fees so on that particular item I think i was make $10 profit. I went back bought all they has which was 2 or 3 in good condition. Sure enough I sold those no problem.

To make an already long story short I tried selling a few other car parts mainly plastic parts, rear view mirrors and some sold and some didn't.

The best item I found to sell were Cadillac grills. All grills were $20 except metal ones were $30. they sell for $120 free shipping if there in good condition. ends up being a $40-$50 profit because shipping is hard on those. I made my own boxes used free packing to increase profits. One time I found a nice aftermarket metal billet grill out there made out good on that deal.

If you can find the right parts this can be a legitimate full time operation. Before i stopped and moved on to other things I had plans of driving to other locations within 2 hours of me. Air bag systems are possible hot items not for sure on that.

 

Great idea. I am sure that some will find it to be a worthwhile endeavor. If you really know your car parts, I could see it becoming quite profitable.

 

Yes people do it I went to a junk yard and the service guy ask me are you selling those on eBay I said how did he know. He said there's another guy comes here and buy shit loads of parts and does the same thing.

My problem was some parts didn't sell and I'm not a mechanic really so I don't go into the real parts under the hood.

 

If the key does not start the car, I am pretty much done troubleshooting and time to call AAA.

It may make sense to research what is actually selling on eBay to target the more popular items.

 

Yea maybe get a eBay tool or program. What I do is type the item in an eBay search then go to filter and turn on completed listings. That will show you what that item actually sold for and it will tell you is the item selling every time or is the person having to relist it.

And I still sell on eBay with other items I don't want to share what I do now at this time. It's hard with car parts I guess cuz I don't know a whole lot about car parts so it was a trial and error thing.