This is the journal I kept a little after Black Friday this year. It details the Wiis I've bought and where, and interesting notes surrounding the holiday console market. Enjoy.

Wii Log

Week of Black Friday

11/23 - Waited in line all night for a Wii. Approx 120 people for 28 @ Forum.

Week of 11/26
11/27 Dad informed me of some at wal mart. Bought one with Holly's money

11/29 Waited for an hour with two mothers for one at GS.

Week of 12/3
 
12/3 One at GameStop. Surprise Shipment
12/4  Bought two at wal mart
12/5 Shipment expected. Will wake up early to check it out. College Station?

12/7 Sold two. One buy it now with Wii Play for $639 with shipping, one ended for $401.21 w/ship. Still non-payer on the one that went for $650. Bitches.
12/8 One is on ebay ending Tues. With Wii Play

An interesting trend I've noticed this week; First of all, there're a shitload more Wiis on Ebay now. We're up to almost 22000. WTF mate? Where are all these people finding them? As a result, the overall avg price has dropped to less than $400 now. Somewhere around $380 at this point? Bundling seems to be the best option and gallery featured also seems to be a good move.

Ebay:

Week before black friday - 12000 systems
Week of- 14500
12/4 - 16500
12/5 - Figured out Walmart gets their shipment usually on Tues. Is target the same? 19000 Wiis on Ebay. Wow.
12/8 - 22000. Market flooded sufficiently? Let's find out. A little more than two weeks until christmas.

Week of 12/10

12/10 Best Buy stocked Wiis last night. Was able to get one of six this morning after running from GameStop to Best Buy. 18800 on ebay.

12/11 - Back to 20000 Wiis. About to go back to Walmart for their Tues shipment.

12/16 - 24500. The last push. I haven't been going on many Wii hunting trips this week because of everything that's going on, but today my sis and I got in line at Circuit City at about 6 AM. We were 19th and 20th, which is funny, because at Best Buy there were about 120 people in line at the same time, and they were just across the shopping center. CC had 33 Wiis.

We then went to Sears to see if they had any left, but we discovered that they haven't recieved any in a while. Oh well.

Still 12/16 - 26500 wiis on ebay.


Week of 12/17

12/17 - as high as 28500
12/18 - 23500. I went to WalMart today to see if they were gonna recieve a shipment. To my surprise, there were 6 people in front of me waiting since 10:30. It was already 11:15 and the shipment usually arrives at 11. So first of all, if it was coming, it was late. Secondly, Lines inside a Walmart?

So 11:45 rolls around and the manager comes by to say "sorry, no Wii's today", and almost as if it was choreographed, everyone in line hung their head and slowly trudged away, disappointed. I did have an interesting conversation with the woman right behind me in line. She told me that she had no problem waiting until after Christmas to get one...but...she was in line for at least half and hour :-\

Anyway, the general consensus of people in line thought that they'd be much MUCH easier to find after Christmas (poor mis-informed souls), and some were even talking about the Gamestop voucher thing and how they didn't want to wait that long (potentially the end of January). Anyway, it looks as if demand will be as high as ever even after the holidays this year, judging from this sample at a relatively slow WalMart.

12/20 - 15800. Wow. Just wow. Quite the drop this week. Over 13000 systems sold that weren't immediately replaced.

12/21 - 9100. Went to Best Buy this morning, and they had Wiis! Not very many, but Wiis none the less. I didn't get one because it's so close to Christmas it's not worth it anymore. Last Wii sold for ~$354 with shipping.

Conclusion: Not a bad holiday season. I sold 11 Wiis and made $1,195 total. A good lesson for the future.

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If anyone wants me to post a more detailed Black Friday log, let me know, I'll post it in this thread. 

HOLY $HIT

How old are you 15?

Jackass, I'm 19. This wasn't an organized thing, they're random notes.

Dude Im not a donkey.

Dam thats alot of money in just a couple of days.

It was over about 3 and a half weeks.

Good job, but more people will hear of this scheme and try it, and you will probably get more competition in the future.

The more likely scenario is that Wii's could be more widely available next year.  Most people don't have the free time for this sort of thing, pretty much a highschool student/college student gig unless you are a fulltime ebayer.

So when you include gas costs, how much do you figure you made per hour reselling Wiis?

Oh god, per hour? Well by my own estimations, including Black Friday, I've probably spent about 15 hours and about 50 gallons of gas specifically looking for Wiis.

So (1195 - (3*50))/15 = $70/hr

Not bad.

@ Steve Smith - I had plenty of competition this year. At one point there were 28500 Wiis on Ebay.

I will admit, I went to a target days ago and they had Wii's. I decided to try my luck at reselling it. I really was on the fence with this one. I think its somewhat wrong, but you know what? That is business. Business is competitive and cut-throat and if you want to make money, you can't put feelings over a potential good deal. If a mom wanted to buy a Wii for her son or daughter that Christmas, she should've been waiting for the store to open.

Dec. 16th (The Wii Explosion Sunday) - I just walked in and they were there. Not many though. So I grabbed it. I also grabbed WiiPlay and an extra Nunchuk.

I put my Wii up on eBay (With WiiPlay and Extra Nunchuk) for a starting bid of $300 and a Buy It Now of $600. Keep in my this all retails for around $340 (with tax). I only put it up as a one day auction. I also said that if the bidding gets over $600 or if someone uses Buy It Now, I'll through in Super Mario Galaxy for free. The next morning someone used Buy It Now and bought it for $600. She paid me $680 though because she said she wanted Express Mailed to her.

I took my Wii, WiiPlay, and Nunchuk with me to Gamestop, picked up Galaxy for $49 right before I went to the post office. Express mail was around $60. So in the end, I was paid $680 - $20 (Paypal's cut) - $50 (Shipping) - 390 (Retail Value) = $220 profit.

That is the only Wii I ever sold. I don't think I will sell another. I think I got really lucky with how much I made. Two of my friends bought 2 to sell in another town (about 2 hours away from me). One sold for a profit of 60. And the other sold his for $250 and a new, in the box Zune.