Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper interview Jamie Trainor from Capital Gains Recycling about reselling old electronics.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Interview With Capital Gains Recycling
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are excited to talk to Jamie Trainor, who's gonna give us a little look into his business. It sounds really exciting. He actually is Capital Gains Recycling or Capital Gains LLC. They deal with electronics. So Jamie, thanks for jumping on here and spending some time with us today.
Jamie: Hi, my name's Jamie Trainor, owner and operator, Capital Gains Recycling. We are an electronic recycling company that also deals with reselling, you know, so people bring in junk and you know, I fix it, resell it. It's great.
Rob: Awesome. So you guys typically deal with electronics, correct?
Jamie: Yeah, that's our main focus.
Melissa: How did you get, like, how did you get started doing some, like what's your background in?
Jamie: So, so we started, we started as like a non-ferrous scrapping company. You know, copper, aluminum, cans, metal, you know, and then, it kind of just grew into electronics and you know, there's really nowhere to bring electronics and you really shouldn't throw it in the dumpster.
So we just started pushing that to the public and it just started flowing in.
Rob: I love it. I love it.
Melissa: It's a different kind of business model. So basically what you guys are doing is you're like, you're taking all the electronics that people don't know what to do with and say, yes, keep it outta the landfill, but then you're using the parts or you're reselling some of them as well. Is that how?
Jamie: Well, honestly, 85% of what people bring in still works. They just, we're an upgrade society. The newest one comes out. True. Gotta have it. What do you do with the old one? Sits in your drawer. Instead, people bring it to me. I plug it in a hundred percent of the time it works. Post it on eBay. You know it's better to reuse than recycle. Now if it doesn't work, then we recycle it.
Rob: Okay. Do you and people who are bringing you electronics, do you pay them like scrap weight or anything for it? Or is it just people donating it?
Jamie: Commercial clients, yes. Okay. You know, people that bring in 50 to a hundred laptops at a time, but not one or two. No.
Rob: Cool.
Melissa: Yeah, no, that's a, it's a great place for people to be able, like it's helping out in so many different ways. So like, it, it, it's keeping stuff out of the landfill. Like, that's one thing I feel like we get, you know, we get comments on social media or whatever saying you know, you shouldn't be reselling like, you know, how much stuff people throw away.
We are such a wasteful culture. Like are, like you said, we're an upgrade. Like, what's the next best thing? It still works fine and somebody can still use it, so why throw it away? Absolutely. I that was, yeah.
Jamie: Yeah. We find that, yeah. I get, I get. I get tons of buyers from other countries for, you know, stuff that's not really relevant in our country anymore.
You know, like a second gen i series, you know, to them that's amazing technology and they're so happy to pay $20 or $30 for it when I would just look at 50 of 'em on the ground and be like, oh, you know. So it's awesome to get them reused by people who really need them.
Rob: Absolutely. It's definitely a service that you're providing that somebody really will take it and be very, thankful and it will be useful for them.
So, what is your biggest platform? So is this stuff that you get in that is absolutely working and you can resell it? What's your biggest platform that you're selling it on? And?
Jamie: eBay.
Rob: Any other? eBay. Cool. Any other platforms that you're dealing with or solely eBay?
Jamie: Larger items. Facebook marketplace. Okay. You know, things that aren't worth shipping.
Rob: Cool.
Melissa: Yeah. So how long have you guys been on eBay?
Jamie: You know, it, it probably about a year. Our account's been active for like two or three, but a year I've really been hammering it because this presidential administration kind of made scrap, not really worth it.
Oh, and so resell is really where it's at right now. You know why, why scrap something for 57 cents when someone will buy it on eBay for $57?
Rob: Absolutely. You know, that's cool. That sparked another question. So the stuff that does come in, that you plug in might have something wrong with it. Do you guys try to fix it before you scrap it?
Or what, what's your process with that?
Jamie: The furthest I'll go is, you know, changing the ram, you know, but can't spend too much time on an item, otherwise, now you're losing money. So, but even that, even if it doesn't work, someone buy will buy it for parts, you know, the charging port, the, you know, the USB ports, you know, so it still has a huge resale value, even not functioning. The screen, you know, I light test the screen with a light and, you know, even without powering it on, you know, it works.
Rob: Yeah. Cool. And you keep referring to like, phone stuff. Is that your biggest like is that what people are definitely getting you the most of? Is phones?
Jamie: Laptops. Okay. Laptops and cell phones, yes.
Rob: Okay, cool.
Jamie: But laptops is the biggest thing. If you look at my store, you're, it's like 80% laptops. Laptops.
Cool.
Melissa: And are you having people do the listings for you or are you doing that all yourself still?
Jamie: I personally, I, I do have one lister now, but yeah, I've personally built this eBay from the ground up myself. I answer all the messages. I do everything.
Rob: That's awesome.
Melissa: Do you?
Jamie: I know. I'm so proud.
Melissa: You should be. It's a lot of hard work.
Jamie: It's, we just, we just hit top seller, so, okay.
Rob: That's, that's awesome.
Jamie: I know. I'm getting goosebumps thinking about it.
Rob: Congrats, man. That's awesome.
Melissa: Yeah. That's awesome. So do you like, as far as growing this for, it seems like you have a whole bunch of stuff that keeps coming in.
So do you see this growing into like maybe you'd hire a couple more listers and grow it more or do you like it?
Jamie: Yes I do. During the cold season business, people stop dropping things off, you know, it's cold. I don't want to go out. My dumpster's right there, you know, that's way easier. But when it gets hot, yeah, it's flowing in like crazy. So typically when it's warm, I hire another one or two guys. And then when it gets cold, unfortunately I have to let a couple go.
Rob: Yeah. Cool. Another question that I thought of, so you're having people bringing you stuff, are you guys also looking out on auctions or other sites that you're actually buying stuff to resell or just as it's?
Jamie: I really want, I really wanna start doing that. Yes. Okay. Because I'm in a lot of eBay groups on Facebook, and I see guys pick up stuff for $2 to $5 and, oh, I just flipped this for $700. It's like, ah, man, I, I need to start doing that.
Rob: Cool. Yeah. The reason I ask is, yeah, one of our local auctions that we deal with, I see a whole city or a whole township, they upgrade their computers and they all end up in tons of pallets, full of computers, screens and all that stuff.
And they sell it for pennies on the dollar that you can actually buy it because it's out of date stuff. Nobody wants it and you can get it dirt, dirt cheap. So I was just wondering if that's part of your business model right now, but it sounds like it's just recycling right now, but you're gonna expand.
Jamie: No, at the moment, it just flows in for free.
Rob: That's awesome too.
Melissa: So have you been like, to get more awareness out, have you been, like you're more in the local market, you just tell people about what you're doing and, and let people know?
Jamie: Yeah, word of mouth. We host electronic recycling events where we park our huge 30 foot trailer, you know, with a big old sign and we promote it on Facebook and people come and drop it off and they get to throw it up in the truck.
And, you know, we kind of explain face-to-face, you know, what we do and how we do it.
Melissa: Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah. What a, it's a different way to, to, you know, get inventory and, and repurpose it and recycle it. That's all. Absolutely.
Jamie: Yeah. And we love it. Yeah.
Melissa: Would do you, did you have like a, you enjoyed electronics when you first started?
Or is just kind of worked out?
Jamie: So I went to an online school. I, I wanted to be like IT network admin, administer. And I was going to college and I actually started here as an employee. It was Dylan and I, he was the owner. I was the one employee. And, at that time we didn't do any resale, nothing. We, we took everything apart.
We smashed, it was like a smash room, you know, you smashed everything. And we scrapped everything. And then one day I sold one thing. If it was some computer and I sold it for like a thousand dollars, you know, and it would've been $25 in scrap, and I was just like, man, we need to like reevaluate what we're doing because we've probably thrown away $200,000 in the last year.
And then boom, I started the eBay and it started picking up and I was like, man, I'm never taking anything apart again. That's awesome. Now it's just, now it's just list all day, list list, list, list.
Melissa: So what is, take us through your process. Cause so you have a lot of inventory, so how do you manage your inventory of stuff you're listing and like your, what is your day today look like?
Like do you have it? How do you organize things and how do you keep it?
Jamie: It is a horrible mess. It looks like a hoarder's don't work here if you're a hoarder. Basically I just list laptops all day or phones. The rest kind of gets separated and sold as scraps, you know, servers, switches, routers, you know, but, yeah.
Cool. We need some, we got, we got a lot of work to do. We're learning. No one's taught us a, a single thing, you know, we kind of just wong it and, and it worked.
Melissa: Jump in and figure it out as you go. That's like the best to take action. And, and then he fig, you know, you're making progress and you'll
Jamie: Oh, yeah. Huge.
Melissa: make mistakes, but, you know, it's a, it's a all a learning thing. Absolutely. What, it's probably one of the biggest things you've learned since being on eBay, since you're fairly, like it's been the first, like year or two that you've been diving into it?
Jamie: You have to be very careful with your listings wordings. If you word one thing wrong, the customer will get it for free and make you return it.
It's extremely frustrating if you don't include something. If something's in that picture and you don't say that it's not included, and they message you and say, hey, where's that? Boom, they got you. Yeah, I think it's rough. Yeah. Yeah. I've learned that very quickly.
Melissa: Yep. You definitely learn and sometimes that's better. Some people, like they wanna know everything about the whole process before they dive in, but then, you know, sometimes it's better just to dive in. You make a couple mistakes and you're not gonna make those mistakes again.
Jamie: Right. Yeah. You lose a couple dollars and you will not forget it.
Rob: Yeah, that's one thing that we have around here is we definitely underpromise and we over-deliver.
So we want people to be overexcited and, and with joy once they get the item, thinking that this was in a little worse condition. I mean, it's in better condition than we actually talked about it or we, we put in the description because that's how you build a good clientele of people who really, really, like your stuff.
So, that's one thing that I learned as well in the beginning, overpromise and underdeliver with my items, get negative feedback. I, I mean, that's one of the things that I had to, I had to grow through and learn. Hey, we definitely want to underpromise and overdeliver on everything that we do, so, and sounds like, yeah, it's the school of hard knocks and everybody goes through it and you just learn how to get past it.
So that's really cool.
Jamie: Yeah, it is.
Melissa: Yeah. Have you or, do you plan to cross post on any other platforms or you just wanna focus just on eBay for right now?
Jamie: Yeah, I've just been focused on eBay. I'm not really sure what else there is. If you could maybe give me some advice.
Melissa: Well, we foc we do mostly eBay too, but, but Marketplace does pretty well with shipping.
If we don't, we don't do shipping just cuz they're customer service is not very. Yeah. On Facebook Marketplace, you can't get a hold of them. Mercari's another one that you could cross post,
Jamie: Mercari is not bad. I've bought off there a few times.
Melissa: Yeah, yeah. So they're, they're trying to be like eBay. Yeah.
Rob: But stuff your size, you definitely could list on marketplace and offer shipping. Are you doing that? Are you offering any shipping on marketplace?
Jamie: Marketplace, I typically do larger items like okay, you know, 50 inch flat screens that come in that work and, you know, larger items that are cool way too heavy to ship.
Rob: Yeah. Cool. Well that's, that's a definitely an expansion possibility for you is marketplace because they offer the shipping and the smaller items you can definitely sell on there and it will broaden your reach. You'll get out because marketplace, you know how marketplace is for your larger items, it's local. When you offer shipping on it I mean, you spread across the country, across the world. Sure. So yeah, you have that option if you wanna expand. I mean, it sounds like you got your hands in eBay and you got your, your time pretty well filled. But that's just an another option for stuff.
Jamie: Yeah. I just need to also find like a crossposting, like plat, you know, like an app or a program that does it cuz eBay is just so perfect for listing. It's just so quick. Yeah. And Facebook is not as user friendly for posting.
Melissa: Yeah. You just started using Vendoo, right?
Rob: We do, yeah. Vendoo is the one that I, I haven't done a lot of cross-posting cuz if, if you don't know, our stuff is larger items, so we're only dealing with the heavy, the stuff that we're shipping on pallets and that kind of stuff.
And I started using Vendoo as a multiple listing platform and they're pretty cool and they make it,
Melissa: you start with eBay and then go to the other ones.
Rob: All your, yeah. Vendoo, all of your platforms. Like once you put it into eBay, you can export it out of eBay into Vendoo and then you can decide what platform you wanna cross post it on.
And eBay by far is the, they want the most, they, they want the most information from you on shipping, on description, on all that stuff. So once that's filled out, once it goes over to Vendoo, you import it into Vendoo. All the other platforms are pretty easy. It's just pressing buttons and getting 'em into the other platform, so, which is pretty cool.
So something you do, you need to look into.
Jamie: Thank you.
Melissa: Of course. Save, save some time. And then it's something also if you end up hiring it out too, a VA could can do that stuff for you. Absolutely. So, which is, it's pretty cool to keep, keep track of inventory that way. Cool.
Rob: Well I'm curious, so do you have one of your flips that you got that sticks out sound? It sounds like that laptop that you did, but do you have anything that you would talk about that's like, oh man, this was so awesome.
Jamie: Yeah. So it was that one computer that I sold, it's called, I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but it's called an s g i Octane. So it's, it's a computer. It, it weighs 85 pounds.
It, it is actually the computer that the Nintendo 64 was made on, and it is also the computer that the Toy Story one and two were made on. Wow. So it was, super memorable. They were $500,000 back in the day.
Rob: Holy cow.
Jamie: And in 1990, so God, that's, that's a million dollars now, right? So I'll just, I'll never forget it.
I almost wish I didn't sell it.
Melissa: Maybe you'll come across another one. You never know.
Jamie: Now was just a random old lady that just dropped it off at an event. She said, my husband's had this in the basement for 50 years, or you know, 20 years. Yeah. You know, it's time to go.
Rob: Now out of curiosity, since I'm assuming, I mean, you don't have a lot of experience on eBay being in the last year.
I mean, not that you don't have experience, but did you list this as an auction and it went for a thousand, or did you put that price on it and that's what it sold?
Jamie: It was an auction actually. Wow. Okay. Back then I did like all auctions. Now I just do all buy it now.
Rob: Cool. Yeah. Yeah. We, we do the same. So that's why I'm always curious on that.
Melissa: But you probably got more for it, you think?
Rob: Well, you never know.
Jamie: Yeah. Probably.
Rob: Something at that that's, that well known is one of those things that you can't set a higher price on and typically you might not find it in seven to 10 days. Find that buyer. So you know now if you're doing buy it now prices, you see the difference between an auction versus a buy it now, finding the right buyer for those items.
Jamie: Yeah. Sometimes when I post to buy it now and it sells in seconds, I'm like, damn, I posted that for way too cheap.
Rob: Every reseller does that. I'm the same way. I'm the same way. So, yeah.
Melissa: Cause you, you get excited that you've made the sale and then you're like, crap. Like.
Jamie: Wait, that was probably worth double .
Rob: Oh, that's good.
Melissa: Are there any like bad sales that you can think of in your mind? Like maybe, something that you went through. I know you talked a little bit about it, but like something that like, ah, a mistake or, that was just like something memorable.
Rob: It's school of hard knocks. What, what's one of those that you can share with everybody?
Jamie: No, just learning the lesson that you have to be super strict with your des your titles, your descriptions, everything. If it has an s s D, you better make sure it has one. Oh yeah. In description, you know, or the buyers, some of them buyers, you mess up. They want your company shut down. Wow. Over over $20.
Rob: That's crazy.
Melissa: Yeah, we actually just did.
Jamie: And I put,
Melissa: yeah, no, go ahead. Sorry.
Jamie: I put a, you know, thank you letter in each one and with my phone number, and so I get some pretty crazy calls.
Melissa: Wow. I bet. Yeah. We were talking about also, I'm sure you have a business line and a personal line too.
We're like, we need a different business line so that we can have those calls, communication. Yeah, communication. Other than personal, so for sure. That's good. That's good. You do, you learn. I think, yeah. Diving in is one of the best ways to Absolutely. To, to do it. Sounds like you've had a lot of success so far.
Rob: That's awesome.
Melissa: Do you have relationships, people that like repair phones, like maybe if it has the one thing and that's all you do, or, you know, like do you have that kind of relationship? Like do people buy from you who do those phone repairs or computer repairs?
Jamie: Yeah. I get a lot of my customers are repeat buyers and what it looks like is they're typically laptop repairmen, you know, cell phone repair shops, you know, a lot in Wilmington, Delaware, or I think that was the town.
There was a guy there that some things he buys off me like before I even go back to put the custom skew in, it's like, listing is not available. I'm like, what do you mean? I just looked, oh, it's sold already, it's gone outta here.
Rob: Love it. That's all. Those are awesome.
Jamie: I love that. Yeah, for sure.
Melissa: So, but, and all your inventory is all local, right?
Like it's local people dropping it off. For your?
Jamie: Yeah, we also do, we do, pickups, you know, around. Okay. If you're commercial and you have enough stuff, you know, we'll drive outta state. As long as you have like a trailer full, right.
Melissa: Do you, and do you limit those people like that you're picking up to electronics or do you do like?
Jamie: No, we also pick up non-ferrous metal and, and ferrous metal.
Okay, cool. Yeah. So then just to, you know, get 'em in the door and kind of explain the real reason that we want them as a customer, you know.
Melissa: Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. It's a def it's a a different way to bring in your inventory and I love it. Absolutely. I think it's a, a great business model, so, and it absolutely, you even have room, like you could expand it and make it more into different cities, I think that's so cool.
Rob: Yeah.
Jamie: Yeah. Eventually we want like a resale shop, you know? Because right now it's, you know, it's not too pretty around here. It's a scrapyard. But you know, eventually we need a nice store with all the nice product in it, you know? Yeah, absolutely. We can just walk in and pick something out.
Melissa: That's cool. Yeah. So.
Rob: Cool. Well, Jamie, thank you so much for jumping on here and giving us some of your tips and your tricks and what's going on in your business. Do you guys have a way that somebody that might listen to this or watch this can reach out to you guys? Do you have something, either a website or something that we can send people to?
Jamie: Yeah, capitalgainsllc.com. Okay. I love it. We're Capital Gains LLC on Facebook. Okay.
Melissa: And where were you located again? In case we have some local listeners.
Jamie: We're in Arnold, Missouri.
Melissa: Okay, cool. Arnold, Missouri. So if you're near Arnold, Missouri and you have electronics that are laying around,
Rob: yep, that's it.
Melissa: You know where to take 'em.
Rob: And check 'em out online. capitalgainsllc.com. Go check him out. If you guys have any other questions after you listen to this, watch this, go check him out.
Melissa: And we'll put it in the show notes below.
Rob: Absolutely. So Jamie, thanks again. We greatly appreciate you giving, getting on here and talking with us a little bit, greatly appreciate that. So thank you so much.
Jamie: Yeah, thank you so much guys. This has been awesome.