Topic: Ship your old Items to Africa for bitcoins (Read 1363 times)

Even if OP agrees on an escrow, why in the world would someone bear shipping fees and sell items in Africa when he can do the same locally and get cash instead.
This whole thread is either a scam attempt or stupidity super general.

If OP can make some escrow to hold bitcoins before he sell items there won't be any trust issue, and its the main problem in here.

1. Trust Issues, No one would trust you at first place, The best bet for you is to deposit Bitcoins to an escrow and seller has to wait for the item to be sold so as to get bitcoins released. But here's a catch, what if you tell him item never got sold?

2. Shipping Fee is going to be huge.

3. There are already many such facilities available locally over the net in my country where people can sell their used items for real cash, why would someone even use your service which includes huge risk and time?

And customs ? how will you deal with them for electronic parts ? cars ?? dont tell me your country does not have regulation on purchasing cars ...

You say you're gonna pay in BTC ----once the item is sold---- in your country, this means the good owner will rely on you for receiving, clearing the customs, reselling with a margin, with trust in every step ?

Hello newinbtc,

It is a pleasure this great feedback from you. Let move into the private for further discussions. my email is sam.deeknight [at] gmx [dot] com and my telegram username is @sammydeeknight .

DM me yours and let have fun doing business!!!

Respect

Sounds interesting , I have 3 Old Smart phones used one Will it work in your country ? How much $ we will get for Value , Estimate and what about Shipping charges That we need to pay at Courior office.

If you like to buy Cloths , I would like to tell you India is the bigget market of wollen cloths , All main Firms import cloths from India to develop countries. We can deal in bulk if You want i can send video or images of cloths what you need

I cN ship via Both courior and Normal post

great
lemme DM you right away!!

hi ... good idea

In an Interview Chris Sacca (One of the most successful Venture Capitalist in Silicon Valley) said that that one of his biggest mistakes was not having invested in RB&B when he was approached by the founders in the early days of the startup. He recalled having out of fear asked the founders "Guys what if things go wrong like someone rent a room and an accident occurred during his stay...?"

Today RB&B is an Unicorn worth Billions of $$$.

Anyways thanks for the wishes.
Regards

Doc !

Great & interesting ur story & experience

I have to read your post over and over again in order to get all the gems & insights in it then i'll pm you later (maybe next Year).

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

This business venture ain't gonna turn out well, me thinks...😂🤷🏽‍♂️ Good luck anyways, Brotha!!!

Hi Sammy,

I agree it can be extremely difficult for some people to consider risk beyond betting on the NBA or whatever. I have my own small business an my father has a much larger one.

I actually construct large free standing LED flood lights that run on 18650 rechargeable batteries - It's not complicated. Strips of SMD 5050 wired in parrell to 2/3/4 x4 18650 battery pack. I get the batteries both new if I can see a good deal but also re-furbish old laptop cells with a balance charger.

Even here in the UK/Ireland (I'm in N.I so most likely will have access to both the single market and whatever trading terms are entered into after Brexit - sounds like it's a good place, but has had a LOT of problems, civil war, not just about the border most was caused by bigoted people killing each other because of different branches of the essentially the SAME religon Catholic and Prodestant) I'm late 30's so I remember th bombings and shootings very well. As a reult our parents took us to live in the countryside and we attended some of the first ever intergrated schools in the country - even now only 10-20% of school's are intergrated.

Going to intergrated (Catholic and Prodestant school - the notion of seperated schools based on essentially very small religous differences will probably seem crazy to most in the West - but, hey that's how it was and that lagely how it is!)

But I think it taught me don't be so quick to judge. View evenone as essentially good, because essentially everyones needs and wants are allinged. But I'm no idiot, the world is full of scammers. And not being quick to judge means just that. not quick to judge good or bad.

The UK is definately in a slump - inflation is out pacing wages on paper by 1.1%. But for regular folks the disparatity between wage growth and inflation has really hit a lot lot harder, with food/electronics/clothes up around 5-6% with wages at 2.2%. This is largely because of 'Brexit' and it's incredibly relative. Whether you choose to buy your popcorn at the cinema or bring it from another shop is still an incredibly 1st world problem!

So really the Items I can just buy items from China and flip them on eBayAmazon for a nice profit a few and far between. I have to add a degree of value to my products - be that making the rechargable flood lights for painters or putting a wifi (or regular) motion activated spy camera with a smalller battery pack in a clock for small shops and home CCTV. Or sowing LED wire through childrens school bags and adding a GPS tracker os the child can be both visable and easily locatabled if they become lost. All this is value aded stuff I do myself (none of these examples are paticularly complicated once you have down a few)

But I believe this is a goo mentality and especiallly in Africa where it would be much cheaper to ship the componets and explain the processes of how to build them than shipping the finished article would be a lot more profitable for both sides. Because one commodity that is univeral is time. And everything takes time.

Right now it's christmas and retail is so busy. So I don't have any time to follow up until things settle in January. Then I will have 2 S9 miners and 2 L3+ miners working and my goal is to make enough to buy 8-10 electric bikes, a 10year old Toyota HiLux (or Nissan Nevara) and rent the bikes out to families in 2 local holiday forest parts at around £15p/h

But I see potential in keeping my knowledge of online commerence alive by dealing with 1 or 2 people in Africa and quit being a tiny cog in the eBay and Amazon world. My Dads business is much much larger than mine. He has around 250,000 about 90% of them being individual items of media, but its mostly all  analoge - People would be surprised how many VHS tapes and vyinal records sell in Europe - but my Father would only turn over a very small % of his stock a year but that small % would have a much higher value.

I prefer new, multiple listings that require little work cleaning up before being posted. It's 2 different styles. Neither can be judged right or wrong because they are both successful in there own way.

But I do have 2 stand alone EZCAP analouge to digital convertors and one day - if I ever find the time! I would like to start archiving my fathers stock. Infinately more transportable and it's rare video's stuff with a bit of age to it. Stuff that never made it onto another format - one of the biggest sellers are sports VHS of football matches in the 80's! Loads of stuff like that - and actually I should end this and help him with the post.

But yeah put together a simple business plan - It's something I have never done lol - but it would really have helped I think if I knew exactly what I was doing before I started.

Good luck sir, chat soon I hope

Merry Christmas

Edit, couple of lines missed in a hurry

Great suggestion!!!
I'll find a way to work it out if it's possible...
By the way your scrap idea is interesting why not try it together. Here in Africa everything in/on a car can be bought 

not sure why anyone would give this serious consideration. There's no financial benefit to use your 'service', and certainly no time benefit.

Is there a good reason I'm missing? Seems pretty simple.

THUMBS UP DOC!!!

Dr OCTAGON you really your stuff ....

I don't blame those who are spewing venomous reactions over here. It's part of the human nature. Millions of years of fights for survival has made human beings risk-averse. They've developed instincts of self-preservation. That's why everybody can't be a Trader or an Entrepreneur... (Read the Book "HOMO SAPIENS' by Noah Harari and you'll get what i mean...)

I smiled when i read the last paragraph of your post on "half worn tires" & "used clothes" importation Business. My mother has been in the imported clothes retail business for more than two decades. She buys the clothes per kilo from the whole-sellers here and roam from town to town to sell the clothes 1 by 1 to individuals. It's through that commerce that she has been able to feed and raised 5 (five) children (including me). Two of my sisters are currently in that business too.  So if you are interested i believe you have the right person to partner with  .

Lemme PM you right away... We have a lot to do together...
Regards

Well there is an easy workaround here that could solve the problem of trust.

There is no need for the product to be shipped at all..,

You can start a new thread on the forum somewhere and maybe even ur own website when u get more established.

Get people on the forum to send you an inventory of items they would like to sell... ask them to take pics of the items and provide relevant details like age, condition, etc...(make and model number)

Much like they would do if they were submitting a gumtree ad.

Then you secure a buyer based on the pics and description, if need be and if the buyer might want a video or something then u can try arrange that with the seller as well if u see the buyer is a serious buyer... once you have a confirmed buyer you get payment from them and buy the item from the seller via a trusted escrow service here on the forum...then await delivery and give the product to the buyer

Problem solved...

Something u might want to look into as well is finding cars in scrap yards and buying the catalytic converters, these converters have precious metals in them like copper, iron, nickel and even small amounts of rhodium.... I would imagine these metals could fetch a pretty price in West Africa?

I am willing to do escrow at cost (tx fees) for a few deals for you until you can establish your ability to follow through. PM me if interested I likely won't be returning to the thread.

I hope you do reply Sammy and I hope you are genuine. You seem an intelligent fellow, lot's of respect for anyone who can speak 2+ languages. I don't see the model Sammy is proposing as a get rich quick scheme.

And I could imagine him needing a little bit of wiggle room to get things started (hence I proposed 30% payment up front) and smaller value items to begin, maybe escrow for over $200, but if Sammy finds the 30% upfront, that means you don't really need to get into escrow until the $350 mark.

I have LOTS of consumer electronic stuff and 30 listings on eBay - should be 100 but its an ordeal.

Taxes a very important, as are the correct customs stickers- however I have experience selling all over the world, I would just need the tarriffs for your country so as to stay just under.

Way to long have people in the West judged Africa on the actions of a few and absolutely if the shoe was on the other foot I'm sure there are plenty in Africa would blame the West...

If BTC is going to mean anything (in my mind) it has to mean forging peer 2 peer global trading relationships.

However you can't cut corners in trade and when in retail you need to know you market - where, what, who, how much?

From much trail and error importing from China to sell in the UK, in the beginning you really need to focus on what you can turnover quickly. Cashflow is the oil of trade and if you get a load of stuff at the start and it gathers dust for a month you are going to struggle in the early days, so know your market, know what profit margin you need to make to grow and what margin the market will bare.

No matter what you do you'll have competiton.

The reason this paticularly interests me is that I was chatting to a lad who did tyres recently, cheap half worn ones - but the premise was huge. The other business they have - which is making far more money apparently is buying clothes by the kilo and shipping them to Africa.

So I know somone doing this.

However 2nd thoughts maybe escrow everything. Credit lines are hard won. But a certain risk is manageable.

This is wrong.. very wrong. The right, safe and legitimate way of doing this is for you to escrow a certain amount of bitcoins with a trusted escrow provider here who will hold or reserve the coins for the safety of those entrusting you with phones, gadgets and other items of value.

Asking people here to trust you outright and blindly is not a legitimate practice and is not acceptable. Let's hypothetically reverse roles here. Would you accept an arrangement where the shipper asks you to send the bitcoins first? I find it wrong (not just in this case but generally) when someone begs to be trusted while that same trust can't be reciprocated.

I remember an incident involving an Indian buyer of some of my coins last year and he kept talking like a broken radio... "brother, you can trust me, send the coins first and i will send your money at western union within the hour. my brother, you can trust me, i'm a good man and i am a businessman, we can do good business my brother".. he kept spewing this garbage about how trustworthy he is, how he never stole a single rupee in his life. As for sending payment first, that was out of the question for him. In other words, he is to be trusted while I'm not. There's something deceptive and cunning when someone addresses you as brother, friend, sweety pie, cookie and all along he doesn't trust you.

Use an escrow service. When bitcoins enter the equation in any transaction, assurances should be given both ways.

what will happen the things if not sold ?