Meet the Master Reseller Who Receives Literally Tons of Inventory at No Cost - Side Hustle Nation

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      What if your inventory was free, and businesses actually reached out to you to collect it?

      This is the business that Angie Nelson has developed over the past 18 years. She operates Angie’s Green Go Surplus on eBay and eWasteDirect.com, an electronic recycling service in the San Francisco Bay Area.

      Her team completes five to seven business pickups each day, gathering approximately 50,000 pounds of e-waste every month—at no charge—and then organizes, tests, and sells the items through one of the busiest eBay stores available.

      Tune in to Episode 735 of the Side Hustle Show to discover:

      how Angie acquires truckloads of free electronics from businesses, schools, and government entities

      how she determines what to resell, what to dismantle, and what to scrap

      the eBay tools and strategies that have led to nearly 200,000 items sold

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      How a $300 Auction Mistake Became a Business

      In 2008, Angie and her husband, as newlyweds, were searching for inexpensive furniture when they stumbled upon an abandoned auction at a defunct mortgage firm, mistakenly bidding on what they believed were individual items—such as a monitor or a file cabinet.

      They ended up paying about $300 and discovered they had won everything from all four floors:

      400 file cabinets

      1,000 trash cans

      and 80 monitors

      They rushed to rent trucks, called in favors, and secured a storage unit with a first-month-for-a-dollar offer to store everything.

      Over the following 29 days, they sold items through garage sales and flea markets. Someone there directed them to a metal recycling facility where they could receive payment based on weight for aluminum and copper.

      This experience opened their eyes to greater possibilities. As items began to sell on eBay and the profits started coming in, they realized this could be a scalable business.

      That £300 investment yielded roughly a tenfold return. More significantly, it laid the groundwork for a company that has since collected over 10 million pounds of e-waste in 18 years.

      Such auctions continue to occur today, especially online with liquidation and customer return pallets.

      How eWasteDirect Functions

      The model is simple: Angie’s team reaches out to businesses in the Bay Area, offering to collect their outdated electronics at no cost.

      Image from: https://www.ewastedirect.com/

      Companies that once stressed about safely discarding servers, laptops, and copiers now simply contact Angie. Word-of-mouth referrals quickly spread—one satisfied client leads to another, and some businesses have multiple locations that she services regularly.

      Currently, the operation conducts 5 to 7 business pickups each day, handling about 50,000 pounds of e-waste monthly. The team has expanded to 13 full-time staff, a fleet of trucks, and a 10,000 square foot warehouse.

      Not all items are free anymore. Some businesses now request a small fee for high-end items like servers and gaming laptops, and Angie is willing to pay for premium inventory.

      There are also costs involved with pickups: certain items such as toners and lithium batteries incur special handling fees. Nonetheless, the core model—acquire inventory for free or low cost, and sell it for a profit—remains the same.

      How to Sort, Test, and List Electronics

      Once a pickup arrives at the warehouse, sorting begins. Items are classified into three categories:

      Fully functional or sealed – test it, research it, list it

      Partially functional – includes parts that work (e.g., a broken screen but a good motherboard) to be listed separately

      Scrap/recycle – items with no resale value, sent for metal recycling or responsible disposal

      For instance, with a laptop, the team powers it on, removes the hard drive or SSD to erase personal data (utilizing WipeOS, certified data destruction software), and documents any flaws detected. Listings are drafted on eBay first, followed by photography.

      Quality images are essential. Angie employs 6 to 10 photos per listing and is careful to avoid excessive lighting, as it can obscure scratches or marks. For reflective surfaces like monitors, she notes in the description that there may be imperfections that are difficult to photograph.

      Being transparent about condition significantly reduces returns.