I got the idea for selling Neopet’s toys from a McDonald’s The Dog promotion they were having. I noticed that the Husky version of “The Dog” was going for $11-30 on Ebay. I was trying to get a hold of one myself because I had collected all the other dogs. This was in 2004 and I was really into this online game called Neopet’s so when I found out that McDonald’s was going to be doing a Neopet’s happy meal promotion a few weeks later I was really excited to collect them.

I’m not sure why I suddenly decided to start a money making venture with them instead but I realised that if people were willing to pay $11-30 for the Husky The Dog toy then maybe they would be willing to do the same with the Neopet’s toys. There were about 200 different toys to make a full set and I started eating McDonald’s like crazy, everytime I saw one I would go in. After about 10 meals I decided I couldn’t eat a happy meal everytime so I would just ask if I could buy the toy and even asked to choose them myself.

Each toy cost me about $2 if I didn’t eat a meal and since there were just over 200 in a set the whole set cost me a little over $400 to collect. I managed to collect two whole sets and also had tons of extras which I sold individually on Ebay. The two sets sold for over $800 on ebay and the individual toys sold for anywhere from $5 to $30 (for the rarer ones).

I ended up netting about $400 plus in profit alone from these toys! I also managed to keep some of my favourite toys for myself but I didn’t eat McDonald’s for about a year after =). This was my first venture and I think it was pretty successful. What do you think?