I’ve decided to sell my drone. I was checking prices recently. I don’t recall what exactly got me looking in the first place, but I saw that the prices on eBay for used drones was nearly the same as what I paid for mine new several years ago.
Previous Posts: Drones | My new Drone
My Mini 2
Maybe five years or so ago, I bought a DJI Mini 2 drone, partially on a whim. A YouTuber I used to watch a lot (@ForestyForest), had a lot of drone footage of the Canadian mountains he climbed. I watched some videos about drones and soon the algorithm was inundating me with drone videos and get rich quick schemes using the footage.
Eventually I started to believe the clickbait videos and then the Mini 2 went on sale near the eve of the Mini 3’s debut. I dropped $249 on the little drone. I was quite excited when it arrived and got it set up right away. I also crashed it into a tree, right away. Thankfully no harm was done, but it was a sobering experience and I was much more carefuol with it after that.
I never flew it anywhere but from my backyard. The winds always felt too strong for the little drone to handle and I was worried I would loose it. This was before I had a car, so I wasn’t terribly mobile. I had a bicycle and my own two feet.
Boredom Sets In
I got bored with flying the drone pretty quickly.
I got a few videos of the woods near my home being cleared. 93 acres of clear-cut forest. That was painful to see.
There was also a kitchen fire that consumed a house down in my neighborhood. That was the most exciting thing I filmed. The wind was strong that day and it was hard to navigate the drone, especially once it was out of eye-sight. It actually ran out of battery as I was flying it home. I had to run down the street after it shutdown midflight. Thankfully it landed in a grassy patch and didn’t suffer any damage.
After that last incident I stopped flying the drone. I moved on to other endeavors and got hooked on other silly schemes like selling eBooks on Amazon and Dividend Hopping.
Money
My credit card bill is maybe at a standstill at the moment. I have temporarily stopped buying new items to stock my eBay shops so that I can focus on selling what I have and paying down my debt.
It would be a real boon if I could get $200 or more for the drone. Even with eBays’ platform fees, I would still get a good chunk of change.
The drone itself is in great condition and has all the original parts including a 128GB memory card it shipped with.
I think the only part with real wear on it is the battery. I must have left it inside the drone when I packed it away. The manual said to remove the battery if storing for a long period of time.
It still holds a charge and can maybe run for 30 minutes. I don’t remember how long they normally run for. I dug the drone out of storage and downloaded the flying app to update the drone’s software and firmware. After a quick test flight it looks to still be working well. I think I can now sell it with no worries.
