Health Care Items

Do you have any luck selling things like wheelchairs, hospital beds, walkers, electric mobility chairs ?

I come across this sort of thing ll he time and I walk, no run, away.

Everyone has that one market they just can't break into.  Mine is medical.
Just can't move it.

Only good thing I've gotten is a cast cut off tool with vacuum for $25.
 It had a Foredom rotory which is like a Dremel on Steroids.
I ripped it all apart just for the rotory tool......


Good tax write off tho.   Donated to shelters with clinics.  They'll give you a Receipt at retail level.
Most need crutches, braces and slings.

Somewhat, but not as much as one would think. Apparently Medicare & Medicade do a fairly good job of providing those items for patients that need them, so getting top dollar in the re-sale market isn't gonna happen.

walkers $2-$50 range
wheelchairs $25-$150 range
haven't got an hospital bed, but have heard others have gotten them, one said sold in the $125 range, the other claimed $500.
Haven't gotten a mobility chair, every unit I have seen with one in it went way too high. I have seen guys at the flea market selling $750 mobility chairs like new for around $200.

Just came fom St. Vincent's......


Wheel Chairs:  $10-$25. $50 for top of the line one.

Crutches:  $5/ea

Walkers: $5-$10

Asked and they don't sell much.  When they get a lot built up they give them to a free clinic.

.......


Surplus Store had stethoscope's for $5. 
Blood Preasure cuffs for $5-$15
Surgical Instruments for $1/ea
Medical Glass (beakers and such) for $.50-$5.
MicroScopes for $25-$100; one for $2000 but it had cameras and video and heat/cold, electro-something....

And some machine I can neither spell nor pronounce ....or have a clue what it is.....for $50,000

Coolest was the electric distiller.  Woulda loved to get that to distill my own....water?

I've not really had much equipment to sell.  I have one 3 wheel triangular walker for sale.  I can tell you the following however.

1) Hospital beds - nothing but scrap metal.  Most places "rent" these beds and is covered by insurance.

2) Wheelchairs - hit or miss.  Guy at the flea market found one at a yard sale for $5.  He sold it 10 mins after putting it out for $100.  The "big boy" or wide style wheelchairs sell much better versus the smaller ones.  Electric chairs I've not seen sell.  Most of the fellow buyers I talk to prefer not to find them in units.

3) Crutches - do ok.  My buddies store sell more of them around Halloween as props then during the year.  Wood crutches except close to Halloween go in the trash.  Metal ones are always kept to sell or scrap.

4) Stehoscope's - I have 2 of them and have yet to sell.  Of course I've not tried very hard either.

Not from storage auction but in estate auctions I buy wheel chairs and walker for under $5 and sell them quite fast.  I got an antique hospital bed for $1 that i sold for over $50 at auction but other than that not to much luck

i did pretty well with aunit i found with dozens of nurse or doctor scrubs

I was a novice in this field until very recently. Paid $100 bucks for a 'medical locker' honestly it looked like someone had died and they stuck their hospital room in this locker. Beyond the 20 or so boxes filled with pills and the random extras (CD Players/trash cans/cleaning supplies), there were three extra sized wheelchairs, a hospital bed, an Arjo Hoist lift type machine. Heres how the selling broke down:

Wheelchairs: $40-50 bucks each, they were very nice in great shape and sold fairly quickly. (All three in a weeks time)
Hospital Bed: Sold for $350 bucks! It was electric, had head/foot and a brand new in the box mattress topper. Sold extremely slowly. No calls/texts after two or three weeks of being on craigslist, but the one guy that did call bought it.
Hoist Lift: Still in the process of trying to sell. These things are extremely expensive, I have mine listed on craigslist for $500 - but not a single call/text after two or three weeks.

I was nervous when I bought it, but you cant argue with the profit. The high end health care items you will sit on for a while, but can be a nice pay off when you do find a buyer.

I bought a chiropractor's unit with some x-ray boards, rehab equipment and some adjustment tables. It took forever to sell and I was only able to get around 25% of their retail value. Unless they are just out of medical school, doctors want the latest and greatest equipment and they have the money to pay for it. This is why the demand is so low for the used equipment. Unless you see some very modern or expensive equipment, I would avoid medical stuff. Medical technology is changing so fast these days and something that was revolutionary three years ago might be obsolete now. Not only that, who knows what kind of funky disease you could catch by handling this stuff.

We had a medical equipment unit come up for auction back in January.  It was like 7 or 8 x-ray machines.  I was like cool - can make some money on the parts from the boards / scrap.  Was thinking $100 max.  I was way off - the unit sold for $1150.  The guy that bought it was like "each of those machines are $800 or so" and I just laughed.

Most everyone knew that the unit is the left over surplus from the hospital a block away.  I surplus equipment for the hospital I work for.  99% of the time the surplus stuff don't work or is so old it has no value other then scrap.  I've not seen the guy back since then.