Tales from the dorm dumpster: Confessions of a dumpster diving Amazon seller

A guide to finding profitable books to resell in college dumpsters, and stories from three years of of dumpster diving for Amazon inventory that students throw away at the end-of-the-semester.

College move out day is a goldmine for Amazon booksellers

Move out day for colleges is a very special day. This is when everything imaginable can be found for free behind every dorm in the country.

Including books. Especially books.

Every year, usually in late-May, college students nationwide lose their minds. The semester ends, and they throw seemingly everything they own into dumpsters behind their dorms.

They’re going home for the summer, their parents are paying for everything anyway, and rather than transport their expensive printer or lava lamp (two things I found this year), they throw it right into the dorm dumpster.

Then I show up, pull out the good stuff, and sell it on Amazon for tons of money.

This is a collection of strategies and stories on making money from dumpster diving at colleges

I’ll start out with a how-to guide on dumpster diving at dorms (and more), and follow with a short story from three years of dumpster missions.

Here’s a photo of me diving into a college dumpster, so you know I’m serious about this:

How to profit from dumpster diving at dorms in 3 steps

#1: Choose your targets

Identify student dorms specifically.

Start with the largest, and work your way to the smallest.

To find dorms, just Google <school name + “student housing”> and map your course. Very simple.

#2: Choose your timing

The best time to dumpster dive at dorms is going to be Friday – preferably daytime, but night will work.

There’s always the risk (as it is with the school next to my house) of dumpsters getting emptied sometime Friday, so going in the daytime is ideal to catch the dumpsters before they’re emptied.

Most moving out is done by Thursday night, with students usually having to be completely out of the dorms sometime Friday.

So what you’re really exploiting here is dorm move-out dates. Get that move out date (it will usually be online), and get there as quickly as possible after the students have moved out.

#3: Choose your comfort zone

Bottom line: The more aggressive you’re willing to be, the more books (and more) you’ll find (and the more money you’ll make).

The most skittish approach is this: Going only at night (when there’s few witnesses), and only search recycling bins (minimal mess, minimal effort).

The most aggressive approach (my approach) is this: Get in every dumpster, tear through every bag, and proceed without regard for witnesses (they’re just jealous).

Why would college students throw book books away in dumpsters?

This is my analysis as to why students throw away so many books on move-out day:

1. They probably have a lot of bad memories of long nights studying attached to those books, and don’t ever want to see them again.
2. The college bookstore won’t buy back everything. Such as slightly outdated textbooks (that still have Amazon value), or exotic books that the bookstore doesn’t even carry.
3. Books are heavy and cumbersome to move.

These students are not Amazon sellers. They’re not in our business. And either is the college bookstore – who rejects many books that Amazon sellers can easily profit from. Anything the college bookstore won’t take, probably ends up in the dumpster.

The reasons go even deeper. Many books you’ll find are in such high demand, and the books are so profitable, there could only be one explanation for them ending up in the dorm dumpster instead being sold to the college bookstore: The dumpster is closer. Crazy but true.

But why ask why? It doesn’t change the fact that a ton of profitable books get thrown out on any college campus when the semester ends.

Timing your dumpster missions for maximum yield

Timing is crucial to maximize your yield.

The university next to my house gets out earlier than most. I wait for move out day all year, and I know their schedule.

Move out day works basically the same at every school, everywhere.

Final exams happen Monday through Thursday. Some students have their last finals Thursday, some Wednesday, some Tuesday, or some just on Monday.

When finals are done, students go insane. That’s when they throw out everything they own, and drive into the sunset. Like clockwork.

That’s where we come in and make tons of money.

Story time: A short synopsis of my last two end-of-year dumpster missions

None of these are earth shattering or involve generational-wealth level heists.

What these stories demonstrate is that it’s very easy to make hundreds of dollars an hour with minimal effort on any college campus.

Let’s get into it…

Year #1: Our dorm dumpster book heist plan

I had just moved literally across the street from one of the top 50 biggest schools in the US.

Timed with move out day, a friend and I set out on two dumpster excursions: Wednesday evening, and Thursday late-night.

The plan was to start the mission Wednesday night, in case the dumpsters were emptied before every student moved out the following day.

We expected that Thursday was when the majority of trash would accumulate. That was the true “move out day.” And we would be back to revisit every dumpster then to maximize our yield.

We mapped out a course of exactly 10 dorms.

There’s way more than books in dorm dumpsters

After visiting all 10 dorms, we found a lot of weird stuff. And most of it was not books.

This is supposed to be a case study on unconventional book sourcing, but its very tempting to talk about everything else we found:

• Clothes (my friend sold a bunch to Buffalo Exchange).
• Juicers.
• Personal journals.
• Food. Lots of unopened food.

…and everything else imaginable. But we’re getting off topic.

Weirdest thing we found that day

The highlight: An unopened Priority Mail box, sent from a female suitor to an unresponsive dorm resident (“James”). So of course we opened it. (Was it a federal crime? I’m considering all trash public domain. Criminal lawyers weigh in below.) It contained homemade cookies and a love letter.

Is there any bigger Casanova than the man who gets a love package, and doesn’t even open it? Play on, player.

Biggest lesson from this dumpster excursion

I thought I knew everything about dumpster diving, but there was one big “a ha” realization I had across these two days:

How much better the recycling bins were for books than the dumpsters themselves.

Most of the books we found were actually in the recycle bins, and not the dorm dumpsters. Somehow, I’d always overlooked those. Big lesson here I would apply to future dumpster diving missions.

Our dorm dumpster diving book heist: Final tally

Here’s all the books we found across 10 dorms and two days:

(The item on top is a box containing Windows 7. Selling for $70 on Amazon, but I’m hearing that Microsoft products are heavily restricted on Amazon, so I’m not including this in the below stats.)

Final tally

• Dorm dumpsters visited: 10.
• Hours spent: 4.
• Cops who watched us dumpster diving and said nothing: 2 (dumpster diving has gone mainstream, & is seemingly no longer stigmatized).
• Resellable non-book items found: Several, including a sealed electric toothbrush.
• Profitable books found: 23
• Average Amazon sales rank: 417,617 (the listing software randomly decided to not display this, so I did it by hand)
• Total estimated Amazon payout: $581.77
• Hourly earnings: $145 / hour.

Year #2: Another dumpster diving campus crusade

When finals week hit again, I had already planned ahead and was ready to strike with military precision. I had already mapped out every dorm on campus, and planned the shortest route between each.

Timing the dumpster heist is always tricky. Finals ends on different days for different students, and the slow rumbling exodus of students lasts an entire week.There is no narrow of time where all the trash gets thrown out.

One approach is to make multiple trips to the same dumpster. But dorm dumpsters are huge, and you run the risk of going through a lot of the same throwaways again.

So my preferred tactic is to determine the day most students are going to leaving town, and go out the day before.  If finals ends on a Friday, most students are wrapping up Thursday; making Wednesday or Thursday the optimal time to go dumpster diving for profit.

That year, I opted for a Thursday.

Executing the dumpster mission

I started late-afternoon, hoping to run into as few students as possible. I also brought a 24-year-old friend this time, for two reasons. One, for the company. Two, having someone more “college aged” made me (in my 30s) look a little less weird.

I noticed major development upon pulling up to the first dorm: next to the dumpster, was a giant Goodwill donation bin. This was an entirely new phenomenon. Goodwill setting donation bins next to dorm dumpsters is a smart move… for them. Bad for dumpster divers.

Fortunately, walking the extra 20 feet to the Goodwill bin is too much for some students. Because right away we found a giant Chihuly art book selling for $30. This dumpster diving for profit mission was off to a good start.

In the neighboring dorm, we pulled several more textbooks from the massive dumpster. We also met several other dumpster divers doing the same thing (looking for housewares, not books.)

The next dumpster had no books, and we broke for dinner.

The missions is compromised by enemy forces (i.e. nature)

That’s when things took a turn.

I had huge ambitions of spending the next eight hours going through each of the 10 dorm dumpsters well into the night, but… Nature had other plans.

It started to rain. Hard. Like, apocalyptic rain. As with my recent recycling center score-slash-tragedy, the elements were threatening to destroy hundreds (or thousands) of dollars in profitable books.

We took our scavenging indoors, to an empty dorm that had tons of discards students had left in the lobby. There was a lot of useful items I intended to take home (nice speakers, a great couch)… but no books.

At that point, we had to abort. But I wasn’t giving up. I knew there were hundreds of books in dumpsters all over campus at that moment. Even if most of them were destroyed in the rain, they couldn’t all be destroyed…

My dumpster comeback

The next day I did a walking tour of the remaining dorm dumpsters. I quickly found three that were under shelter and untouched by the storm.

Between these three, I found a dozen books to resell and a sealed box of Avery labels – all worth money on Amazon.

The final total from this college dumpster mission

• Total yield: 19 books
• Total listing price: $286.51
• Average Sales Rank: 676,540
• Time spent: 3 hours.
• Projected profit: $171.60

Final take: Success?

After dumpster diving campuses for many years, I can say this was probably the least profitable end-of-the-year college dorm dumpster mission I’ve ever had. $171 isn’t exactly an impressive number. But it was still absolutely worth my time, and a ton of fun.

And if you’re wondering, I got the speakers and the couch from the dorm lobby. In addition, I got a lamp, printer, whiteboard, boxes of Emergen-C, and enough laundry detergent to last a couple years.

Year #3: Dropping the ball but still making bank

Something bad happened: I missed dorm move-out day.

I don’t know how it happened. Maybe I was distracted. There’s was no good excuse. But I simply missed the big day.

After last-year’s lukewarm book haul, I became fanatical about not having my second mediocre year in a row. I had to turn university trash into profit, somehow.

That’s when I remembered the college library dumpster, which was overdue for a visit.

My history with this college library book dumpster

I discovered many months before that this library threw out many books. And I had already pulled several hundreds books from the recycling bins on their loading dock. But it was inconsistent, and I’d lost interest.

With the college now empty, this was a good time to revisit the library dumpsters. Maybe libraries did an end-of-the-semester purge also?

As I approached the rear of the library, I could tell from 50 yards away that this would be big. There were thousand of books stacked in giant gaylords on their loading dock.

This wouldn’t be a mere dumpster diving excursion. I was going to make this an outright heist.

So I backed my truck up to their loading dock and shoveled the contents of an entire gaylord into my truck bed. In broad daylight.

I barely scratched the surface of the dumpster, and left two other gaylords of books behind entirely.

Here was my score:

Nearly every book was seriously obscure, mostly old (1970s and 1980s), scholarly non-fiction titles with a very limited potential audience. Very few FBA sellers would touch books like this. That’s why I like them so much.

My dumpster book score: The final tally

• Total: Approximately 400 books.
• Books with a value of $10 or more: 112
• Total listing price: $5,900.
• Total time: About 1 hour of loading and transport time, 3 hours of sorting and listing on Amazon.
• Average Amazon sales rank: 4+ million (again, few sellers would touch these books).

My final analysis

These are some seriously, seriously obscure books with a very limited demand on Amazon. I would be extremely surprised if even 20% of these sold over the next year.

But that doesn’t matter. Because some of them will. And most will sell eventually.

I didn’t pay anything for them. And as a Fulfillment by Amazon seller, I am unburdened of having to store them or even think about them ever again. I just sit back and collect the money – some of it next week, some of it next year. But I don’t really care, because for four hours work, I’m totally happy.

Dumpster diving yields profitable books yet again.

If you live near a college, don’t miss next semester

You now have a full tactical blueprint for profiting from university trash yourself, along with real world stories of this in action.

Everything imaginable will be yours for the taking at the end of this semester.

Remember: Dumpsters don’t dive themselves.

-Peter Valley

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