Posted by So far in 2025, I have repaired and sold 32 Xbox controllers. My goal (was) to sell 50 controllers, but it has been extremely difficult to find controllers that are priced low enough to make a profit. My average profit this year is $8.78 per controller. That doesn’t include the parts I had to buy to repair them. I spent $130 on parts so far this year. Most of that was covered by Ebay gift cards that I acquired during the year. If you include parts, my profit drops to $4.69 per controller. All my refurbished controllers have been sold on Ebay. So, I’m only doing it because I have the time and like the challenge of getting a broken controller working again.
I usually have free shipping on my controller listings. But in October, I noticed that shipping prices have increased by about 5%. Free shipping helps the controllers sell faster. I also list controllers at a fixed price. I don’t like waiting 7 days to find out if I’m going to make a profit or not. Controllers have been selling within a day or two, so I only put one or two up for sale per week to minimize the number of trips I make to the post office. Right now, I have one controller waiting for parts, one waiting to be repaired, and one waiting to be tested.
With the holidays approaching, and no other broken controllers set to arrive, I’ll probably take a break from fixing controllers. After having repaired almost 60 controllers in the past 18 months, I have seen just about everything that can go wrong with an Xbox controller. I have cleaned some very dirty controllers. I have spent many hours trying to desolder thumb sticks on newer controllers. It takes a lot of patients to remove all the solder without damaging the circuit board. I have found ways to get thumb sticks working by adding wires to the circuit board when traces become damaged. Electro-magnetic (TMR) thumb sticks are becoming more affordable and available. This will make it easier to upgrade controllers with longer lasting joy sticks and still be able to offer them on Ebay at a reasonable price.