Posted by For the month of May (2025) I sold 4 items on Ebay. Three Xbox One controllers and one hat for a total profit of $24.42. Used controllers are difficult to sell if the price is over $30. I had a guy offer me $23 for a controller that I had listed for $28.95. I told him that his offer was too low for me to make a profit, so he offered me $25. Luckly the controller sold the next day, so I didn’t have to reply to any more of his low-ball offers. It wasn’t listed as a best offer item anyway. I have two controllers listed for just over $30 which are in very good condition. They may take a little longer to sell, but I put a lot of work into refurbishing them.
I have not been able to win any controller auctions on ShopGoodwill.com this past month. Ebay has been better, but the selection of controllers for parts priced under $15 is slim. I am working on a model 1914 controller right now. The left stick has drift, and I had a heck of a time removing the potentiometers. There always seems to be one or two pins that refuse to release. The holes on the circuit board are just too small to make solder removal an easy task. I usually end up using a soldering iron to get the last pins to release. I tried using a heat gun, but that didn’t work as good. I decided that the whole thumb stick needs to be removed because it feels like it’s worn out. That means that I have 8 more pins to desolder.
I looked around for a better solder removal tool, but instead of spending $200, I decided to upgrade the one I have. It is one with the rubber bulb that you have to squeeze to suck the solder. I removed the rubber bulb and replaced it with one of those vacuum pump tools. To make the attachment to my old desoldering tool, I used a short piece of rubber tubing. It works by pushing the plunger down and releasing it with a button on the side. The vacuum is stronger and more consistent than squeezing the bulb. It doesn’t work 100% of the time. Sometimes it still takes several attempts to remove all of the solder.
I have been following the latest Xbox news, and it seems like new Xbox consoles may be nearing an end. Most of the announcements have been about playing Xbox games on other platforms. Not so much about new hardware, which leads me to believe that Microsoft may want to exit the game hardware business. If they just focus on games and making a better game controller, I think they would save themselves a lot of money. In the near future all games will be download only and no longer available on a disk. Since you can play most Xbox games on a phone or PC, does it still make sense to spend $600 for a console?