A budding “little Del Boy” has made a huge profit by re-selling empty bottles of Prime energy drink to punters dying to get their hands on the viral beverage. Charlie Smith, 10, braved excessive queues outside Asda stores last month to get his hands on the drink, which was created by YouTube stars Logan Paul and KSI.
But after guzzling the contents, he turned the empties into readies by flogging them on his mum's eBay account - leading to an increase in his investment. Charlie's first sale netted him £12 for five empty bottles of Prime, which normally retail at £1.99 in supermarkets such as Asda and Aldi.
And following this success, he’s even started paying other youngsters £1 for their empty bottles in the hope of pocketing a better margin on the open market. Charlie’s dad Adam Smith, 38, says it's "ridiculous" that punters are forking out for the plastic trash but “can’t argue” with his son as he's pulling in a 17 per cent profit margin.
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He said: “I’ll be honest, we think it’s stupid that he’s buying drinks that they’re obsessed with for £2. But we can’t argue with him because he’s getting his money back on it.
“But it’s very normal for Charlie. He’s very good with his money, he doesn’t like spending it, put it that way, so he just thinks it’s brilliant that he can drink it for free. He likes trying to buy and sell anything to make a profit. Charlie’s a bit like a little Del Boy.”
Budding entrepreneur Charlie added: “I love it, I love making money. I want to be a businessman when I’m older.”
Adam, from Nottingham, said Charlie began hunting for the energy drink in the lead-up to Christmas, which contains water, vitamins and minerals and has no added sugar. He had used a “Prime Tracker” app on his smartphone to find out where and when they would be in stock in supermarkets, which allowed him to snag a collection of flavours.
But Charlie twigged he might be able to get his pocket money back when a school pal asked if they could buy some of the empty bottles he had accumulated. Property developer Adam said: “Before Christmas when we were trying to get it in the first place from Asda, we managed to get all of the different flavours essentially.
“He’s got a thing on his phone called ‘Prime Tracker’. It says which Asda have got stock, and he managed to build up a collection of them all. He drank them all.
“Then one of his friends came round and wanted to buy an empty bottle off him. He said ‘no’ to that as he wanted to keep the collection.
“But after a while, as he’d been collecting them and trying to get hold of Prime stuff, he looked on eBay and saw what they were going for.”
Charlie, with Adam's help, put five different flavours of the drink that he’d collected – ice pop, grape, lemon lime, orange and tropical punch – on auction site eBay. And remarkably, the empty bottles were snapped up for £2 more than the drinks retail for in supermarkets.
Since then Charlie has begun to look for new ways to get hold of the bottles and has started purchasing them from friends for £1 so he can sell them. Adam said: “He got above the retail price of what they sell for a full bottle, which is ridiculous.
“Now he’s trying to buy them off other people empty for £1 to try and re-sell them. He's got about 25 in his bedroom now. He’s been going through eBay but he was going to try and do Facebook Marketplace as well because there are other things there.”
Adam believed that other kids were keen on getting hold of the empty bottles of Prime as they were now being traded like a “trophy”. He said: “I asked Charlie, and he said it’s just like having a little bit of a trophy. I think it’s stupid – but it’s just to say that you’ve had it.
“All the kids at his football, everybody has just been saying, “Which flavours have you tried?” I think it’s just madness. Me and his mum find it quite comical. It’s just daft.”
But Adam thinks this might be just the start for Charlie who has always had an entrepreneurial streak. He added: “He saves up his pocket money – and this is the main project he’s decided to do as he’s got older as everyone is just obsessed with it.
“The fact that you can sell empty bottles of a drink is just ridiculous.
“I was laughing about it because he said, “I wonder if there are any other empty bottles of products that we could buy and sell?” I said, “Absolutely not – this is a one-off!”
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