In my business, i purchased an unwanted item at a discount and hope to resell it later for significantly more money. Car dealers are doing the same thing but with much smaller percentages. When people are done with a car or whatever they tend to not care that much what they get for it. Big profits for the dealer when the person just lets it go for whatever. A pawn shop or other form of used goods store might offer only 25% of what they intend to retail it for. We get bent out of shape on, for example, $20k trade in offer when we can get 23k selling it ourselves. (sales tax makes this less than a 3k spread).