My parents own a local food stall and we typically sell the junk canned sodas people buy from us at a junkyard. But when I saw on Facebook that people in international craft groups buy thousands of tabs for their cosplay costumes and textured handicrafts, it gave me an idea to sell unbent and clean soda tabs from the canned sodas we sold every day.
Before serving the sodas to the customer, I would offer to open it for them so I can keep the tabs. But when they don’t, I would just simply ask them to leave the tab or their finished soda on the table. After collecting every tab, I degrease them in warm water with soap, throw away the bent or damaged ones, and sort them dry into jars and zip-lock bags.
Those plain silver tabs in 300-count packs cost $30 while rare colored tabs from energy drinks would cost $50. Shipping won’t cost much since it’s weightless. I am also planning to contact other local stores nearby to be able to purchase can tabs so I can sell more.
Just go on eBay to see their value. I work in a upscale Italian restaurant and see a lot of bottles. We started saving the Corks and selling them. It’s been pretty profitable for a stupid little side hustle
This is a lot of work for 30 dollars ngl. That’s 2 hours of work at McDonald’s to make 30 bucks. How much time goes into collecting 300 tabs degreasing them packaging them and shipping them?
This is actually pretty clever 😂 and very environmentalist-vibes 😌 The sorting and cleaning sounds like a lot of work, though. Curious how long it takes to collect enough tabs to make a decent profit.
Thanks! Yeah, the cleaning and sorting definitely take some effort, but once you get into a routine it’s not too bad. Collecting enough tabs for a decent batch usually takes a few months depending on soda sales, so it’s more of a slow build, but the payoff feels worth it when you see them being reused for crafts.
We use those to clean surgical instruments at the vet clinic I work for, they work really well, completely removes blood with no scrubbing (not that I expect OP to have to clean a lot of blood off the soda tabs).
I had fun using the ultrasonic when I was a dental sterilization tech and the autoclaves were great too. I definitely sterilized my earrings a few times too lol
You should try posting on Facebook groups that your looking for pull tabs for donations. Im sure theres people who have cans lying around that they don't wanna deal with
Ronald McDonald House is amazing! My grandson was born 2 months early and had to be in a NICU a couple hours away. RMDH made everything so much easier for us. I absolutely drop my change in the bucket for them. Excellent organization!
Mostly for crafts and cosplay, some use soda tabs to make chainmail armor, jewelry, handbags, belts, and even textured art pieces. They’re lightweight and give that metallic look without the cost of real metal
Canned food tabs tend to have really big loops to fit your finger through, so they aren’t as useful for most of the crafts. But someone could probably modify a design to use the different ratio if they wanted to.
My 13 y3ar old daughter has been collecting every pull tab we've had for the past three years. She makes all sorts of things wiith them. Such as jewelry or armored clothing for stuffed animals.
Nice, fellow tab collector. I have an 8 foot chain Ive been building for at least 5 years now. Most is from me, although I’ve convinced a few people to save them too. Been thinking about making chainmail as well. Had no idea you could sell them
Cool chain. So that one is not reinforced with thread? I imagine with the triple (oops quadruple) stack it is pretty sturdy and cannot easily pull apart?
When I was a kid, I asked my grandparents to connect tabs for something I was doing. They collected tabs for years after….. I couldn’t get them to stop.
Ok, that is super sweet. My son asked us to save times for him and he just throws them into a storage tote. I’m definitely sending him pictures of some of the crafts here to inspire him, or I’m going to start collecting for myself!
I had a friend who was trying to quit his porn addiction complain to me that his r/all feed was full of porn and OF girls 🥰 I had to explain to him how to mute and block to reshape his feed.
They're grossing income that's on top of their normal wages by performing a task? It almost sounds like it's a side hustle, but you're right, I forgot side hustle has a minimum earning requirement. How silly of me.
A quick look on eBay and 1000+ tabs go for around $10, sometimes even cheaper especially in bulk. How are you selling 300 for $30? Something seems off here.
Interesting side-gig. Ask those stores if you can install small deposit boxes that their customers can put the tabs directly into, and offer to clear them out for free.
Im confused, youre selling 300 tabs for 30 bucks? Are they special in some way? You can buy 20k+ on eBay right now for 68 bucks. Like, buy those and save yourself all the time from collecting them from customers if its working
Hey my drinking problem will finally pay off! It’ll pay for itself in no time💀 my drink of choice is White Claw Surge and those tabs come in purple, green, red, orange the whole goddamn rainbow basically. I assume those are extremely rare. If I would’ve saved all the tabs from this year 😯
Not a flex, obviously. But I have to find some humor through all the shame and struggles
huh i didn't know people would pay for them! i've been collecting every tab from every can i've had for probably the last 6 years? i have multiple jars full of them - definitely getting close to a thousand if i'm not already there. friends and family will give me their tabs too. sometimes i make things with them, but right now i'm filling up a skull shaped glass container with them :) thanks for sharing!
I don't get it. Who is buying these where they don't have tabs on their soda/beer/energy drinks? I feel like I could be dropped almost anywhere in the world and find somewhere to buy a can of one of those things as soon as I got to civilization.
The only places I couldn't are probably also not the kinds of places that are preoccupied with making cosplay costumes.
I work at a scrap yard and we basically throw bags full of these away every week because people save them for some reason and then recycle them with their cans but they’re all too small to make it through the baler so they just get swept up and tossed.
Soda bottling plants and distribution centers often have loads and loads of cans and bottles they need to dispose of that didn't sell in time. We used to do a fundraiser where we opened cans and dumped the contents into a sewer drain. It was awful but we kept the redemption money by recycling the cans/plastic.
I have been collecting colored tabs from Bubly cans for years & have a large container full of them. I never had a good reason other than why not. I had no idea people would buy them.
If you remove a lot of these tabs yourself, here is the easiest way to get them off:
Swivel the tab around so it is covering the hole of the can. Then push the tab downward into the hole until it pops off. It should come off without ripping the small ring that attaches it to the can, leaving no additional sharp edges.
I save mine for the Ronald McDonald House in my city. The money generated from donated tabs gives families a place to stay, free of charge, while their children are receiving cancer treatments at the nearby children’s hospital.
Years ago our library had a book called Pop-Topping that was all about making crafts and clothing out of soda can pull tabs. At the time, the pull tabs were not like they are today. It was a ring attached to a thin piece of metal, and you pulled the tab completely off the can and threw it away. Most people just threw the tabs on the ground which created tons of litter (parking lots were full of tabs that had been run over). This is probably why they changed the design to the current version so that it doesn't create waste.
Anyway, I found this Facebook post about the Pop-Topping book. it's interesting how folks can get creative and recycle tabs.
Genuinely amazing! I got poptabs from my relatives saved stashes, and made a chainmail shirt with them. I also collect colored, and at my summer job everybody knew to give them to me. I wound up with probably a couple hundred green Bubblr tabs and tons of plain gray and some other colors as well!
How do you do this?… i have so many plain tabs as well as colored tabs from JackCayman drinks lol. I reuse some of them for crafts but have some that could be gone if the chance arose.
My little cousin is making chainmail armor out of soda can tabs and at every party we go to she collects everyone’s soda tabs. I also started saving my tabs in a slip lock bag so I can give it to her whenever I see her.
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