Sell or Ship Test Strips from Alaska — Find a Buyer

The clock does not start when you post it

Payment is made within 24 hours of a parcel being received and verified. Both halves of that matter, and the first one is the one that surprises people posting from Alaska. The 24 hours runs from arrival, not from the moment you hand the parcel over, so however long transit takes from where you are sits outside the payment window entirely.

Verification is the second half. Someone opens the outer packaging and checks the boxes against what you described — brand, count, dates, seals. It is a real step rather than a stalling tactic, but it is a step, and it is the reason payment is quoted from receipt rather than from posting.

The practical consequence is that you should not treat this as a same-week transaction from Alaska, and you should be wary of anyone who tells you it is. Plan for the parcel to travel, then for the fast part to happen at the other end.

Settle the number before the parcel leaves

This is the single most important thing on the page, and it is more important from Alaska than from anywhere else, because the cost of getting it wrong is measured in weeks of transit rather than an afternoon.

Get an actual figure in writing for what you actually have, based on brand, count and expiry dates. Not a range, not an "up to" number, not a per-box average taken from a table. A buyer who will not commit to a number before you ship is a buyer who intends to adjust it once your boxes are in their building and the return journey is 1,642 miles long.

If a quote does change after arrival, ask for the specific cause and for photographs of what was received. A seal broken in transit, a misread date, a count that differs from what you described — those are real reasons and they can be checked. A vague downward revision is not a revision at all, and you can ask for the supplies to be sent back rather than accept it.

Photograph everything before it goes. The sealed boxes, the expiry dates, the lot numbers, the packed parcel. Do not open a box to photograph what is inside it; opening it destroys the thing that made it worth sending.

Do not post the two things most guides tell you to throw away

The most widely read article on selling diabetic supplies tells readers that expired stock has very low or no resale value. For test strips that is correct, and for a sound reason: a degraded strip returns a bad reading, and a bad blood glucose reading is a safety problem rather than a bargain. Nobody should be trading those.

It is wrong about two things, and they are the two people bin most readily. Expired Omnipod pods — 5, DASH and Classic — still carry value. So do expired Dexcom G7 sensors. Both pay at a reduced rate rather than nothing at all.

Expired Dexcom G6 sensors do not qualify, and neither does anything else past its date. Those two exceptions are the whole list. Before you clear a cupboard in Anchorage or Juneau and drive a bag to the tip, check whether what you are holding is one of them.

What has to be true before a box is worth sending at all

The seal has to be intact — factory-sealed, unopened, original packaging. An opened box cannot be resold at any price, because nobody downstream can know how it was stored. This is the most common reason a parcel comes back, and from Alaska it is the most expensive mistake in the list.

The supplies cannot have come through a government-covered program. Stock paid for that way cannot be resold. If yours came through your own insurance, or you bought it retail, that is a different matter, and a pharmacy label with your name printed on it does not affect anything either way.

Test strips should have at least six months left before expiry. Below that the value falls away sharply, because whoever uses them next needs time to actually get through the box. And a 100-count box is worth meaningfully more than two 50-count boxes of the same brand, which is worth knowing before you decide what is worth the postage.

FreeStyle Libre has one further condition that catches people out: US retail versions only. Sensors bought outside the country cannot be resold here regardless of how perfect their condition is.

Alaska is remarkably even, and that is unusual

About 9.4% of Alaskan adults have diagnosed diabetes on the CDC's 2023 BRFSS estimates, against 12.1% nationally. That is a low rate, and it is part of why no buyer has ever set up in the state.

The more interesting number is how little it moves. Wasilla sits at 9.6% and Badger at 7.7% — a spread of 1.9 points between the highest and lowest cities in the state, which is the narrowest gap anywhere in this data. Anchorage is 9.0%, Fairbanks 7.9%, Juneau 8.6%, Meadow Lakes 9.4%. In most states there is a ten-point canyon between the wealthiest suburb and the poorest city. Alaska does not have one.

So there is no concentration to point you at, and no local pocket of demand. With 718,543 people spread across 245 ZIP codes, and 15.2% of them aged 65 or over, what actually reaches the market here is thin, occasional and scattered — a prescription change, a house being cleared, a cupboard nobody had opened in two years.