Switched From Test Strips to a CGM? What to Do With the Leftovers
Switching from fingersticks to a continuous glucose monitor is one of the bigger quality-of-life changes in diabetes management. It also tends to leave a drawer full of supplies you will never open — a stack of test strip boxes, a bag of lancets, maybe two or three meters collected over the years.
Most people put that drawer off for months because they are not sure what to do with it. Here is a practical way to sort through it.
Why the Leftovers Pile Up So Fast
The switch to a CGM rarely happens on a clean boundary. A typical version goes like this: your prescriber writes for a Dexcom or a Libre, the pharmacy fills it, and meanwhile your standing test strip prescription keeps refilling on its old schedule. By the time everyone catches up, you have another ninety days of strips you no longer test with.
On top of that, most people were already stockpiling. If you were testing four times a day but your prescription assumed six, the surplus was building quietly for years before the CGM ever entered the picture.
The result is usually more than people expect — often several hundred strips, plus accessories. If you want the fuller explanation of how this happens, we wrote about why so many people end up with extra test strips.
First: Keep a Backup
Before you clear anything out, set aside one meter and one sealed box of strips.
CGMs are excellent, but they are electronics attached to your body. Sensors fail early, adhesive gives out in the summer, a replacement gets delayed in shipping, and readings occasionally drift far enough that you want to confirm with a fingerstick. Nearly every CGM manufacturer still recommends keeping a meter available for exactly these situations.
One meter, one box of strips, and a handful of lancets is enough. Check that the strips are not close to expiring, and check that they match the meter you kept — that pairing catches people out.
Then: Sort What's Left Into Three Piles
Sealed and unexpired
These have real value. Factory-sealed boxes with time left before the expiration date are what buyers want, and they are the bulk of most people's leftovers.
Value tracks the expiration date closely — supplies with a year or more remaining are worth meaningfully more than supplies with two months left. This is the main reason not to let the drawer sit. Every month it stays there, the pile is worth a little less. Our post on when to sell diabetic supplies gets into the timing.
Opened, damaged, or expired
An opened vial of strips cannot be resold — the desiccant inside starts working the moment the seal is broken, and accuracy is no longer guaranteed. Crushed boxes and expired stock fall into the same category for most purposes.
That said, do not throw expired supplies out before asking. Expired sensors and pods in particular are sometimes still worth something, and they are the kind of thing people bin without checking. See what we do with expired supplies.
Meters and hardware
Unopened meters still in the box have some value. Used meters generally do not — they are given away free by manufacturers, because the business model was always the strips.
Lancing devices, control solution, and carrying cases are usually not worth selling on their own, but they are fine to include in a lot rather than sorting them out.
What to Do With the Sealed Supplies
You have three realistic options.
Donate them. Some free clinics and mutual-aid groups accept sealed, unexpired diabetic supplies, and this is a genuinely good outcome. It takes some calling around — many clinics cannot accept donated supplies at all, for liability reasons — but if you would rather they go straight to someone who needs them, this is the route. We compared the tradeoffs in sell or donate.
Sell them. There is an established market for sealed diabetic supplies, largely serving people who are uninsured or underinsured and buying out of pocket. Selling sealed, unexpired supplies that you obtained legitimately is, in most cases, permitted in New York.
Leave them in the drawer. This is what most people actually do, and it is the only option where the supplies expire and end up in the trash anyway.
Do Not Forget the CGM Side
One thing people miss: the switch often generates surplus on the new side too.
If you started on a Libre and moved to a Dexcom, or went from a G6 to a G7, you may have unused sensors from the previous system. Insurance transitions frequently leave a month or two of the old sensors sitting unused. Those are typically worth more than strips, box for box, and they expire faster — so they are the first thing to deal with, not the last.
The same applies if you moved from pens to a pump, or between pump systems. Unused pods and infusion sets do not become useful again.
What We Buy
Test strips — Contour Next, OneTouch Ultra and Verio, Accu-Chek Guide and Aviva, FreeStyle Lite, True Metrix, and others
CGM sensors — Dexcom G6 and G7, FreeStyle Libre 1, 2, and 3
Insulin pump supplies — Omnipod 5, Omnipod DASH, Tandem t:slim cartridges, Medtronic infusion sets and reservoirs
Accessories — lancets, pen needles, and unopened meters
Mixed lots are normal here. Most people who have just switched to a CGM have exactly this kind of pile, and it gets quoted as one lot rather than item by item.
Serving Albany and the Capital Region
We buy across a wide radius from Albany — Troy, Schenectady, Saratoga Springs, Clifton Park, Colonie, Glens Falls, Hudson, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Utica and much of Upstate New York. Home pickup or a public meetup, whichever you prefer.
Getting a Quote
Lay everything out on a table, take one photo with the brands and expiration dates readable, and text it to (518) 779-9751. You will usually have a number back within about fifteen minutes.
Clearing the drawer takes about ten minutes of your day, and it is a lot better than watching the boxes expire.
