Issue #90

What’s up, Mat here. Let’s start this week with a state of things. Last week we had sales which totaled like $200. Really bad. Impossible to live off. My rent is triple that so if I was relying on reselling I’d be in deep trouble.

This week it’s a bit better. Not sell my company and retire better, but a bit better. We have a lot of video game sales from the Facebook Marketplace pickup. Exactly why there’s a huge demand on finding these things at garage sales… they sell fast.

In a move that doesn’t surprise anyone but me, we didn’t have any more Bratz doll or Polly Pocket sales. They continue to be a category that gets a ton of attention but the buyers are hesitant to pull the trigger… much like The Block “family homes”.

That said, enjoy the categories and brands I out this week and don’t forget you can listen to this weeks episode, a bit more unhinged, on the podcast.

Mat.

In This Issue

• What I Bought

• What I Sold

• Secondhand Opinions

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Podcast

• Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I Bought

I’m about to show you my big brown clock.

A category that can often be overlooked, we have what appears to be a standard wall clock priced at $9.99 at Savers. You might have left it behind in the past, but I guarantee you wont after I tell you a little secret.

This is a Cobb & Co. They’re known for their high quality wall clocks which are made out of Australian pine and solid brass and are hand sanded and varnished. Each piece is unique and not only do they sell for a lot of money, their sell through rate is quite high on eBay.

With each piece coming with a lifetime guarantee, chances are if you find one of these in the wild it’s going to work. If it’s priced anywhere near $10… buy it, let me show you why.

As I’m typing this I have a very vague recollection of selling an Australian made wall clock. If you’ve been following along since Flip Weekly started back in February, 2024, have I sold this brand before?

I remember being in my old place and having a Facebook Marketplace pickup with a nurse or carer. She was picking up a clock and the person refused to have any other clock but a certain Australian brand. Maybe it was Cobb & Co? Maybe that’s why I was drawn to it in the thrift? Off memory she paid big money too.

Anyway, don’t be like me and forget this brand. If you see Cobb & Co know that it’s an expensive wall clock that has a high sell through rate. I paid $10 and have listed this up for $150.

I honestly hate buying Thomas & Friends items. I see it absolutely everywhere in thrift stores and it’s the one kids item even the staff don’t want. It fills me with no joy to present to you this next item, hidden in the kids book section that you should probably buy if you see it.

I scoffed at the initial pricing of this Complete Series 1-10 of Thomas & Friends; they wanted $20 for it. I remember seeing somewhere you could get over $50 for it so I looked it up.

$20 into $80 isn’t crazy after all fees and postage but then I started looking at the sell through rate. 200% within Australia which means it would definitely be out the door within 90 days. Then I started to notice that all of the listings are for pre-owned copies. This one was brand new. That little piece of shrink wrap plastic around the metal tin allows us to ask for a bit of extra money… maybe even cross that $100 mark.

I rolled my eyes, put my ego aside and paid the $20. I decided to be a bit greedy and list it up for $120 with free post. So far I’m the only one with a brand new copy so its gotten a few watchers and given the sell through rate it should be easy profit.

Speaking of items hidden in the kids book section, we have something that honestly shouldn’t be there but I’ll talk about that in a minute.

This is volume 6 through 10 of the manga/anime books called Made in Abyss. I’ve done well with manga before and in some cases the series is nothing special if printed in the original Japanese language but more valuable in English. This is one of those cases.

For example, we have Sold Comps for volume 1-13 in Japanese for $120.

Or individual volumes in English selling for big money.

In a cruel twist of fate, the earlier English versions go for more money than the later versions, but my volume 6-10 can still be listed up for $200. Not to shabby considering I paid $25.

I saw this next item and my first thought was what on Earth is this thing?

When I see something unfamiliar and then read what it is and still don’t know… usually that’s a good sign that this is a specialized piece of equipment that is most likely worth money. This is a VDV Scout Pro 3 Tester Kit by the company Klein Tools that appears to be brand new. At the time I had no idea what any of those words mean. It looks like a taser with a few different chargers, what am I supposed to do with this thing?

So we look up the sell through rate for “VDV Scout Pro 3 Tester Kit“

We look up what the Sold Listings are…

We’re looking good. Unfortunately when I add on Australia to the Active and Sold we see a different story. 42 listed, 3 sold. Not to worry, let’s undercut all of the Active Listings so when that 1 per month sells it’s us. I list up for $149.95 which is significantly less than everything else on the market and we’re confident we’ll get a quick sale on this thing we don’t even know what it is.

Here’s something I didn’t know. Before Labubu’s, before Pokemon cards, back in the late 70’s it was extremely popular to collect Smurf figurines from BP petrol stations in Australia. You read that right. Fill your car up with petrol, pay $10 at the cash register and splurge 85 cents for a figure.

In an effort to make more money from their petrol stations, BP was pitched the idea and agreed on selling collectable smurfs. Are the 70’s even real? A petrol station wants to make money so they sell plastic Smurf figures? There’s no laws back in the 70’s, why aren’t they just selling unregulated cocaine or meth? Why opt for Smurfs? Had they even tried offloading black market tobacco? Heck, they make enough in 2025 to do that, why not the 70’s?

But no, collectable Smurf stuff. Alright, let’s go with it. I came across the below item which ignited this curiosity.

This is a 1980 Smurf Pyjama Bag that still has its original tag which featured the BP logo.

I didn’t even look this up I thought it was too cool to leave behind. $4.50 for a chance of scoring some sweet 80’s pyjamas someone left behind. Sorry, not that. I’m not into pyjamas. We don’t have any sold comps so it’s a bit of a gamble but I think something like this should do okay on Facebook Marketplace as it’s not something you see everyday. In fact, are pyjama bags still a thing? My younger sister had one as a kid but since then I haven’t seen any. It makes sense though… where would I see them…

Moving on, don’t get put off by this jerseys $16.79 price tag, it’s worth a hell of a lot more than that.

You need to be checking out the men’s t-shirts and sportswear for jerseys, I can’t be the only one. Familiarise yourself with Australia’s major sporting teams (their ain’t that many) and you have the potential to find gold. I usually pass on the standard run of the mill colors and try and find the weird ones. The one above is the perfect example.

Why? It’s an AFL jersey for the Carlton Blues. Their entire thing, their entire identity is wrapped up in the name and colors, the Blues. The team song lyrics even start off with…

🎶 We are the Navy Blues 🎶

🎶 We are the Old Dark Navy Blues 🎶

So what do they do back in 2011 for the 2012 season? They change their jersey color to a baby blue. Whose idea was it… as a team so focused on navy blue as their identity to alter it. It sounds silly right, it’s just a color, but this team was founded in 1864 and for the past 150 years they were content with their color being navy blue. Then all of a sudden in 2011 the people in charge thought… what about baby blue?

It lasted for 4 games. Not kidding. It was so controversial and hated by fans that the team put out a press release essentially deflecting the blame and the decision onto the AFL.

The club rambled on in the press release and came up with a few other bangers. Including this gem:

They’re basically saying that even though they’re wearing the jersey… that they designed… it’s still not their actual uniform.

I think the funniest part comes at the end when it’s finished with:

The team in fact didn’t win that year.

Anyway, I got distracted. No Active Listings. A few Sold Listings but they’re scattered because nobody listed them with accurate titles.

These were the only ones I could find. I decided to list mine up for $250 and the response in the first 2 hours has been promising. 26 views, 4 watchers. I also scored some 80’s AFL mugs for a couple of bucks but they wont make me that much money.

Now for my Facebook Marketplace find of the week. I think with past success every weekend I’m expecting to turn into Shohei Ohtani and hit a home run. Here’s what I found on Saturday.

Using the power of Google Lens I could identify that we had:

1. Samsung DVD & VCR Recorder Combo with what looked to be the remote on top of it.

2. Panasonic NV-HD620MK2 VHS player.

3. Some XMS DVD player.

The combo unit sells for around $300. There’s only 1 listed on eBay within Australia and that’s for $550 with 9 watchers.

The VHS player has comps in the $150-$200 mark.

I’m thinking this has the potential to be $30 into $500, if not more. Let’s be real though, the Seller explicitly states that they don’t know if they work and I’m a bit put off by the Seller having over 100 rating on Marketplace… I mean they sell more than me but aren’t going to test these out? Hmm.

Being a bit suspicious, I assume I’m walking into a deal where I’ll only be able to offload these as parts only. I check out those comps and it appears we can at least get around $150 for both the units if they don’t work.

I head out and pick up the lot, bring it home and notice that the combo unit has obviously loose pieces inside of it. This thing is making so much noise when it’s moved around. Curious if the electronic components are loose inside, I take off a few screws, open it up and you wouldn’t believe what I found inside.

I don’t know who forced all of this inside the unit, or for what reason, but this thing had multiple CD cases, multiple DVD’s and even some loose change rattling around. No wonder it didn’t work for them. Thinking the problem was fixed, I put it back together and got to testing.

Whilst the VHS side worked, unfortunately the DVD drive was messed up and the front buttons were shot - probably from having CD cases jammed inside of it. Not to worry, we should still be able to get $100 from it for parts. In terms of the other VHS player, it was the unit which didn’t have a cord so I’ll be ordering one from eBay soon; it’ll only cost a couple of bucks.

Not exactly the home run I thought it was going to be.

What I Sold

If you’re wondering why video games are one of the most popular items to resell, it’s because they sell fast. Last week I picked up a huge bundle of video game consoles and games from a lucky $550 Facebook Marketplace deal. Within hours of listing the sales started to come in.

Despite having a loose joystick, this Pokemon console and controller was sold within 24 hours on Facebook Marketplace. In the original bundle I bought the console had the Expansion Pak and an extra controller. I decided to remove the Expansion Pak and sell it seperately for its going rate (although it’s yet to sell).

These first 2 sales were via Facebook Marketplace. The pricing is way below eBay Sold Listings and that’s because the listed price is basically what I would receive after eBay fees.

For example the Nintendo 64 console was listed on eBay for $449.95 with free shipping. It would cost me around $15 to ship and eBay fees would be approximately $75 so it’s then listed for $350 on Facebook. The price is insanely attractive for anyone looking to buy a console so it was snapped up very quickly. Exact same deal for the PS Vita. I’ve found both the Sony PS Vita and Sony PSP sell extremely fast, especially within Australia.

Even though this isn’t the original Super Nintendo, it still sold within 1 day. Some people might assume the newer models that have the built-in games aren’t valuable, but I was able to get over $100.

That’s a decent amount of last weeks deal out the door and we’ve easily recouped our $550 investment. We have around $1,500 worth of games left including the Holy Grail Starcraft 64 with which I’ve already turned down a bunch of lowball offers.

As Soph’s Flippin Mad said on Instagram: a LOT of coke is going to be done off this plate.

$1 was all it took for me to bring this amazing Viagra plate home with me. Once I did get home I posted a photo on the subreddit /r/pharmarepcollectables and since then its the #2 most upvoted post of all time and has been seen by over 50,000 people. It’s such a bizarre category of collectable that I have trouble understanding the appeal.

I mean, the collectable categories I dabble in are based off of nostalgia from my childhood… granted I never looked in my fathers medicine cabinet. Regardless, could it be because it’s so out there, so unusual that it appeals to quirky collectors? Has to be it, right?

Out the door in 20 days we have the 1976 Happy Days doll that was still on its original card. This doll had a ton of of interest on Facebook Marketplace at $50 with not so much on eBay at $100 despite that being in line with the comps.

I opened this newsletter up without any Bratz sales but we’ve had 1 come in last minute. Cameron from the 2002 line has sold for $64.95 and with that… we’re in immediate profit with the Bratz collection from Issue #87.

This is obviously a very low sale price and not worthy of talking about except for the interaction with the Marketplace buyer. I bought this over a year ago after hearing from resellers that old tools can do well. I found it at a garage sale for $5, took a gamble and its been sitting with me ever since.

The unusual thing is that the buyer wanted this specific measuring tape, not for a DIY project but for something a bit more unusual.

Not the most bizarre Marketplace message but still bizarre. I reply saying yeah it works fine and receive this reply:

Seems unnecessary but I agree and send through a video, not knowing if I’m contributing to someones peculiar sexual fantasy. From there everything seems okay, but the requests keep coming:

I’m just thinking like dude… it’s a $20 measuring tape. Just swing by and pick it up, you don’t need my phone number, just message me.

Oh, and the “we will do our best“… what do you mean you’ll do your best? It’s a lackluster, no-frills, straight-forward pick up. Have you picked something up before? Why do you need to be at your best to do it? Just do it, like c’mon. You place an order for Domino’s pickup, they tell you it’ll be ready in 20 minutes and you tell them okay, I’ll try and make it. Good Lord.

Secondhand Opinions

The concept is simple, we’ll throw up a reselling question, I’ll present my poorly thought out opinion and you’ll provide your own.

Last week I asked you “What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on a single deal?” and here are the results.

Fascinating to see a couple of votes for more than $1,000 but I guess it’s a secret as nobody elaborated on that. Oh well, most of us are in the under $1,000 deal.

Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

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100% Free Resources to Help You

Flip Weekly have created the following resources to help you become a better reseller.

• Ultimate List of YouTube Reseller Channels

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• Memorize Video Game Prices with Flip Vidya

• eBay Sell Through Rate Calculator

• How To Tell If A Book Is 1st Edition

• 100+ Nostalgic 90s Kids Shows Ranked by eBay Value

• Reseller Terms and Acronyms You Should Know