Issue #57

This issue of Flip Weekly is going to come across as targeted towards beginners but don’t be fooled, even us pro’s need a refresher course every once in a while. I’ve gotten to the bottom of Footrot Flats that seems to always be mentioned by resellers but never expanded on, I start my journey to collecting 1st edition hardcover copies of Harry Potter, I drive over 200km to get some action figures, I have unbelievable sales including a $1 into $150 in less than 48 hours plus a hell of a lot more.

If you don’t like reading, listen to the podcast here. I don’t want to push it too hard on you but if you haven’t listened to it yet I’d really appreciate it if you give it a chance. It’s on pretty much every single platform you can imagine including Apple, Spotify and YouTube and whilst you can read through this newsletter in 10 minutes, the podcast regularly extends to an hour where the amount of knowledge and tips are shared completely unfiltered and without a paywall - it’s 100% free.

In This Issue

• What I Bought

• What I Sold

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Podcast

• Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I Bought

I did something this week that I don’t usually do: I went severely out of my way for a Facebook Marketplace deal. Not even a deal that was mind-blowing to be honest, but something I thought would be fun and could make me a bit of money.

It was Friday night that I saw a post on one of the Facebook Groups I’m a member of. It was an ad that featured approximately 20 early 2000’s WWE action figures that were only $2 each. The location was outside of Sydney, approximately 70 minutes from where I live so I needed to make sure it was worth it.

At 8:30pm on a Friday night I’m not doing much comp research on these listings but I could see one that sparked my curiosity. I grew up as a wrestling fan in the late 90’s so I’m somewhat familiar with the early 2000’s characters so I was able to instantly recognize this guy:

This is Chris Benoit, a former wrestler who spent over 20 years on the circuits but is notorious for murdering his wife, youngest son and then himself back in 2007. Benoit was one of the most popular and decorated wrestlers in the WWE however after this tragic event, the company removed all mentions of him from their shows, websites, merchandise, etc - all of course for good reason. With no future action figures being created of him, the older Chris Benoit figures have jumped up in value.

When I saw the value of this 1 action figure, I decided to take a chance on the lot knowing that this one just needs to sell for the rest to be profit. The idea was that if the other 19 were cheap figures, I could at least lot them up and still make money. The good news is that the total value of all of the figures comes out to $463.44.

Despite using sold comps and active listings I don’t think I’ll be able to get anywhere close to $463.44. I think what I’ll do is pull out the most valuable figures and lot up the rest. If you want to see a video of all of the figures and their values, jump on over to our Instagram where I have just posted a video of everything.

Speaking of Instagram, if you follow Flip Weekly you will have seen the insane DVD find on Friday: a $1 DVD that’s worth $150.

You know what’s cool? If you jump over to eBay Sold Listing’s and search for The Wiggles DVD and sort from Highest Price to Lowest Price, there’s an absurd amount of my listings that show up. That’s because these Wiggles DVD’s feature the original cast and are a part of the “TV Series“ which are worth a lot of money. There are 3 in the series and let me show you the sold comps for all 3.

By the way, I promise that I’m not going to harp on about The Wiggles in every issue.

The Wiggles TV Series 1:

The Wiggles TV Series 2:

The Wiggles TV Series 3:

So if you find all 3 you can expect approximately $450 if not more (I’d tack on a premium.) If you watched the Instagram video you know what happened to my copy of The Wiggles, but for those who didn’t I wont spoil it just yet.

Moving on, I have a new side goal after walking away with a decent haul at a thrift store this week. I want to aim for a collection of Harry Potter books, but not just any. I want hardcover, 1st editions. Here’s how it works with Harry Potter. It’s pretty easy to find them in thrift stores and you don’t want to be paying anymore than $1 per book for paperback or $3-$5 for hardcover.

Like most popular books, 1st editions (and 1st prints) are more desirable and worth more. If you’re buying all 7 books in paperback format your listed price is going to be around $50-$60. Not much wiggle room considering shipping books can be expensive. On the other hand, hardcover and 1st editions…

Can command a higher listing price.

As I mentioned, there are 7 Harry Potters and I was able to find books 4-7 in a thrift store for $1-$2 each. Each were hardcover, with the dust jacket and 1st editions. If I sold them now I’d be missing out on hundreds of dollars worth of profit, I’d rather keep them in my bookcase and check any Harry Potter book in the future just to see if they’re 1st editions. But how do you know if they are? It’s straight forward once you learn, it’s a matter of opening the first few pages to where the legal mumbo jumbo usually is and looking for either “First Edition“ or seeing if the original publishing data matches your books copyright date. Here are the pages for each of the books that I bought:

Every single Pokemon item in a thrift store is worth checking out - I should know, in the past month alone I’ve found some of the coolest Pokemon items in thrift stores including sealed booster packs from 5+ years ago. One of my favorite to find are plush that have the original tag. Not only that, the tag being in a foreign language. Just picture the conversation in the back of the thrift:

For us though? We know that Pokemon was created in Japan and we know that they have exclusive releases in other countries and those releases can be worth a lot of money to hardcore fans outside of those countries. Didn’t know that? Go back and read through all of the Past Issues of Flip Weekly so you can catch up.

Before I talk about the markings that show this Pokemon plush is worth picking up, here are the most recent sold comps for this plush.

You’re thinking now, okay, how do I spot it? First off, any Pikachu or Pokemon that is different is worth looking up. This Pikachu is dressed in a kimono serving fruit with a bowtie, I mean… it’s not exactly how Pikachu normally looks. Apart from that, you check the tag and ideally you want to see that it’s from the Pokemon Center. The Pokemon Center is a bunch of retail stores that sell only Pokemon stuff, nothing else. It’s all official and it’s all licensed.

Adding on to that paper tag, you want to find the official tags on the plush, like the following. I don’t buy any plush that doesn’t have a tag on it, even if I think it’s legit and someone has cut it off, it’s not worth it. No tag = no sale.

Not all tags are created equal though. If you found the above plush and it didn’t have the gold Pokemon Center tag but instead had the one below, would you buy it?

The answer should be no. Would you buy a brand new Sony 4K UHD television from a no-name store, with no box or markings? Big brands have branded tags and materials to identify their products, you wouldn’t expect a Big Mac from a takeaway food store that didn’t have the famous Golden Arches. If there’s one thing you learn here, it’s that the tags are very important, it’s what collectors will look at so it’s what we as resellers must prioritize.

You know me, I’ll check out any biography that I don’t usually come across in the hopes of finding an autograph. I guess I was lucky this day, I found Michael Bolton’s autobiography complete with his signature and a copy of a ticket to his concert. In most cases when I find signed copies of books I don’t verify or authenticate the signature. You can do your basic research online by Googling what the authors signature looks like and not once have I ever thought it was faked. I mean… who would fake a signature in a book?

This copy had the concert tickets inside the book which lent credence to the authenticity of the signature and would boost the eBay listing. As someone born in the 90’s, I would say that Michael Bolton rose to fame through his collaboration with SNL’s The Lonely Island with the hit song “Captain Jack Sparrow“ but that would be false. He was actually a very popular signer and songwriter in the 70’s and 80’s with his solo career and with the band Blackjack. Who knew?

I’m pretty chill when it comes to autographed books, my default listing price is $49.95 but I’ll jump up to $99.95 for someone who I think is relevant, interesting or has a rare autograph, or even $200 if it’s someone incredibly famous and beloved. For Michael here? I would have opted for $99.95 but we have what appears to be damage to the top left so I’m going for $59.95. Still, that’s not too bad, $5 into $59.95.

I’ve heard countless things about Footrot Flats and I finally decided to look into it now that I found a single copy. The gist is that this was a comic strip created in New Zealand from the late 70’s to early 90’s, published in newspapers and then turned into books. The popularity was at its height in the 80’s when the books sold millions of copies and New Zealand even created a Footrot Flats Fun Park. The series consists of 27 numbered books and the closer you have to number 27 the more money you’re going to get.

You have 3 options with Footrot Flats:

1. Buy any you find and try and sell them. You can find early copies like #3, #5, #6 on eBay now for $3 + $6 post.

2. Ignore the lower numbered books and aim for the higher books. Ignore books like #6 which can be bought for $10 and only pick up ones like #26 that sell for $150.

3. Buy all of the books and try and complete the set.

As someone that visits more thrift stores than the average person, I’m more inclined to opt for option 3. If I can find all 27 books for around $2 each, total expense of $54, I can sell them for a lot of money.

So just remember those options when it comes to Footrot Flats. If you’re not completing the set, you’re only buying the later books. I hope this helps straighten out the Footrot Flats mystery.

A few other things I bought this week:

What I Sold

Who knew? In less than 48 hours The Wiggles TV Series 2, that I bought for a single dollar, has gone on to sell for $150. Keep an eye out for The Wiggles DVD’s in thrift stores and garage sales - they’re so easy to spot!

You ever hear stories about people shooting themselves in the leg with a gun they own? I always thought they were morons (they are) until I bought this Assassin’s Creed cosplay hidden blade. Assassins Creed is a video game where you play a dude named Ezio who goes around killing people with this hidden blade that’s tucked up his forearm. The idea is that with the press of a button the blade extends from his wrist to past his fingers which immediately incapacitates his enemies. It’s pretty cool, very pointy, definitely doesn’t need testing to see how sharp it is, and the very first Assassin’s Creed game trailer is one of my favorite trailers of all time, check it out here.

Anyway, this appears to be one of the items that didn’t make it into Flip Weekly. Bought on January 29th for $30, it’s gone on to sell on March 7th for $139.95.

If this old 90’s game was sealed and complete you could get over $100 for it, even pre-owned you can get $100, however I was a bit unlucky with mine and pieces were missing. I went into great detail in Issue #38 so check that out to see exactly why I took a gamble on this creepy board game.

This is the cutest thing I’ve ever sold. This is a 1989 VTech Phone Pals and yes, that’s a physical phone attached with a cord and yes, that’s a phone book. Give this to a kid now and they’ll be wondering where the touch screen is and why you have to physically press buttons. Regardless, this is a kids toy all the way from 1989 that I picked up in Issue #45 for just $5 and its gone on to sell for $150. Here’s what I had to say about it:

I can’t get enough of H.R. Pufnstuff despite the fact it aired 23 years before I was born. It’s very nostalgic for me, it was one of the shows that my parents put on the TV when we would go away on holidays as very young kids, although back then it was the VHS version with the googly eyes. The show is almost renown for the VHS version but I broke down the data to you in Issue #38 that showed the DVD has a higher sell through rate and sale price. If you see the complete series of H.R. Pufnstuf in the wild on DVD, pick it up.

I paid $20 and listed this LG VCR/DVD combo on eBay on the 11th of February and it sold 3 weeks later for $152.00. I found this on Marketplace but the competition there is huge, especially in my area. If you’re not messaging in the first few minutes you’ll most likely miss out. I got lucky, I messaged the guy an hour or two after it was listed, he told me it was pending and I just said something to the effect of “No worries, if the deal falls through just message me and I’ll come round right away“. I also told him where I live so he knew that it was just 5 minutes up the road.

Fortunately the deal did fall through and I went round and picked it up. The seller showed me his phone and there were legit maybe 50 messages from people asking about it so you’ll have to be fast… or very persuasive to get a Marketplace deal. That said, garage sales and even thrift stores are still putting these out so that in my opinion is the better place to source.

You know that I like a high sell through rate. A high sell through rate means your item will sell quickly. Well, this signed jersey may have the worst sell through rate out of everything I’ve ever purchased. I got this from a thrift store back in March 2024 and it’s only just now sold in March 2025. I remember the day I found it, it’s a rare Rugby jersey and fully signed yet despite listing it for $500, it got no interest and I eventually just said screw it and accepted a Best Offer of $250.00. I’ve come to learn since 2024 that a lot of jersey collectors don’t like signatures on their jerseys, it ruins the art of the jersey (or something like that).

That’s all I’ve got for you this week, don’t forget to check out Flip Weekly on social media where I’m now posting short videos of my finds and the podcast where you can hear a long-form version of the newsletter. Thanks again for reading, I’ll see you next week.

Mat.

Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

What’s this? Click here for more information on how you can score a whole bunch of free prizes including a $200 Mystery Box!

Flip Weekly Podcast

Introduced as an accompaniment to the newsletter, the Flip Weekly podcast is for people who want even more reseller content. You can find the podcast on all major podcast streaming platforms or you can listen directly on the Flip Weekly website here.

Flip Weekly on Social Media

If you want more Flip Weekly content, don’t forget to follow us on both Facebook and Instagram.

• Flip Weekly on Facebook.

• Flip Weekly on Instagram.

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

• Google Sheets Reseller Spreadsheet

• Memorize Video Game Prices with Flip Vidya

• eBay Sell Through Rate Calculator