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- The Bigger The Care Bear, The Bigger The Profit ($10 into $200)
The Bigger The Care Bear, The Bigger The Profit ($10 into $200)
I stumbled across a gigantic Care Bear that sells on eBay for upwards of $200.
Issue #59
Thrift stores have been sort of empty lately, maybe you’re taking all of the good stuff? That’s good, it means you’re learning. It was only 2 weeks ago I got to the bottom of Footrot Flats only for a reader to show me the entire collection he picked up this week which will go on to sell for over $1,000.
$5 prices, this entire set will sell for over $1,000.
Happy last week of the month Flippers.
Do you still need to be reminded? Listen to the podcast while you read.
In This Issue
What I Bought
I don’t think I’ve been this excited for a find in a long time, it’s something that I would have potentially kept for myself if it was brand new and sealed.
You don’t find one of these everyday in a thrift store.
Before iPhones, iPods and MP3 players, we had CD walkman’s. They were called walkman’s because if you ever did anything besides walk whilst listening to it, you’d scratch the ever-loving crap out of the CD rendering it useless. I think most people, including me, romanticize the past and this is a good example. The sheer inconvenience of needing to carry a whole bunch of CD’s and a machine the size of a stack of pancakes with you just to listen to music is a reminder of the little luxuries we take for granted today.
With that said… at the time it was great and I probably shouldn’t shit on it. This Sony D-EJ011 CD Walkman was found at a Lifeline thrift store for $25 with a price tag mentioning that it has been tested and it works except for the LCD display. It’s important to remember that when you’re buying older stuff, having the item boxed is different than having the item loose. Take a look at the comps for both loose and boxed.
Loose ranges from around $50-$80 BIN.
Boxed however… $150.
These are sort after pieces of old technology. Is it nostalgia? Perhaps. I like to think its people taking a stand against never really “owning“ anything anymore. I’ve had a few people buy DVD’s from me and message afterwards saying they’re stocking up on their collection because they’re sick of streaming companies and to be honest, I don’t blame them. What do you think?
Would you go back to physical media? |
If you ever find one of these at a garage sale, I’ll tell you my default numbers. I always think for a loose unit around $25 for Marketplace, $50 for eBay. Remember of course if it comes with the original box or accessories we can always charge a premium. By the way, if you want to see what a $1,000 CD walkman looks like, check out Issue #48.
Next up, we all know Care Bears. They’re the multi-coloured Bears that were originally created in the early 80’s as greeting card mascots and later on became a huge merchandising cash cow with television shows, movies and toys all made after them. Each bear has a different colour and unique image on their stomachs and collectors are always on the lookout for new and unique items in the range.
I think I found one this week… it is a plush but it’s a tiny bit different.
It’s goddamn 3 foot tall.
Kids don’t hug this bear, they have to wrestle it into submission. Most Care Bears will usually sell and are worth looking into if you’re happy with selling $20-$50 plush, so knowing that I looked him up.
This is the exact one.
I paid $10 and we have a sold comp for $200. I decided I’ll pick him up. I’m not too sure if I thrifted it or adopted it but I do know that this thing is my new roommate, he takes up a lot of space being 90cm long. From what I’ve seen online, this larger Care Bear is quite rare, there was only 1 active listing when I looked him up and that one was $210 with $100 postage and 14 people watching.
To find out more, I went onto Reddit as they have a dedicated Care Bears subreddit with 200,000 members. In a conversation between 2 users, we get some valuable information.
I'm shocked there is a jumbo Sweet Celebrations Bear, I just tried a search for it on eBay and I didn't see any like it listed. I just tried a DuckDuckGo search on it and still nothing came up. It has me wondering where did it come from and where can I find it, as I would like to get one.
It's a prize bear won at an arcade and cost a ton. I doubt it'll be on ebay, Hunter leisure jumbos rarely are, they're a nightmare to ship from Australia so sellers don't bother
Well laurenshapiro, there’s nothing I love more than causing headaches and nightmares for myself, so this Aussie seller is shipping the Care Bear on eBay. I did think maybe I can vacuum pack him but online suggestions say that’s not a very good idea as some plush collectors wont like a potentially deformed toy arriving in the mail. Either way, I’m selling my new roommate for $249.95 with free shipping.
You know what I’m like with DVD’s, I’m only ever going to tell you about ones that can sell for a lot of money with huge profit margins. We aren’t here to make $5 per DVD, so here’s one to keep an eye out for.
Peep the 2 other volumes to the right.
This is Volume 1, 2 and 3 of an animated show called The Amazing World of Gumball. The logo and colours on the spine of this show caught my eye and so I checked it out.
Sidenote, check out Instagram today for a video of me finding these DVD’s and just how hard you have to look as everything tends to blur together after a while.
The DVD’s were $3 each and fortunately for me all 3 were brand new and sealed. Looking at sales and comps, the sealed ones tend to sell for a lot more. Like take a look at the price for just 2 volumes:
$99.99 for the 2 brand new.
I was able to find 3 volumes, all brand new and sealed so this is where we need to come up with a pricing strategy. I had a look at highest priced listing and it was for Volume 1, 2 & 3 pre-owned. It was listed for $114.95 free post.
Brand new and sealed versus pre-owned. Huge difference.
If I sold mine for that, it would net me approximately $70 in profit. It’s nice, but mine are brand new and sealed, I want a premium for that. I don’t think it’s unreasonable, given some of the some comps of sealed copies to ask for $150. It would make mine the highest priced item in the category, but they’re also the only ones that are all brand new.
Let’s do it, $149.95, free post, would net me approximately $98 in profit. Not too shabby for a TV show I’ve never heard of nor will ever watch. Have you seen it? Let me know.
A few other things I bought this week:
I thought this was cool, a pocket poker electronic game for $15. Brand new and sealed has me listing it up for $99.95. It’s around $50 opened and working.
Here’s a sold comp. Brand new and sealed is in short supply so I can add a premium plus I can add on my Australia tax to get to $100.
With the Formula 1 coming to a close in Australia, this Daniel Riccardio F1 jersey was a no brainer for $15. Comps on eBay have it around $100-$150.
Here’s some sold comps. I’m thinking $80 on Marketplace, maybe around $129.95 on eBay.
A WWE wrestling belt for $2? Hell yeah, this thing spins too. Comps around $50.
Here’s a sold comp. I’m thinking $50 on eBay, $40 on Marketplace. I’m surprised the belt was only marked $2 at the thrift.
I can never go past an NRL jersey, especially this 2017 West Tigers away jersey that I bought for $10 and can list for $80 on eBay and $50 on Marketplace.
Review of FlippedIt
As you all know, Flip Weekly has no paywalls, no banner ads, no annoying pop-ups, nothing asking you for a single cent and that hasn’t changed. This week Matt, The Aussie Flipper reached out and asked if I wanted to take a look at a web app he’s created with his buddy. This isn’t a paid review nor do I receive a commission from signups, this is just taking a look at something that might be able to help out people like us when it comes to reselling online. I’ve also been able to get you a discount which I’ll put at the bottom of this review.
The web app is called FlippedIt and you can think of it as an alternative to using spreadsheets for managing your eBay store. Spreadsheets aren’t for everyone, I created a spreadsheet tracker for all Flip Weekly readers several months ago and the amount of emails and messages I’ve received from people who have difficulty inputting data or even accidentally moving or deleting cells is astronomical. FlippedIt is a more user-friendly, foolproof way of keeping track of your inventory and finance data.
A screenshot of the Active Listings tab.
It’s very simple to use, all you have to do is Sign Up and start inputting your eBay listings. At this point in time it appears the web app doesn’t connect up to your eBay account so it can’t automatically pull in all of your listings, but here’s hoping the feature is added in the near future otherwise it’s a daunting task having to manually input hundreds of eBay listings. I haven’t investigated the eBay API before, but if it’s limited in use, some sort of XML export/import could potentially work with users filling in missing fields could work. Maybe? I digress.
Overview page of the Flipped It Dashboard.
Once the data has been added, you can see snapshots of all of the important datapoints. A tab on the Dashboard appears show “Insights (Coming Soon)“ which should provide some interesting information about the items you’re listing. When it comes to this type of software, the more data the application has, the better the insights will be, that’s why I think being able to connect up to eBay using their API would be such a beneficial feature. That said, FlippedIt requests data that eBay wouldn’t have, such as the sourcing location of your item which could be handy if it can analyse which thrift stores you buy the most items from and if they go on to sell quicker than others. Wouldn’t that be cool? You’d be able to plan out your thrifting root based on past successes. We all probably subconsciously do that today, but having the data to back those decisions up would be key.
FlippedIt is still a new piece of software so it’s quite barebones at the moment, however if I was just starting out and I was needing to choose between a spreadsheet and FlippedIt, I would 100% choose FlippedIt. If you’ve yet to start tracking your inventory and you’ve been tossing up whether or not to start a spreadsheet, give that a miss and try out FlippedIt.
Matt has generously provided a 20% discount for all Flip Weekly readers so to take advantage of this offer click here.
What I Sold
Let’s start off with a follow up to Issue #57 where I traveled 200km for 20 WWE action figures, costing me a total of $40 minus fuel and the 7/11 Jumbo Slurpee. It was a spur of the moment trip where I had only comped up one of the figures which was worth around $80AUD; the other 19? No idea. When I got home I separated the lot into 2:
Chris Benoit action figure listed up for $79.95 buy it now.
19 WWE action figures put up for auction with the starting bid of $9.95.
This was all a bit of fun, I figured not accounting for my time, I only really needed to sell the more valuable figure to recoup my investment so the auction result was going to be mostly profit. It started out pretty solid, with hundreds of views and around 15 people watching the auction. The bids started to roll in…
I forgot I had an auction going and saw multiple eBay notifications come through on my phone at once, I was thinking good lord someone’s just bought my entire inventory. No Mat…no.
At this point in time I decided to put a poll up on Instagram asking you what you thought the final selling price would be.
The general consensus was that the final selling price would be between $60-$100. The bids continued…
We’re past the $40 mark now.
With 5 minutes left until the auction closed, I counted it down with the bid at $41.00. Knowing that a flurry of bids usually comes at the end, I was anticipating the Instagram poll contributors to be right on the money. 3 minutes left, 2 minutes, 1 minute, here we go…
Cue the sad trombone sound effect, womp womp…
… nothing! No flurry of late bids, no further excitement, a final selling price of $41.00 + shipping. It honestly doesn’t really worry me that the final selling price was only $41.00, I was doing this for a bit of fun, the only bummer is the hits of dopamine you get when an auction price rallies to something you weren’t expecting. Oh well, we know auctions have worse results than Buy It Now’s so take this as a lesson.
The fangirl power is strong!
I’m honestly surprised that not only did these magazines sell for full price, they received a whole bunch of attention on eBay. I picked up this bundle of Total Girl magazines in Issue #55 for just $1 each at a thrift store. The reason I picked them up is because I wanted to see if something so obscure as an old teen magazine featuring the likes of Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus on the cover would sell in 2025. I’m just thinking of the teens who identify as Swifties have probably never picked up a magazine in their entire lives, so this could be a bit of a novelty for them.
As you can imagine, not all magazines are created equal. 10 random Women’s Weekly from 2010 probably wouldn’t sell for anything, you really need a unique angle and to think of who your customer is. If you find some magazines in thrift stores or garage sales be sure to let me know, I’d love to see. By the way, speaking of magazines, if you want to go down a rabbit hole one of my Holy Grail finds would be to find a huge bundle of Nintendo Power, a gaming mag from the late 80’s, early 90’s.
I’m manifesting finding a huge bundle for $1 each.
A few other items I sold this week:
Sold in 2 hours of listing for $50 on Marketplace.
Sold in 48 hours for $80 on Marketplace.
Sold within 5 hours on Marketplace for $40 + post.
That’s all I’ve got for you this week, be sure to listen to the pod and check out our socials, I’ll have some videos going up shortly. Hope you score big on the weekends garage sales!
Mat.
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