Issue #10.

An absolutely incredible week! We've struck gold with a 6-piece kitchen set that was sitting on the thrift store shelf for just $1 each, yet somehow sold close to $2,000 in just 10 days. We're also seeing nostalgia sales on eBay, exploring an unusual sourcing method, uncovering an electronic handheld game with a jaw-dropping resale value, and offering you all the first opportunity to test out our new reseller spreadsheet and more. But first!

Table of Contents

• What I’ve Bought

• What I Sold

• Resources & Friends

• User Submissions & My Challenge

• This 6-Piece Kitchen Canister Set Just Sold for $1 …

• What’s To Come

What I’ve Bought

When you’re sourcing items you aren’t restricted to just thrift stores and garage sales, you’re really open to purchase from anywhere that buys and sells product. I’ve had success with a local comics and collectibles store (basically a pawn shop) that sells some really cool items at discounted prices. It’s one of my favorite places to visit and as soon as you walk in the tiny store you’re inundated with limited edition statues lining the walls, vintage toys hanging from the roof, collector cards and comics behind glass display units and essentially every Funko Pop known to man, stacked from the floor to the ceiling.

Every now and then a piece comes in that isn’t exactly in line with what they sell and it’s put up for sale quite cheap. The piece in question was this:

If you’re unable to see the price tag it’s $15 for this vintage 90’s Disneyland Goofy button up baseball jersey. It was in great condition and just needed a few loose threads cleaned up and it would look as good as new.

If we take a look at comps we can see a sale price that’s a lot higher than $15.

With those comps in mind I decided to list it up for $79.99 and if it sells for the full amount it would net me a $49 profit margin after all fees. Keep an eye out for your local pawn shops or any business that buys and sells items, you may come across a winning deal.

Side note: at this exact same pawn shop I was able to find some really cool Pink Panther animation cells from the 1993 television series.

I paid $70 total for all 3 cells, I was able to identify the episodes that they were from thanks to the power of the internet and I’ve already sold 1 for $150 which was shipped off to Italy. I’ve listed another one for $140 and have kept one for myself so either way it’s a massive win.

The next item I bought was pure curiosity as I’ve never sold anything in this niche and I loved the idea of learning more about it:

Cameras seem to be everywhere at thrift stores and garage sales and yet I’ve never picked one up. When I spot one I think yeah there’s a bit of money to be made, but there’s also a lot of moving parts and I know nothing about them so it’s tricky to be able to sell with any sort of confidence. Nevertheless it’s always a good idea to learn more about a new niche.

I came across this fully boxed, complete Nikon Coolpix A300 at Vinnies for $65 and thought why not? I of course checked out basic comps online prior to outlaying $65 and we were looking at around $50 for parts if it didn’t work or $220 if it did. Sounded good to me so I took it out of the box, turned it on and had a quick fiddle and everything seemed cool so I picked it up.

Once I got it home I was able to fully test it out. It had a sneaky 8GB SD card still in the memory card slot, the battery was working perfectly with a full charge, the zoom seemed fine, the buttons weren’t sticky or non-functional. To be honest it seemed perfect.

However, after looking at a few more comps I noticed a few listings saying that Bluetooth was working or Bluetooth wasn’t working. The Bluetooth functionality allowed you to transfer photos from your camera and other things like that. To use Bluetooth you needed to download Nikon’s app called Snapbridge. I installed, configured and set it all up and attempted to connect. No luck. I tried a few more times and no matter what Bluetooth just wasn’t connecting. Another Google search and it became pretty clear that this ‘Snapbridge’ app is notoriously bad and a lot of people had issues pairing their phone to the camera.

I must have tried a dozen times, alternating with different solutions but still no luck. At this point in time the camera has only been tested with my phone, so I decided to wait until I was visiting family to see if it would work. My sister attempted to connect to the camera… no luck. It just didn’t seem like it was going to work so I made the call: she could sell it herself on Marketplace.

The camera was listed at around 2:30pm for $100 with a note stating that Bluetooth didn’t seem to be working. The camera got immediate attention with close to 10 saves within 3 hours and 5 “Hi, is this available?“ messages. It was maybe an hour after that somebody from another state reached out, asked if it could be shipped and it was successfully sold for $100 + post. I’m not sure how to feel about this sale just yet, but I’m happy that someone is going to use it and it didn’t end up donated straight back to Vinnies. My takeaway is to avoid anything using Snapbridge.

The last thing I want to bring up is this:

Consider this a reminder that you should keep an eye out on your local thrifts social pages for any ongoing promotions. One of mine was having a 50% off DVD sale and I was able to pick up 2 seasons of Pokemon for $6 and King of Queens complete box set for $10. Here’s how this will break down on eBay:

I’m not one to go heavy on DVD’s however Pokemon is always a quick mover for me and King of Queens box sets sell well on eBay - both should go on to move quickly as they’re at the lower end compared to the comps.

A few other random items I picked up include:

What I Sold

The first item is pure nostalgia.

I grew up watching Power Rangers and became an instant fan - turns out a lot of people love the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers because this action figure was the most viewed and watched item on my eBay account. I found him in a thrift store toy bin and he was surrounded by a whole bunch of large, cheap plastic toys - you know the ones, they’re light as a feather and bought originally in $1 stores. I immediately recognized him from the show, picked it up and could tell it was well-made so I bought him for $5.

I listed him for sale in late December and the views and watchers started racking up but no-one pulled the trigger. I think it was because the original price was $149.99 so once it eventually gone done to $89.99 it was snapped up quick. I don’t usually do free post however this item was listed before I set up my consistent shipping routine so that adds a $14.50 fee on top of everything else. Profit for the item after everything will set at around $65.00.

This next item is something to keep your eyes out for in the thrift:

We have a lot of 5 wrestling DVD’s that were picked up for $1 each. I’ve mentioned before that you should only purchase your DVD’s from a thrift store or yard sales that’s selling them for $1 each or less - these stores are inundated with media so don’t buy DVD’s for anything more than that. Now in terms of wrestling DVD’s, you’re going to want to keep an eye out for 1 of 2.

1. Niche of a niche - these are wrestling DVD’s dedicated to either single performers or best-of’s, for example “The Rock’s Greatest Matches“ or “Best Ladder Matches of Wrestlemania“.

2. A bundle of Pay Per View (PPV) events, for example:

In my case, I bought the 5 DVD’s for $5, shipped them off for $10.60 and had a $35 sale price leaving me with $22 profit.

Next item I want to tell you about ticks the following boxes:

1. It’s small and easy to ship.

2. It’s easily mistaken for a cheap toy.

3. It can sell for $30+ if it’s loose or $50+ if it’s packaged.

You may recognize this, the item in question is an electronic handheld game from the earlier 2000’s called 20Q.

The concept was simple: think of anything in the world and the game will try and guess what it is within 20 yes-or-no questions. If it fails within 20 questions, it will ask an additional 5 and if it fails, you’re the winner. I tested the game out and it was pretty fun although it didn’t know what an email newsletter was. Unfortunately the one that I sold did have a few missing pixels which drove down the selling price but it was still playable, it didn’t affect readability. Check out some of these comps.

If you ever see one of these rolling around a thrift store toy basket or sitting on a garage sale table, pick them up! It honestly looks like a cheap toy from the early 2000’s so most people wont price them high unless they look them up. If it turns on and it works you can make a bit of money. In my case, a few pixels were missing and I was still able to get a decent price:

So even with a few pixels missing it sold for $20 and had a lot of views and watchers.

A few other items I sold this week include:

Resources & Friends

This weeks resource is something that we built over the past fortnight, it’s the beginnings of Flip Weekly’s Reseller Spreadsheet. Every single person that’s reselling should ideally be keeping track of their inventory so you can work out what you bought an item for, what it sold for, how long it took to sell and if you should buy it again based on the sell through rate. You can do all of this with this spreadsheet.

At the moment it’s only available through this newsletter and eventually I’ll put it live on our website for anyone that’s interested. It will forever be 100% free and I’m looking for you guys to test it out, provide some feedback, maybe suggest some new features and we’ll continue working on it until it’s completely perfect and featured packed with everything you need.

To view the spreadsheet, click here.

There’s only 1 thing you need in order to use this spreadsheet and it’s a Google Account. First things first when you view the spreadsheet you’re going to want to make a copy of it to your own account. To do this:

1. Open the spreadsheet.

2. Click File > Make A Copy

3. Name the spreadsheet and save it.

That’s it, you’re done.

From there you only need to pay attention to the first 6 sheets. They are:

1. Dashboard - this is a visual representation of your sales and profit.

2. Form - this is where you can add, edit and delete items to your inventory.

3. Inventory & Sales - a full list of all of your inventory.

4. Daily Sales - double click, select a date to view your sales for that day.

5. Monthly Sales - double click, select a month to view your sales for that month.

6. Buy Again - these are items that have sold within 30 days and have a 40% or more profit margin.

At the moment the sheet is filled with sample items that can be removed and replaced with your own. To do this simply go to the Form, click on the down arrow next to Search, click an item (wait for it to load) and then hit the Delete button.

As I’ve mentioned the sheet is still in testing mode so I’d love to hear your thoughts, experiences and feature suggestions that could be added before releasing it on the website. You can get in touch here.

User Submissions & My Challenge

This week I talked about finding items to sell in unusual places - you never know where a profit can be made. My challenge to you this week is to find an item to resell from a place that you wouldn’t regularly visit for inventory. Whether it’s a pawn shop like me, or something completely different I want to hear all about it.

Massive props and a shout out if you’re able to find something for free (that you currently don’t own) and are able to sell it for a profit. To take on the challenge and send through your submission, click here.

This 6-Piece Kitchen Canister Set Just Sold for $1,750 In 10 Days

Believe it or not, this seemingly basic and, let's be honest, ugly 6-piece set, featuring a 'dated' design and my crappy photography blew my mind when it sold for close to $2,000 in just 10 days.

So what’s the story? A friend of a friend got in touch and said she had something that she wanted to sell and needed help. Whilst hunting for vintage pyrex in the local thrift store she came across this set of canisters for only a buck each. She liked how they looked but didn’t know anything about them so she picked them up for $6, brought them home and did a bit of research.

Turns out these are quite special, they are made by a company called Jeannette Bottle Works which started in the late 1880’s and rebranded to Jeannette Glass Company in 1898. The company specialized in glassware and between 1928 and 1938 produced their most popular patterns that are collectible to this day. One of the reasons why they’re collectible and highly sought after?

They contain traces of uranium that glow under a UV light! Even still, I’ve sold uranium glass before (never from this company) and I was massively surprised when I looked up comps online.

Honestly, these prices are insane. In terms of some ways to spot them?

1. The ribbed pattern.

2. The colour - the green hue is one of the most common, but some of their products also came in pink, teal and a transparent white.

3. A marking - on certain glass products a reversed J can be seen at the bottom, sometimes in a square, sometimes in a diamond. It’s reversed so that it appears the correct way when viewed through the bottom. On other products you can see embossed “J.G.CO“ or “J.G.C“ lettering.

Back to the story, I’ve been asked to sell these and split the profit. I decide to put up an asking price of $2,000. Based on comps I honestly thought this was a fair price and maybe even a bit under - however in the back of my mind I couldn’t believe the value so I was second guessing whether anyone would shell out $2,000 for a few canisters. I could have listed them individually but my gut was saying that a complete lot would garner more attention and sell faster. The complete set was listed on various websites on the 29th of March with a $2,000 sale price.

There was immediate activity on all of the selling platforms. Views, watchers, saves, messages - it was clear that buyers were interested. Who knew 1930’s kitchen canisters had such a market? The items sat without a single offer for several days and it wasn’t until the 9th of April that I received what looked tobe a generic offer message on Gumtree:

The offer came late at night from an account with no feedback, profile picture or introduction. I responded immediately and asked a few questions just to validate that this was a) a real person and b) somebody that was genuinely interested. A bit of back and forth and I was confident that it was real offer and a genuine buyer. We now had a decision to make, would we:

1. Decline and hold firm at $2,000.

2. Do a hard counter at $1,900.

3. Meet in the middle at $1,750.

The decision was made to meet in the middle at $1,750 and I presented that to the buyer who responded in the most Aussie way possible:

After sending over bank details the payment was made within 3 minutes and the sale confirmed. I packed up the canisters extremely carefully as they were heading across the country to Perth and finally once it arrived the buyer was extremely happy:

What’s To Come

A huge weekend of garage sales, hopefully some massive eBay sales and your feature requests enacted on the new reseller spreadsheet. Last week I posted a thank you image in this section thanking you guys for 300 subscribers. It was actually a bit late because we’ve flown past 300 and now sit almost at 450. The goal is 1,000 before the end of the year so I’d appreciate any support you guys can lend. Thanks again for reading and I’ll talk to you next week.

Mat