Issue #106

In this Issue of Flip Weekly we list up incredibly valuable books on eBay as an auction for just 99 cents with free shipping, find $100+ items in Salvos and Savers, and get back on the horse with enough sales to make me nice and grumpy. All that and more, let’s get into it.

P.S. listen to this weeks Flip Weekly podcast for a code word to win a $50 gift card to your choice of either Vinnies, Salvos or Savers! Exclusive to Flip Weekly podcast listeners (and there aren’t many, your chances of winning are high!)

Mat.

In This Issue

• What I Bought

• What I Sold

• Official Flip Weekly Podcast

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Flip Weekly on Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I Bought

Moving sales. The opportunity to grab valuable items on pennies of the dollar because other people can’t be bothered to pack up their stuff and transport them to their new home. I love ‘em.

This week we took advantage of some young girls nightmare scenario of needing to move during Sydney’s (and to be real all of Australia’s) rental crisis. What’s the very first thing you do when you get that notice from your landlord? It’s not look at rentals, it’s not look at your bank account, it’s to look around at your all of your belongings and realize just how much crap you own.

There’s no-one with more regrets in life than a collector who has to move house.

Let me take you back to not last weekend, the weekend before. Scorching hot day. Perfect day to stay indoors. Wasn’t going to be the case for us. Up pops a Facebook Marketplace listing for “Assorted YA/Fantasy Books“ with a description that states the books are $2 each and must be picked up by Sunday.

Being a little bit curious as to what this person was selling I clicked into the listing. We’ve got some very common young adult fiction on the top shelf. Twilight, Cursed Child, Mortal Instruments. Nothing exciting.

The bottom shelf however… this is where it gets good. In among a bunch of (pretty much) valueless paperbacks, we have some hardcovers. Hardcover books of one of the most popular fantasy authors of the past decade and someone who has sold over 75,000,000 copies of her stories, Sarah J Maas.

Few quick notes before I get onto the insane value:

1. I’ve never read a single one of her books. At least, unironically and not on the Flip Weekly podcast.

2. I don’t have Alerts set up on Facebook Marketplace for her books. It’s purely the algorithm.

You’ll remember I’ve sold Sarah J. Maas books before, the value is entirely in the out of print 1st editions with the original covers.

Guess what the hardcovers were? Every single one a 1st edition with the original covers and dust jackets. Books from her incredibly popular series Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses.

Now I couldn’t see the covers at the time, I had to trust my gut by looking at the spines of the books. That alone gave me a pretty good indication I was going to buy some peoples dream books for just $2 each.

Before you start thinking thousands of dollars, I’ll temper your expectations. We could not complete a full set of Throne of Glass or A Court of Thorns and Roses in hardcover. The person selling the books cheapened out for a few years and opted for the paperback version. Just for fun, here’s Sold Listings for full sets of both series in their original 1st editions:

As you can see from the above listings, these are rare, very expensive, very heavy and highly sought after books. If I pieced these out individually, I think I could make at least $1,000.

However…

Where’s the fun in that?

You know what would be funner? If we started an auction on eBay, for the entire lot of 9 hardcover books for just 99 cents with free postage. I said a second ago these were very heavy, the postage alone is probably going to run us close to $100. Fun, yeah?

That’s what I did. Last Sunday I set up the auction with the only goal to make at least enough to cover shipping. How did we go? Keep reading to find out.

It’s not often you can get a good deal from a thrift store item that has had this level of care and attention put into it. In most cases a handwritten description usually means it’s priced according to eBay. However, that doesn’t work when there’s no listings for said item.

Fresh off the back of learning who Cassandra Clare was, I walked into Salvos and found this 3 pack of Cassandra Clare audiobooks. Specifically, The Infernal Devices, a trilogy that’s part of the Mortal Instruments series. It’s sort of crazy, each book is represented by THIRTEEN CD’s accounting for 15 hours per book. Can you imagine needing to not only sit near a CD player for 15 hours, but then changing the CD every hour? It’s torture.

There’s very little data available for these things, they were released in 2010 and the only 2 Active Listings are for ex-library copies which are going for around $80 in the US. We’ll test out the popularity of this series by listing in Australia for $120.

Genuinely impressed myself spotting The Art of Naughty Dog at the very bottom shelf at Savers. Also kind of impressed considering I don’t think I’ve ever played their most popular games. For those unaware, Naughty Dog is a video game studio responsible for titles such as Crash Bandicoot, The Last of Us, Jak and Dexter and Uncharted.

Anytime I can find a book like this I instantly know it’s a winner. With zero listings available in Australia but plenty of Sold, we can get decent money for something we’re only paying a couple of bucks for.

I listed mine up for $119.95 with plenty of interest already. A great book category to keep an eye out for. Another book category that I get pleasure in finding is this…

Anything J.R.R. Tolkien. One of my Holy Grail pieces to find thrifting would be a 1st edition The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, bonus points if it’s signed by Tolkien. Tell me I’m dreaming but if that ever happens I might as well retire from the game. Taking a look at past sales on Heritage Auctions, the last sale for a 1st edition, 1st print of The Hobbit sold for $47,500USD, or roughly $67,000AUD.

We’re coming nowhere close to those numbers with this book, but trust me, this thing is still very cool. This is a 1999 3D pop-up of the The Hobbit illustrated by John Howe. John grew up a Lord of the Rings fan and started drawing bits and pieces from the books at an early age. As he got older, he honed his craft and eventually worked with Peter Jackson on the movies as the chief conceptual designer. From there he’s been involved in Lord of the Rings in many different ways, whether that be re-illustrating the maps, designing the board game, or in this case, illustrating the pop-up book.

Just opening this book you can see the amount of time, love and care that went into it. Not only do pieces pop-up, but it’s interactive with flaps that open and spiders that move up and down on string.

The comps are a bit all over the place and I think it’s because the supply can fluctuate. At the time of publication I can see maybe 10-15 on eBay and both those prices and item locations are all over the place.

I’ll list this up for $119.95 which among the 10-15 listed is actually on the low end.

What I Sold

Let’s start off with the auction. 7 days, 99 cent start.

The auction went live on Sunday at 7pm. I’ve read that the best time for an auction to end, the time where you’ll hopefully make the most money is Sunday nights at 7pm.

By 10pm, 7 people had run the bid amount up to an even $100.

From my very limited experience with eBay auctions, I’ve been used to Day 1 having a lot of activity. Throughout the week it slows down and then the last day we get an influx of bids. That’s what I was expecting. At $112.50, I have no idea if we’re on track for a big payday or not.

By the end of the next day, things hadn’t moved much.

I’m not surprised it quietens down and really we’re just waiting for the final 30 minutes, everything in between feels like the NBA regular season (a waste of time).

The bids are increasing ever so slowly. I’d receive a notification of bid received, exactly like the below…

But that’s not what you want. A single notification means that someone placed a bid on your item and they’re automatically the high bidder. No fighting over top spot. In a perfect world, they’d submit a bid for say, $150, then immediately get outbid by somebody who has placed a maximum so the price is driven up. Didn’t happen this day.

At this point in time I’m thinking like man… I hope it goes higher because I’ve opted for free shipping and these books are so goddamn heavy they’re going to cost a fortune to ship. Knowing my luck, the Buyer will be in Perth. I’ve budgeted around $100 for shipping. That means at the current $152.50, accounting for eBay fees and postage, I’d take a loss. This is why auctions are fun.

The next day however, we get the bid notifications in a row. This is what we want.

It’s been bidded up from $152.50 to…

We’re now in a position that we can make a profit. I’m so keen for this to end, it’s only a few days away and my eBay drought will come to a close.

The bid is now up to $350! It’s at this point where I’m excited for a bidding war. I check out the bidders just to see how many people have submitted bids over the $300 mark and we’ve got 6. That’s good, that’s 6 people who are ready and willing to spend at least $300 and that’s not accounting for anyone not yet in the race.

It gets to the final day. I wake up ready, a positive mindset, it’s auction day and it’s going to be a good day. I visit my niece and nephew, get lots of love but make sure I’m home in time for the 7pm epic conclusion. I’m FaceTiming my girl, telling her all about how I’m the best uncle in the world but then have to end the call so I can watch the ending.

7 minutes to go. No movement yet. That’s fine, eBay’s full of last minute snipers.

5 minutes, I start screen-recording. This bidding war is going to make a great video for social media, I’m already half way through editing it. I’m just waiting for the grand finale.

I then realize I’ve been sitting here for 4 minutes and nothing has happened. Where’s everyone gone? Make a bid!

Then it happens. The crescendo.

There was no way this was going to stay at $350.

There we go, last minute snipers. $355.00.

The clock ticks down, they better get in quick.

10s left, these guys are sneaky.

5 seconds, they’re going to grab it last minute.

0s, no movement. Wait, what?

New notification comes in:

Goddamn, where’s the bidding war?! Where’s the excitement over people flocking over your items?! You mean I screen-recorded for 7 minutes just to watch the price increase by five dollars? I honestly thought it would cross the $400 mark.

Don’t get me wrong, we paid far, far less than $355 for these books, and I’m not upset at the final sale price, I just wanted some drama. Give me some drama. Bidders fighting over last second sniping, auction paddles being swiped across foreheads, the leading 3 turn into a 4 or a 5.

To tell you the truth, I’m not surprised. Auctions, whilst can be fun, never yield the best result for the seller. I knew this going into it. I could have sat on these, pieced them out and make easily double what I made today. But like I said earlier, sometimes you have to opt for what’s fun, not what’s the best decision financially.

_{Note: this is not financial advice but if it was, it would God help us. Find your excitement elsewhere, don’t sell expensive stuff cheap in the hopes of getting a dopamine fix. How dumb can one man be?}

We have a very quick sell through rate for the next $100 item.

It only took 2 weeks for Dalziel & Pascoe to turn from a $5.99 Savers pickup into $99.95. Techincally, a sale price of $139.23 as it’s off to New Zealand. This is one of those BBC television shows that looks ultra generic and somehow lasted for 11 seasons and yet I’ve never heard of it before. Dalziel & Pascoe? Sounds like some sort of hardware shop plastering mix. Make sure you pick up some Pascoe on your way home.

We’ve got a Street Sharks sale!

These haven’t gone as quickly as I thought they would but at least I’ve sold more than I’ve given away. $79.95 for a rollerblading shark. One thing I like to do with listings when there’s a few of the same advertised, is work on the title to include details that add value even if other listings have the features, but don’t advertise them.

For example, you can see in the title the inclusion of “Working Claw & Mouth“. Majority of the listings with this exact figure have a working claw and mouth judging by the photos, but by putting it in the title, it emphasises the feature and might make some buyers think well this is the only one listed as working, I guess the others don’t.

This Street Shark I sold for $80.00 can be bought on eBay right now for under $60 and it’s the exact same. Same features, same claw, same mouth… just no mention that it’s “working“ even though it would. I don’t know, maybe it sounds obvious but if I’m in a category with a lot of the same things, I want to stand out somehow.

There’s only a few categories that I’ll continue picking up even if they don’t meet the $100 minimum standard. That’s signed books.

If I was to keep a list, I’ve found actors, world leaders, sports players, musicians, deceased entertainers... someone from every genre. I love finding the random ones. Unless it sells for hundreds of dollars, I’ll usually skip people I’ve already found. Like John Howard - his signature is easy to find yet barely cracks the $50 mark. This week I sold Jordan Belfort’s (The Wolf of Wall Street’s) biography for $70 and it’s off to Denmark with a total order value of $127.28.

Having found Jordan Belfort’s signed book, there’s really only 1 businessman / conman left on my list and funnily enough he also fits into the world leader category.

The next 2 sales were from the same buyer on Marketplace. This was the first 5 star rating I’ve given where I genuinely thought it was deserved. An absolute perfect experience. See below the photos for the exchange.

Tell me this isn’t the perfect sale:

The bloke texts me at 7:23pm. No mucking around, can be here in 30 minutes. Perfect. He wants to do a deal. 2 Pokemon games for $150, which is a $10 discount. Of course I say yes to that.

24 minutes later he says he’ll be there in 5 minutes. Running a full minute early! Then at 7:56pm he’s here! Cash in hand, no real haggles, no questions about authenticity or wanting to test the games out. Seriously, it sounds stupid to be gloating over a Marketplace deal but when you do as much Marketplace as me, these sort of deals stand out. $150 richer, 2 Gameboy games out the door.

If you ever get lucky enough to secure a Nintendo 64 deal on Marketplace or at a Garage Sale, here’s something to remember. A seller may be pricing their Nintendo 64 console at eBay rates of $100ish. They’ll most likely forget or ignore that the Expansion Pak hiding under the front cover is worth an extra $100.

Always check for the Expansion Pak.

Before I go, a quick Average Sales Price update. As of writing this, we’re 48 days into the year. We’ve currently sold 40 items, pretty much 1 sale a day, and we’re sitting at an average sales price of $158.73. Will we get to $200 by the end of the year? Am I dreaming?

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this week, make sure you listen to the podcast and head on over to https://flipweekly.com/contest/ and enter the code word to win yourself a $50 gift card. Thanks again for reading, I’ll see you next week.

Mat.

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100% Free Resources to Help You

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