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A Christmas Miracle: This $5 Toy Will Sell For $500
You think you've seen everything until a thrift store marks a $500 toy with a $5 price tag.
Issue #45
Welcome back to Flip Weekly, this is the last Issue before Christmas and boy have we been busy. Last minute thrifting for items to flip and thousands of dollars worth of sales including some that are selling in less than 24 hours. If you don’t hear from me on Instagram, I want to wish you an absolutely amazing Christmas, I hope that you’re happy with your sales in the lead up and I hope that you’ve been enjoying Flip Weekly coming into your inbox every Thursday morning.
Remember: it’s rude to Google Lens your presents on Christmas Day so put your phone away. ˢᵃᵛᵉ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᶠᵒʳ ʷʰᵉⁿ ʸᵒᵘ ᵍᵉᵗ ʰᵒᵐᵉ.
In This Issue
What I’ve Bought
We have less than a week to go before the big day and I’m wanting to make as much money from desperate parents searching for a last minute present as possible. To say that I’m ultra focused on toys this month to resell for a profit is an understatement. I’m after anything related to popular franchises, IP’s and trending products. If it’s cheap and I think it can be flipped, it’s going home with me. Fortunately, I got lucky and a Salvos had a huge Pokemon donation that cost me $48 with a total listed value of $289.75.
Some plush, action figures and miscellaneous.
The plush was Tomy which is a great brand to be picking up and they were only marked $5 each. These should hopefully sell on Marketplace before Christmas and based off of comps are worth around $50 each. One of the other items was a Pokemon Battle Figure Pack. It was marked at $7 which was a bit confusing at first, I mean these plush were huge and brand new yet $2 cheaper than this small pack of 2 inch action figures. Here’s the explanation of the pricing:
A department store sells Pokemon Battle Figure Packs for $7.
Luckily for me the employees didn’t really know the difference, because the pack they were selling wasn’t worth $7, instead it has sold comps on eBay for around $50.
Good enough for me.
Don’t ask me why they’re worth more money, they just are. All Pokemon items in the thrift store are worth looking up and when you do, make sure you’re not looking at the wrong comps like these guys. Speaking of Pokemon, my luck didn’t stop at the Salvos, it ran on into the Save The Children Op Shop. I came across this 2007 Pokemon Deluxe Pokedex for $15. These Pokemon Pokedex toys are basically interactive, electronic toys that store a database of facts and trivia about all of the Pokemon in the Pokemon universe.
Tested in store, working and even came with batteries.
This version appears to be harder to find in Australia than others, so whilst they command around $80 in the USA, comps here tend to hover between $100 - $150.
Not too bad for a pretty simple piece of technology.
I put this up on eBay for $150 with free Express Post hoping for a quick sale before Christmas. Even if it doesn’t come it will sell eventually, the sell through is very good. By the way, if this was the original 1998 version I totally would have kept it for myself.
The next 2 items I’m going to show you were bought for a combined $8 and you may even recognise if you were either born in the 90’s or had kids in the 90’s.
VTech 1989 Phone Pals complete in the box.
Li’l Secrets carded from 1993.
What’s impressive about these 2 finds isn’t the price, but the fact they’re in amazing condition given their age. The Li’l Secrets figure has a clean card and bubble which is hard to find with any toy that’s over 30 years old. The Phone Pals box is also in amazing condition, it’s even older from 1989 and the box doesn’t have any real wear. No dirt or water marks, little if any tears plus the instruction manual and the paper phone book are in mint condition, it’s really incredible.
Phone Pals is something I remember from my childhood despite my mum saying she never bought it. It’s battery powered and you’re able to look in the phone book and dial a combination of numbers and shapes to reach a farm or a shop. I tested it and it was working perfectly and the funny thing is that the company didn’t use a friendly voice on the other end, they used some late 80’s computer generated voice which I can imagine being somewhat frightening for a kid. Then again, the concept of a phone book and a phone with a line is also pretty frightening.
Now the Li’l Secrets was $3 and not something I had as a child nor I remember any of my sisters having, although mum did say this one was familiar - I don’t know what’s going on with our conflicting memories. These dolls came with a couple of charms hidden in the dolls hair which you could either put on the doll or put on a piece of string to make a bracelet.
Comps for these are going to vary widely but because we have a premium product (new / clean / boxed) we can charge a bit more.
Most are overseas and start around the $50 mark.
Comps indicate a carded figure is worth around $80.
I’ve decided to list Phone Pals for $150 and Li’l Secrets for $80. $8 into $230.
On Tuesday this week Sydney experienced one of the hottest days in a while with temperatures reaching upwards of 40 degrees Celsius. I visited a 2 storey Salvos thrift store and realized very quickly that whilst upstairs was a comfortable retreat from the sun, downstairs was fully open to the outside elements with customers and employees sweating and complaining to each other about the heat. Whilst I’ve always been somebody who would prefer freezing cold over boiling hot, I have a sneaky suspicion I have the heat to thank for the absolute bargain of this next item.
This is an animated GIF, it might take a second to load.
Before I explain what this is, the reason I think the item was marked $5.00 was because of the way the employees were acting on the day. They had a whole cage full of product to inspect and tag and I heard multiple times that they wanted to get through it all so that they could go back upstairs and escape the heat. I don’t blame them, it was honestly sweltering. So I think that’s how we get such an awesome find for just $5.
So what is it? This is a 6 pack of Beyblades. It doesn’t sound like much so let’s break it down, first with what Beyblades are.
Beyblades are spinning-top toys used in a game where players battle to knock each other's tops out of a stadium or stop them from spinning. They can be customized with different parts for attack, defense, or stamina. Players launch them with special tools, and the game is all about strategy, skill, and a bit of luck.
Look familiar?
I’ve found and bought loose Beyblades before, but have never found them sealed, or even in a Mega Value Pack like this. I checked the bottom of the box and saw they were from 2012 so I figured maybe there’s some older ones in the pack that are worth something. I picked them up without ever scanning them on Google Lens.
Once I got home I did a search. I didn’t see any eBay or eCommerce links which was unusual. The very first thing that appeared was this Reddit thread from 5 years ago.
Reddit is a really good way of getting information and gauging public interest in products.
In the thread we had a few different opinions from users.
I would say easily closer to 100$ if not more
I say 150 bucks just because its old and in good condition.
That last comment got my attention. Somebody thought this set was worth $150 because it was “old“ — and that was 5 years ago. I kept searching but not much else came up until I found yet another Reddit thread, but this time it wasn’t from 5 years ago, it was from Monday. Creepy.
“I paid $400AUD for this“
This person has bought the exact set on Marketplace, within Australia, for $400AUD and guess what? The top comment isn’t saying the person got ripped off. You know what the top comments are?
JACKPOT
I would sell my foot for that
If something is $400 on Marketplace, that’s an easy $500 on eBay. So that’s exactly what I did, after of course posting a picture of my find on the exact same subreddit. It’s now up for sale on eBay for $500 and within just a few hours I’ve turned down a $250 offer. Thus far though, no-one has sold their feet for it.
Guessing this would be an international buyer given the position of the dollar sign.
What I Sold
Someone’s getting a quiz game for Christmas.
In last weeks Issue of Flip Weekly I showed you this special edition boxset version of Buzz, the PlayStation trivia game. It was hiding in-between board games with a $5 pricetag and it has gone on to sell this week for a whopping $149.95. The most important thing however is the test that I wanted to conduct with this listing. Go back and read it if you don’t remember but the gist of it was that this item tends to sell for either $75-$85 or $150 and it seems to be based on how it’s photographed. If the main photo is of the front of the box it sells for $75-$85, but if you open it up and show the inside like I did above, it sells for $150. Last week there were 2 listings of this product online. 1 was mine for $150, and the other was somebody else’s priced at $89. And of course, the main photo was different for both.
As of writing this Issue, mine had sold for $149.95 and the $89 version is still listed.
My version, sold for $150.
Somebody elses’ still available for $89.
They’re the exact same product and yet the more expensive one with the open box sold first. Their may be a few small tangible differences like outer box wear and shipping location, but to me it really shows the importance of photography. Saying that, you don’t have to rush out and buy the most expensive gear, I mean I don’t even have any photography lights or even a workstation, half the time I’m taking photos on the ground or on a table with natural night. I do however run all my photos through Photo Room which removes backgrounds and can put something nice behind it.
Lots of interest in this jersey and it took a few months for someone to pull the trigger.
Christmas has come early with a huge $550 jersey sale. I picked this up from a thrift store in June for just $15 so we do have a 6 month sale time but I really don’t mind waiting 6 months to turn a $15 jersey into $550. Throughout the past 6 months I did have offers on it in the $300-$400 range but I decided to hold firm and it paid off.
I remember buying this and when I got to the cash register the checkout lady took it and acted like she wasn’t going to sell it to me. I was like oh no, what’s wrong? She said she’s not a supporter of the team and didn’t want to touch it. Here I am thinking they realised they shouldn’t have put it out for just $15.
You can read about the find in Issue #21.
Next up is another jersey that I bought on November 26th but I didn’t write about it just because it’s yet another sports jersey which isn’t that interesting. I wanted to include it this week just as a nudge to you to look up any jersey you find that has the word Rugby on it.
$12 at a Salvos on November 26th.
Sold on December 15th for $99.95 + post.
19 days to turn a $12 purchase into $99.95. These sort of jerseys are usually easy to spot in the mens section - they’re most of the time heavier material and have alternate colors and patterns. I’d estimate that 70% of the ones you come across will be local sports teams that aren’t worth anything but keep an eye out for Cities, States and Countries.
That was quick!
The Li’l Secrets carded doll that I picked up for $3 has gone on to sell in less than 1 day for $79.95. To be honest it doesn’t really surprise me — if this was any other franchise or character from the early 90’s that I recognized in this good of condition (the back card and the bubble) I’d probably keep it. The odds of me ever finding a carded Li’l Secrets again have to be low but at least I’m now familiar with a new type of girls doll that holds its value.
Go back to Issue #40 and read about how well Baby Born accessories do on eBay. I got all of these accessories from a garage sale and it worked out to cost just $2.50 for all of it. Garage sales continue to deliver. That was a pretty crazy garage sale, I spent $20 and walked away with $900 in listed value.
Sold within a week for $80. $15 into $80 in 6 days.
This was cool, a Bo Burnham 2020 concert tee.
I couldn’t work out the signature yet it sold for $50.
Bought at a garage sale, this Zelda Monopoly is one to look out for.
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