Issue #67

I’ve got a huge eBay story for you today. I was introduced to eBay when I was just 16 years old, almost 20 years ago. I didn’t look around my house for items to sell, I decided to manufacturer my own. The internet was the Wild West and I wanted to take full advantage. I created an online business that was importing consumer electronics from China, had insanely high revenue, garnered national media attention and put me on one of those ridiculous “top 10 young entrepreneurs in Australia“ lists.

Everything was going great, I was making bucket loads of money whilst I was at school, I was on track to put my products in retail stores and cash in big time, heck even my friends mums were selling my stuff at their work, yet it all came crashing down when I was just 17. To hear the full story, you’ll have to listen to the Flip Weekly podcast here.

In This Issue

• What I Bought

• What I Sold

• Secondhand Opinions

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Podcast

• Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I Bought

I bought my first guitar. 32 years on this planet, never owned one. Did a music class in school for 2 years, didn’t learn how to play a single thing. 12 year old me would be incredibly embarrassed to see what my first guitar looks like.

After spending a large of time looking over the guitar, trying to find flaws that I wouldn’t be able to spot anyway, I decided to pick up this $35 Hannah Montana acoustic guitar. Usually this sort of thing wouldn’t stop me in my tracks, but I saw inside the guitar “Disney by Washburn“. This isn’t some unbranded, generic kids Hannah Montana guitar, it’s official by Disney and Washburn, a legitimate guitar manufacturer.

I looked up comps. Very few available, 70% sell through rate.

Average sale price around $125 - $150. This isn’t too bad, however I’m not keen on shipping this thing, it’ll end up costing close to $100. I’m going to aim for a quick Marketplace sale with a price tag of $100. There’s a whole lot that goes into testing guitars and without a huge deep dive you’ll never know fully if it’s in perfect working order, so just use common sense and look for any cracks, loose pieces and if everything is straight without any warping. Use your own judgement and hopefully we can make some money with this stuff.

Next up, here’s a question for you. Would you have bought this vintage Akubra Snowy River hat?

Here are the facts:

• Akubra Snowy River Hat

• Pure Fur

• 161.29% sell through rate on eBay.

• Sold listings as high as $200 on BIN, as low as $33 on auction.

• Average selling price appears to be around $150.

• Thrift store price: $40.

• Not in perfect condition, blemishes and marks on the hat in the photos.

I put the hat back by the way. It didn’t have a price tag so I had to ask the staff and they came back with the $40 price. I’m surprised they didn’t puncture the hat with their tags, kudos to them.

Next up I’m going to show you 2 DVD’s to keep an eye out for. 1 is worth $100, another is worth closer to $50. The first is called Cutting It.

This is a British reality show following hairdressers across London. There’s only 4 seasons and it sells for $100 - I wouldn’t bother with individual seasons by the way.

The second DVD is called DAAS Kapital, an Australian sitcom television show from the early 90’s that is actually banned in Germany.

It’s basically a variety / sketch show that only ran for 2 seasons yet the cheapest you can get it on eBay right now is $75.00. That said, I saw this sold listing and decided to replicate the pricing, maybe it’s an inside joke within the show and catches someones eye.

Now I haven’t done articles of clothing in a while, but I couldn’t resist picking this next one up, especially at $15.

I was surprised at the price, but after doing some research trying to find anything on this, it was near impossible to find out what this is worth. For context, it’s a Sydney Swans AFL throwback jersey. That means despite looking old and featuring old logos, it’s actually manufactured in 2024 as a bit of nostalgia and celebration.

The jersey is celebrating 150 years of the Sydney Swans being a part of the AFL premiership and the only thing I could find out about it was from a press release from May of last year.

I’m trying to find a price of what these sold for but I couldn’t find anything. Nothing on eBay, social media, Facebook, in the comments of the announcements, online or even the Swanshop direct link - it was gone. It was bugging me, I didn’t know what this was worth and I didn’t want to under price and take a guess. Then I remembered I’m a tech dude…

I went back to the press release and looked at the date the stock went on sale. May 22nd, 2024. I jumped on over to the Wayback Machine, an organisation that archives the entire internet. I enter in the web address for the Sydney Swans online store. I could see the page was archived on May 25th.

What do ya know? Featured on the front page of the Sydney Swans online shop on May 25th was the exact thing I was looking for:

From there I’m able to see the archived product page and get all of the relevant details. This is that exact same page today:

The product is no longer being sold yet other items from that exact same 150 Anniversary line are. That tells me it was most likely incredibly popular and sold out. It cost $110 and it’s not listed anywhere else… I’m going to list it up for $200 and see what happens. $15 into $200 with just a tiny bit of work involved.

What I Sold

I forgot to tell you about this item that I picked up last Wednesday. Paid $2 in a thrift store.

This is a VHS of Footrot Flats. I’ve talked to you a lot about this series, probably why I didn’t include it last week. We know there’s a huge collectors market for this series, but this VHS on eBay only sells for like $10. So why did I pick it up?

The inside was sealed making it attractive to collectors and a standout in the listings. I decided to list it up for $49.95 and it sold within 24 hours. I hear a lot about the VHS category being dead, but I mean… $2 into $50 within 24 hours proves otherwise.

Secondhand Opinions

The concept is simple, we’ll throw up a controversial, or at least spicy reselling topic, I’ll present my argument whether it’s poorly thought out or not and you’ll provide your own.

Last week I asked you “Should You Clean Items Before Selling Them?” and here are the results:

Here I was thinking this might be controversial… I swear I’ve heard resellers talk about not bothering with a clean but I guess I’m hearing things. This next question should be a bit more controversial.

This weeks topic: Is showing up early to garage sales smart strategy or just plain rude?

If you ever talk to a person hosting a garage sale, you would no doubt have had them complain about the “early birds“ rocking up super early. These are the people who knock on the door of houses set to host a garage sale before they’ve even put anything out; in some cases hours before the sale even starts. I hear this complaint at least once a week when I’m doing the rounds and it makes me wonder the type of person who thinks it’s okay to do that, because I never would.

Before you call me a hypocrite, I have arrived early to sales before. If a sale is on my route and it’s yet to officially start, I’ll drive past to see if the owner is outside with items available for sale, but I would never knock on the door early, potentially disturbing other members of the family just so that I can rifle through their stuff. I think it’s rude, disrespectful and entitled. The absolute perfect garage sale host for me would be someone who keeps everyone outside before the sale starts, and then letting just me in. If not that, some sort of line, queue or if it’s not very busy, just opening a gate and then everyone can come in together.

Don’t get me wrong, timing is everything when it comes to sales. First in is usually best dressed. There’s nothing worse than arriving and seeing that everything has been picked over. I remember going to an estate sale once. Here in Sydney, they don’t tend to be as well organised as the US. No ticketing system, no real organisation. The advertised starting time was 8am, I brought a buddy, a bag, and all our hopes and dreams. When we arrived 10 minutes early we could see a flurry of people coming out with nothing. A woman who walked in after us asked why it was open already and the host mentioned that “a man with a truck arrived at 6am, he was persistent and rude and wanted to come in so we let him and he loaded up his truck“.

The dude would have walked away with all the value. He was persistent and it paid off. That said, he left a negative impression on somebody he just met. Would you want to be that kind of person? Would you be rude to make some money?

Let me know your thoughts below.

You can vote, you can email in, submit a form on the website or even get in touch via social media with your own thoughts.

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Flip Weekly Podcast

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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