Issue #86

Show me any other reseller that talks about their finds publicly and I guarantee they don’t score as many bangers. Week in, week out we seem to find ourselves in a position where we can turn just a couple of dollars into thousands.

That’s exactly what happened this week. We’ve ticked off a bucket list item of finding Street Sharks in the wild, we have a 4 season TV show that sells for over $250, a 30 minute sale giving me a 25 times return plus $20 into $1,000 worth of books.

Absolute insanity, check it out below and tune into the podcast if you can’t get enough.

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’ve been blessed by the Thrift Gods. This week has been without a doubt the best thrifting week of all time. Stack up the finds with anyone else and I swear it holds up. No, I didn’t find hidden 18K gold in a Salvos grab bag, but I did find retro items that are highly coveted to collectors and worth a lot of money.

We start off with a find that’s been on my bucket list for the past 18 months.

We found ourselves a Street Shark. Street Sharks was an American based animated television show that ran for 3 seasons back in the mid 90’s. Incredibly popular by dudes of my generation that grew up on it. The show was based around these half dudes / half sharks as they battled crime and evil villains and like most of Mattels shows, was created to promote the toy line.

I ate this show and toy line up as a kid - I even have home videos of me getting some of the action figures for Christmas and birthdays.

Unlike Funko Pops which were created to be collectible (and thus will be landfill in 15 years) Street Sharks were meant to be played with and in 2025 they’re some of the hottest 90’s toys that collectors are after.

The action figure above is one of the protagonists of the show named Mantaman. He was formally a scientist named Dr. Terrence Morton but then one day decided to stab himself in the neck with Sting Ray DNA and Raptor DNA… as you do… and became this stingray / human hybrid.

Mantaman sells on eBay constantly for between $50 - $100.

I would have been completely happy with finding this sole Street Shark action figure, but the Thrift Gods were extremely generous. I didn’t just find Mantaman…

I found Turbo Jab Hammerhead, T-Bone, Power Arm Ripster, Steel Jaw Jab and Slobster! Another 5! The prices varied between $5 - $8 but no joke, I’ve always wanted to find a bundle of Street Sharks in a thrift store or garage sale before. This was like a fever dream to me to find them, I hadn’t held these in my hands since I was a kid.

Then again, my attitude towards collecting has changed since starting Flip Weekly so whilst I find them cool and it’s nostalgic, they’re still going up for sale. Let’s take a look at what they’re worth knowing I spent $43 in total.

We have $43 total spend and the listed value appears to be $530. Steel Jaws Jab is what is making this a home run. That’s a $300 figure by itself! I was a bit surprised some of these figures were selling for under $50, I honestly thought all Street Sharks were $50 and above. I’m not complaining, it’s just a surprise. If you’re wanting to know the basic identifiers for Street Sharks, it’s this:

1. Action figure around 15cm that looks like a… you guessed it… half man / half shark.

2. The copyright marking will say Street Wise Design.

Now I thought myself extremely lucky to find these 6 figures. However, the day ends, a new one begins and you start to think… well what about today? So I head back thinking maybe a few Street Shark action figures hadn’t been put out yet. No such luck, but I did find this in a grab bag:

It’s Street Sharks but not an action figure, it’s a lid from a Pizza Hut collectible cub and it’s just as sought after as the figures. Released in 1995 and exclusive to Australia, these cups (and the lids) can sell for a lot of money.

I paid $4.99 for the grab bag and I’m going to ask for $99.95 for the lid. It sounds like a lot, but their aren’t many out there and the collectors market for Street Sharks is still growing.

There are 84 sleeps until Christmas. Sorry about that. They say Christmas is the time of giving… I disagree, right now Halloween is giving to me hard. I wish I was filming because the words I said out loud when I found this next item was record worthy.

What have I said about vintage Goosebumps? It is insanely collectible! I’m actually disappointed that I was the one to find this and not you - I mean it wasn’t even hiding, it was curated in the Halloween section. $6.99?! For a 1996 Goosebumps clock radio?! You best believe I picked this up faster than you can say Reading Is A Scream.

Imagine you’re back in 1996, you fall in love with the series and your parents gift you this after buying it from a Scholastic catalogue. You get it home and you’re so excited because it isn’t just a standard clock radio. It’s motion activated with sound effects and glows in the dark. Take a book from between the hands and you’ll hear “the hair rising sound effects”. Functionality wise you have a clock radio with an alarm plus an AM/FM radio “with a built-in antenna!” You’d be stoked.

It didn’t come with the original box but I searched for a photo of it online and it looks really cool:

If you can find any old Goosebumps item that isn’t the books (well, the books too) you can make a lot of money. Back at the height of its popularity, the Goosebumps lawyers went nuts with licensing. The brand was everywhere which means it can pop up in any area of a thrift store.

As you can see this stuff can be in every area of the op shop. If you skip any of these sections you’re potentially missing out on some amazing finds. You best believe when I found the clock radio I scoured the entire place for more Goosebumps stuff. There was nothing, but still!

Let’s quickly move from categories I would have loved to receive as a kid to a category I would have detested. Clothes. We have a concert t-shirt that seemingly slipped through the cracks at Lifeline.

Kanye West toured Australia back in 2014 with his Yeezus tour and this piece of merch has made it to an op shop and priced up at just $12. Fed up with Kanye’s antics or updating their wardrobe? Doesn’t really matter, we can mark a lot of money with this find. We don’t have exact eBay Sold Comps but we do have some that are pretty close.

Seeing as this specific design is difficult to find online I decided to try and get $150 for it. Its already got several watchers and by the looks of it should sell. A lesson that concert tees don’t have to be 30 years old to be valuable.

Alright, time for another insane find. Literally something that should have an entire newsletter dedicated to it. Not just for its crazy value, but because eBay removed the listing due to “bestiality“ - you would have seen this if you follow me on Instagram where I’ve been teeter-tottering between 999 and 1,000 followers.

Don’t worry, it’s nothing like that.

We have 4 books here. Looks like nothing spectacular. No idea what they are or what they’re about, never heard of them before. For whatever reason their spines stood out to me. Whether it was because it was by an author I’d never heard of… maybe I saw the cover and it looked like some sort of graphic novel… or maybe subconsciously I wanted something like the fish book. I don’t know. Take a closer look.

They’re not graphic novels, they’re not comics, they’re not guides on how to catch kiss and release fish. They’re in fact rule books on how to play a tabletop role playing game called Lamentations of the Flame Princess. All 4 of them. Think of it like Dungeons and Dragons except the rules and scenarios are… a bit more disturbing and darker. Unfortunately I don’t know much more about tabletop role playing games but we can gather enough that people buy these books as guides on how to play the game with each book offering a different sort of expansion or scenario? Maybe something like that?

The books weren’t too badly priced, the total I paid was $20.

A bit of a tangent, the prices weren’t a standard $5 each, they were all over the place. $5.49, $3.49, $4.49, $6.49. Makes me wonder if this is just random Savers pricing or if each book has a hidden formula that staff use. We know hardcover is usually priced up higher than a paperback, but do they also take into account number of pages? Width and height? Dustjacket? It’s intriguing to me just based on the fact that these books would have all came in at once and presumably priced in succession, so why the odd pricing? What’s the bet it is just random and not worth thinking about. Anyway…

Lamentations of the Flame Princess are known for having limited runs of their books. When doing research into them I found an old Reddit thread that worried fans at the time:

Top comment:

When I look at the back of the Fish book I can see text that reads “First Printing: 500 Copies“. Maybe it was true? Let’s look at Sold Comps to see what we’re dealing with.

Now as for the Fish book… no Sold Comps in the past 90 days. Today, it doesn’t surprise me. This was the book that was removed from eBay for a Policy Violation so I bet most people didn’t bother relisting and went to sell there copy elsewhere. Not me though.

I relisted the book but blurred out the inappropriate word. So smart. eBay: 0, Mat: 1.

I took a look around the internet for any place selling this book and it was hard to find anything but I did find 2 random independent book stores. Going off their pricing I felt comfortable sticking a $300 price tag on it. Yep, $300. I even joined and posted in a Lamentations of the Flame Princess Facebook Group with the price and somebody said “That's a great price for fishes“.

Let’s take a look at the listed prices in a beautifully designed graphic.

So we spent $20 on 4 books and we can get almost $1,000 out of them. It still feels a bit surreal, I think I’ll feel better once 1 or 2 sell. I know there’s Sold Listings to back up the popularity of the tabletop game but you can’t help but feel it’s too good to be true.

Moving on, this set of DVD’s was frustrating to find information about.

Why? Here’s a fun game: type Home Movies into eBay or Google and see what comes up. I’m trying to do on the fly comp research and the internet is giving me step by steps instructions on recording your own home videos. When you come into a situation like that, you need identifiers. This is an animated show on Cartoon Network so we include that and alas, we have some information.

The show lasted 4 seasons and given I’ve never seen it before, it stood out like a sore thumb. We have 2 seasons of show for $4.99 each and given it’s out of print, we’re in for a pretty decent payday. If only we had the entire 4 seasons…

Nevertheless, I think we can get around $100 for the pair. Here’s a tip: if your DVD comes in a slipcase, advertise in the title or description or even the photo that it has a slipcase. Collectors, for whatever reason, value this and it can help your sell through rate.

A few other things I found this week that will flip for decent money:

What I Sold

This might be the most expensive toy necklace ever sold on eBay. This is an original 1992 Polly Pocket (picked up in early September from a huge Marketplace deal) Fairy Garden Locket. It’s legit 5cm, opens up to the original doll and if you look at the top you can see a very small area where you can put in your own photo. I have no idea how you’d get a photo that small or that shape, but it’s supposedly possible to carry around a photo inside this thing. If you have $500 laying around you can buy it brand new:

That wasn’t the only Polly Pocket we sold this week. I had a Buyer get in touch via Facebook asking for a bundle deal. She actually asked upfront if she could come around and have a look at all of them and I’m just thinking… girl, firstly, you need to do better at protecting yourself on Facebook. You do not invite yourself into strangers homes on the internet. Especially to some dodgy looking dudes home who looks like he has no business in selling Polly Pockets. Secondly, I’m not a store. I don’t have a display of Polly Pockets in my window. Look at the photos and make a decision.

I relayed this onto her (minus the I could have been a murderer part) and she settled on 5:

When I list items on Facebook Marketplace, I usually price them a tad below what I do on eBay. There’s obviously no fees on Marketplace so the discount is just taking that into account. If a Polly is $150 on eBay, it might be $130 on Marketplace. The total Marketplace value of the above 5 was $390. I offered them for $300 which was promptly accepted. We moved forward with a $150 deposit and another $150 upon pickup… providing of course she doesn’t invite herself into some other Marketplace home and never comes out.

_{I kid, I’m joking, but seriously, don’t be going into strangers homes.}

Sold via Marketplace and man, what a quick sale. Listed at 5:46pm and sold by 6:23pm. Within only a few minutes I received an $80 offer with the Buyer asking if I’d take it because it didn’t work but when offers come in that quick, stick to your guns. I told her if it’s still available in a few days she can have it for $80. Quickly, she changed her mind. Took it for $100. This stuff wherever you find it are immediate buys, don’t even bother comping.

I wouldn’t have picked these up if they weren’t branded. This is a huge carry case full of Fiskars scissors and punches for scrapbooking. You can get this sort of stuff from Kmart or even Temu but it’s the branding that drew my eye 7 months ago when I bought this set. It’s taken a while to sell but we still profited $80.

It doesn’t sound like a good buy when it’s $20 into $80, but this was a part of a huge Marketplace pickup that I talked about in Issue #80. Invited inside to a Sellers home, I was able to snag 39 games for $200 with a total listed value of $989.54. Of that deal only 4 video game listings remain - they were all fast sellers (although I’d love for the Harry Potter Collection PS2 game to sell, it’s up for $219.95).

This was a quick sale, out the door in a week. I’ve found a lot of the “Annual“ books aren’t worth much money. If you look up this book on eBay the Active and Sold comps are quite low. A sale of this exact book in the middle of September was for $10. However, Sonic is such a huge brand and popular character that when I saw the listings I decided to filter Active Listings by Item Location: Australia. There were zero available. Australia was starved off this particular book. I took a chance, listed it up for $50 and it’s sold locally.

Secondhand Opinions

The concept is simple, we’ll throw up a reselling question, I’ll present my poorly thought out opinion and you’ll provide your own.

Last week I asked you: “Have you noticed garage sale prices being more in tune with eBay prices lately?“ and here are the results:

A common sense answer. If I go to garage sales this weekend I know it will be in the front of my mind. Let’s hope if I take photos to show you that I wont get called out by another reseller.

That’s all I’ve got for you this week, if you want more listen to the pod. I mentioned Christmas in this weeks Issue and the reason it’s on my mind is that I really want to do something special this year. Not for myself, but for you. I’ve got a few ideas in mind, let’s see what I can pull out for Thristmas 2025. See you next week.

Mat.

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