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- Check Your Thrift Store For This Twilight Book: It Sells For $150+
Check Your Thrift Store For This Twilight Book: It Sells For $150+
Often mistaken for a regular $10 copy, it's actually worth 15 times more.
Issue #46
Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas. Santa’s got you a brand new Issue of Flip Weekly and I promise there’s not a piece of clothing in sight. I hope you had an amazing Christmas and spent some quality time with your friends and family. Tell me… what are your feelings on reselling unwanted Christmas gifts? Do you do it? Do you offer the service to your friends and family? Take a commission? Let me know!
As for me it’s been an extremely hectic week but that didn’t stop me from hitting up a couple of thrift stores and scoring some items that would make any flipper jealous. I mean, I spent $16 and the total listed value is basically $400 - and things have already sold!
In This Issue
What I’ve Bought
It may come as no surprise that thrift stores and op shops weren’t the primary benefactors to my hard earned money this week. With Christmas just passing, we need to do as much selling as possible to recoup the thousands and thousands we’ve spent on the lead up to Christmas. Whilst I wasn’t able to hit up the thrift too much I was able to snag a couple of good deals, some of which went on to sell very quickly.
We start with a book that everybody is familiar with but you may not be familiar with this version that’s priced at $4 but is really worth close to $150.
Who isn’t familiar with this book?
Priced at a thrift store just like it’s a regular copy of Twilight, we have Breaking Dawn Collector’s Edition. A standard copy of Breaking Dawn sells on eBay for around $10, however this Limited Collector’s Edition is approximately 15 times that.
$150 even for a pre-owned copy! Brand new is closer to $200.
The difference between the regular copy and this collector’s edition is that the latter comes in a Deluxe Slipcase, has a Cloth Cover, Ribbon Bookmark, Chapter Ornaments plus an autograph print on the opening page. The copy I found for $4 isn’t in amazing condition, the slipcase has some general wear and tear however the book is very much in a displayable condition. The only reason this caught my interest, because let’s be honest the thrift store is littered with copies of Twilight, was that it was much thicker than a regular copy and it had the slip cover over it. Any variation or difference when it comes to popular titles is something I’m going to investigate and I recommend you do too. Looking for a quick sale I’ve listed it up for $100 and given the sold comps I have no doubt I’ll get it given it’s the only one available within Australia.
Next was a $5 find that dog lovers that grew up in the late 80’s, early 90’s will be familiar with. You see below a 1986 Pound Puppies carry case with a $5 price tag from a Lifeline op shop here in Sydney.
This style of carry case (fabric + plastic “gates“ on each end is quintessential vintage)
Pound Puppies I’ve come to learn was a toy line launched in the 80’s by Tonka of all companies. The concept was simple: some plush puppies that came with an adoption certificate. They came in a range of sizes, some full size plush while others were much smaller that could easily fit in your pocket. I’d never heard of this line before but they were popular enough to have their own TV show, movie and grossed more than a billion dollars in retail sales.
Most of the comps were US based.
This is the plastic “gate“ I was talking about above. If you see this style of carry case it’s old.
The carry case alone sells for between $15 - $30 and luckily for me I opened it up and saw that it was filled with 2 lines: Pound Puppies from 1986 and Puppy Surprise from 1991 (similar sort of concept).
9 Pound Puppies plus the case.
9 Puppy Surprise + 2 knockoffs.
Looking at comps for both, it isn’t unreasonable to expect at least $50 from each set and that’s exactly what I listed them up for. It should be an easy $5 into $100 thanks to a small case full of puppies.
If I was asked to describe the perfect flip it would be almost idential to the next thing I bought. It was easy to find in a thrift store without any sort of rummaging, upon looking it up I was greeted by a Reddit thread titled “Anyone else seen this?“ indicating a level of rarity, there’s a sold comp for at least $100 and to top it off a price sticker of just $2.
Sorry about the poor quality!
This is a Limited Edition box set of Red Hot Chilli Peppers 2006 album Stadium Arcadium. This was a close one because I almost left without it and let me show you why. Hint: it’s because of what’s inside.
Everything that comes inside the box.
4 handwritten notes, matchbox.
Marbles and a spinning thing.
It contains some unusual items that I legit thought were junk. I thought when I opened the box I was opening someones box full of tchotchkes and/or rubbish. We have hand written notes plus a hand imprint, some marbles, a spinning / twirling object and a box full of matches. Unfortunately it didn’t have the CD or DVD which is what made me think it was a junk box - it wasn’t until I looked it up that I realised that this was the Chilli Peppers Limited Edition Junk Box. The comps were really good, take a look:
Comps over $150 if complete.
With comps this high, it’s one of those things where I’m tempted to buy the CD online just to complete the item. The CD can be bought for around $8-$10 including shipping so it may just be worth it so that the buyer isn’t then tasked with putting in work to complete it themselves. Honestly, who would have guessed after opening this box full of marbles and finger paintings that it would be worth close to $200.
I’m going to give you a spoiler, this next item was found in the board game section of a thrift store for $4 and sold in 35 minutes for $79.95.
Yes, another big box PC game.
I’m not kidding, I pick up every single big box PC game that I find because they just sell so well. This one was found in the board game section which is a common occurrence and is the 2003 Freelancer. I’ve come to find out that this is and was one of the most popular games created for the PC with a huge community of fans even now in 2024. I don’t know too much about it except that it’s a sci-fi based space flying game. When it comes to big box PC games condition matters so be sure to look over the box if you find one. This game sold for me in 35 minutes for $79.95 and in hindsight I wish I listed it up for more!
What I Sold
I’m about to show you 2 boxsets of books. 1 you should buy thanks to an 18 day turnaround time, and 1 to avoid with a 6 month turnaround time.
Bought for $5, sold for $69.95.
Bought for $5 sold for $30 on Marketplace.
Which one do you think sold quickest? If you’re thinking Assassins Creed, you’re wrong. It took over 6 months to sell and when it did it wasn’t full price. Shakespeare on the other hand went extremely quick and for $40 more. You might have seen in Past Issues of Flip Weekly that I’ve found video game books for $10 before and sold for $150 48 hours later but this is not the case for these Assassins Creed novels.
$5 into $79.95.
As I mentioned earlier, this big box PC game sold in just 35 minutes. Not my all time fastest sale, but extremely good never-the-less.
Always look for signatures!
No doubt a Christmas present, we have a signed copy of Housemeeting by Australian comedians Lano & Woodley. I’m always on the lookout for signatures of unique and interesting characters because no matter what, they’re going up for a minimum $49.95 on eBay and in most cases they’re bought for under $5.
Whenever I read Puppy Surprise I can’t help thinking of the Duck Surprise bit from Fawlty Towers.
These didn’t last long, they were gone in just 3 days via Facebook Marketplace. If you remember back to Issue #44 I had a Marketplace buyer bundle up 5 different items from me. It gave me a sort of realization that I should be upselling and asking more questions with buyers on the platform. I said this:
When I work with eCommerce brands we’re always trying to increase their ASP (average sale price) and the easiest way to do this is to introduce bundles and add-ons. I mean how often do you visit an eCommerce website and when you’re checking out you’re recommended a bunch of other products and related items?Pretty much every time, yeah? Why don’t we do that with Marketplace? If someone is interested obviously interested in X, we should let them know we also sell Y. I think in Q1 2025 I’ll run a test with upsell messages to Marketplace users and just see how it goes. I’ll of course report back the results.
This week it was a no brainer with these vintage puppy toys. A lady on Sunday messaged me asking about the Puppy Surprise listings.
This is such a better opener than “Hi, is this available?“
The buyer seemed enthusiastic to say the least so I decided to just ask if she’d seen the other listing.
Just like that the sale price went from $30 to $60.
Look, it’s not some huge sales hack, it’s been around for years and years but upselling and just even asking the question can at times result in a higher average sale price. It should have been obvious but for some reason I just never thought to apply those sort of selling techniques on Marketplace. I’m glad I did, it just makes sense and both buyer and seller are happy.
2 week sale time for the Sanyo VHS player.
In Issue #44, just 2 weeks ago I picked up 2 VHS players - 1 for $6 and 1 for $4. As of Monday both have sold for a combined $150. That’s $10 into $150 in 2 weeks. When it comes to VHS players, I’ve said it a million times, you ideally want the remote and instruction manual. If you have them and it’s a good brand, you can ask for around $150 (including post) on eBay. If it’s just the console like these 2, I usually do $100 on eBay (including shipping) and $50 on Marketplace.
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