Issue #43

Welcome back to another Issue of Flip Weekly. We’re closing in on the end of the year so I hope you’re listing the last of your inventory and also making bank from the pre-Christmas sales. My sales from last month were up 42% which I’m really happy with considering this is a fun side gig and I think the lead up to the 25th is going to be extremely busy with packing, shipping and navigating the post office. While I’ve got you, if you’re feeling ultra festive this year, be on the lookout for Giving Tree’s throughout your local shopping centres and malls. If you have good quality, excess inventory that’s brand new and sealed, consider dropping it off to one of these Giving Tree’s and it will go to someone in need. Enough of that, let’s get into it.

In This Issue

• What I’ve Bought

• What I Sold

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Flip Weekly on Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I’ve Bought

December has turned into the month where people abandon their cruise ship replica models because this week I found 2 of them out in the wild.

I’ve talked about these models in early issues of Flip Weekly and I was surprised to pick up 2 of them this week. We have the Norwegian Star and Rhapsody of the Seas. These resin models are always priced cheap and in most cases you can get a 10x return, if not more. The last one I sold was in Issue #39 which was bought for $9.99 and sold for $150.00.

If you go into eBay Sold’s and type in “resin cruise ship model” you’ll see hundreds of sold listings of these type of models, with sale prices ranging all the way up to $500+, with an average sale price of like $200. Ever since selling my first one, I’ve always looked out for cruise ship memorabilia because for whatever reason it has a huge fan base with plenty of spare cash laying around. In terms of the 2 I picked up this week, comps are good:

Both of the models I picked up have slight chips in them so I wont be able to get full price, but I should be able to get around $150.00 for both of them. $7.00 into $150.00 isn’t too bad. If you see these out in the wild, pick them up.

This next item is quite unusual, I saw it lurking at a thrift store with a $15 price tag and was intrigued.

At first thought, given it had a super long antenna on top I thought maybe it’s an old school satellite phone until I saw it had no dial pad. Looking at it further it appeared to be some sort of walkie talkie or radio communication device. These are always gambles at thrift stores because half the time electronics are put out either untested or not working. I’ve experienced this so many times, and just to get a bit sidetracked for a second, it even happened this week. I found this sweet old Sony Walkman cassette player at a Salvos for $20 and picked it up.

But of course once I got it home and gave it a test with fresh batteries, headphones and a cassette it didn’t work, didn’t even make a peep. If it was working…

It honestly shouldn’t surprise me, some of these thrift stores put the “valuable“ items in a display case at the front and this what just randomly sitting on a shelf. You can be sure that if this was working they’d mark it up. It sounds like I’m accusing them of putting out an item they knew didn’t work… and I guess I am. But anyway, back to the other weird looking communication thing.

It’s called a Realistic TRC-219 Transceiver which from what I understand is basically a Walkie Talkie. What’s cool about this item is that people don’t buy it for the functionality, they buy it for its aesthetic. Why? This exact model was showcased in the TV show Stranger Things and people buy it to cosplay. Cool right?

As it was a cosplay item, I decided to take the gamble and buy it for $15 knowing that if it didn’t work, it hopefully shouldn’t matter too much as it’s purely for aesthetic reasons. Of course once I got it home and tested it out it didn’t work. Now, it’s actually got a pretty good sell through rate at 57.14% and in terms of comps, you can expect anywhere from $50-$100+ depending on where you’re selling.

The Walkie Talkie appears to be somewhat hard to find within Australia and the only one listed here is for $110 + post with 4 people watching. I decided to list mine up for $99.95 and it’s getting a decent amount of attention for what is essentially a prop. This item sort of ties back into Issue #27 “How To Use Celebrities For Free to Sell Big on eBay ($8 into $187)“. In Issue #27 I went through how I stumbled upon a t-shirt in a thrift store just for $8 and sold it for $187 purely because it was the same shirt design that Timothee Chalamet wore in one of his movies. I really like this type of eBay marketing - if you find an item and you recognise it from a TV show or movie, sell it based on that for a premium. Chuck the celebrity or movie name in the title, put in a screenshot of the scene and it’s very possible you find an entirely new market.

I tend not to buy DVD’s but when they’re this good I can’t refuse. This week the thrift shop DVD God’s were really good to me leading me to 3 DVD’s under $10 total that I can sell easily for over $250. For context, I’m not standing in the media section scanning each item, I’m just looking for anything at all that stands out… and these 3 did.

I paid something like $7 for these in total and the total listed value is $260. They’re not even that obscure titles, I’m sure you’ve heard of The Wiggles, probably even Sailor Moon. These are great titles to pick up and remember when it comes to The Wiggles, the original cast is key. There’s a huge collectors market and these items sell quickly. The 1 title you may not have heard of (I hadn’t either) is called Hellcats. The “adult“ DVD’s were in a bookcase with only the spines being displayed. This was the spine of Hellcats and what stood out:

For starters it’s something I knew I had never seen or heard about before. Makes sense, the show only ran for 1 season. The second was the NBC logo above Ashley Tisdale’s head. Again, something I’d never seen and if I had seen the NBC logo no a DVD case before, it was usually plastic and thinner. I guess these 3 things caught my eye because I pulled it out and thought it was worthy of a look up.

When I typed Hellcats DVD into eBay all I saw were 240 listings for a 1957 movie with the same name. I looked up Hellcats NBC and again, nothing. This really caught my attention so I used Google Lens on the cover and really the only result was a Reddit thread from 2 months ago in a subreddit called “Forgotten TV“. The thread only had 7 comments and one of them was “Has anyone found it on dvd? I’ve been looking! I had similar majors and really related to this show.“

For me this is a jackpot - we have a TV show that some deemed forgotten with 0 eBay listings. With all of this information, I decided to list the DVD up for $99.95. I was immediately seeing views and also messages, including this beauty:

For those other 2 DVD’s, here are some comps:

Now with The Wiggles, if you happen to find the TV series (the one above) in both Series 1, 2 and 3…

The crazy part is that you can envision finding old Wiggles DVD’s at any old thrift store or garage sale. People see it as just an old worthless DVD, but you… you now know better. Oh, and here’s a fun eBay message I received about The Wiggles, let me know what you would have done.

For the longest time I walk past masks in op shops and it’s just cheap, plastic Halloween type stuff. You know the kind, they’re usually cracked or broken, they have a $5 price tag and you know that no-one is going to buy them unless it’s a week before Halloween. However when I’ve visited pawn shops in the past I’ve found that they have a lot of different types of horror-related masks and the pricing on them is often insane. It’s like that on eBay too, take a look at some of these:

So I’ve made it a point to turn over every mask and see if it’s well-made and potentially a home run waiting to happen. This week it wasn’t a home run but it was something really cool.

For just $2.99, we have a 1995 Darth Vader latex mask. On the inside of the mask was the Lucas Films copyright and this thing was really well made, fully latex and wearable - I could even fit my giant head inside of it to take some Marketplace photos (which by the way was quite difficult). I couldn’t see too many sold comps for something this old, there were a few active in the USA ranging from $30 - $80 and so I thought this would be perfect for Marketplace. $50 straight up and it was gone within a few days. Keep an eye out for masks!

What I Sold

These little cruise ships are legit - this one sold in less than 12 hours! It’s now off to Portugal where the buyer paid full price of $49.95 + $69.42 in shipping and taxes for a total sale price of $119.37. It’s baffling to think it’s gone from a little thrift store in Sydney all the way across to Southwestern Europe. All of these little cruise ships tend to look the same so keep an eye out and don’t forget that you want the resin models, they’ve got a bit of weight to them (if they’re plastic throw them back although I’ve yet to come across a plastic one).

This did not last long and its gone on to sell for full price within the week. It makes one think maybe I should have listed higher and worked my way down but then again you can never complain when you turn a cheap DVD into $100 in less than a week. Keep an eye out for Hellcats and just remember that when you’re looking at DVD’s, you’re looking for items that you don’t see in every thrift store. Don’t recognize a title? Look it up, that’s the only way to learn.

Snoopy is one of those items that have dedicated fans and collectors and tend to sell quite quickly on both Marketplace and eBay. This racquet head cover took me a while to list on eBay because whilst it was getting a ton of attention on Marketplace, nobody ever really wanted to buy it. Maybe because it’s quite awkward to display and if you wanted a Snoopy tennis racquet cover there are modern ones you can find that are 1/10th this price. Regardless, this sold for $50 and is off to Switzerland with $33.55 worth of postage. I probably wouldn’t buy this again but I would buy more unusual Snoopy merchandise if it’s vintage.

Big box PC games are still selling well for me. These are old school 90’s computer games that were sold in these huge cardboard boxes that collectors now buy for display purposes. Ideally you’d like to find sealed copies but as you can see from the one above, opened games still sell for a decent price if the artwork is undamaged and the box is in semi-decent shape. These types of items are sometimes mistaken for board games or puzzles which is one of the reasons why I love looking in those sections. If you go back to Issue #18 you’ll be able to see this game on the board game shelf plus a few tips and tricks for spotting these types of things.

My go-to when I’m picking through VHS and looked for sealed copies is that the title has to have a bit of a cult following. I’m not picking up Bruce Almighty or Meet The Parents, I’m looking more for titles like this, The Crow. The original 1994 film starring the late Brandon Lee was recently remade which has put some attention on the film and this copy has finally sold after gaining something like 20 watchers without anyone biting the bullet. If you go through past issues of Flip Weekly you’ll be able to see other sealed VHS that I’ve sold, all for the $49.95 mark.

A fair amount of DVD talk in this Issue that you’ll start to think it’s a category I like buying. This bulk lot of Bondi Rescue was only picked up in Issue #39 for $14, listed on November 2nd and sold on the 30th of November for $100. It’s a decent show to keep an eye out for, you’ll want to get multiple seasons and aim for around $2 or less per DVD. Obviously the more seasons you find the better the reward.

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100% Free Resources to Help You

Flip Weekly have created the following resources to help you become a better reseller.

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