Issue #95

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Thriftmas. It’s week 1 of the season of perpetual hope and it’s my job this month to give you that. Not hope for the future, not hope for your side hustle or eBay store, but hope that you win, I guess, mediocre prizes. Think of this as an online version of your local R.S.L Christmas raffle except you don’t have to buy tickets, sit in a soulless auditorium or indulge in the authenticity of bistro cuisine.

The prizes aren’t a leg of ham, meat tray or schooner of Tooheys New. For Week 1 of Thriftmas, Flip Weekly are giving away a… Vinnies gift card. Quelle surprise.

To enter, all you need to do is go onto either our Facebook, Instagram or YouTube page and leave a like or tag a friend in the comment section of the Thristmas post. There is a dedicated Thriftmas post on both Instagram and Facebook whereas YouTube is the podcast upload for the 4th of December. Entries are counted as:

1 entry per like, 1 entry per comment (1 tag per comment).

Winners will be announced in next weeks newsletter and podcast and Week 2 of Thriftmas will begin. Will the prizes get bigger and better? Maybe even juicier and glazed? Ugh, no Mat, don’t entertain the idea of a Christmas ham. Unless… no, okay, I wont.

Anyway, once you’ve done that go and listen to this weeks podcast episode, I had the chance to talk all things flipping with ABC radio over the weekend.

But first…

In This Issue

• What I Bought

• What I Sold

• Official Flip Weekly Podcast

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Flip Weekly on Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I Bought

After last weeks mammoth $1,600 op shop flip I thought I was in for another huge payday. I came across an ultra rare DVD title and scrambled to complete the set.

For the uninitiated, this is a Holy Grail television show to find on DVD.

Full Frontal was an Australian sketch comedy show that ran for 4 years back in the 90’s. Like most sketch comedy shows we can praise it for launching careers and condemn it for launching careers. Take Saturday Night Live. We praise it for legends like Norm Macdonald and Phil Hartman, condemn it for Rob Schneider and Jimmy Fallon.

We can thank Full Frontal for launching the careers of Shaun Micallef and Eric Bana and condemn it for Julia Morris. Ugh, this just makes me think about the state of comedy on Australian TV. Not good.

If you can find all 5 seasons of Full Frontal on DVD at your local op shop you can expect to get paid big money for it. It’s out of print, hard to find and highly sought after.

Unfortunately this isn’t what I found. Essentially it was a best of compilation DVD from a spin off show called Totally Full Frontal. You best believe though once I saw a single copy of a Full Frontal DVD I scoured every single inch of this op shop looking for more.

With DVD’s priced under $3, all I wanted was a single complete season. Like this, give me just Season 4.

Maybe I can press my luck and ask for the first 2 seasons?

It wasn’t meant to be. Either somebody owned just the Best of Series Two Totally Full Frontal on DVD or somebody else snatched up the good stuff. In terms of the value of the best of season 2, there’s only 1 active listing and they want $200 for it. I think they’re dreaming.

Puzzles and board games. 2 things you’ll never find in my house unless they’re listed on eBay for boat loads of money. The root cause of any kids worst Christmas, they can sometimes be good money makers. We were able to find a board game this week that blended cinema magic and expensive hobby.

If this was a Lord of the Rings puzzle, it stays behind. A mass manufactured pre-owned board game like Lord of the Rings monopoly? Unlikely to crack the $100 mark so it stays behind. This on the other hand, a deck building Lord of the Rings game just screams value. First of all, the more complex and nerdy the game feels, the more it can be worth. If you start reading the instructions (which have been simplified for 15 year olds) and find yourself distracted and wishing you were elsewhere, chances are it’s a banger.

Priced at $5.99, the only thing I’m worried about is getting this home and seeing missing pieces. My concerns are diminished because as I’ve said before, the people that buy and play these types of games usually take good care of them. I’m stereotyping millions of people but you know what I mean.

Once I get this thing home I open it up and start going through the pieces. Hero cards, enemies, artifacts, locations, I’m counting these all up and thinking no-way will I luck out and have all of the hundreds of pieces complete in box. After doing several recounts because I guess I struggle to count to 10 I was able to confirm that yes, this is complete. Madness.

Here comes the fun part. Pricing for my fellow Australians.

If you’re in the United States, you can buy this game on eBay factory sealed for about $125 or pre-owned for $70. However, we live on an Island. We don’t get all the good stuff here. We have to pay up.

Australia has a severe lack of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Deck-Building Games… meaning we have 0 available on eBay. You’d have to luck out locally to find this. With this information in hand, and knowing that both Lord of the Rings and these board games are insanely popular, we can aim high.

As of listing, the absolute cheapest price you can get this game delivered to your address in Australia is my listing which is for $120. When, not if, this sells we will turn $5.99 into $120.

The reason I’m so confident is that I looked up the sell through rate and we’re sitting at a 104% STR. Learn more about sell through rate here.

Quick break from high value items for an OOTD. For those that have resisted the urge to rot your brain on Tiktok, that stands for Outfit of the Day.

I was going to say this was an unusual find in the men’s coats section but after thinking about it, where would you put it? It’s a very old Banana’s in Pyjama’s one-size fits all robe. This 90’s robe is on the Davenport tag and whilst its made of polyester it has that silk-like finish.

I don’t know too much about the brand but I do remember it being prominent on a bunch of vintage AFL ties that I found previously. After inspecting this robe over I was able to find a wash tag that featured the ABC logo and a copyright date of 1996. We do have a few markings so I’ll give it a soak with a stain remover. I wouldn’t usually go to that much effort but once I did a bit of digging it seemed 100% worth it. Why?

It’s quite rare and the last one that sold was on Etsy for €102.88 which equates to around $180AUD.

For me personally, Etsy as a standalone source isn’t very comforting however there’s nothing on eBay. No Active, no Sold. The absolute closest I could get was an XS nightie that was $50 + postage with multiple watchers using a similar pattern. Apart from that, nothing. The question remains… is this a $180 robe? Surely not…

On the subject of reselling items for $100, let me introduce an unlikely offender.

It’s uncommon to find a high valued action figure at Savers. I should know, I’m there all the time beating kids away from the racks. This week I saw this $9.99 solder looking dude in a bag all by himself. It looked well made, it was quite heavy and the articulation on the limbs was promising. So we did what we always do, we comped it up.

Using Google Lens we quickly found out that he was a character called Demoman from the game Team Fortress 2. Your familiarity with the game is irrelevant, all you need to know is 1) if it’s sold online 2) how often and 3) for how much.

We open up the eBay app and search for Demoman Team Fortress 2 and the results shocked me.

If this action figure came with a fee of the little plastic accessories we could have made close to $300. Instead, we’re selling it all by itself for $100. Given the scarcity and extremely high Active Listings a quick sale wouldn’t shock me.

Why do 90’s girly toys just fall into my lap?

After securing 2 huge bundles of 90’s Polly Pockets this year I thought I was done. Vinnies suggests otherwise. In 1 of those bundles I had this exact same playset but loose.

At the time, it came with 4 little accessories but was incomplete. I put it on eBay for $59.95 and it received a decent amount of views and a watchers. So then I walk into Vinnies and see the complete in box version for just $4 and I immediately know to buy it. This brand, Fairy Winkles, was made by Kenner in the early 90’s and each playset came with tiny fairies that could hide and play in them.

This particular clock had hinges that opened the main door and then when both clock hands are at exactly 12 the balcony springs open.

Whilst no figures were missing, the main reason I bought it was because of the box, it was in pretty amazing condition given its age. When it comes to old toys and collectibles the condition of the packaging materials is extremely important.

I wouldn’t want to encourage you to buy any 90’s toy that comes in a really good box… but if it’s $4 you can’t really go wrong. This is the competition, 11 active listings:

Then if we look at Sold Listings…

I don’t think it’s far-fetched to list this up for $150. $4 into $150 just before Christmas, yes please.

What I Sold

This is why you meet strangers off the internet.

A Facebook Marketplace deal for $30 has turned into $300 just in time for Christmas. After a bit of banter, I was invited inside the home of this seller and was able to pick up massive scores, check them out in Issue #80.

This weeks action figure buy was bought on eBay for $100 and it only took 24 hours. Time to play some Team Fortress 2 just so I can memorize what the video game characters look like. I checked out eBay for some recent sales, and every single one of the below characters sold in November for at least $500. Insanity.

I want you to take a close look at this Mario Kart cartridge. No really, take a very, very close look. It looks like the wall of a kids bathroom stall. If you’re ever deciding whether or not to purchase a Nintendo 64 game based on its label and cartridge quality, don’t. It will sell regardless. Off to (hopefully) a better home within just 72 hours of listing.

Of course the 2 most iconic N64 games were the 1st to sell.

Sealed VHS can still sell well. This copy included all 5 movies on multiple tapes which is a bit of a bummer, the multi-copies don’t tend to do as well as the single issues. I’m always looking out for sealed VHS, collectors, and even celebrities like Pete Davidson, go crazy for ‘em.

I don’t know about these model kits. I saw a huge pile of these at a Salvos thrift store and picked out the only one that was still sealed inside. Thinking it would sell fast, it ended up taking 6 months. Unless the hobby has a resurgence with the younger generation I can see it taking even longer as the customer base… um… dies off?

This was a great score on a Sunday garage sale during the 1st week of Garage Sale Trail. You wouldn’t believe how jacked it got us as it was the 1st garage sale of the day. You can read more about the find in Issue #92. I’m not sure if I said it at the time but I have to imagine this is going to be used as a display piece as the Game Boy Camera is, for lack of a better word, dreadful. When testing this piece out it I honestly don’t know how this passes as a camera, the picture quality looks as if you’ve put a blindfold over an iPhone. It’s so bad.

A couple of other smaller sales:

Thank you to everyone who has followed Flip Weekly on social media, we recently surpassed 10,000 followers on Tiktok which is pretty cool.

That’s all I’ve got for you this week, don’t forget to listen to the podcast, enter the contest and win yourself some Christmas ham.

I’ll see you again next week.

Mat.

Flip Weekly Podcast

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Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

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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

• How To Tell If A Book Is 1st Edition

• 100+ Nostalgic 90s Kids Shows Ranked by eBay Value

• Reseller Terms and Acronyms You Should Know