Issue #26

Are you someone that likes reading 3,000 word newsletters about garage sales and thrift stores? There ain’t many of us, we’re few and far between. However, in this issue I let you in on a secret about Disney clothing whereby if you spot these 2 words you know for a fact it’s an $80 listing. I’ve also got a 90’s children’s cult show that you can make big bucks on, a sale that took me just 53 minutes and a teddy bear brand that should be on your TO BUY list. Oh, I forgot to mention, we had an insane weekend of garage sales!

In This Issue

• What I’ve Bought

• What I Sold

• A Garage Sale Fever Dream: Nintendo 64, Gameboy, V …

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

What I’ve Bought

I have to laugh at this purchase, it was at a local Salvos with a price tag of just $3.50. First of all, $3.50… bit of a weird price, especially for a sports jersey, they’re usually starting at $15.00. I’m not complaining, take a look, a close look.

This is an Australian T20 Asics cricket jersey. They don’t sell for much, usually around $20 on eBay (a similar one literally sold this week for $0.99 on 1 bid) however besides the price tag, something else caught the corner of my eye.

In a very faint silver marker, players have gone on to sign the jersey. Even if these were the most disliked players in all of Australian cricket, you can’t really go wrong with a signed jersey that’s just $3.50. Identifying the signatures is the hard part, but we’ll talk about that later.

Moving on, let’s stick with clothes and take a trip to a Vinnies where I was able to pick up this $15.00 Disney glow in the dark shirt. It might sound expensive but I’m going to tell you exactly what you should look for when buying this sort of Disney clothing.

Disney clothing is bought and sold every single day. You can go down to your local Kmart or department store and pick up an officially licensed shirt for like $10.

So how do we differentiate what’s worth picking up in the thrift for $15 when it’s Disney related? Why did I pick this one up?

It’s because this is a Disney Spirit Jersey. When you see a Disney Spirit Jersey I want you to immediately think of a $80.00+ shirt. Spirit Jersey is an American manufacturer who have been collaborating with Disney since 2017. In collaboration they make these high quality heavyweight cotton jerseys that are a bit heavier than a regular t-shirt but lighter than a jumper. They bring out new designs in the theme parks and the Disney online store and from what I've read, once a design has left the rotation it doesn’t come back. That makes these jerseys perfect for us resellers as the popular designs can become collectible and worth a bit of money.

This one that I picked up has sold comps in the $85.00 range with active listings going crazy high into the $400+ mark. It came with the tags which none of the other 10 active listings have so I’ve listed for $119.95 with already a few people watching. Halloween is just around the corner so it’s the perfect time to pick up this sort of thing.

If you take a look on eBay Sold for “Disney Spirit Jersey“ you can see some of the crazy high prices that these sell for, and you don’t even have to sort by highest price. The most recent sold look like this:

So just be aware that Disney clothing can be thrown into thrift stores and mixed in with the rest when it could really be worth over $100. Keep an eye out for those 2 words: Spirit Jersey.

1 more piece of clothing before we move on and it’s something I spotted in a giant barrel of winter beanies.

I saw the print and thought… wait is that the Teletubbies? You know, the children’s television show from the 90’s where the characters had television screens viciously implanted into their stomachs.

They were also 8 foot tall monsters in real life…

Anyway, I wanted to see if this was a new or old beanie so I turned it inside out and found a 1996 vintage tag and a $6 price tag. I didn’t bother to look it up with Google Lens but when I got home I looked everywhere and could not find a single listing or image of this beanie. That’s good for us because we can then list it for whatever we think we can get. On eBay, 90’s Teletubbies hats comp around the $50 mark and I thought that was pretty fair so I ended up listing for $59.95 with free delivery.

In terms of what is selling at a high price for Teletubbies collectors, it appears as though the more obscure items are commanding a higher selling price, which of course makes sense. The standard smaller plush of any of the characters ranges from $10-$20 which would be okay if you picked them up in the thrift for $1 each. If you can find all 4 characters you can sell as a set and command a premium (around $100) and then there’s the other merchandise such as backpacks, shirts and playsets that can sell for good money.

I’d just say that if you do spot any of this in the wild, check out the tags and see if it was made in the 90’s, we don’t want modern stuff.

This was a bit of a surprise after writing about cinema exclusive popcorn buckets in last weeks issue of Flip Weekly.

What we have here is a cinema exclusive drink tumbler for The Garfield Movie for $4. There’s a huge collectors market for Garfield, both modern and vintage and the few pieces I’ve picked up in the past I’ve always sold them relatively quickly.

What is insane about this tumbler are the comps, I honestly couldn’t believe them.

It’s going to sound crazy, but I’ve gone on to list this very basic, plastic drink tumbler for $130.00 and it already has multiple watchers. This trend is 100% real, I did a regular Google search just to see if people are even talking about these cinema exclusive items and it’s true, they are. In a Garfield related subreddit, this user talks about the 2024 Garfield popcorn bucket:

Now please don’t go out and buy every popcorn bucket or cinema drink tumbler you see. 90% will be complete junk. Make sure you do your research before you pick anything up.

What I Sold

That didn’t take long!

This signed cricket jersey that I listed at 7:20pm on Thursday went on to sell 53 minutes later for $50 + postage. It’s not the quickest sale I’ve ever had (check out Issue #21 for a 16 minute sale) but it was a really fast $3.50 into $50.00.

I’m convinced that if you find anything signed, you should identify the signatures before you list it up. It sounds obvious but you would be surprised how often items are listed as “signed“ and they don’t make any mention of the people who signed it. When you’re selling something like this, you need to tell a story. Look back at Issue #5 when I found a fully signed AFL football for $20.00. There was no identification of the signatures and so no story could be told. It only took a few hours for the signatures to be identified and I was stoked because it was a signed ball from the players and the team that won the premiership that year. Because of this, I was able to sell it 2 weeks later for a 900% ROI.

There are so many resources available for identifying signatures. You have your Facebook Groups, forums, Reddit and your own naked eye. I relied on the latter for this and my basic process was:

1. Figure out the jersey. Australian T20 cricket jersey (T20 is a specific format of cricket, not like a standard test series or one day game).

2. Because of the format, chances are your signatures aren’t going to be from test cricketers, moreso T20 cricketers. This narrows the list.

3. I looked up on Google: Australian T20 cricket players.

4. I started with the easiest to decipher letters and cross referencing it with the list. From here it’s a game of trying to identify cursive letters.

5. From my experience you can lean on commonalities such as letters that usually follow the other as well as patterns, e.g. it’s easy to make out an i because you’ll see the lone dot marking, you can tell when 2 L’s are placed next to each other etc.

6. Once you think you’ve identified the signature, do a Google Image search for person + signature. Cross check your signature with the Google result.

With all of that combined I was able to work out 2 players: the former captain of the Australian T20 team Aaron Finch plus one of the most popular and exciting players Glenn Maxwell. This was enough for me to list up and lo and behold it sold quickly. I recommend everyone that reads this to have a go at deciphering signatures because if you find out you have a knack for it, you can make a lot of money.

Let’s head back to Issue #11 when I visited one of my first estate sales. I ended up doing really well, hence the Issue title “Making Ten Times My Money From An Estate Sale Within 48 Hours“. The estate sale was from a lifelong collector, mostly teddy bears. I bought a couple of cameras and attached to one of the camera bags was this little keychain.

I didn’t see this guy until I got home and out of curiousity I looked him up and learn that not only is this Steiff brand highly collectible but this little keychain, can’t be more than 10cm tall is actually worth a bit of money. Why? Steiff basically invented the teddy bear. I’m not kidding, go back and read Issue #11. He’s gone on to sell this week for $25 + post. I’m surprised and shocked - he’s so incredibly tiny and I didn’t even mean to buy him, he was literally just attached to the camera bag. This is obviously a brand you need to look out for you.

A few other miscellaneous items I sold over the past week:

A Garage Sale Fever Dream: Nintendo 64, Gameboy, Vintage MOTU & Sealed Video Games

Garage sales can be hit or miss. Most of the time I’m getting back into the car after looking through piles of plastic containers and over priced glasses screaming “JUNK!“ at the top of my lungs. Then all of a sudden the stars align and you come across a sale that drains you of all of your cash and you abandon the rest of your afternoon. That’s what happened on Saturday.

Let me reiterate: if I get home on a Saturday after garage sales with no money left in my wallet I’m a happy man. The more money I spend at garage sales the more money I’m going to make reselling. On Saturday I spent a total of $70.00 at the 1 sale. For those of us that hit up garage sales every weekend, that’s huge. Read on to the end to see my haul.

Let’s rewind to Friday night. I’m using Garage Sale Finder to check out the sales in the area like I usually do. I map out my route and there’s about 6 that are within driving range. The first starts at 8am and I plan my route so that I can visit as many as possible at the start times. When I’m writing the addresses in the Notepad app on my phone I place an asterisks next to any that caught my attention. No asterisks is a wildcard. 1 asterisks means something in the listing sparked my curiosity. 2 asterisks means I spotted something in the photos that gives me greater hope. 3 asterisks is a potential home run. For only the 2nd time, there’s one that I place 3 asterisks next to and it’s 4th on my list to visit and starts at 9am. The reason why it catches my attention is this photo on the Marketplace listing:

Nintendo 64 games and accessories are next to impossible to find at garage sales. The competition for video games is next level and if you’re not there at the crack of dawn, knocking on windows and asking for them you’ll miss out (I’d never do this by the way). Over night I contemplate the order of my route, the triple asterisk sale starts at 9am and is a 40 minute drive from my home. If I decide to go to it first I’m going to miss the first 3 sales and in the back of my mind I’m thinking that people are going to see this photo and rock up at the early hours of the morning and snag all of the good stuff so I shouldn’t place my eggs in that basket. I contemplate missing out on a home run but decide to opt for my original route, let’s see how we go.

I strike out early and don’t spend a single dollar. I work my way down the list and can see my 3 asterisks sale. I look at the time… I’m ahead of schedule and can actually make it there by 8:50am. Let’s go!

I arrive 10 minutes before the official starting time. My eyes are immediately attracted to the back of the sale where items are piled high. This is what I see.

I take a closer look:

There’s a few cool pieces, individual glasses and what-not but nothing that really catches my eye.

I spot some Garfield. After all that we’ve been through, we know that Garfield is something to look for. I pick it up and take a closer look…

I see a $10 tag on the bag and 2 1981 Garfield statues inside. I have no idea what they’re worth but I want them. In most cases I’ll just straight up ask for a price but I turn around and see what I’ve missed. Hundreds of items strewn out across the front lawn. I’m going to need to make a pile. Let’s see what we have…

It must be because popcorn buckets are in my head lately but this immediately stuck out to me, and for good reason:

I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t add it to my pile. I honestly don’t know why, I had a feeling it was worth money, it was one of the only things I picked up to photograph and yet I left it behind. Maybe because my mind was focused on video games? I have no idea.

If we look around that mat we see this:

These are all good signs for a garage sale, it’s all collectible items. The Furby was from around 2007 off memory and the electronics with the remote was a DVD player. I don’t know much about Hot Wheels or Matchbox (although I’d love to do a deep dive) so they were all left behind.

Next to the toys, we have what appears to be 2 completely untouched boxes of video games and media.

What we have is a massive treasure trove of video games. Thanks to resources like Flip Vidya I’m able to quickly navigate through the pile and avoid picking up the entire box which would have set me back a lot of money. I pick only what I think is worth money and what can sell and make a huge pile. I have maybe 2 ½ bags full of product and I’m not done yet.

To the other side of the sale we have another section, this time covered in grab bags.

Inside the grab bags I spot vintage toys, action figures, collectibles… I’m having a hard time trying to identify what I can before someone else comes in and snatches something good. I pick up 1 bag, Polly Pocket, straight into my pile. Another bag I pick up and can see what looks to be a Power Ranger, I’ll take it. The next bag will pay for the entire sale, it’s filled with vintage 1980’s Masters of the Universe action figures. 1 of these figures alone could sell for $50.

I grab anything I think is going to sell quickly and for a premium and add it to my pile which is now 4 bags deep. I go to check out and the price I finally pay is $70, a combination of notes and a lot of coins. I honestly couldn’t believe I was able to get so much. Take a look at my haul below:

After listing up all of the items the total value is $1,110.30. Of course you have to subtract fees and all of that however I’m still extremely happy. Not so much about the money, moreso finding this sort of thing in the wild - it’s like a renewed confidence in garage sales and a testament that not every trip ends in screaming “JUNK!“ at the top of your lungs in the car.

Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

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