Issue #50

This Issue of Flip Weekly not only contains items that are bought for pennies and sold for hundreds of dollars, but it also has actionable information on how you can buy something cheaply on Marketplace and flip it for a huge profit on eBay, with an example. Be quick because it wont last long.

Now, I don’t want to spoil upcoming events, however in the next week or two something big is going to launch for Flip Weekly. It’s going to change everything… how you get your information, how you consume the newsletter. I’m hoping it’s a change for the better but rest assured you’ll still be receiving your Thursday morning newsletter until the end of time.

You’ll hear more about it soon enough, but first!

In This Issue

• What I Bought

• What I Sold

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Flip Weekly on Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I Bought

This issue is filled to the brim with items that are going to sell for a lot of money yet I’m starting with my own personal favorite find of the week. Younger than me and in better physical condition we have a 1996 Space Jam sweatshirt, take a look.

I became a huge basketball fan later in life so I didn’t grow up with Space Jam (and Patty Mills is my GOAT) but you can’t pass up on something like this. The tag features the Warner Bros Studio Store logo and on the back of it you can see the 1996 manufacturing date. The sweatshirt itself is navy blue with the illustration embroidered onto it and it’s honestly in such great condition for something that’s almost 30 years old.

When I find something like this in the wild, I don't comp it in store because you just know it's worth more than $10. Once I got back I looked it up and this is the first thing you see on Google Lens.

As we’re not new to this, we know we can’t trust the top result in Google Lens and if we dig a bit deeper we’ll see more realistic prices. Those prices came and they range from around $150 and go up to $300+.

Now I broke one of my cardinal rules which is of course don’t buy something if it’s not going to sell, aka has no sold comps. However, I’ll tell you why I picked this up. First off, I think it looks really cool and if it was my size I’d totally keep it for myself. Second, Australia doesn’t have any active listings for this sweatshirt. Zilch, nada, none, it’s basically a new offering to the country without being exorbitant shipping fees. Finally, I know this thing is worth more than $10, even if it sells for $50 on Marketplace that’s a 5 times return. With that said, I’ve decided to list this $10 find on eBay for $124.95 with free shipping. It's cheaper than the US and if it sells I'm still walking away with around $80 in profit.

This next thrift store find might lowkey be my most profitable item over the entire year, and we’re only in January.

Welcome to the world of dolls. Unlike other 30 year old dudes, this isn't a new world for me, I grew up with 2 sisters who loved playing with Barbie and Bratz and I'm sure on more than 1 occasion I grabbed my Action Man and joined in. Bythe however wasn't a familiar brand and it makes sense why, they manufactured dolls for just 1 year in 1972 and then shut their doors. Due to the scarcity of the dolls, they got a sort of cult like following.

For one reason or another, a Japanese toy company in 2001 began to start manufacturing the dolls for the first time in almost 30 years and since then the popularity has grown, but mostly for the older dolls, from what I can tell. By the way, this whole manufacturing for a short time, closing the doors and re-starting in the future gives me major Willy Wonka vibes.

Anyway, if we were to describe the point of difference it would be that Blythe have this pullstring on the back of their heads which change eye colours. It's not a digital alteration, it's physically rotating the eye to a different set. Pretty cool, yeah, but a choking hazard if I gifted her to my niece.

That leads me to say that these dolls appear to be for women and collectors. The market on eBay plus the Wikipedia page indicates that artists and hobbyists like to buy these dolls and customise them, sometimes to sell, sometimes to display. It's a cool little creative hobby but the most important thing is that they're worth a bit of money.

I couldn’t find sold comps for this doll on eBay, but take a look at some of the asking prices.

I have to admit, having reservations right now is completely normal. Anybody can list an item on eBay and ask for thousands of dollars, that's true. I'm skeptical too. Until I did a bit more research and found an unboxing of this exact doll by a collector on YouTube.

This YouTuber purchased the exact same doll from eBay back in June 2024. She's a “Mentor” on the BlytheDolls subreddit and on there she said that the doll cost £627, the equivalent of around $1,200AUD. That information gives me my first sold comp. There are only 20 listings of this doll on eBay, and the absolute cheapest is $903 (most expensive is $2,521). I could undercut the others, or I could do something a bit more fun and start an auction. Yes, auctions usually result in a lower sold price but it does mean that this $5 purchase will sell within 7 days and that sounds good to me.

I decide to start things off simple: $9.99 starting price + post. Let's hope we get some bids otherwise we'll walk away with a total profit of $1.26 - not even enough for a Wonka bar. I’ve included below some sold comps for these dolls. Stay tuned to the newsletter and to Flip Weekly on Instagram here for the results.

Moving over to the media section, we have a nice collection of DVD’s that when bundled together can get you an almost 5-10 times ROI.

A few things here:

• If I’m buying DVD’s, I really want to only purchase from a thrift store that has them at $1 or less each. I got these from Savers for $1.99 and broke my rule, but it’s just to show you.

• These are professional wrestling DVD’s. The company is WWE which has been around since the 80’s. Once a month they hold PPV’s (think special events) and they’re usually the culmination of the entire months storyline.

• The better wrestling DVD’s to buy are any that have the WWF logo instead of WWE - that’s before the rebrand and means they’re older and possibly more rare. I’ll show you the logo difference below.

• It’s best to bundle these DVD’s so I bought 10 of 11 that were there.

• Like always, check to make sure the disc is inside and they’re a Region you can sell in your area.

Wrestling DVD’s are sort of like German Cockroaches, if you find 1 out in the open, there’s going to be more hidden away. If you come across them at a garage sale or thrift store, start hunting for the rest. You can also get lucky and find a rare copy within the bundle, like I did at a separate thrift store.

It’s a good category to look out for, if we check the sell through rate for “WWE DVD Lot“ we can see 411 active listings with 267 sold giving us a sell through rate 64.96%. It’s not exactly 1:1 but your listing will get views, watchers and ultimately sell if it’s priced correctly. Compare that with complete series of popular TV show's and you’ll see it’s a better pickup. Note the searches are {tv show} + complete dvd.

In fact, if you add up the sell through rate for all 5 of the popular TV shows above, the total comes in at 56.78% which is 8.18% less than the professional wrestling DVD’s.

Without going into too much detail, I did a few good deeds this week and the thrift God’s definitely rewarded me. The first was with the Blythe doll above, and the second was with the following pair of books, take a look.

Seasoned Flip Weekly readers will be in awe, new readers might be confused. Take a look at Issue #47 where I go through my Top 10 Flips of 2024 and look at #10. It’s a Warhammer 40K book and these go for crazy money. Here’s what I had to say:

There’s a series within Warhammer called The Horus Heresy, it’s very familiar to me despite never saying the words out loud. The 2 books I found were $4 each and they were:

These aren’t cherry picked listings, these are the averages and both have really good sell through rates, I fully intend on selling both for a combined $279.90 and that’s listing lower than past sold comps. Why? To get them out the door. The sell through rate for the 1st book is 69.70% and the 2nd book is 105.88%. If you’ve never heard of these books before and find them in the wild, I expect a huge thank you.

You know what’s funny? I was so excited to tell you about this next item that a thrift store price cheap and sell for hundreds if you spot 1 thing, and yet its been upstaged by the Blythe doll above. Regardless, I’ll let you in on a secret.

I saw this Wicked doll in a thrift store for $20. If you’re unfamiliar with Wicked, it’s a movie based on a play out now that’s been advertised everywhere. It’s dominating the cinema, the music is all over the radio and the merch is in every toy store. I’m not sure how I keep up with pop culture whilst working 24/7 but I knew a little about these Wicked toys.

It was late last year that a story went viral of somebody purchasing a Wicked doll and realizing that the website address on the back of the box was incorrect. I don’t want to type it here, but just imagine that it was meant to go to TheMovie.com but instead just went to The.com. Turns out The.com didn’t lead to the movies website, but instead lead directly to a hardcore pornography website. Yes, really.

Absolutely hilarious, you couldn’t write this, the doll went out to stores in the US, Canada and Australia with a direct link to a pornography website printed on the back. Somebody definitely got fired and I’m sure they lost a bit of money but their error is our gain. I remembered this and looked on the back of the pack to see if this was one of those error dolls but I couldn’t see the infamous link.

I couldn’t find anything so I decided to look on eBay at the listings for error dolls and placements of the link. I could see that the dolls that weren’t recalled had a small bit of tape placed over the website link.

I can see it! That little piece of black tape was placed over the website of the dolls that weren’t recalled. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal if it was merchandise for a small movie, but Wicked is one of the biggest blockbusters of the year ($700m worldwide gross) with a sequel and/or part 2 coming out at the end of this year. Demand will be there for a long time.

Let’s check out the sell through rate. “Wicked Doll Error” just in Australia has 17 active listings with 44 sold, meaning the sell through rate is 258.82%. If we remove Australia we have 459 active, 1,000 sold giving us 217.86%. Basically… if you have one of these it’s going to sell because the supply is low and the demand is high. Basically like a TurboMan.

Just to give you some context… I’ve never seen Wicked the play, the musical or the movie. I don’t know the characters, I don’t know what it’s about (something like Wizard of Oz?) but I did know that it was popular at the moment and that the doll was recalled. That information alone was able to lead me to buy this thing for $20 and list it on eBay for $249.95.

Is there a lesson here? I don’t know, maybe keep your ears open?

A few other cool things I bought this week:

In what could easily be mistaken for a shake weight, we have a Bop It! Smash. I love buying Bop It’s because they sell fast and they’re also really fun to test. Nowadays I usually only buying Bop It’s that I haven’t played or seen before, and this falls under that category. If you’ve ever been to an Australian RSL or any sort of arcade, you would most likely have seen or played the stacker machine. 3 pixel blocks move horizontally across the screen and your job is to stack them - testing out your reaction time. If a pixel isn’t stacked, it falls away and you’re left with 2 blocks to stack, and then 1, and then you lose.

The Bop It Smash is essentially a portable version of that. Check out the demo video here if you’re still not getting it. Like I said, I hadn’t seen it before and it was only $2 so I picked it up. What’s shocking about this Bop It is its scarcity. 25 active listings on eBay, 83 sold listings. That’s a whopping 332% sell through rate. The unusual thing is that not a single one of those were within Australia… that’s weird.

Brand new listings on eBay over in the US have it $100 and used hover between $20-$30. In this scenario, where Aussies can’t get their hands on an item without having to deal with buying international and spending more on shipping than the item I list for a premium. I decide to put it on eBay for $49.95.

What I Sold

I picked up this Red Hot Chilli Peppers limited edition box set of random items in Issue #46 for $2. I was very close to leaving it behind because I thought it was a branded RHCP box filled with some random persons junk. If you left this behind I wouldn't blame you, the contents are hand drawn items, a box of matches, some paper twirling things, some marbles... just a lot of weird stuff that didn't look cohesive or to do with a rock band.

The contents however weren't junk, they belonged to a limited edition box set of RHCP's 2006 album Stadium Arcadium. The funny thing is that the set was missing the CD and DVD yet has gone on to sell within 4 weeks for $50 on Marketplace. I did have it on eBay for $99.95 but no luck there.

I don’t think I wrote about these Star Wars resin helmets, but I picked them up from a thrift store for $30 each and after about a week of inactivity on Facebook Marketplace I started to think these were a waste of money. I actually thought they’d sell fast on Marketplace to the point where I took photos of them on top of my car and listed before going home thinking they’d sell by the time I got home. They’re quite large, they weigh about 5kg each and are 41cm tall, so you can imagine I didn’t exactly want to ship them. After no bites on Marketplace though, I had to do something and eBay was the answer.

Listed on January 1st for $99.95 each + postage, they’ve gone on to sell 17 days later to the same buyer. After all fees I’m left with a tidy $151.25 profit.

A few other things I sold this week:

I’m all for buying cameras from garage sales, it just sucks when they don’t work. That said, you can still recoup your money because a lot of people buying untested/not working cameras on eBay. This video camera was only $20 but unfortunately wasn’t working despite what the seller told me. If it was working… maybe $100-$200. Because it wasn’t, $50 + post. Either way, this is a reminder that you shouldn’t through out stuff that doesn’t work, there’s always a market for it.

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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