Issue #108

In the past 90 days, the most expensive Harry Potter book sold on eBay was for $7,995USD. It was a 1st edition, 1st printing of the Philosopher’s Stone. The cheapest was a single copy of The Half-Blood Prince for just $2.95. Where do you think my pick-up this week fits into the equation? Keep reading to find out.

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Let’s get into it!

Mat

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

Yer a flipper, Mat.

I had a busy day on Saturday. Mum was coming down the next day for a visit so I was running around getting everything ready. Essentially making my home look somewhat respectable. I finally sat down after running evening errands at around 6pm and I did something I really need to stop doing. I opened Facebook Marketplace.

Why must I look items that are specifically pick up only after a long day where I don’t want to leave the house again. Up pops a listing that was too good to ignore. A bunch of Harry Potter books. Big deal, right? Well, I posted a photo of this Marketplace deal on the Harry Potter subreddit with a simple question: is this a good deal? You know what happened? Within 8 hours, 42,000 people viewed the post and the overwhelming consensus was 100% yes. Or, as a Redditor put it “I’m surprised this is a legitimate question. Yes, most definitely“.

Update: it’s now had over 90,000 views!

Of course, I knew this was a good deal. A great deal in fact. This deal was so lucrative that I dragged myself off the couch at 6:30pm on a Saturday evening to do a 1 hour round trip North. Let’s take a look.

You’re looking at what many would scroll right past. A box set of Harry Potter books. These are all hardcover, 1st editions, original covers, published by Bloomsbury, printed in the UK Harry Potter. We’ve come a long way with our book buying where I see this $20 Marketplace listing and instantly know it’s worth a bit of money.

The photos showed that the books were in pretty good knick, and after contacting the buyer I immediately asked her to mark the listing as pending which she agreed to right away. 5 minutes later I’m in the car and on the way. She tells me that multiple people messaged her after me but she’s kept her word. These books belonged to her when she was younger and she kept them for her son. Well… her son is more into video games than reading so they got to go.

The comps for this set are insane.

The absolute cheapest you can buy this in Australia right now is $870 with the average price being around the $1,000 mark.

I’m sorry, what?! A $20 Marketplace pickup that we’re going to list for $1,000?!

So what makes this different from any other Harry Potter book?

1. It’s a complete set, all hardcovers with the same cover illustrations.

2. It’s a box set. Surprisingly the box alone makes a big difference.

3. They’re all 1st editions. Yes, they’re not really early prints but it doesn’t matter for this set.

4. This specific box set is no longer being printed and sold.

After looking around the Harry Potter subreddit it’s obvious that their are a lot of collectors in the niche. These are people that buy any and all sets and display them for their own enjoyment. This sort of thing:

Here’s the thing. If you’re collecting Harry Potter books you really need the original 7 books, all in hardcover inside the box set. It’s basically the default before you move on to other variants. By the way, I say this after only a few hours browsing the sub - I’m probably wrong.

So what did I do? I listed this $20 find up on eBay for $999.95. Mind blowing, right? As is tradition, the eBay listing goes up on Facebook Marketplace for significantly less where it’s already got plenty of people watching it. If this does in fact sell for full price on eBay, technically it’s a bigger ROI than my #1 flip of all time, the Sonic books. That was $60 into $1,600 giving us a 25.7x return. These Harry Potter books would be $20 into $1,000 which is a 49x return. I’m excited.

I’ve never been more excited to pick up the board game checkers.

For just $5 at Vinnies, I found a 1994 Simpsons 3D Checkers set. It’s easy to spot the difference between modern and vintage Simpson items, there’s a stark contract in the illustration and animation styles. I imagine the staff missed the ©1994 on the corner of the box.

The set was almost complete, just missing the original instructions but all 12 of both Bart and Lisa were inside the box along with 12 crowns which I assume go on the winners remaining pieces.

If you find any sort of Simpson’s chess, it’s always worth picking it up. I had these comps in the back of my mind which are from 1991:

So I was interested to see what the 1994 checkers would comp up at. To be honest? Sold Listings aren't that strong. We have a 50% sell through rate with the cheapest being $46.37. However… not a single Active Listing in Australia. I don’t necessarily recommend doing this as it got me into a lot of trouble when I was first starting out, but if you take the lowest listing (price + postage) you can use that total as your starting price.

This really only works for in demand items, I remember doing this for obscure toys years ago and they just wouldn’t sell. Nevertheless, let’s give it a go. The cheapest you can get this game flown into Australia is $86.12. That's our competition. If we list for $99.95 buyers will have make a choice. Pay an extra $13 to have it to them faster, or save $13 and wait a few weeks for the USA post. Given the fact people want things instantly in 2026, I think I know what they’d choose. We’ll aim to turn this $5 pickup into $99.95 on eBay, a bit less on Marketplace.

When you’re in Savers browsing the Religion & Spirituality bookshelf, whose signature would be a home run? Jesus? Moses? The Pope? How about the antithesis of these people?

Who were you thinking? The Devil? Hitler? Bit weird to have Hitler in Religion & Spirituality. This is a paperback copy of Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion, found in Savers for $3.49. Dawkins has previously been described as a “professional atheist“ and he presents his case of there simply being no God in this book that created a lot of controversy at the time (2006) but also a lot of praise.

I first came across Richard Dawkins when he debated convicted child sex abuser, Cardinal George Pell on ABC’s QANDA program. In the episode, Dawkins argued that a God does not exist, atheists can be happy and moral people, and that scientific theories are more likely than a God hypothesis. In response, Cardinal Pell, who just before he died paid 1 of 2 boys he sexually assaulted a lump sum of money, argued that if you don’t believe in God you can’t possibly have any morals or be a good person.

Whilst Dawkins can’t prove there’s a God, and Pell can’t prove there is, Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2020 did prove and ruled that George Pell knew about sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church but did nothing about it.

Anyway, enough about that. If you can find a 1st edition, 1st printing of The God Delusion, the atheists that “lack morals” will pay up big time.

Unfortunately we don’t have that, we have a paperback copy but it is signed. There’s very little in Australia. I mean, somebody is trying to get $70 for Dawkins signature on a random envelope.

We also have somebody in Sydney with a signed paperback copy of The God Delusion with a BIN price of $340. A bit insane, like I know the signature is rare with only 5 within Australia, but that’s a bit too much. Let’s aim, again, for $100. I’d be the cheapest on the market and it’s a cool signature so someone will pick it up.

A few other pickups this week from op shops:

You know I’m aiming for a $100+ average sale price, so if you see this little Alphie guy kids learning toy it’s worth picking up but only if…

He comes with his learning cards.

Alphie is manufactured by a Hasbro company called Playskool and it’s a pretty simple toy. He comes with a bunch of interactive cards that are inserted into a slot on the front of the toy, which then activates a quiz or an educational lesson. All of the information comes up on the LCD screen with animations and to engage with the robot you can press the buttons on the front. It’s nothing ground breaking but here in Australia supply is limited and you can get at least $100.

No cards?

With cards?

As of publishing there’s only 3 of these robots available in Australia and only 1 with cards. The price? $119.

Let’s keep the $100 items rolling.

This is a 2016 Fiji Olympics Rugby jersey size medium. Seemingly rare considering I could only find 1 other Active Listing on eBay.

The 6 watchers and 1 in cart was enough for me to take a shot. I know it will sell, and I’ve put more effort into my listing with specific dates and context.

I know a lot of resellers talk about “good sizes“ and might leave this behind because it’s just medium, but I think that may be personal bias. What are the stats? Surely there’s a pretty much even distribution among shirt sizes.

I looked into it. By “I looked into it“ I meant I did a quick Google search for “most common shirt sizes“ and opened up the first few results.

Goodink, a custom apparel brand published results based on 15,000 orders.

The point is, and I feel like I’m about to teach a primary school class, people come in all shapes and sizes so unless the sizing is XXXS or XXXXXXL, I think the whole “it’s a bad size, it’s a good size“ is based on nothing other than the resellers anecdotal experience, not facts or cited studies. Similar to the entire “eBay SEO“ stuff.

I’ll buy a medium shirt for $14 and sell it for $99.95. That’s fine with me. I ain’t a size queen.

A quick update about the Sony Walkman WM-FX10 that I got for free off Marketplace last week.

The drive belt arrived this week ahead of schedule. This is what it looks like:

It’s literally a rubber band, but shaped perfectly for the model.

The Sony Walkman WM-FX10 doesn’t require any screws to be opened up. What you do is open up the battery compartment and gently pull the plastic apart, moving your fingers around the outside of the player so the case doesn’t snap. From there, it will pop open and you’ll see the below.

You take the rubber band and place it around the 3 wheels / pulleys. This is where we play Operation and don’t worry, even midnight Mat can get this done within a minute.

This is what it looks like with the belt put on.

I quickly went and got a cassette tape, fresh batteries and some old school earphones. Fired it all up and… nothing. It don’t work. As a 1 trick pony that’s all I’ve got. Oh well, we’ll sell it for parts. It’s a rare color variant and the radio does work so we’ll aim for $100 which doesn’t seem too outrageous looking at eBay Sold Listings.

What I Sold

If you’re ever visiting my eBay store, which you shouldn’t be doing because I’ve never once given it out, and see an item with this light brown wooden desk background, it means I couldn’t be bothered taking it to the lightbox to take proper photos. Basically it means it’s not worth getting up for.

I think I picked this up because I was hopeful and then disappointed. I saw Full Frontal and thought I got extremely lucky. Turns out it was a best of version. Not nearly worth as much.

I’ll find it one day. In the meantime, my disappointment purchase has brought our average sale price down. Well done Mat.

No disappointment for this next sale which was bought and sold in just 7 days.

I knew when I saw this on Facebook Marketplace it was worth more than $75 and that it would sell fast. I quickly chucked it up on eBay for $300 and Marketplace for $200. Didn’t even bother to wash it! Mostly due to laziness but also because I didn’t want to ruin another valuable article of clothing.

You’ve really got to know your logos and tags when it comes to older clothing. Shout out to @rachelscustomsewing who reached out with an amazing score of a very early Sydney Roosters NRL jacket that she found for just $1. Check out the tag and the logo, it’s the exact same as the jersey above.

Here’s what she had to say about the find:

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