Issue #82

Mat here, and it’s not everyday you spend over $100 on a sticker book and a bunch of stickers. You have to be thinking though… if you spent that much money on it… what’s it worth? The answer? A lot!

That wasn’t my only face palm of a purchase, you’re going to laugh when you see something I picked up from Marketplace on the way back from a weekend away. Oh, and don’t cringe or cross off when you see what I got from Vinnies; I was so embarrassed buying them.

All that and a lot more, let’s get into it.

In This Issue

• What I Bought

• What I Sold

• Secondhand Opinions

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Podcast

• Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I Bought

Picture this: it’s a nice Sunday morning, I’m about to get a big greasy brunch with my family, smiling faces all around, still a bit tipsy from a fun Saturday night out... then suddenly an interruption.

I have to drive 90 minutes South West to buy a sticker book for $150.

“I'm sorry, you have to spend HOW MUCH on a WHAT?”

One hundred and fifty dollars on a sticker book.

That's exactly what happened to me this week. Let me explain.

During the week I saw a listing on Facebook Marketplace priced at $200 for “Wrestling Collectables“.

To my surprise, it’s the exact sticker book that I attempted and failed to complete as a kid. The 1999 WWF Attitude Official Sticker Collection featuring profiles and bios of some of the superstars at the time. The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker. Growing up as a huge WWF fan the first time I saw these stickers being sold at the newsagent for $1 per pack I was hooked.

Me and my wrestling buddy were saving money and spending it all on the packs. At one point my best friend at the time bought an entire box for $50, completing the book with an extremely jealous Mat. Wanting to do the same, I asked the newsagent to order me in a box, trust me I’m good for the money. Unfortunately, it never happened.

Cut to this week and this listing unlocked that childhood trauma. I asked a few questions and slept on the decision, something you should never do if you’re wanting a good deal. The listing included the sticker book which was I’d say 80% complete, a huge bundle of around 500 stickers that were doubles plus an entire box of 100 unopened packets!

I was honestly surprised that nobody picked up on the deal, I mean these are a full box stickers from 1999 that are unopened plus what 1 wrestling fan described as the rarest WWF/WWE book.

But what about comps?

The sticker book alone sold for $600?! That’s crazy. What about the actual sticker box? Nothing Sold in the past 90 days, but let’s look at Active.

A cheeky $900 for an unopened box of 100 packs.

So we have a $600 comp for the book, $900 comp for the sticker box PLUS we have over 500 stickers that are doubles.

This… is an amazing deal. I couldn’t wait any longer, I offered the dude $150 and it was accepted. I drove just over an hour each way to pick it up and once I got home I let the nostalgia wash all over me. I wanted this over 20 years ago and now I have it. I went through each page with each sticker opening up old memories. I took photos and asked family members if they remembered and to my surprise, they did.

Do I keep it for myself? Put it on display, maybe open some packs to relive my youth? Send through a photo to my childhood friends in an attempt to reconnect?

Nah, took some photos and listed it on eBay.

With the USA market off the table I decided to list a bit lower at a number I thought was reasonable and would initiate a quicker sale. We’re attempting to buy a sticker book with stickers for $150 and sell it for $1,000. And you know what? It’s 100% going to happen.

Remember that if you can’t find anything on eBay you can search around on social media to see if anyone is talking about your item. It’s perfect for validating your item and for me, helps me make decisions on whether or not to purchase something.

When you’re in the media section of an op shop this next type of DVD should excite you, but not the way it would excite some people.

I’m immediately attracted (not like that) to this sort of DVD and it gets me excited (also not like that). For me in the past any sort of media that looks really Japanese has equaled a decent payday. In this case, we have 4 DVD’s of a television series called To Love Ru which looks like a kids animation yet it’s rated MA15+ which is on the verge of being restricted to people over 18 years old. But why?

It’s not because of gore or violence, it’s because of something called ecchi - yes, this is embarrassing for me too, bare with me.

So things are getting a bit weird and I admit I was a bit embarrassed picking these up. I’m glad I didn’t do a deeper dive, because it goes on:

• Frequent accidental nudity (characters often end up in compromising positions).

• Suggestive situations involving bathing scenes, wardrobe malfunctions, and alien inventions causing perverted mishaps.

• Many episodes include lingerie shots, cleavage focus, skimpy outfits, and innuendo.

So it’s uh… not for kids. Not too judge, but what on Earth are “alien inventions causing perverted mishaps“?! You’re telling me there’s some sort of alien invasion and they don’t take over cities but instead walk in on you in the shower and hijnks ensure? I’m so confused.

Anyway, they were all $3 each and the total listed value is $180. If you find anything like this in an op shop, make sure you look them up but don’t look too hard.

Oh no, what have I gotten myself into now…

I do the bare minimum to repair and sell a Sony Walkman last week and all of a sudden I think I’m some sort of electronics repair technician. Let’s see if this will humble me. Over the weekend I was travelling and saw an ad on Marketplace for this old Sony Walkman cassette tape player for $15 that was marked as not working. The listing description indicated the motor runs but the tape doesn’t play.

With my vast experience in repairing these things, I immediately think, oh cool, must just need a new belt. That’s easy enough, I can buy one on eBay for $20, repair it and sell it for a profit. I decided to look on eBay for comps, one for parts/repair and one for working.

For parts or repair:

For working:

What makes this so valuable? It’s collectors. The Sony Walkman WM-2 was the 2nd Sony Walkman ever created back in 1981. Technically though it was the first of the Walkman name, as it succeeded Sony’s TPS-L2 which was the worlds first portable stereo, and improved upon it with a sleeker, smaller design.

Because of that, it was the best selling cassette Walkman model of all time, selling around one and a half million units. If you look at the image above you’ll notice a few different variations. The metallic grey was the first colour offered followed by the black and red versions later down the track. So what we have here is a historically significant piece of portable media.

Granted, I may not be able to repair this but you know I’m a gambling man. I paid $15 for this thing and given we can sell it for $500, that gives me some room if I need to buy parts. The good thing is that you can do all of that on eBay. A new belt? $11.87. Pinch roller? $21.78. Center gear repair kit? $68.79.

Do I know what the last 2 actually are or what they do? Nope, but it can’t be that hard. It’s 2025, we have access to unlimited information in the palm of our hand, plenty of helpful communities around the internet, plus general curiosity and the will to turn a $15 non-working cassette tape player into a $500 successful flip. Let’s do this!

Oh by the way, this guy had a couple of other portable cassette players he was getting rid of (both not working) and ended up giving them to me.

It’s a Sony WM-FX40 and a Panasonic RQ-XF50 - both have LCD screens which probably rule out me being able to fix them if that feature isn’t working.

The Sony:

The Panasonic:

I think I could get around $50 for both for parts. I’ll test them out but I wont invest in them if the LCD is broken, that’s way outside of my “replace an elastic band“ realm of experience.

What I Sold

In Issue #80 I risked my own life and accepted a strangers invitation to go into their home for the promise of buying vintage toys, LEGO and video games. I thankfully survived the trip and one of the collection I walked away with was this huge bundle of Ben 10 action figures and cards for $30. It received a hell of a lot of attention on eBay where it was listed for $149.95 (bought as well by a fella in the US but I had to cancel the order) but then sold on Facebook Marketplace for $100.

I’m 100% on board for buying Ben 10 toys. Action figures, plush toys, box sets on DVD, they seem to always sell high and sell fast. Despite being released close to 20 years ago, I don’t think people have caught on that the limited series is still so popular and so you can still get lucky with it at thrift stores and garage sales.

I described Outrageous Fortune last week as a bogan Home & Away after watching a 3 minute clip. Thanks to a listener of the podcast I was swiftly corrected.

If this updated description of Outrageous Fortune has made you want to check it out, you can buy the DVD box set on eBay for about $100.

A Facebook Marketplace deal for a Furby Baby has paid off in just 30 days. Purchased for just $30, we had a cute pink and white Furby from 1999 that was fully boxed and sold on eBay for full price at $200. Remember that not all Furby’s are created equally. Unusual color combinations, boxed or unboxed, manufactured date are all going to play a part in whether or not it sells for $50 or $200 and more.

There appears to be a market, or at least people altering their Furby’s. This person created and sold a Teletubbies Po inspired Furby for $100 and whilst most are cute and I applaud their creativity, some of them… get a bit unusual.

We start off with one that some people would like:

To something that may haunt me in my dreams:

To something that’s pure nightmare fuel:

When people say “get a hobby“ do they mean… this? What do you even do with this? It looks like a possessed door draft stopper. How quickly do you exit my apartment if you come inside and see this perched up against the wall? Do the people keep these working? Surely not, all you’d hear is “kill me“ in Furbish.

Anyway.

If I see graphic illustrations like this, I’m going to want to comp the item. It’s a good thing I did, Berserk on Blu-Ray sells everyday for close to $100.

Wrestling DVD’s that are a bit unusual or not the norm can sell for a decent chunk of change. This buyer from the UK bought this World Wrestling All Star DVD for $49.95 and then paid $51 on top of that in postage and VAT. Crazy!

Good to have the bulk lot of cheap games that I picked up in Issue #80 out the door. They’re all games worth between $10-$25 and I just didn’t really want to bother with listing them individually. Most of these I didn’t really want to pickup when I got invited inside the buyers home, but he didn’t want to be left with just a couple of shit games so I decided to just get them all. Doesn’t really matter, just 1 of the games that I bought that day pays off everything.

Secondhand Opinions

The concept is simple, we’ll throw up a reselling question, I’ll present my poorly thought out opinion and you’ll provide your own.

Last week I asked you “What should we do about kids in thrift stores making a mess of the toy section?” and here are the results:

You people are brutal! 56% want kids banished from thrift stores for simply playing with a few toys! C’mon now, they’re just kids, they don’t know what they’re doing. Don’t you have kids? Nieces? Nephews?! Disgusting.

This weeks topic is: How badly will the suspension of shipments to the USA affect your business?

We’re 1 week in Australia Post suspending commercial shipments to the US. I’ve cancelled multiple orders and excluded America from my outgoing shipments. Absolutely crazy that I can post to any other country except the US. Last week I worked out the halt would cost me around $8,000/year in sales.

From reading around the internet, that sort of pain extends to a lot of other small businesses and eBay sellers. Some have said it’ll cost staff, others the entire business.

What about you? Scared or worried about your sales? I’d love to know.

What do you think?

You can vote, you can email in, submit a form on the website or even get in touch via social media with your own thoughts.

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