Issue #101

Ladies and gentleman, 2026 is well and truly underway. Everyone seems to be back at work, we’re all run off our feet, my inbox is overflowing but despite all of that, we still make time to hunt for bargains.

I needed to find some home runs this week. The pink limited edition PlayStation 2 console that I sold just before Christmas (which was working) has finally been returned to me (not working). I didn’t want to put out any negative juju so I gave a full refund. That meant that the eBay account now sadly resembles the bank account. It’s in the negative. Negative $550.

eBay knows that we make enough sales to pay that back. We’re not going to have our account get into trouble unless we flee to an isolated, remote plate in the world like Mexico or Lake Macquarie.

So alas, we head to thrift shops and stalk Facebook Marketplace for good deals. How’d we do? Take a look below.

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

Ask me the movies I grew up with, the ones that I could re-watch every day and not get sick of. These movies I loved so much I had the posters on the walls of my bedroom. The films weren’t enough, I needed the action figures to play with. Once I completed the sets, I then needed to visit the filming locations.

One of my earliest memories of going to the cinemas was seeing Lord of the Rings Return of the King when I was 12 years old. I was too young to see the first two movies in the cinema. I distinctly remember watching them for the first time in my dads theater room. I couldn’t sit still long enough so each film was split into multiple nights. Regardless, I couldn’t get enough. We watched Fellowship of the Ring together, followed by The Two Towers… an experience I’ll never forget. When Return of the King was coming up we went to go and see it together. It was the first time seeing a movie at the cinema which was completely full. I thought, this is weird, I’m at the front and sitting next to people.

The trilogy was my life for several years and I still have a lot of love for it to this day. Having worked on Flip Weekly for over 2 years, I know that Tolkien books are some of, if not the most sought after in the category. In every rare book collectors library you’re going to see at least something related to Tolkien. I attempted to read some of the books myself but I’m too dumb. However, my brain works just enough to spot it in a thrift store.

Cue, this weeks Savers trip.

In hindsight I have no idea how I found this book. The spine features no words and it was hidden and squished between fiction books on the shelf. If I was to take a guess it would be a distant memory of hearing a rare book collector talk about looking for the “books covered in plastic“ at thrift stores as a good place to start. This tip can be deceiving because a lot of the times it’s worthless library books.

So I pull this out and immediately I’m like well this is cool, it’s Tolkien inspired. I open it up to the Imprint page and it appears to be a 1st edition published by Allen & Unwin.

That’s all well and good but what even is this book?

Basically it's one of the most important books ever written about Lord of the Rings creator J.R.R. Tolkein and the world he built. The author, T.A. Shippey was as far as I can see a professor at Oxford and was very close to where Tolkien lectured in the same university. T.A. Shippey was obsessed with Lord of the Rings and Tolkien from a young age and he dug into absolutely everything and offered his own explanations and analysis on the world, the language, the mythology and how it connected to real linguistic and cultural history.

Even to this day, a lot of Tolkien fans consider this book that was published in the 80's to be a foundational text in Tolkien studies. Just imagine you were becoming a butcher in 2026 and your teacher told you to purchase the very first, original book on how a sausage is made. This is the book you’d buy. Does that make sense?

Anyway, I paid $3.50, there’s no Active Listings for a 1st edition yet we have 2 Sold’s.

It’s a well and truly valuable $200 book and it’ll make a great addition to any Tolkien collection, I just wish I was patient and smart enough to read it and make sense of it. If you’re out at an op shop or garage sale and you see anything that looks like old Tolkien or Lord of the Rings, buy it!

Moving on from the thrift store, I’m about to show you the power of Facebook Marketplace. The next 2 items were both purchased for FIVE DOLLARS EACH.

If you have $5 to your name and a mode of transportation, you can make money with Facebook Marketplace. The first…

I have to apologise, I didn’t get a screenshot of the listing that showed it was $5 and by the time I picked it up the Seller had deleted the listing. But trust me, I had to raid my coin jar to scrounge out $5 for this toy.

This is a 12” Major Chip Hazard action figure from the film Small Soldiers (something else I grew up on). Priced at just $5, I sent through a series of messages telling the Seller I could come and pick it up and she told me she had multiple people interested. I didn’t push her or nag her, I was friendly and this has seemingly gotten me more deals than not.

Why did she choose me when 3 other people were interested? I honestly think it’s just being human with your responses. These people are being sent so many messages and offers, the more human you send the better chance you have of getting through.

So I went out to the middle of nowhere, paid $5 in an assortment of gold and silver coins and just before parting ways I heard “he used to talk, I assume the batteries are dead“.

Oh crap, this is a talking figure?

I try him in the car and get nothing. That’s fine, nothing a couple of fresh batteries wont fix.

I get home and open the battery compartment. Damn. 3 very heavily expired AAA batteries. Not a good sign. Battery acid everywhere. I take them out and put them aside (because you never bin a battery) and give it a bit of a clean. At first with water and paper towels. Batteries go back in… nothing. I move onto WD-40 and Q-Tips. What do you know? I press the button on the front…

“Major Chip Hazard reporting!“

Eureka, WD-40 works. Of course it did, that stuff is magic.

With a working, talking figure we can list on eBay for a decent price. We paid $5 and the listed value is…

Granted, not life changing money but it’s such a cool find, especially for someone like me who grew up loving Small Soldiers.

This is the next $5 find:

iPods are overlooked and underpriced every single day. Every single day time I’ve bought an iPod on Facebook Marketplace its always been the same. No charger, no idea if it works, the buyer just found it and wanted to get a few dollars for it. This particular iPod was an 8GB iPod Nano 3rd generation which sells on eBay for anywhere from $100-$150.

I heard on the radio the other day that iPod’s are “coming back“ so expect 2026 to see a surge in iPod pricing, availability and demand. You don’t want to focus on the Nano or the Shuffle though, you want the iPod Classic, I think the most popular is the 7th generation. I have a few brand new and sealed but you can find boxed ones for around $1,000.

Back over to the thrift stores, I was wondering throughout and started to notice a whole bunch of 90’s skating / BMX merchandise. I saw some Tech Decks in the knick knack aisle, a Metal Mulisha motorbike in the toy aisle. I’m thinking some dude has donated gnarly stuff from their childhood. The Metal Mulisha comped up to a couple of hundred dollars but I left it behind because there were no Sold’s and the box was pretty beat up (plus it didn’t scream out to me)

What did though… were a small collection of 90’s skating VHS tapes.

This was really cool. Priced at $2.49 each, I knew that old school BMX/Skate stuff could fetch a bit of money so I took all 3. I noticed a bit of mold on the middle one but bought it anyway. Here are the 3 tapes:

The comps were strong.

In terms of the 411 VM tapes, we can average about $50 depending on the Issue. Some are more, some are less. So close to $250 in value. The only issue was that The End had some mold on the tape. I bought it knowing this. I tested the other 2 tapes and they played fine. Next came The End.

I’ve always avoided buying VHS tapes with mold but let’s see if it’s possible to get it clean. I first put the tape in the player to see if it worked. It didn’t. I might have messed up doing that. I ejected the tape. I put on a YouTube video showing how to open the cassette. Easy enough, you just unscrew 5 screws and you’re in. It does crease the sticker on the front of the tape but if you’re gentle it’s fine.

From there I got a Q-Tip and wiped away all of the mold from the top. The next part was grueling, I manually winded the entire tape from right to left and swiped away at any mold on the magnetic strip. It probably took me a solid hour.

After popping the tape back in the quality had improved. The tape now had audio. The video was still dodgy, but I then put in another tape and it was also dodgy after previously working well, so I think having put in the moldy tape at the start screwed the VHS player… oops! So who knows? Maybe it’s possible to get moldy tapes working again. This was just 1 test, let’s try it again sometime soon.

Anyway, I documented all of this and put the 3 skateboarding VHS on eBay for $150. Given the rarity and the fact you can’t find them in Australia, I’m guessing someone will snap them up.

What I Sold

It’s hard to wrap my head around people paying hundreds of dollars for books.

This isn’t the first time I’ve found books from The Horus Heresy series, and it probably wont be my last. Unless you guys go out and look for them. In that case, there’s 54 books in the series and every single one is valuable. The black and gold on the spine is usually a giveaway to me, I get annoyed when any other series uses the same colour scheme and fonts.

I had this Game Boy sitting on my eBay account for a solid month without any action. A bit of a surprise, but it was missing the back battery cover. I thought, well if it was me I would probably find a different one that had the battery cover, so I went ahead and spent $5 on a replacement. Yeah, literally not expensive but I put it off because I honestly thought it would sell quicker and the purchase would be useless. Anyway, after taking the listing down, adding the battery cover it sold within 2 weeks.

Real American sports jerseys are a dime a dozen in thrift stores, but I got lucky with this one. A 2020 Tom Brady Super Bowl jersey that’s quite hard to find and sold quickly. I’ve gone over jerseys a million times so I wont tell you again how to spot fakes.

We’ve got some proof that older VHS that isn’t The Wiggles can still sell.

I got these in a huge box of cassette tapes and considered them basically free. In that box was The Wiggles Sailing Around The World which sold almost instantly for $199.95 along with a DVD/VCR combo that sold for $249.95. When I saw the other tapes, I thinking of just donating them to charity until I realized a large collection were all Jim Carrey. Wanting to test the waters, I lotted all 11 up and over the 2nd half of 2026 started lowering the price. From $100, to $80, to $50. That was the sweet spot. $50 + around $25 post. Turns out… still a bit of money in old VHS.

After relisting the PS2 as faulty for $300, it sold within a few hours. I hope the new buyer is able to get it working and doesn’t attempt to get a refund if they can’t fix it. I’m disappointed with this sale and we essentially break even. We’re not in the business of buying items to resell and not making any more. What’s the point of following someone who you get tips and tricks from if they’re not consistently making money? Sorry about that.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this week. If you want more content, jump on over to this weeks podcast episode. Thanks again for reading I’ll see you next week!

Mat.

Flip Weekly Podcast

The Flip Weekly podcast is for people who want even more reseller content. You can find the podcast on all major podcast streaming platforms or you can listen directly on the Flip Weekly website here.

Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

What’s this? Click here for more information on how you can score a whole bunch of free prizes including a $200 Mystery Box!

Flip Weekly on Social Media

If you want more Flip Weekly content, don’t forget to follow us on social media.

• Flip Weekly on Facebook.

• Flip Weekly on Instagram.

• Flip Weekly on YouTube.

• Flip Weekly on TikTok.

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