Issue #71

An insanely busy week, I decided to do something I should have done a long time ago and that is to cull inventory that was worth less than $50 or was over a year old. The results are extremely embarrassing and included in this Issues for you to laugh at. Before you laugh, check out the sales for the week which easily total over $1,000. Plus, a moral dilemma in Secondhand Opinions. All that and more, but first!

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What I Bought

A bit different, we’re going to start off with what I found. Yes, I found something. On a random weekday, stumbling across as a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the thrift. I’m always looking inside the first and second Harry Potter books either for a 1st edition or for a signature. If you find a signature, you can easily get $1,000.

I wasn’t lucky enough to find a J.K. Rowling signature, but I was lucky enough to find this.

Yes, a winning scratchie lottery ticket! Look at the top right game, you have to find 3 of the same icons to win the prize money listed in the bubble. 3 stars = $20. Hell yeah! I had the most ethical response of instantly pocketing the ticket and leaving the store. I’m done looking for scores, I just scored $20 for free!

Or so I thought. I took it to the newsagent down the street, asked for the ticket to be scanned or to have a confused cashier look straight back at me.

“I can’t scan this, it’s too old.“

Oh…

“We can only scan tickets going back 6 years, this one is older than that.“

Ugh…

I thought I scored a cheeky $20 but the thrift God’s punished me for not buying the book the scratchie came in. Karma had been delivered.

Oh well, moving on, nowadays if I’m buying books it’s either ticking off one of two criteria:

1. It’s signed by an interesting or prominent person, or

2. It has a high sell through rate and will sell for at least $100.

This is what I found for $5.

This is a fully illustrated hardcover copy of The Art of Zootopia, a Disney animated film from 2016. If you’re looking at books, any sort of “The Art of“ genuinely do very well both in terms of sell through rate and average sale price. Just like the movie, game, etc that they’re based on, they’re usually high quality and very highly detailed.

This book shows behind the scenes views of the incredible artistry and research involved in making a major motion picture. For example, it took eight months to get the various animals' fur just right and we see in the book we see the test colors, textures, and even directions of fur growth - it’s pretty incredible.

This particular book has a 200% sell through rate and the amount it goes for… we’re going to see huge returns.

Just to give you an idea of this valuable category, jump on over to eBay and search Sold Listings for “The Art of ______” and insert any animated movie, game or even a live action film that looks gorgeous. If you’re not sure how to do that, go to eBay Advanced Search here, enter the the title and click the 3 checkboxes “Title and description“, “Completed items”, and “Sold items”.

If you find any out in the thrift or at yard sales after reading this, you better tag me and hit me up.

I’m going to show you 3 DVD’s I found this week that all sell for between $65 - $100, definitely ones you want to be buying if you’re in the media game.

Here’s what we have, the price I paid and the listed price up on eBay:

I don’t get very excited for DVD’s but all 3 of these were from the same shop within the same row so I couldn’t pass them up. I figured if I’m going to buy 1 I might as well buy 3, and all 3 had good sell through rates with both Berserk and Wombles sitting close to 100%. Remember these titles when you’re in the thrift or at garage sales and always remember that obscure complete collection media is what you’re looking to find.

What I Sold

I’ve just made hundreds of dollars from a “collectable“ category that may be the most overvalued in all Australian thrift stores and garage sales. I’m not talking about Funko Pops, I’m not talking about Beanie Babies… I’m talking about the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

Honestly, at garage sales and thrift stores around Sydney this category is held up on such a pedestal. The Sydney 2000 Olympics had these mascots named Olly, Syd, Millie and Lizzie - a bunch of native Australian animals that were licensed onto a massive array of different products. Money boxes, plush toys, commemorative plates, the list goes on.

The prices that some people think they can get for them is ridiculous, it’s not unusual to see the keyrings released with McDonald’s Happy Meals to be listed up for over $50. I mean, there’s currently 427 listings for McDonald’s Sydney 2000 Olympics and you know how many sold? 19. That’s a 4.45% sell through rate. You would literally be better off selling Bruce Almighty on DVD, you’d have a 2% STR improvement.

Anyway, the sell through rate of Sydney 2000 Olympics in the Collectables market is somehow even worse clocking in at 9,200 Active Listings, 384 Sold, 4.17% sell through rate. I’m coming at you with a lot of numbers but the bottom line is this: the category generally sucks. However, somehow… I was able to turn a profit quickly when I found these.

For $25, I found this set of soft cover books, each representing one of the Olympic sports at the 2000 Games inside a plastic slipcase. The condition was okay, but what I was mostly interested in was if anything was missing. You know I’m ideally only wanting to sell complete sets and this slipcase had a lot of spare room on either side. I looked these up and this is what I found.

I counted them up and what do you know, a total of 29. We had a complete set and what was even more exciting was that this item had been documented with the Powerhouse Collection. For long-time readers you might recognize that name from Issue #49 where I found a military board game from the early 1900’s. For those that don’t remember…

So this is the 2nd item I’ve found that has been featured within the collection… I find that pretty cool. I couldn’t find any sold comps for these programs so I decided to list up for $199.95 + postage and they sold in just over 3 weeks. I really don’t think I’ll be buying into this category again anytime soon, unless of course I’m able to find myself an authentic original relay torch, that would be cool to light my cigars with.

I’m still reeling from this sale. I found this complete 9 book series of The Ringing Cedars for $4 a book and within less than 60 days I’ve accepted a Best Offer of $900! If you want to read more about them, check out Issue #63 here. Just like the media I mentioned above, complete sets of books can do well. I’ve also noticed that some of these spirituality type books have volumes that go from like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to 5.1, 5.2 and checking those out online makes me think that I need to be more aware of those books because the sale prices are quite high. If you have any knowledge about this hit me up.

It’s a sad day, Mr Squiggle will be departing my home after just 5 days. Despite the past 2 sales of Mr Squiggle plush’s being $140 and $150, I made the decision to list up for $200 + postage due to the pure scarcity of the item. When you literally have the only one listed on eBay, you are free to list up for whatever you want.

A reminder to you too, I received 2 offers during the 5 days it was listed, 1 for $140 and 1 for $160. I turned both down. When you’re receiving offers so soon after the item has been live, I’ve found its best to wait it out and see what happens. I’m glad I did, $35 into $200 in 5 days and I really hope you’ve checked your basements, attics and back of the cupboards to see if one is hiding there for you to sell.

Gordon Ramsay’s very first autobiography, Humble Pie, has sold in exactly 1 month turning $3 into $100. It’s off to Dubai with a whopping $59 postage charge. If you’re looking for Gordon’s signature, Humble Pie is the one I’ve had success with multiple times. It was his very first autobiography from 2006 (2 more have since been released) and pure anecdotally I think he put in more time with autographs with it compared to the literally hundreds of books he’s released since.

Remember this if you’re buying video game controllers or consoles: if it’s themed to a specific game or is a funky colour, chances are it’s a limited edition controller and worth more than a standard one. When I saw this controller in Lifeline it was priced at the exact same $8 mark that 2 other standard Xbox 360 controllers were. Being familiar with the category, I knew this one was worth the most so picked it up and made off like a bandit. $8 into $120 with plenty of views and watchers over the past 60 days.

Finally, this last sale is extremely embarrassing and I don’t want any bullying, I’m being vulnerable with you right now. In an effort to reduce inventory, clear up space and save myself some time by removing items with low selling prices, I did a huge clean up. I removed any item that had been sitting on eBay for longer than a year or sold for less than $50 (keeping a few cheaper items just if I thought they were cool).

I had 3 moving bags full of items that I mostly purchased before I knew what I was doing. I was thinking of donating them back to the thrift stores, almost in a cannibalistic feeding the source of the items themselves type way but instead I opted to put it all on Marketplace for $50. A huge steal, as the value would be in the hundreds albeit with a low sell through rate. Here’s what it looks like.

Looking at these photos is embarrassing but it’s also a reminder of how far we’ve come. At one point in time I was buying things like The Best of Dr Seuss, a DVD you can go onto eBay right now and buy for $4.99 including post. There’s a single copy of A Clash of Kings, the 2nd book in the Game of Thrones series, a Lawrence Transport snapback, some random trucking company in Australia, a Batman Hot Wheels car which isn’t even old… you’d struggle to sell it for $1 at the markets. You know what’s worse? Going through this stuff and finding items that fell through the gaps, stuff that wasn’t listed on either Marketplace or eBay. How did that happen? You know what’s even worse? You know the stuff isn’t the best when you offer it to family and they don’t even want it. Ouch.

Don’t get me wrong, you could fill up a market stall and make your money back but it’s not something I want to focus on. We’re wanting high ticket items, we want the sale to be worth dragging ourselves out of bed to the post office for. I put the listing up on Marketplace and the entire lot was gone by the next day.

Going forward now If I hear KA-CHING, I know it isn’t for Who Wants to be a Millionaire Interative DVD Quiz Game, it’s for something that most likely is worth $100 or more.

Secondhand Opinions

The concept is simple, we’ll throw up a controversial, or at least spicy reselling topic, I’ll present my argument whether it’s poorly thought out or not and you’ll provide your own.

Last week I asked you “Are Thrifted Gifts Thoughtful or Tacky?” and here are the results:

A wholesome response to last weeks poll, it’s good to see most people agreeing that thrifted gifts are thoughtful. I’d be a bit worried if the poll said they were tacky, I’ll be with family the morning this comes out and I’ve already gotten them a few gifts from when I hit the thrift this week.

This weeks topic is: You find money inside a book at the thrift. Do you: leave the book and pocket the cash, buy the book and keep it, or hand it in to staff?

In relation to what happened to me this week, I want to know what you would do if you were in my situation. Let’s flip it up a bit and say it’s cold hard cash. You open up a random book looking for a signature and it’s just sitting there. You look around and it’s just you - are you pocketing that money? Buying the book and keeping the cash that just so happens to be inside? Or are you reporting it to the thrift store who will most likely keep it as a donation.

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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