Issue #30

G’day guys, Mat here with Issue #30 of Flip Weekly! This weeks Issue has a ton of action, we dive into garage sales that have a few twists and turns. From showing up right before the official start time and still missing out on the best items, to snagging a hidden gem that overs overlooked - it's all a part of the hunt. I'll cover the value of trusting your gut at sales, the importance of knowing what to look for in a crowded thrift store, and some quirky finds that had potential buyers excited from around the world. But first!

In This Issue

• Quick Poll

• What I’ve Bought

• What I Sold

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Flip Weekly on Social Media

Quick Poll

What I’ve Bought

I arrived at this weeks garage sale, advertised to start at 8:50am, 10 minutes before the official start time.

Items were put out, the garage was open and it was nice and quiet with the sun shining, ready for a busy sales day. I’m not someone to turn up to a sale hours in advance, I find it awkward and rude and there’s no way I’d be up that early on a Saturday morning.

This garage sale had advertised records, games and accessories, electronics and more. The mere mention of records and games usually attracts a big crowd. Turning up and being virtually the only person there felt nice. I spent around 10 minutes looking around, chatting with the seller. Of the small talk whilst browsing, I heard something that was quite deflating. It went like this.

Mat: have you had many people through?

Seller: not many today, I’ve been inundated with messages all week.

Mat: I thought you would be, the prices are good and you listed $1 records and 50 cent games.

Seller: I had someone turn up yesterday who bought a lot of games.

I’m conflicted. Somebody has come round a day early, picked through the items and taken all of the high priced products. I respect the hustle, I really do. On the other hand, it feels like getting beaten in a race that was run a day early. That said, I’d rather succeed through knowledge over speed - we’re focused on building expertise with a sustainable approach at Flip Weekly; you simply can’t be first to every sale.

After 10 minutes, the sale is packed.

This is why you can’t sustainably compete on speed. Every sale, after a few minutes, is absolutely packed. I ended up spending $25.00 on a few video games including some old school Sonic the Hedgehog SEGA Mega Drive, plus 2 cameras, Xbox/Wii/PS2 games (total $25 into $169) however the item I want to talk about from this sale is something I’ve mentioned briefly in the past. It’s actually why I decided to put this trip as one of the first sales of the day.

When I saw this listing go up earlier in the week, on top of the boxes of discs was this:

I had a feeling this would be left behind, and lo and behold it was. The person that picked through the games on Friday left this behind. Consistently people ignore the functional item and focus on what’s inside. Empty CD case? Worthless. Tin case with nothing inside? Throw it away ignoring what’s on it. This CD case was included in the 50 cent accessories and it sells for $30.00 every single day.

It’s not going to make you rich, but it’s going to sell fast for $30.00 from $0.50. It’s the same deal with tins that you find at thrift stores, they’re not filled with gold bars so the staff price it like a regular container, not a pop culture collectible. In this case, it’s an empty CD wallet to others which is worthless. To PlayStation collectors and nostalgia heads, it’s something you need for your shelf.

We proceed to the next sale, a bit further out in a quieter area and I’m one of the only people there.

It’s honestly been a while since I’ve bought a few items without looking them up and just trusting my gut and/or buying what I think is cool. I arrived at this moving sale and first thing I see when I walk in the door is this pendulum clock, it has no inscription or branding, it’s obviously handmade with a few imperfections but I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It was marked $30 and I just thought… if I was given $30 there’s no way I could make anything like this. The sale was empty so I had some time to think on it and I continued looking around.

In room 1 we had an assortment of kitchen items and I couldn’t go pass the goofy looking pig salt and pepper shakers for $1. They seem to be hand painted and I’m sure someone will fall in love with their cheeky grins and pick them up for $29.95. As I’m looking around the sellers are actively going to the heavier items and marking down their prices. They were moving and didn’t want to lug around the bulkier stuff.

I head into the other room and immediately spot a $5 Big Box PC game that was in-between a couple of board games. It’s called Dark Earth and has USA comps ranging from $50-$70.

I opted for a $49.95 sales price which already has 3 watchers and a turned down offer. I don’t see any reason why it wont turn $5 into $50. The other item you’ll see above from this sale was the tin “I Like Aeroplane Jelly“ sign. I picked this up not because I thought it would make me a lot of money but because it’s somewhat nostalgic to me. On the back of the tin I could see 1997 copyright however getting home it appears that this is a highly reproduced tin sign because Aeroplane Jelly is… collectible.

A bad purchase? Maybe. At least I learnt something new. Total cost of this sale was $45.00 because yes, I picked up the clock. Total listed value is $180. $30 for the clock (listed for $80), $5 for the game (listed for $50), $10 for the Jelly sign (listed at $20 on Marketplace) and the $1 S&P shakers (listed for $30) were thrown in for free. By the way, one of these went on to sell within 24 hours, read on to find out which one it was so you can keep an eye out!

When I’m not waking up at 6am for garage sales, I’m hitting up the local thrift so I can be disappointed with their inventory. Today however, I found something for $1 that was worth buying.

This was only $1 and is the reason why I’m always looking in the towels, sheets, pillowcase area. This is a Harley Davidson pillowcase and it bares what I’ve come to known as the “3D Emblem“ which is something you want to keep an eye out for when you find Harley Davidson items. Here’s a close up:

I’m going to do my best to explain what this means. 3D Emblem was a print shop based in Fort Worth, Texas and worked with the motorcycle brand from like the early 70’s until 1994. They’re most famous for their t-shirts, which can be knocked off. Like any item that can be faked, there’s a few telltale signs that include things like item quality, typography and things of that nature. I did as much research as I could into this item, mostly because I couldn’t find any other 3D Emblem pillowcases and decided to go ahead and list it.

To be honest, the quality felt great, the zipper was high quality, the wash tags were all there and I used some common sense and thought… if you’re going to fake 3D Emblem, which can sell for up to $1,000+ for a t-shirt, why opt for a pillowcase? I’d still like to learn more about it but keep an eye out for the graphic when you’re on the hunt and spot Harley-Davidson items.

This next item is pretty cool:

Spotted this in the thrift store for $3. The book was quite thin and upon first glance I thought it was one of those free Christian comics/graphics that you see littered throughout your community. Opening it up you can see that a lot of love and care has been put into it.

It’s highly detailed and has issues 1 through 12. But what is it? I did a basic eBay search and there were no active listings. How about sold listings? Nothing. Look, that doesn’t mean to put the item back. If you can see something that’s high quality and a lot of time and money has gone into it, it’s worth looking more into. This wasn’t created and given away for free, it’s easy to tell. So I did a Google search.

I knew none of this at the time but after doing a search for Twelve Foot Ninja Comic I saw this thread:

This one sentence alone was enough to convince me to pick it up. I don’t care about zero sold comps, zero active listings, the fact people are going to social media and desperately seeking the comic is enough social proof to me that this will be a home run.

I picked it up for $3 and when I fully went through the thread later on I can see that the person that created the thread also talked about purchasing another users comic for $80. I’m not entirely sure if that’s USD ($120AUD) but either way, it makes me think that I can list this comic on eBay for around the $200 mark and see what happens.

A few more items I was able to grab:

What I Sold

Here’s the first item from this weeks garage sales that sold.

I truly believe that one of the major reasons this sold so quickly was because of the initial product shot. When it comes to Marketplace I usually take around 9 photos of the item in my home, and then I get the best one and run it through Photo Room. The end result is something like the above. It captures users attention and helps envision what the item will look like in their home. This isn’t an ad or a sponsor, it’s just an app that I use, costs something like $10 a month and you can eliminate or add backgrounds. Definitely something I recommend if you’re selling a fair amount online.

The clock was bought for $30 on Saturday, listed on Saturday afternoon and sold for $80 on Sunday morning. I was honestly surprised at the metrics.

To be honest with you guys, the reason I listed at $80 was because I could see these almost brand new, better looking clocks on Marketplace that were listed for $100. Like this:

I don’t know much about clocks. The closest I ever came to being a clock expert was when I ran a website called My Big Black Clock. If a well made Seiko Quartz clock is selling for $100, then this homemade clock with somewhat poor finishings, scratches and marks can’t be worth anything more than that. Now that it sold almost instantly for $80… was I wrong?

Here’s something that I’d 100% pick up in the future, it’s called a Micro Babies. We got lucky, we were saved from Google Lens by the thrift store volunteers relying on the vintage sticker price.

I bought this on August 26th and sold it on August 31st for full price... that is turning a $2 item into $39.95. If you look into these “tomy micro babies“ you can see 6 active listings with 21 sales which equates to a 350% sell through rate. What I like most about these Micro Babies is that they legit look like something that would sell for a dollar or two. That’s perfect for us resellers. If you come across a bundle of ‘em and the seller is only asking for a couple of bucks, you know you’re in for a payday.

Here’s what I know nothing about: CD’s.

Here’s what I do know: Eminem has a large fanbase.

I usually look in the CD section to spot overlooked PlayStation 1 and PC games. I saw this Eminem CD with a whole bunch of stickers and decided to look it up. There was only 1 comp and it basically said this was a Chinese import of his album and it was rare. It also sold. I thought for $1, what they were charging for CD’s, I’d pick it up and give it a shot. Immediately I could see just how collectible Eminem was. This thing has ten times the views many of the other media items I listed had. People were messaging me left and right asking for more details and I could only tell them so much. It sold this week for $33.24 + $38.21 in postage and fees for a total order value of $71.45!

This has made me keep an eye out for Eminem merchandise and I saw on Marketplace and eBay that he has some rare action figures. Keep an eye out for them and pick them up if you find them in the wild.

You’ll remember the next item from last weeks sales.

I missed out on a $300 decanter but was able to pick up this vintage film camera for just $5. The flash was working and it had no apparent signs of damage and ended up selling over the weekend for $30 on Marketplace. It had some interest on eBay but locally seemed to be where it was at. A reminder that you can still make some good money on untested and broken cameras. Maybe sometime in the future we can learn how to fix cameras? Put together a free course or something?

Ahh, clock radios. The mosquito of electronics. We wish they didn’t exist, we hide under the covers to escape them and even though we hit them in the morning they still manage to wake us up. That said, every single clock radio I’ve purchased has gone on to sell so it’s an item I’ll continue to pick up. It’s also an item that I regularly find in the free bin so keep an eye out. They’re overlooked just like other radio items but on eBay they sell incredibly well.

Since I started flipping thrift store items, I legit think this is the one product I’ve bought and sold the most. I’ve bought maybe 5 of these over the year, each for $4 or $5 each and every single one has gone on to sell for around $50. They sell so consistently that I even thought of white labeling my own golf ball washer (I mean, they’re their on Alibaba for $10 each, minus the cleaner) but I digress, this isn’t why we started reselling.

This was a Goosebumps t-shirt that I didn’t even look up comps for in the store. It’s a t-shirt where you see the graphic and you just know that it’s going to sell, it’s such a dope design. Whilst it isn’t a 90’s shirt, it’s still on a Scholastic tag and ended up selling in just a week or two for $30 on Marketplace after I paid $10 for it. In case you’re unfamiliar, I’ve written an entire Issue on Goosebumps which you can check out here. It doesn’t pass the 10 times ROI we aim for, but sometimes you just have to pick up cool stuff when you see it.

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