Issue #23

Arrr mateys, it's been a swashbucklin' week! We've scoured garage sales at the crack of dawn and tripled our doubloons, unearthed thrift store treasures that look like naught but trinkets yet return a king's ransom, and crowned a victor in our $50 Savers Instagram contest. But the true prize? A find that makes me feel like a pirate. All that and more, but first!

In This Issue

• What I’ve Bought

• What I Sold

• Did I Really Just Find Pirate Treasure At A Garage …

• Instagram $50 Gift Card Winner

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

What I’ve Bought

First off, my apologies. Moving on. If you’re ignoring independent thrift stores you need to reevaluate your sourcing. This week I spotted 2 items in a glass display cabinet that had all of the hallmarks of old toys. I asked to see both and was told that if I got both, the price would be reduced from $10 each to $15 for both. You don’t see that often, especially for the items I’m about to show you.

Look, I was born in the early 90’s and so I’ve never seen Thunderbirds but that doesn’t mean I can’t profit from it. It’s easy to distinguish, it’s a giant ship with a cargo area that drops below whilst its long, thin chicken legs stick out. If that doesn’t spell it out for you, maybe the “Thunderbird 2“ graphic on the side will. It’s important to understand that these franchises are collectible, especially when you get into the older side of the toys.

The second item I thought was Thunderbirds just based on the fact it looks very similar however it was from a different franchise called Space 1999. Again, I’ve literally never heard of this but we’re still going to make money from it.

I could see that it was made in 1974 by a company called Dinky so I thought why not, let’s pick it up and I’m glad that I did. If it’s complete in box, you can expect around $350 (or to be honest, whatever you want to ask for depending on eBay scarcity).

However as ours is unboxed and missing a piece or two we’re only going to ask for $149.95 on eBay and $100 on Marketplace. It must be a good price, look at these numbers. It’s only a matter of time before someone pulls the trigger.

I bet you didn’t know that the next item is something that can sell for a lot of money. Before you ask, no, they’re not just worth money in Australia because they were bought back by the Howard Government in ‘96, it’s because people really, really like them.

What we have is an original Super Soaker from the 90’s. The term Super Soaker has become synonymous with generic, cheap water guns however this is one of the originals from the 90’s by the popular manufacturer Hasbro. This is a Hasbro Larami Super Soaker XP 270 (cool name) and at the time of purchase had 7 listings and 5 sold.

If we use Flip Weekly’s eBay Sell Through Rate Calculator we can see a sell through rate of 71.43% which means that for every 10 Super Soakers listed, 7 will sell within 90 days. We have prices ranging from $106 all the way up to $240+ so if I swoop in with a decent price I’m sure it will get picked up before the others. It isn’t as good as last weeks 1,000% sell through rate example however who wouldn’t want to turn $5 into $100 within 90 days?

Next up, who remembers the TV show Buffy? I found something in the thrift this week that I knew I had to pick up.

I can tell that no Flip Weekly subscribers visited this thrift store because I’m always harping on about these Playworks tins. They are always selling and in most cases are underpriced.

It’s from the year 2000, it’s still factory sealed and the graphics on it would look great with any Buffy the Vampire Slayer collectors. It’s been put on eBay for $40 and Marketplace for $30 with many people watching it on both platforms. I’m always finding this Playworks brand on my adventures and I highly recommend you pick anything up that has this logo. If you want to become familiar with their aesthetic and the types of items they sold, search Playworks on eBay. They’re not items that are selling for hundreds or thousands, but they are items that are consistently priced for $1 or $2 yet sell for $30+. Think things like tins, pencil cases, plastic watches but branded with old pop culture.

I’m in the boat that if you see Pokemon, you buy Pokemon. Can you convince me otherwise?

I loved the look of this Jigglypuff and check out what happens with a few batteries.

There weren’t too many comps for this but the ones that were listed on eBay had such high prices…

I got this for only $4.00 so I decided to list cheaper than the competition and I’m sure it will sell, just like all Pokemon. It seems that somebody donated their entire Pokemon collection to this thrift store because I found a few other things in the plush bin.

Look, I grew up with Pokemon as a kid but only the first 150 original ones. I literally have never heard of these 2 before. The only reason I looked closer at them is because they sort of looked like Pokemon. You don’t have to be an expert at every niche to make money, sometimes just having the faintest idea can make you a few dollars richer. In this case, both plushes were less than $5 and their combined eBay value is over $100.

What I Sold

Can I just say that I severely underestimated the power of the original Wiggles. I’ve picked up 2 original Wiggles items and both have gone on to sell this week including one that cost over $50 to ship.

This is a 2004 Wiggles remote control car that is hard to find without the remote. I picked this up at the Salvos next to Savers which I visited for last weeks Issue. It was only $5 and went on to sell for full price at $54.95 plus $49.11 in shipping and taxes.

The other original Wiggles item I sold was a pop-up book that I would have only paid a dollar or two for and that sold on Marketplace for $20 + postage. If I learnt anything from this week it’s that the original 4 Wiggles are worth a look-up when you’re out sourcing. $5 into $50 plus $2 into $20 are the kind of multipliers you want especially when the sell through rate is so quick.

The sealed VHS tapes that I bought in bulk in Issue #6 are still consistently selling. For those not familiar, basically a dude on Marketplace wanted to get rid of 5 boxes full of VHS tapes for $20. Of the 5 boxes, 24 had their tapes sealed. Since then I’ve been able to sell them off for around the $40 mark easily making back my money. This week we have the movie Spawn that sold for $39.00 plus free post.

There’s different types of seals when it comes to VHS so if you want to learn more go back and read Issue #6 - you might get lucky and snag a fully sealed VHS which you can sell for thousands.

Ready for a quick turnaround? Let’s take a look at how we turned $10 into $50 with a thrift store bundle of Skylander figures hidden on the bottom shelf.

Spotting the tote, I was surprised to see it priced at just $10. There were 45 figures in total. Here are the key takeaways:

1. These sold extremely quickly on Marketplace, flipping $10 into $50.

2. It’s important to check every nook and cranny at a thrift store, even the bottom shelves.

3. When you have a large number of a certain collectible item, you can often flip it for a profit.

Skylander figures aren’t hugely valuable individually. Staff probably used Google Lens to check a few and saw that each one was worth $1 to $5. To clear space, they slapped a $10 tag on the lot. With around 50 figures, that’s just 25 cents each. Even if one figure is a homerun, you've made your money back. I estimated each one could sell for $4-5 on eBay. Listing them all for $50 ($1 each) led to a 5x return, easy money.

You’ll remember last weeks garage sales I picked up 2 pieces of electronics that I honestly thought were more valuable than what they were. They were:

1. Sony Blu-Ray Player

2. VCR Recorder

The Blu-Ray player was bought for $5 and the VCR was bought for $10. Both have been picked up this week however the VCR didn’t end up working. A guy came over this week to test it out (brought his own TV!) and the audio was working fine but the video was off. I included in the description that I wasn’t able to test it out but still felt bad and told the guy he can just have it - maybe replacing the AV cords or putting in a VHS cleaner will fix it.

The Blu-Ray player on the other hand was sold and picked up at a completely reasonable time.

The player was sold to this guy at 8pm on a Saturday night for $20. I had a lot of questions to the guy that drives 20 minutes on a Saturday night at 8pm for a Blu-Ray player… questions that will remain unanswered forever.

How could I forget the Thunderbirds 2 figure from earlier! There was a lot of interest on Facebook Marketplace and it didn’t take long for it to sell for full price.

I was wanting to turn this into a GIF of a Thunderbirds 2 plane turning into $100 cash, however the buyer paid in small notes and a ton of coins… all added up to an even $100 though.

Did I Really Just Find Pirate Treasure At A Garage Sale?

This week really drove home 2 things to me:

1. It’s important to be early.

2. You need to choose your garage sales wisely.

I’d say 6 months+ ago I would hit up every single garage sale in the area. I wouldn’t care what the photos looked like or what was described in the listing, if they’re near, I’m coming. Now? I’m more picky. And I guess that comes with experience. The very first garage sale I went to this weekend I spent $30 total and walked away with around $200 in inventory. Unlike thrift stores, garage sales are where you have to act quick, trust your gut and check out before someone else snags your stuff.

This is the first sale I visited:

After playing Flip Vidya for an ungodly amount of hours, I knew that Dragon Ball Z on the Playstation 2 was something to pick up. This game was called Dragon Ball Z Budokai 2 and it’s something you want to remember because check out the comps for this series on Playstation.

I picked up 10 things from here in total so each item was around the $3 mark. The game has already gone on to sell for $34.95.

I’m living proof this isn’t useless information because not only did I find Dragon Ball Z Budokai 2 at the garage sale on Saturday, but I also found Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 at a thrift store for $5 on the exact same day.

Unfortunately it was on the Nintendo Wii so it’s not a $200.00 sale price, but it’s still $50. If you aren’t utilising Flip Vidya (which is 100% free) to gain knowledge about video game prices, then you’ll never learn which games to buy and which games to pass on.

Back to the first garage sale of the day, I also picked up this Dragon Ball Z figurine that’s worth around $60.00 and a whole bunch of Warhammer figures and books. In hindsight I would have avoided the Warhammer figures as the boxes were open, some pieces were missing so without knowing too much about the sets, it’s not worth too much; I wouldn’t pick up opened boxes again. I put that bad decision making down to being in a rush and overly excited for spotting Warhammer stuff after making hundreds from the books over the past few weeks.

For reference if this box was brand new it would be worth around the $400 - $500 mark. The final item I wanted to talk about from this first sale was something I was surprised to see when I got home. Something that both the person hosting the garage sale missed and something that I personally missed. Complete oversight from both of us.

I knew of Club Penguin from the years gone by but if you’re unfamiliar with Club Penguin, let’s be lazy and embed a Wikipedia quote:

Basically create an avatar and talk to people in a virtual environment. Mostly for young kids between 6-14 who weren’t like us cool kids that played Habbo Hotel. I picked it up because the tin was heavy, sealed with tape and I was keen on taking a game on some old school trading cards.

Now if the tin was fully sealed…

We’d be in for a payday. However, what was in the tin completely surprised me.

It was completely filled to the brim with foreign notes and coins! I feel like a pirate finding hidden treasure. After doing a bit of research (read: some very basic Google searches) I came to the conclusion that majority of these notes and coins were worth simply face value, there wasn’t anything rare or crazy. With that said, I say that as somebody who wouldn’t even know if anything was rare or crazy if it was right in front of me.

If any readers know anything about coins, feel free to hit me up, you reply to this email or visit Flip Weekly’s website and hit the Contact button. I counted up the denominations that I recognized and came to around the $40 mark of coins that I could cash in. I’m thinking however of chucking them all in one of my safes and just leaving them there for a while… it can be someone else’s problem later on.

The garage sales continued on throughout the day…

However I didn’t pick up much for any of them. I got this lot of 5 classic Where’s Wally books for $2 but I’m going to hold off on listing them. Over the next few weeks I’ll keep an eye out for $0.50 - $1.00 books and look for the old Where’s Wally and eventually sell in a bundle.

Might be worth keeping an eye out for the classic versions of Where’s Wally, especially if you have a thrift store near you that does cheap kids books.

Instagram $50 Gift Card Winner

Last week Flip Weekly finally launched on Instagram. I’ve never really used the platform before to post so I had no idea. A contest was launched where a $50 Savers gift card was available to somebody that followed the account and gave us a like and comment. It’s now closed however you can check out the account here. You’ll see more thrift store visits throughout the week, items that are nostalgic but are left behind for one reason or another plus a lot more.

The winner of the Instagram $50 Savers gift card is… @wheres_shell. Congratulations, thank you for reading and keep an eye out on your Instagram inbox for a message on how to claim your prize.

The winner was chosen randomly through Wask.co’s Instagram Picker.

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!