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The Most Boring British TV Show Is Worth Close to $1,000 On DVD
Join me as I bore you with British television.
Issue #88
If you follow Flip Weekly on social media you’ll see this week I was thrifting like a lady. I’ve bought and sold makeup, dolls and girls toys in weeks gone by and this week it’s time to for handbags. Oh the categories I’ve been ignoring!
From there we jump over to the World’s Most Boring Television Show, to the best selling game of the early 2000’s and then back to a time when cars had cassette tape players in them. Get ready for the most boring Issue of Flip Weekly delivered with my dry as dust writing style.
If you’ve got nothing else better to do and want to join me in watching an episode of the World’s Most Boring Television Show jump on over to the podcast, available on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for, just search Flip Weekly.
Enjoy!
In This Issue
What I Bought
One of my biggest pet peeves with thrifting is leaving stones unturned. If I’m spending time at an op shop I don’t want to be looking in just 1 section. I think a lot of us are guilty of this (myself included) but every now and then its beneficial to step outside of your comfort zone and look in other areas.
This week was handbags. Whilst I don’t know much about women’s fashion, I can lean on other identifiers. For example, the quality, the branding, or like the below, the collaboration.
$18 with a few marks on the front.
Among a sea of standard black and tan bags, we come across what appears to be sketches of Disney characters on a white bag that could use a clean. The brand on the front plate reads “Dooney & Bourke“ which as you can imagine… I’ve never heard of. The Disney characters on the other hand are instantly recognizable and if you have someone in your life who loves Disney, you’ll know exactly how expensive it can be.
The bag appeared to have some yellowing on the front side, something I chalked up to either dirt or hand oil (is that a thing?). I assumed that it could be cleaned off as the bag felt like some sort of leather material, which later turned out to be a Polyvinyl Coated Cotton. Apart from that, the inside look almost new and for $18 this seemed like it should be worth looking up.
I’m glad I did. Dooney & Bourke have been making bags and accessories since 1975 and collaborating with Disney since 2009. You can find their current line on the official Disney website and let me tell you, I thought the prices were insane before realizing they were in USD. You know how people wear those Minnie Mouse ear headbands to Disneyland? Check these out.
Did you also just throw up in your mouth a little?
How much do you love Disney? Enough to spend close to $400 on a headband? Don’t show this to the Disney Adult in your life.
I do a bit of a dig into what the bag is, and it’s a part of the “Sketch“ line that originated back in 2014. It orignally cost $198USD ($303AUD) and is a crossbody bag with leather corners. It’s not their most expensive bag but it’s still pricey.
Sidenote, if I found one of Dooney & Bourke’s popular bag and wallet combos it would have been a huge home run. Especially if it featured a popular Disney IP like Lilo & Stitch or Cinderella. The below 3 bag and wallet combos all sold on eBay for an average of $2,445 this year.
The average selling price of these 3 bags is over $2,000.
Anyway, I bring the bag home, and give it a bit of a clean. I used a bit of water and some napkins and it ended up looking really nice. I list it up for $150 on eBay and $100 on Facebook Marketplace.
I use Photoroom on iOS for editing on occasions.
An amazing price given there’s only 2 Disney Sketch Dooney & Bourke bags on eBay within Australia and the cheapest is $200 with 49 people watching.
Now, if you thought me cleaning a bag was boring, just wait until you hear about this next item. It’s a television show on DVD. I want you to think of the most dull topic imaginable. Think boring, think dull, think… British.
Something I’d expect my Nan to put on in the middle of the day.
Great British Railway Journeys, a television show every kid would hate to watch. I can explain the concept to you as exploring Britain via train but the official synopsis makes it sound more boring than I could even try.
Cartographer George Bradshaw produced the first comprehensive timetable and travel guide of Great Britain's railway system in 1840. Armed with his Bradshaw's Guide, presenter Michael Portillo travels around the country by train exploring the ways that society and industry have changed since the guide was first published during the Victorian era.
Are they trying to put people to sleep? It’s like the travel guide says here’s the house Angus and Malcolm Young (from AC/DC) grew up in. You travel to Villawood and oh look, it’s now a Detention Center. Fun!
Weirdly, people enjoy it, the show has been running non-stop for the past 15 years with new episodes still being recorded.
Despite it’s apparent popularity, the market hasn’t been flooded with copies of it on DVD. Individual seasons are selling for around $50 each and if you can find the entire series you can ask for close to $1,000.
9 sold of Series 1-11 at $750.
I found Series 10-15 for a total of $11.96 and listed it up for $199.95. Like any television show, the later series tend to be the most expensive.
If I find the time I’ll watch an episode to let you know if it’s as boring as I think it is or if I’m completely wrong and owe the show an apology. Either way, it’s a series to keep an eye out for.
I swing around from the DVD’s and notice a big box protruding from the video game section. Immediately the nostalgia hits me.
I paid $5.49 for this piece of history.
Nothing sums up the early 2000’s more than playing The Sims on your desktop computer. I can’t remember how many sleepovers I had at friends places and we’d load up Hot Date and spend hours trying to make our Sims… fall in love. The original Sims game was released in 2000 and was one of the best selling games of the year. Due to the popularity, 7 expansion packs were released over the next 3 years which added new characters, features and themes.
This box contains the original game plus all 7 expansion packs in 3 sleeves/wallets. I paid $5.49 which was a steal and you’d best be sure I took off that rubber band to make sure all the discs were inside.
Over time, like anything kids handle, the original box was lost, destroyed or thrown out. Majority, if not all of the listings for this piece of history look like this:
No real value.
Missing discs, missing wallets, incomplete. There are no Active Listings for what I have here but we do have 1 Sold Comp and it’s promising.
Well what do we have here?
Knowing that people pay big money for big box PC games, and knowing we’re the only person with this specific copy, I didn’t hesitate and I put it up on eBay for a solid $100. Looking at the amount of views and watchers and the ratio between those 2 I’d say the price isn’t being scoffed at, I genuinely think it’ll be snatched up.
What I Sold
Last Thursday I bought something that I knew I couldn’t full test. Really, I could only half test it out. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean my car doesn’t have a cassette tape player.
Sorry for the upside down listing.
I wish I was young enough to say this was before my time, but really it’s not. I grew up with my parents having a car with a cassette tape player and we pumped it. With mum, it would be the audio recordings of Mr Men with stories broken up with a banger song. With dad, it would be a constant loop of Tina Arena, Meat Loaf and Shania Twain. To this day I struggle to recall prices on items I bought from thrift stores but can recite the entire lyrics to Man, I Feel Like A Woman.
This “Sony disc man“ priced at just $20 on Facebook Marketplace is actually a Sony Discman Portable CD Player Car Kit that’s worth a lot more. Not only does it come with the CD player, but it also comes with an adapter so you can play CD’s from your car that only has a cassette tape player. This would have been high tech back in the early 90’s.
The kit was pretty much complete and it was in unusually good condition. $20 seemed like a really good deal considering it was fully boxed so I drove out to get it. Once I got it home I tested out the player and it worked but of course I can’t go chuck the adapter into my car so it has to be sold as untested.
$20 into $150
With it selling in record time I have to wonder… is this dude still rocking a tape player in his car or is he a collector of some kind? I like to think it’s the former and he’s the coolest old man in his town.
I do admit this was a gamble. There was no guarantees this would work and the Sold Listings was virtually worthless - none of this model boxed in the past 90 days here in Australia or overseas. Active Listings didn’t help much either so I decided on a number I’d be happy with and what do you know, a quick sale turning $20 into $150.
Last week I talked about turning off shipping to the United States and not receiving a single international sale since. The thrift God’s must have been reading because this week we had 2: 1 to New Zealand and 1 to South Africa.
$30 into $150 + $60 postage to South Africa.
You can tell it’s getting close to Christmas (70 days left) when items like this are out the door. I don’t usually pick up anything Skylanders as there’s a bit of a learning curve when trying to identify the valuable figures, but when I came across a sealed Starter Pack on Marketplace for $30 I knew I could flip it for over $100. Keep your eye out for these, I’ve found them in thrift stores and Marketplace.
$10 into $100 and off to New Zealand.
A television show that might get slept on a bit. The tall book like case of the complete series sells constantly for $100 but if you’re lucky enough to find the box set brand new, you’re looking at anywhere from $200 - $300.
Crazy!
Make sure you do your comp research before picking up a single DVD of Underbelly, I don’t want to be the reason why you’re stuck with a $8 DVD that doesn’t sell.
Ever get nervous to put on a belt? We’ve all been there.
A bit nervous it wasn’t going to fit.
This was the last Sony Walkman portable cassette players from the lot I picked up for free a few months back. This one, a WM-FX40 had an LCD screen and whilst it would turn on and the radio would play, cassettes wouldn’t. Be the handyman that I am, I figured a new belt would fix the problem. After all, a new belt is the ultimate cure, right? It’s like the “take some paracetomol, you’ll be fine“ of repairs. Fortunately, it did the job.
I put the bought price as $20 as that was the cost of the new belt.
I’m not kidding, this thing sold fast. Listed at midnight it sold same-day. This is all despite my horrible midnight photography and the LCD screen having a ton of dust and dirt behind it. I can’t stress enough that if you can get these things cheap, buy them, even if they aren’t working. So far I think I’ve picked up 4 that weren’t working and 3 were repaired with a new belt, 1 was sold for parts. Oh and I use the term repair quite loosely. If you can remove and replace the rubber band in the game Operation, you can repair the belt in these.
The next item is from a huge bundle and the sales just keep on rolling in.
$250 for this small Polly Pocket set that isn’t even complete.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still the dude in Sydney with the biggest Polly Pocket collection. We have 22 left totaling $2,120. I’m curious to see how many are sold between now and Christmas. What do you think?
How many Polly Pockets will sell up until Christmas? |
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 “Have you ever bought or sold something that later turned out to be fake?“ and here are the results:
Ouch!
We’ve all got our horror stories by the sounds of it. A tie this week between “Yep, lost money on it“ and “Yes, didn’t realize until later“. I guess we have to be more careful when sourcing items.
Like me, I very rarely pick up NBA jerseys anymore just because the market is completely flooded with fakes. I’d estimate 70% of the time I pick one up there’s at least 1 question mark hanging over it that makes me doubt the authenticity. The last thing I want to do, especially as someone who sells jerseys regularly, is put up a fake one and scare off potential future buyers.
That said, I did find one at Lifeline this week for $18 that passed all of my tests.
$18 on this sweet jersey.
It’s a really nice Mitchell & Ness Golden State Warriors jersey. Actually the rookie jersey for Steph Curry so it’s a 2009 - 2010 Hardwood Classic swingman. The wash tags looked good, the stitching was immaculate and one of the best indicators for me: the weight. Plus of course it matched up perfectly with the authentic jerseys online.
It doesn’t have the best sell through rate on eBay with most that sell being brand new with tags (this one has some wear), but it’s quite uncommon here in Australia so I think I should be able to sell it by this time next week.
Ignore the $350, I wont get anywhere near that.
I’ll aim for $100 on eBay and somewhere a bit lower on Marketplace.
Anyway, I don’t have a question for you this week, but if you want to listen to the podcast version of this newsletter, you can do so by searching for Flip Weekly on any podcast platform including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube etc. On the podcast this week I slog through Season 1 Episode 1 of Great British Railway Journeys which you can watch at the same time on YouTube for free. SUPER FUN.
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week.
Mat
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