Issue #61

Reminder: you can listen to this Issue in podcast form here!

Ever have those days where you walk into a thrift store with a hope and a dream and walk out having spent $18 with a listed value of over $1,000? I leave most thrift stores empty handed muttering under my breath that I suck at thrifting. On this day last week I thought I found something cool, a 1990’s TMNT poster on the outside of a toilet door in a Vinnies. I asked the Vinnie’s staff members if I could buy the poster, thinking what good is an item in a thrift store if it isn’t being sold, yet 3 different people told me that no, it was there to make the toilet door look pretty and that’s it.

I was bummed out until I turned around I became face to face with 6 items that have a combined value of over $1,000. I recorded a video finding these items and the video will go live on Instagram this morning. Follow the account here. But first!

In This Issue

• What I Bought

• What I Sold

• This $18 Bundle Turned Into $1,500 — And You Could …

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Podcast

• Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I Bought

This week was an interesting and fun week… I had a visitor! My mum had decided to come down to Sydney for the day to catch up, talk shit and eat nice food. After we had caught up a bit at my place I asked her what she wanted to do and it was clear she wanted to “find bargains” at the local thrift. She reads the newsletters and listens to the podcast, or pretends to, but isn’t a fan of listing on eBay and Marketplace. I guess you could say she loves the thrill of the hunt. I told her about the poster and my find of the year the day before and that’s exactly where she wanted to go first. I told her I recorded a video of my find and left some behind. I thought they were valueless; turns out they could have been bought for around $20 and sold for a couple hundred dollars.

We rock up to this thrift store and the leftovers I skipped were no longer there. Someone else cleaned up. Not to worry, it’s a numbers game I tell mum, the more opportunities we give ourselves the higher the chance we succeed. We go over to the media section and I immediately start scanning the shelves. I want to find something that will sell immediately for a lot of money, convince mum that this is something she can do herself because you know, money talks.

Nothing stands out too much until I see a single volume copy of the TV show “Prisoner Cell Block H”. This is a classic with Australian resellers because if you’re lucky enough to find the entire series you’re in for a huge payday.

I tell mum… if you find 1 volume of a TV show, chances are… you’ll find another. I didn’t know how keen mum was for bargains, within a blink of an eye she’s looking at shelves I’ve never been able to get down to in my old age. At one point in time she’s pulling out volume after volume, I don’t know where from but they’re starting to pile up.

All of a sudden the shelves are stripped bare of Prisoner Cell Block H and we have a pile of 9.

For newcomers, this TV show, Prisoner Cell Block H is about as much a rite of passage in reselling as a Mambo Loud Shirt. This Australian soap opera ran for 692 episodes! Having never watched the show, it looks like a more gritty Orange is the New Black.

Anyway, mum found 9 different volumes. Sort of annoying as the volumes weren’t in sequential order, they’re really all over the place. If you find Volume 1-10 you can easily get $200 yet a random assortment like the above? A bit tricky. If you’re asking why? Just think…. Who wants to watch a show and start from episode 30, then jump to episode 86, then 120. Makes no sense really.

We paid up for these DVD’s too, each DVD was $6 so for all 9, yep $54. I might have been a bit too excited thinking we were in for a huge payday to properly analyze the situation. However now that time has passed, I’m legit thinking that the best solution to this problem isn’t to lot them up as a random assortment of volumes but to instead list individually. Why? So that others attempting to collect the full set can use me to do it. When people are trying to complete sets and are after a very specific volume, season, item, whatever, they’re willing to pay up. Remember that 2cm tall Mighty Max figure I sold for like $25? There’s an example.

So instead of going $200 for all 9 DVD’s and hoping some buyer likes watching things out of order, I’m thinking I’ll commit to a slower sell, list each up for $49.95 and wait for people to complete their collections. $49.95 seems to be an okay amount that some volumes are selling for, and just realize that buyers don’t have a huge selection, it’s really 1 or 2 options. So here I am, opting for a slower sell through rate so that instead of $54 worth of DVD’s turning into $200, they’ll turn into $449.55. This is your reminder that piecing out items is sometimes worth it.

The next item is what I think Gen Z would call forbidden ice cream.

There isn’t ice cream inside the box, it’s a collaboration between Streets Ice Cream and dusk, the Australian chain of candle and home fragrances stores. When I stuck my nose inside, wow… a huge overwhelming whiff of a nostalgic chocolate flavored Paddle Pop ice cream, this thing is strong. When I asked mum if the candle had been used, she gave me a look to say “No Mat, the wicks would be burnt…“ and I felt like an idiot. Yeah, makes sense.

After smelling the candle and being told it was new, I thought this would surely sell on Marketplace or even eBay for more than $10. I looked up comps and not a single active listing. Weird, is it no longer being manufactured? The answer is that this collab started and ended over 3 years ago.

Huh, didn’t know that these existed. I still can’t find any exact sold comps, but we do have the knowledge that these candles were originally priced at $59.99 so if they’re still in demand we might be able to get a premium. We also find out that they released a line of fragrant oils with similar smells and we do have sold comps for those, check it out.

With a really good sell through rate, these users are able to get nearly $100 for these flavors. That sounds perfect to me, let’s buy the candle for $10 and list it up for $99.95 and see how we go. Let’s hope it sells quickly before I have a few drinks and mistake it for real ice cream.

In the exact same thrift store, one where I usually never find anything because it’s smaller than my shoebox apartment, we also found this boxed 2010 Japanese Power Rangers… thing.

Despite visiting Japan and studying the language for 2 years in school you might have guessed that I can’t speak or read a lick of it. That doesn’t stop me though from seeing it’s obviously a Power Ranger toy with the Bandai logo in the bottom right which is not only a great quality brand, but also one that can be worth a lot of money.

Judging from the photos, it appears to be an electronic battery powered toy so we decide to scoop it up and attempt to decipher what it is in the car going back home. This is where I introduce mum to the concept of Google Lens’ translate feature.

Talk about mind blowing, she couldn’t believe you could just point your camera at Japanese words and have them replaced with the English version so easily. Using Google Lens we were able to see that this is a Power Rangers Gosei Morpher which is a “morphing device of the Mega Rangers.” Mum and I immediately knew what a Gosei Morpher did, but in case you’re unfamiliar you put these “Power Cards“ into the device, close it up and sound is activated which reads out, in Japanese, the cards special ability.

It’s basically this, but in Japanese. With that information we were able to look up Sold Comps. If you had the head loose with no cards you could expect around $20-$30.

If you have some cards, you can expect a bit more:

As ours is boxed and working ready to go, I’m thinking $149.95. I’m not too sure how it will fair considering it’s in Japanese, but it’ll be interesting to see the results. Either way, it was only $6 (I’ll never understand thrift store pricing).

Speaking of thrift store pricing and never understanding it, we stop into a Lifeline on the way home and I find this.

What are the odds? Seriously… I’ve never found it before… what are the chances of finding this TV show on the same day in different thrift stores in different suburbs? Not only that, each Volume has 8 DVD’s and they’re usually priced per disc at either $1 or $2 yet these today… $3 for the entire volume. Make it make sense.

I picked them up and the $9 purchase should turn into $100.

What I Sold

The first sale this week took less than 24 hours and I’m incredibly proud because it was an item mum picked up in the thrift. I couldn’t get a picture in the thrift but mum paid $3 and this is what it was:

This sale really surprised me, I told mum that I’d list The Wiggles VHS for $49.95 and it would most likely be the slowest seller as we’ll aim for $49.95 which was $5 above the highest sold comp.

I mean, you can go on eBay right now and find copies of this VHS for $15.

So yeah, this was a huge surprise. I decided to look into these VHS and it turns out that 90% ship only to Australia and the 1 that didn’t was all beat up and had a ripped cover. The thing is, if you weigh and measure your item and determine exactly how you’ll post it prior to listing, there’s no reason to not open up your audience and ship international. By just offering international shipping, the VHS sold for $49.95 instead of $4.99 like the one above.

Guess what? Whether it’s domestic or international, you still have to go to the post office, the only difference is you have to fill in a customs form. Customs form might sound intimidating but it’s literally an online form you can check out here and all it asks you is for the buyers address, your address and what’s in the parcel. You don’t even have to print anything out, you chuck the VHS in a padded mailer, seal it and when you get to the counter the staff will ask if you’ve filled in a form, you’ll say yes and just show them the code that gets sent to your email. Don’t put it in the too hard basket because it’s simple and straightforward.

Popcorn buckets are such an unusual category. It’s a category that had me inundated with trolls who didn’t believe that a Garfield movie exclusive item would sell for $80. This week a buyer who lived 50 minutes away from my place in Sydney drove over on a Saturday afternoon to buy this super cute R2-D2 popcorn bucket. Go back to Issue #25 when I first discovered that there was a huge community for people that collect popcorn buckets.

Picked up in Issue #56, we have this Star Wars collectable that sold for full price. I got away with an absolute steal here, I paid just $15 and it sold for $169.95. The reason I think it was so cheap in the thrift was because the employees mistook it for regular Scholastic Star Wars books. They either didn’t look them up and just sold Star Wars Scholastic on the packaging or they couldn’t open up the card sealed electronic device inside and said screw it.

This was such a cool find, you can check it out in Issue #53 here and you can also watch the video of me finding it here. This Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves swag was, I’m guessing, given out to influencers who attended the premiere of the movie. Apparently they weren’t a fan of the film and donated the entire lot to a Lifeline thrift store who sold it to me for $25. The swag included a stein, beanie and satchel. The movie was received well and combined with being a popular IP, it went on to sell for $200 + $65 postage to the US in just under 2 months.

In Issue #50 I was swiping through the clothing racks at a Salvos thrift store and spotted this vintage 1996 Space Jam sweatshirt that was in mint condition. It was only $10 and had some insane comps and has sold for $124.95 + $28.25 postage to the US.

This $18 Bundle Turned Into $1,500 — And You Could’ve Had It

If you’ve read Flip Weekly since the beginning here are a few things I’ve said to you many, many times:

1. The board game section of a thrift store is underrated.

2. It only takes 1 store to find a gem.

3. You can make money on big box PC games.

I’m about to show you what may be the most money I’ve ever pulled out of a thrift store.

Just like book or DVD series placed next to each other on a shelf catches your eye, these boxes in the board game section caught mine. I had just looked over a bunch of big box PC games and thought maybe there’s more? This was a somewhat fruitful day at this thrift, it was obvious that a huge donation of pop culture / retro items had come in and I was looking forward to cleaning up.

If you take a look at the image above, you’ll recognise that they aren’t board games. They’re not DVD’s, they’re not even thick books, they’re video games from the late 80’s, early 90’s. Nowadays I know that old is good, but doesn’t necessarily mean big money, I mean you can get a Star Wars game on Nintendo 64 released in 1999 for like $19 on eBay.

I wasn’t too excited at first but I jumped onto eBay for one of the games and that alone made me stop, pick up the rest and get the hell out of there. I’ve been burnt before by putting items down and walking away so I wanted to make sure I left with what I wanted.

Each game was priced at $3 so the entire bundle of 6 games cost me a whopping $18. In hindsight it’s crazy to think that this thrift store puts Sydney 2000 Olympic plush toys behind glass but these very, very valuable games squished in next to Scrabble and Family Feud.

I’ve yet to show you the comps, the juicy part, but first I’ll show you the individual games and let me know if you’ve ever heard of them.

If you don’t recognize any of these titles that’s fine, neither do I. All I knew was that big box PC games can be big money and with the help of eBay and Google Lens I walked out of the thrift with 6 games that are going to be listed up for close to $1,500.

To summarize the games, we have 2 series:

Kings Quest - volume 1-4

Quest for Glory - volume 1-2

That makes up our 6 games. You know what’s crazy? If you’re a younger reader who plays video games and the earliest you can remember are the Nintendo 64 cartridges, I’m about to blow your mind with how these games were played.

You’re probably thinking “yeah I know, older cartridges”

Nope.

“CD’s?“

Nope.

“Tapes?“

Not quite.

“Floppy discs?“

What size?

“What size?!“

To get started playing Hero’s Quest, first install the game and read the instructions.

To enjoy this game you need to play around with four 3.5” floppy discs and ten 5.25” floppy discs. I’m not coming at you modern day gamers from my high horse by the way, I have no idea how these work either. Doesn’t seem worth it to me.

Anyway, you’re here because you want to know how much they’re all worth. Let’s go through the sold comps and for the first time ever I’ll note that I’ll probably list higher than some sold comps just based on availability and condition.

These 6 sold comps add up to just over $1,200. When we list very old and rare items we have to take into consideration the condition of the item and factor in the supply and demand. The condition of my items is immaculate given they’re older than me. They are complete in box and even have the original receipts which is really cool. In terms of supply, it’s very limited. How many games from the late 80’s to early 90’s do you think survived up until now? Now demand? Tough to gauge however based on sold comps it seems strong. I’ve also spent some time recently on the Sierra subreddit filled with 15,000 who love and adore the games.

After mulling it over, and sitting on the listing for 2 days, something I very rarely do, I decided to lot up the 4 Kings Quest games together for $1,000 and the 2 other games individually for $250. If all 3 listings sell, that turns my $18 purchase into $1,500!

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this week. If you miss me over the next few days, listen to the podcast in the background of whatever you’re doing. Catch you next week!

Mat.

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