Issue #39

Welcome back to another Issue of Flip Weekly. This week I’ve had some crazy fast sales, the first was sold in just 12 minutes (a record for me!) and the second was just under an hour. Imagine picking up 2 items from a thrift store, listing them up and having them both gone within an hour?! Crazy! Take a look below at what I’ve bought and sold this week and don’t forget that if you’re in Australia this weekend and next weekend is the annual Garage Sale Trail. Literally hundreds of garage sales all across the country and it’s your chance to make a ton of money. Check out the website to see if there’s any within your area. But first!

In This Issue

• What I’ve Bought

• What I Sold

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Flip Weekly on Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I’ve Bought

Thrift stores continue to amaze me. At any given time, you can walk in and see overpriced, obviously fake branded clothing, and yet tucked away, underneath a shelf, you’ll find the following.

This is a Jakks Pacific WWE “Super Value Pack“ that was released in 2007. If you’re unfamiliar with WWE, it’s an American wrestling company that is insanely popular for their live shows, pay per view events and of course their merchandise which includes action figures just like this. We had a $10 price tag on this box, so I decided to open it up in the shop and see what was inside. Considering the price, I honestly expected there to be nothing in it. I was surprised. Inside we had 4 brand new figures, still in their original packaging and completely sealed, stickers for the ring on their original paper plus the remaining accessories all factory sealed. By all accounts, this was an opened box, but with everything brand new inside.

This excited me and as soon as I got home I looked for comps, knowing that WWE is insanely popular and lowkey hoping that this was a desired set. What I came to find was that the comps on this were sparse. I found one… just one.

It had sold recently for what is approximately $160.00. I didn’t know if this was a one-off, when there’s zero comps and only 1 sale, the truth is this could have been on the market for years and years. There’s no real way to know. To gauge interest, I decided to head back to Reddit, and post my find on the subreddit /r/wrestling_figures. I really like using this website to figure out the popularity of certain items, they’re knowledgeable, it’s highly targeted and if you have pressing questions about something specific, you’ll find an answer there.

The post had thousands of views in a short amount of time and given the amount of attention it received, I realized that this was essentially a home run. The comments validated my initial thoughts: finding a set from 2007 still factory sealed was rare. It was nostalgic to a whole bunch of people and the general consensus seemed to me that I was going to sell this for a lot of money. I decided to list the item up and in just a few days we have close to 50 views and 3 watchers. Perhaps it will sell as a Christmas gift?

You see this on a thrift store shelf, would you pick it up?

To be fair, this angle isn’t the best. It’s not what I first saw. This was what I first saw:

If this angle doesn’t help you, that’s fine. Let’s have a refresher course from Issue #29. In Issue #29 I spoke about the importance of recognizing logos. If you can recognize a logo from a certain era, you’ll be able to instantly tell the year the item is from. Think of all of your favorite brands and envision the logos throughout the years. They change every few years and if you really think about it, you can remember what was going on at the time. Why is this helpful? It’s the difference between this being a regular modern day hat and a hat from the 90’s. One could sell for $10, one could sell for $100. For me, as a die-hard sports fan, this was a no-brainer. Take a look at this graphic.

Yes, I know, it’s a lot of sports but bare with me. Knowing the logo I could tell this was a NRL Sydney Roosters hat from the 90’s and using this graph I can pinpoint 1995 - 1997. If you need any motivation to pay attention to logos, remember the time I found a jersey in a thrift store sporting the logo above from 1997 that cost $15 and would go on to list for $600.

The point I’m trying to make is that logos are your friend! They’re an easily distinguishable simple mark on most items yet can tell you absolutely everything if you know what you’re looking at. Just think, if you’re primarily a Nike seller, look up the history of the Nike swoosh. The more you know the better and it doesn’t take long see the differences.

The next thrift store I visited is usually quite cheap and so it was rare to see a $10 price tag on a book. These are Star Wars graphic novels from the late 90’s, these make up part 1 and part 2 of a trilogy called Star Wars Dark Forces and if we look up some comps, we can see it’s highly sought after.

In situations like this, where we find 2 out of 3, you best believe that for the next 10 minutes your primary goal is to find the 3rd.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find the 3rd which is just my luck as its the most valuable of the 3. In fact, if I was able to find all 3 it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that I could sell it for anywhere from $300-$400.

The reason I say that is because right now on eBay their are only 3 copies of the final book and it appears to be very rare for an Australian listing to pop-up. Stay tuned to see what I end up doing with these 2 that I found for $20.

Straight up I’m going to tell you that I’m not a huge watch guy. I’m a Swatch guy. I’m kidding, but throwback to Issue #25 when I picked up a Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland Swatch watch that went on to sell for $255 + post. With a single successful Swatch sale under my belt, I saw this old looking one for $5 and thought it was worth a gamble. The few listings on eBay are all over $100 and there’s a sold comp in the $70 range, so I figured I’d put it up for $50. It has a bit of interest thus far considering it’s the cheapest listing and who knows, maybe soon I’ll have 2 Swatch sales under my belt.

A few other things I picked up this week:

Sitting on a top shelf was this super cute Winnie the Pooh bear. Looking at the markings we can see it’s from 2002, is a special edition and a Disney store exclusive. I pulled it down to see its price and it was only $5 at a Lifeline Op Shop! This was a scenario where it seemed obviously mispriced, maybe because the clear plastic was a bit dirty? This ticked a few boxes for me:

• Special Edition

• Disney Store Exclusive

• Complete in Box

• Quite Old

• Christmas themed with the holiday around the corner.

I think of all of the above and then back to the price… $5… surely this is worth more. Looking inside the box and it’s in perfect condition, I honestly don’t think he was ever taken out of the box. Like, have a look yourself. The below is an animated GIF so wait for it to load.

If we take a look at comps there’s 44 available but not a single one within Australia so if somebody wanted to buy this they’d have to pay US shipping which brings the cheapest down to $85.82. Considering Christmas is coming up and shipping times are unreliable, this seemed like a no brainer and to be honest… something that could be sold for ten, maybe twenty times its cost price. I think everyone should trust their gut when they see an item like this. Just looking at it you can tell it’s worth more than $5.

If you saw my post on Instagram this week (follow here), you would have seen that I picked up a huge collection of Pokemon action figures at a thrift store this week.

I spent $73 in total and the collection was huge, take a look below.

Now I’m running out of time before the publication deadline, but I asked Instagram what they though the total value was and I’m going to ask you too. Next week I’ll be listing out the value to you, but in the meantime take a vote in the poll below.

What I Sold

In Issue #21 back in July I had my fastest eBay sale ever. It came in at 16 minutes and was a 1996 Goosebumps finger puppet that was bought for $2 and sold for $52.54. At the time I was amazed at how quickly something like this could sell, I thought that it took a few minutes for items to process and end up in search results but turns out… nope. This week I beat the 16 minute record.

I want to show you my quickest sale of all time, coming in at just 12 minutes!

From $4 into $99.99 in just 12 minutes. I couldn’t find a single comp for this hat no matter where I looked. eBay, Worthpoint, Facebook Groups, all over Google and forums, there was nothing. In cases like this you can really ask for whatever you want if you know you’ve got a good quality item. I wasn’t too sure what to list it for, I had previously bought a hat for $2 and sold it for $250 but that was an entirely different niche (read about it here). I decided on $99.99 for a fair price given its age, condition and lack of comps and as you know, it was snapped up in 12 minutes. It’s very possible I left money on the table but who knows if it would still be unsold if I listed for $250 whereas at least I have this money in my pocket and I can reinvest it into fresh inventory.

I decided to list the Star Wars books that I picked up for $100 on eBay and $80 on Marketplace. Within 20 minutes I was contacted on Marketplace buy a fella who wanted to buy both. After he asked a few questions and we worked out pickup/delivery, he sent me through the money and they were taken down from eBay within an hour (listed at 6:16pm, taken down at 7:14pm). The crazy part is that this particular buyer had been searching for these books for close to a year, check it out:

So these Star Wars books and the NRL hat were 2 items that I picked up on a short thrift store run. $24 was the total I spent and within an hour of getting home they had gone on to sell for $180. Not too bad!

Let’s go back to Issue #27, 15th of August. At the only Savers in my state I found this cruise ship replica for $9.99. Surprisingly the comps were insane.

Cruise ship people are built different. We have a 78 day turnaround time and its sold for $150. This is either a memento for somebody who cruised on this ship or somebody who collects these types of models. Right? I can’t say I don’t get it, they’re pretty high quality, look cool and display well; it’s been sitting on my display shelf this entire time. Whenever I’m out in the thrift or at a garage sale I’m always paying attention to anything cruise ship related, it pays well!

Just a reminder that accessories for older video game consoles can be valuable and sell well for you. I’m sure some resellers would find this CD wallet at a garage sale, find no games inside and put it back down. It’s the wrong move because they sell every day on eBay for at least $30 and this one I’ve been able to move for $20 on Marketplace.

Moving on but sticking with the earlier Star Wars category is something I forgot to show you that I bought from a thrift store on October 30th.

It’s quite obvious, but this is a Star Wars Episode 2 chess set. We all know how popular Star Wars is which is why I guess this was in the display cabinet beneath a cash register of a Vinnies. I’m usually not one to look in there, my thought process is that it’s in there because staff think it’s valuable and I’m mostly trying to find the hidden gems, not the ones in full sight. That said, it had a $20 price tag and I had a feeling that a chess set that’s quite old like this (Episode 2 came out in 2002) it would surely be worth more than $20.

If we take a look at eBay, we have 19 active listings, 15 sold listings. 78.95% sell through rate which means it’s going to sell quick. The thing is, of those actives we have 0 in Australia and of the sold listings, there’s only 1 and that was sold for $100 - about $30 higher than all of the other USA pre-owned sets.

With it being somewhat rare here in Aus, I could have listed it up for around $150.00 but instead opted to copy the exact pricing here on eBay and on Marketplace drop it down to $70. It was the right move, somebody messaged me on Marketplace that they could collect it the very next day.

That’s all I’ve got for you this week, thanks again for reading and don’t forget that the Australia wide Garage Sale Trail is on this weekend. There’s garage sales all over the country and bound to be one near you. Be sure to tag Flip Weekly on Instagram with anything cool you pick up! See you next week!

Mat.

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