Issue #40

Mat here, I’ve got a massive issue this week. We hit the road and took part in the Garage Sale Trail for the 2nd year in a row. As you can see from the title, we cleaned up. We have items that were bought for $2 that were listed for $200, plus an on the road sale that took just 4 minutes, complete with pictures of the item taken on the roof my car - literally the fastest sale I’ve ever seen in person. Strap in and come with me to Garage Sale Trail 2024.

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

For 2 weekends out of the year, Australian’s like to take part in a new tradition called Garage Sale Trail. It’s an event put on by local councils with the goal of extending the life of products we buy.

Basically it’s 2 weekends of garage sales. Last year I took part for the first time and walked away with some killer deals, including a huge collection of Mad Magazine Comic Books that cost me $20 and I sold 24 hours later for $1,000. This year I didn’t get as lucky however that’s not to say that I didn’t score… big time…

I’m going to take you back to Saturday morning. I was joined by my younger sister who was inspired from the deal above, and we decided to hit up sales in her local area. I think if I was to describe my ideal garage sale host, it would be this: an older person, preferably a parent, the kids have moved out and have left behind their childhood items. In theory, the parent want the kids stuff gone and don’t care about making money. In fact, they probably don’t even know what the items are or what they’re worth. We struck absolute gold when we came across this first sale.

So what did we find? Where to even start.

These are old school electronic video games. I say video games lightly but I think this is what was classed as video games in the 80’s. This was entertainment. We have a 1982 Snoopy Nintendo Game & Watch.

This is the first ever time I’ve found one of these in the wild. These Nintendo Game & Watch’s were what came before the classic Game Boy. We all know the Game Boy, it’s the handheld console where you can put in a cartridge and play a video game. Take it out, put in another and play a different game. These Game & Watch’s didn’t have that functionality, the game was built into the console. So this particular game was Snoopy Tennis - if you bought this, you ain’t playing anything but Snoopy tennis. I’m going to tell you what the host charged us for this, but first, take a look at what was next to it.

We have a very similar… I guess, gaming console? Right next to the Nintendo. It’s a 1982 Diamond Hunt game, that has 3 different screens. It’s powered with the exact same batteries but the difference is that this isn’t by Nintendo and believe me, just having the Nintendo brand on your product matters.

So what do we have? We have two 80’s gaming handheld consoles. Both were tested and confirmed to be working. But before that, we had to pay for the them! I held up both consoles in my hand and asked the dude how much he wanted for them. The reply I got was shocking: $2 each. That’s fine by me. I remember seeing Game & Watch consoles on Marketplace and Video Game Groups and off memory they tended to sell for around $100 each. That was my basis. Let’s look at comps.

Snoopy first. If it was boxed:

Unboxed, like what we found:

The average seemed to be around the $200 mark and we even had comps that were past that - it seemed to be a console that was rarer in Australia therefore you could ask for a bit more. This was my sisters score, someone who doesn’t have an eBay account so we tossed up what to do. We mulled it over, we started thinking $100 for a quick sale, but after more comp research we went up to $150 and then what do you know, $200 just crept in. We can then ask for $200, maybe negotiate down to $150… there’s no rush and we know that Nintendo people and also Snoopy people can get a bit crazy.

The listing went absolute bonkers, it completely surpassed my expectations. 600 clicks, 21 saves all in the space of 24 hours. This thing is pretty much guaranteed to sell and to sell quickly. Who doesn’t like a $2 item turning into $200 cash?

Now in terms of the “console“ I kept for myself? It’s pretty quiet.

Goes to show that you don’t just want old stuff, you want the tie-ins with different brands, like Nintendo and Snoopy. At that exact same sale we picked up a few more items - we spent a total of $20 and the dude was happy to see it all gone; he told us he was selling the house, spending his children’s inheritance and travelling the country in a caravan. Sounds good to me. Here’s what we bought:

Yes, this baby doll is creepy. It’s got that thousand yard stare reminiscent of a war veteran. I’m sure if I take away its bottle it will curse me out and tell me how thankful I should be that I have freedom. It’s made by Zapf Creations, the same famous company that was responsible for Baby Born. These ones are called Chou Chou dolls and the sell through rate on eBay is quite impressive, around 66.67%, compared to Baby Borns 19.54%. Keep an eye out and just remember that when it comes to stuff like this, the accessories are where the money is. That’s the clothing, bottles, that type of thing.

If you’re unsure as to why I picked up this bulk lot of Baby Born clothing and accessories, scroll on down to what’s sold and you’ll see. This is all vintage Baby Born including a car seat carrier, backpack, changing pad, bottle plus some clothes. If I had to guess I’d say there’s around $100 worth of product here. It sounds like a lot, but check out some vintage Baby Born comps below and it starts to make sense.

If you ask me whether I would opt to buy the doll or the accessories, I’d buy the accessories 100% of the time. If you’re a collector, you have the doll, you might not have each piece of clothing or accessory.

Holy crap, I finally found a working CRT television. You will remember that in Issue #28 I left behind over $1,000 in televisions (in theory). These TV’s have become increasingly popular over the last few years as gamers try and recreate their childhood for a bit of nostalgia. They grew up playing Nintendo on huge televisions so their gaming rooms aren’t complete without something like this. If you want to check out just how popular CRT gaming is, head on over to the subreddit /r/CRTgaming where over 100,000 people share photos of their setups.

The comps and sell through rate for these old CRT’s is shocking, it really blows my mind and makes me second guess if this is actually real. If you search for Retro Gaming CRT you’ll find 874 results with 940 sold, giving us a sell through rate of 107.55% - basically if you list, it will sell.

If you want some inspiration, go check out the sold comps - it’s 100% going to inspire you to pick up an old TV next time you’re at a garage sale.

These old TV’s have zero value to people that don’t know what they are, I got mine for $5 and it’s gone on to be listed for $399 + post. If someone buys this, they’ll be paying probably over $500 for it. Isn’t that crazy?

You know I love my tins and I couldn’t go past this Powerpuff Girls one from the year 2000. Unfortunately I didn’t full inspect it at the sale and I noticed later on that the hinge was broken. I don’t think it’s worth listing it on eBay so I put it on Marketplace with just a $5 price tag. If it wasn’t broken I think it could have easily been $20 Marketplace, $30 eBay. Not to worry, it still displays great and someone will snatch it up. Check out the numbers on Marketplace after 48 hours.

PowerPuff Girls is a big seller so whenever you find it in the wild, pick it up. Take a look at some of these recent vintage PowerPuff Girls sales.

Inside of the tin were a couple of Looney Tunes tazos from 1996 - I decided to list them up on Marketplace for $5 and they sold a few hours later. Not a whole lot of money but it’s still something given I didn’t even know they were in there. All in all from that 1 garage sale we have 7 items purchased at $20, for a complete listing value of $900. Breakdown below.

Not included was a plush Dorothy the Dinosaur that my sister picked up as a personal item. So really there were 8 items, average price being $2.50 per item. Not a bad return aye.

We moved on to the next sale and this is where my sister beat me with the fastest sale I’ve ever seen clocking in at just FOUR MINUTES. You read that right, 4 minutes. The sale had some really cool stuff, the host was a pop culture collector who had a lot of Comic Con related items. A mix of modern and vintage. Unfortunately a lot of the items were priced according to eBay. Like this Baby Sinclair from the TV show Dinosaurs priced at $20.

What I find funny is that this figure was put in a bag and priced high, yet what I found in a small open box further away was completely loose yet worth more. This is where our knowledge comes in.

If you’re stumped as to why I rushed to pick this up, maybe the back will help.

Familiarize yourself with this logo, it’s the Goosebumps logo! These are the vintage Goosebumps toys that were a promo item for Pizza Hut back in the day. I actually found a similar one earlier this year and sold it in record time, you’ll remember from Issue #21. These little plastic finger puppets sell extremely quickly and for decent money.

I paid just $1 for this puppet and I said to my sister, let’s list it up and see if we can sell it before we get back. I took a photo of it on top of my car, used the Photoroom iPhone app to make the photo look a bit better and sent it to my sis to list on Marketplace for $30. Literally 4 minutes later a lady messaged wanting to buy and that was that. A 4 minute sale, money in her account before even making it to the next sale.

A few of the other items I bought from this sale:

So that sale was responsible for the fastest sale I’ve ever seen. We move on to the next one where I bought my first ever tool from a garage sale. I came across this measuring tape and I thought the logo and typography looked quite old. The only thing I know about old tools is that every old man seems to ask for them at sales. “Got any old tools?“ was a phrase I literally heard at the first sale of the day.

There’s around 80 sold comps for “stanley powerlock vintage” and the average sale price seems to be around $30 - $50.

I have no idea why, I guess just like anything there are vintage tool collectors? You tell me. After finding this, we continued looking in the rest of the rooms of the house. We were told by the owners that they were selling and even asked if we wanted to buy the place - I don’t think they were joking either. In one room we found 2 sealed action figures from the animated series Ben 10.

I feel like I see Ben 10 everywhere, I’ve just never paid it any attention until that day. I did what I usually don’t do at garage sales and took a quick photo for Google Lens. Not much came back on eBay but I did find this website where the figure was listed for £69.99 which is approximately $140.00AUD.

As I said there were 2 figures so I picked both up, 1 for each of us. I decided to list mine on eBay for $99 and my sister listed on Marketplace for $50. So far its received a lot of attention on eBay.

On Marketplace its received attention too - several people have wanted to buy it and have it shipped but my sister doesn’t want to deal with Aus Post which is fair enough - it resulted in this funny exchange with a buyer.

So for this garage sale we have 3 items, $15 spent, total listed value of $180.00 and would have been more if both figures were listed on eBay. After the entire day, this was our combined haul, minus the TV and the Goosebumps figure that already sold.

What I Sold

Oh boy, did I really screw this up. I picked up this vintage Baby Born pram for like $10, listed it on Marketplace for $50 and was inundated with people wanting to buy it. After a whole host of no-shows and spam messages, I decided to take it off and put it on the ever reliable eBay. I bought a large box, put the pram inside, cut the box down to size, measured, weighed, put that information into the Australia Post Postage Calculator to see the average price to ship, thought the shipping price was fair and then decided to list on eBay for $199.95 + free shipping.

I listed on October 14th and it sold on November 5th - barely 3 weeks. I was ecstatic, a $10 item transformed into $150. The city walk holding a child’s pram, the funny looks and side eye glances was worth it. I gave it a bit of a clean, took some nice photos and was happy to see it off to someone that would enjoy it.

However, life isn’t that easy. When the postage calculator gave me the rates, I basically only looked at the cheapest on the sliding scale. For example, if you ship a 5kg box from a Sydney suburb to another Sydney suburb, it’s going to be cheap. That rate shows up in the estimates. Yet if you’re going to ship from Sydney to Perth, Western Australia (4,000km / 40 hours drive) it’s going to cost an arm and a leg. When I looked up the estimates I discounted the fact that people in Perth would buy a Sydney product. I don’t know why. So what happened?

Someone in Western Australia bought the pram. They paid $150.00 in total for the item with free shipping. After eBay fees, what was left to me was $129.60. The shipping fee alone was $120.00. That means my eBay profit was $9.60 BUT the pram cost me $10 so my total profit was -$0.40. I sold a $10 toy pram for $150 yet still lost money. It’s funny… I mean I can laugh at it… but also… goddamn, why does Australia have to be so vast?!

Whenever one of these shipping mistakes occurs, I always like to imagine what the recipient is thinking.

“He sells this for $150, spends $120 on shipping + packaging materials, how do they make money?“

“The DVD sold for only $5, yet the shipping was $11.20, what is going on?“

I’m sure my shipping errors have been mistaken for some sort of money laundering operation. There isn’t much the recipient can do except take a photo and come up with their own conspiracy theories.

If you’re popular enough that your publisher makes your book hardcover, you’re popular enough to sell on the secondary market with your signature on the first page. I continue to make money by pulling out popular titles and authors, checking the first few pages for a signature. It’s an easy way to turn a $5 book into a $50 book. Or, if you get lucky like me, an $8 book into $200 within 6 hours. With Christmas coming up, it’s the perfect time to plonk yourself down in the book department and try and find some signatures.

With that said, it may not be the most efficient way of making money. There’s a real good shot that you don’t find a single signature or if you do find one, it’s of someone that’s irrelevant. I try to focus more on the interesting and unique items, I would rather spend 5 hours unsuccessfully searching for a signed copy of Norm Macdonald’s biography (that isn’t a biography) than pick up 10 cooking books that will sell within the next 12 months.

The only thing I can say about this PS2 game, that netted us $50 in sales, is that I hope you are taking advantage of Flip Vidya which is completely free. Flip Vidya will 100% help you identify which video games are worth picking up and which ones aren’t. I used to visit garage sales, ask for video games and then when they were brought out I had no idea what was what. Now whenever I visit a sale, I am completely confident that I can pick out the games that will make me money.

That’s all I’ve got for you this week, but stay tuned because this weekend Garage Sale Trail is on again and I’m aiming to make a lot more money. Don’t forget to follow us on social media and share the newsletter if you haven’t already. See you next week!

Mat.

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