Issue #49

Welcome to Issue #49 of Flip Weekly, the newsletter where I buy items from thrift stores and garage sales and sell online for a profit. Huge welcome to the new subscribers this week who join us from Yahoo! Finance. I was lucky enough to speak to a journalist there about side hustles and this newsletter got a nice little write up. You can check the article out here.

We have some unusual finds this week - the main item is something that was a total surprise but took me on a pretty fun journey - from $10 to a couple of hundred in a few hours. Read on below for the full story and don’t forget to follow Flip Weekly on social media, I have some big news to announce soon. But first!

In This Issue

• What I Bought

• What I Sold

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Flip Weekly on Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I Bought

We start off with something old, frail and close to falling apart. It isn't your author, it's something much more desirable.

Hiding under a basket of miscellaneous junk, I saw the outside of this paper item and thought it looked very old. On the front of the cardboard was a logo printed reading “Called To Arms - A New Military Game“. With my brief past experience with military items selling fast (I’ve bought and sold like 2 things), I thought might be worth some money, especially when the sticker price is just $10.

I did a quick look up of the game on eBay and couldn’t find anything so I Googled the name. 2 results came up that sparked my interest. The first was from the State Library of South Australia and the second was Powerhouse Collection. If you’re not familiar with Powerhouse Collection, let me fill you in.

Using these 2 resources I was able to find out a bit more information about the game. The game has been dated between 1889-1902 (easily over 100 years old) and involved players taking turns going around a board, aiming to make it to the end before the others via the roll of a dice. The board was themed around the Boer War with players taking the side of the British forces against the Boers, basically old school propaganda.

After learning all of this, my mind immediately started racing... this could be a huge find... my copy is in better condition than the State Libraries, are they in the business of buying items? I mean, the Powerhouse Collection includes 2 paragraphs about the people that owned and loaned the game, could I immortalize myself on their website by donating the item to them?

The page could go from the current:

To the new:

My dreams of a philanthropic life were dashed when I altered my eBay Advanced Search just a bit and found 1 sold comp.

An exact comp… for $68… sold exactly 1 day before… what the hell. That's seriously low, I mean a game of Risk at Kmart sells for more than that. This comp through a wrench into my master plan. I really only have 2 options. I can either choose to list it for $68 to mimic the sold comp or I can shoot higher, relying on the fact this thing is over 100 years old and most likely not going to come up again anytime soon. I opt for the latter and choose to list for $250.00. Updates to come.

Okay, hands up who had one of these Password Journals by Girl Tech as a kid. Also put your hand up if you had a sibling with one of these journals and attempted to break into it. If you weren’t lucky enough to have one as a child, let me tell you about it. It’s essentially a journal that has an electronic locking mechanism that opens and closes based off your voice. These were extremely popular back with young girls in the late 90's, early 2000's and as they evolved so did their features, things like ink that could only be seen under light, hidden compartments, making this something kids loved.

The irony that in the late 90’s, early 2000’s kids wanted their thoughts under lock and key but now post every fleeting thought online. Anyway, I found this factory sealed in a thrift store for $20 and on the back, taped to the journal was an official Girl Tech carry bag. Some sort of promotion a toy store ran back in the day. I'm not too sure if I instantly recognised the item, the packaging or the idea of the password journal from my sisters when we were younger. Regardless I knew something like this would be worth more than $20 given the amount of nostalgia people would have with it.

Sold comps are a bit all over the place as there are multiple iterations of the journal, however we do have similar sort of comps and a healthy sell through rate: 18 listings, 39 sales for a sell through rate of 216.67%.

Factory sealed tends to be about $100 - $180. I'm going to take a chance with my listing - there are very few active listings that are factory sealed, none that are the exact same and none that have the additional carry bag. Of the active listings, only 2 are sealed and they average $196 and have a combined 53 people watching them. My listing will go up for $199.95 + postage and if it sells, I can expect a healthy $145 profit. By the way, if this journal is something you recognise, check out the old advertisement for it on YouTube here. Might bring back some memories.

This is your reminder that you need a Will or else your collectibles will be sent to Vinnies for people like me to pick up and sell. I’m making an assumption but this thrift store was filled with Taz from Looney Tunes merchandise, pretty much in every area of the store. We had wooden decorative plaques in the framing area, glasses and cups in the kitchen section plus what you see above scattered throughout the store. Looney Tunes isn’t the fastest selling collectible for me but there’s definitely a place for it in your store, especially when the items are from the 90’s, brand new and sealed.

I picked up all 3 items above for just $7, most likely listed cheap for functionality. In reality, they’re brand new Looney Tunes merchandise from the 90’s that are hard to find. We have:

• Taz Talking Cereal Bowl - 1998.

• Taz Canteen - 1996.

• Taz Talking Cup - 1998.

Funnily enough the items that talk… still talk. Can’t imagine the state of the battery compartment. Comps are a bit hard to find, but we do have this one for the talking cup.

Until Looney Tunes convinces me it’s a hot seller, I decided to list all 3 up in a bulk lot for $99.95 with free post. I figure if someone is a Taz fan they’d want to pay $100 for all 3, rather than $60 for just the cup. I’d still walk away with a $60-$70 profit and it would give me some reassurance that Looney Tunes is worthy of picking up in the wild. By the way, why am I always finding brand new and sealed collectibles at thrift stores but they’re never things I’m interested in? Just once I’d like to find something that’s interesting to me personally.

Tell me a section in a thrift store that’s more underrated than the board games. It seems to be a catch-all section lately with items priced like a generic puzzle or game of Guess Who.

I got lucky and found this $5 Lord of the Rings chess set. It's The Two Towers version and I spent 5 minutes opening it up and confirming all pieces were there. For reference... 32 pieces in a chess set. If you ever come across this sort of pop culture chess set in the wild just know that majority are worth between $50-$100 if not more. It really does shock me about thrift stores that an item that has "Antique Ivory and Chinese Lacquer Finish Chess Set" plastered across the front can be put in the board game section for $5 yet worthless sterling silver jewelry is marked up 500% and chucked behind a locked cabinet. Thrift store pricing continues to baffle me.

I’ve bought and sold a Lord of the Rings chess set before as well as a Star Wars Episode 2 set (also sold in a day, read about it in Issue #39) and these things go crazy on Marketplace.

Since WHEN do you ever leave a thrift store with a complete in box Gameboy game?! When I saw this in the glass cabinet I assumed it would be priced up to eBay comps, or even past them, but it had a $18 sticker. Higher than what I’d like to pay, but comps for CIB games are around the $75+ range. Take a look:

The lesson to be learned here is that thrift store employees usually price based on whatever the item is, not it’s condition or packaging. If you’re familiar with this sort of industry, you’ll know that there’s a huge difference between a game that’s loose and a complete in box game. Here’s a visual representation of the difference.

What I Sold

Issue #37 was titled “You Can Make Hundreds With Thomas The Tank Engine“ and that’s exactly what happened this week. This brand new Thomas & Friends motorized train was bought for $8 and went on to sell for $199.95.

I wish I had saved a message I received on Marketplace a few weeks back, it was some random person getting angry saying “It’s just Thomas The Tank, why is it $150?!“ - well, this is the reason why. By the way, don’t feed the trolls and reply to them. I did for fun back in Issue #38 and you can see how much of a time sink it is.

I honestly didn't know how this would go. A single sold comp for $68 yet I listed for $250. Turns out, $250 might not have been enough, it sold within 2 hours on a random Tuesday night to somebody in the UK who is paying an additional $60 in post. This find ended up being featured in a Yahoo! Finance article about side hustles, you can check it out here.

The Lord of the Rings chess set sold in what was a matter of hours. I don’t know what it is about these chess sets on Marketplace but they’re always such quick sellers.

Unlike Sauron getting his hands on the One Ring, it isn’t the end of the world if you have bad photography skills like me. If you’re picking up good quality items like this chess set it’s going to sell itself.

Radios are something I will always pick up at garage sales. I don't think I've ever seen one for over $5 yet they sell all the time for 10, even 20 times that. I think the novelty of getting home after a sale having paid $5 for a radio and selling it a week later for $50 - $100 is what keeps me buying them. They're not exactly exciting but I'm still buying them. Weird. This radio was picked up at a sale (Issue #36) for $5 and has sold for $49.95.

In Issue #29 I did the unthinkable: I left a garage sale with cutlery. Here’s what I had to say about it.

You might be thinking that 20 Issues have past since then so I’m now a master of spoons and forks. The answer is, unfortunately, no. I still don’t know too much about them. I know that Oneida is a good brand however with 110,000 listings and 21,000 sold, it’s not an exactly a hot selling item (19.09% sell through rate). I really do think that my perceptions of what is a good pickup was skewed by what I saw on some YouTube channels. I’m not blaming anyone, I mean I bought this for $20 and sold it for $100 however would I pick this up again? Probably not, it brought me no joy and sat for 6 months.

What do you get out of this listing? Here’s 3 things that I’ve learnt about cutlery.

1. The pattern matters. If we narrow down the above set, it’s brand is Oneida but it’s from the “Lasting Rose“ collection. These patterns matter.

2. Like other categories, you want a complete set. Just the word “Complete“ in your title can boost your sales price by a huge amount. Think about it, would you rather buy a Complete set of something or have to fill in the gaps?

3. The reason things like cutlery are so popular at estate sales is because people are looking for precious metals, things like silver and gold. Learn the markings for these metals and look for them in the wild.

In last weeks Issue you saw that I picked up this 7 volume, heavy set of TinTin books from a thrift store. I paid up for them which isn’t something I usually do, they cost me $63 in total however this week they’ve gone on to sell for $199.95 + $80.00 postage to India. I’ve found that TinTin sells really well for me, I’ve never been left holding onto any inventory and whether it’s eBay or Marketplace, it all seems to go.

A few other random sales this week:

I listed these 2 “children’s education books“ on December 3rd and they sold on the 14th of January. I don’t think I wrote about them, but they were found in the children’s book section where items are like $0.50 to $1.00 each and I thought they were fun. They’re created by this indie publishing company called Little Homie Books and this set was learning numbers and letters with the help of… rap and hip hop stars. For example, you open up the alphabet book and it’s an illustration of the signer Akon and you see “A is for Akon“ along with a little blurb. Anyway, the 2 books that were bought for virtually nothing went on to sell for $69.95. Keep an eye out for novelty children’s books that appeal to parents, they’re a sure fire winner.

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100% Free Resources to Help You

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