Issue #117

It’s been an exciting week. Not only were we invited onto Sunrise to chat with the team, we’ve done print media interviews about last weeks Goosebumps sale, found $100 items in thrift stores and op shops plus cleaned up with Facebook deals.

I’m going to go through this weeks top 5 Marketplace pickups which includes 1 dud (I messed up badly) and 4 killer finds. Their value starts at $250 and goes all the way up to a legit Holy Grail. You’d want to keep an eye out for this stuff, there’s plenty to go around… except of course for #1 which is basically a 1/1, the only other example is being displayed in a museum.

Let’s get right into it!

Mat.

In This Issue

• What I Bought

• What I Sold

• Official Flip Weekly Podcast

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Flip Weekly on Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I Bought

Talk about a blast from the past. We had a $1 basket of books in Lifeline that piqued my interest. What I found was very cool.

Inside was a bundle of early 2000’s Nickelodeon magazines with 1 that was a definite standout.

It’s one of Nickelodens first magazines. It’s the Nicktoons Special #4 and inside you can find comics, quizzes, puzzles, a double-sided poster and more. What makes this special isn’t the attached poster, Spongebob cover art or year it was published. It’s this:

This is the very 1st comic appearance of Invader Zim, the alien from Nickelodeon’s animated series that aired back in 2001-2006. The show can go for decent money on DVD as well as any other early 2000’s merchandise.

In terms of this specific 1st appearance comic, I’ll be straight up and say it isn’t a home run, but it is very cool and the value can fluctuate. According to Key Collector Comics it can range from a high of $70USD to a low of $8USD. Low indicates a poor quality magazine, no poster, writing on the activity pages, that sort of thing. High would be with the poster and general overall good condition.

I think we can aim for that $70USD mark which is approximately $97.20AUD. We can add on our Australia tax and even a bit more. There’s currently 2 available on eBay worldwide. The 1st is $38 with no poster and a few flaws. The 2nd is $273 and in similar sort of condition. I might be huffing paint but I legit think we can get close to $100.

I scored a good deal on a collection of The Simpsons DVD’s this week. When you’re looking for this show on DVD, ideally you want the later seasons.

The most expensive season appears to be number 19, it sells for close to $200.

Season 20 on the other hand comps up at $30, and 18 at just over $100.

It’s weird, you go down to Season 17 and it’s back to under $50. What’s so special about Season 18 and 19? The internet says the demand for physical media when it first came out was low so therefore the number of physical copies reflects that. Must have been a steep drop off.

So we have Seasons:

1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

Which means we’re missing:

4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 14.

What would you do in this scenario? Sell them off individually, bundle them together as is, or wait and acquire the 7 missing seasons. Here’s the most accurate Sold Listing for Seasons 1-20 if that helps:

Let me know in the below poll:

UPDATE: I’ve looked at the slipcases and each one is complete with the booklet. We do have a $799.99 comp we could aim for if we buy the missing seasons on eBay with their booklets. I worked out that the total cost would be $213.75. We would then have season 1-20, complete with the booklets and aim for $800. As of publishing there’s only two active listings.

I’ve got 1 more thrift store find to show you before I run you through 5, yes 5, Marketplace finds of the week that are all bangers (except 1, I messed up).

Thomas & Friends does nothing for me. I don’t think it’s exciting, I don’t like the graphics, I think it’s low hanging fruit for resellers, it’s just the definition of meh to me. However, when you can’t find Active or Sold Listings for a complete in box set and you only have to pay $5… it raises my feelings from meh to tepid.

Look Vinnies, I’ll buy it for $5, but I wont be happy about it. I counted the pieces when I got home just to confirm it was complete (it was) and now I’ve put it up for $100 + post. If you see a boxed set like this, with the words Trackmaster and the original battery powered train comes with it, it’s worth more than $5.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way. Let’s go on an insane run of Marketplace finds. Let’s go from worst to best.

Starting off with my mistake at number 5.

This is a Nikon Coolpix A100. Emphasis on the 100. Why? Whether it’s getting dumber with age, eBay autocomplete on mobile, or rushing for a deal, I looked up Sold Listings for the Nikon Coolpix A1000.

The A1000 has Sold Listings for…

Whereas the A100 has Sold Listings for…

Great. No wonder it was still available 30 minutes after it was listed. I don’t know how I didn’t catch this error. You know when it was that I finally did? After I had it in the car with me for over an hour and I was legitimately 2 minutes from home. I looked at the camera on the front seat, saw the A100 and thought… haven’t I been looking up comps for the A1000? I pulled up my phone at the traffic lights, risked the huge fine and saw my mistake. Genius.

Oh well, the deals get better here at number 4. The next one saw me buy a collection of tattoo books.

This is a category that is low key slept on. I found out that tattoo books can be quite expensive after wanting to pair one with a gift voucher I got my sister for her birthday. Cool gift idea right, a tattoo voucher plus a tattoo inspiration book. Turns out they’re not just hard to find, they’re expensive to buy especially the good ones.

From this bundle we have just under $500 worth of tattoo art books. One of these tattoo artists named Horiyoshi III has a cult following and they go off.

Judging the book by its cover, it doesn’t look expensive. It looks like a standard library book, but the designs inside are what people pay big money for. Just remember tattoos + Japan + books = big money.

Number 3 we have the Oculus Quest 2.

I’ve seen a lot of these around on Marketplace lately. Ideally you want it complete in box. I paid last week, but picked it up on Saturday, gave it a test and everything is working properly. I’ve found the people selling these VR sets to have barely used them. It really seems to be one of those things where people either love ‘em or hate ‘em.

The sell through rate within Australia is very high and depending on condition you can ask for around the $300 mark. The one that I bought is in better condition than the other listings, although it’s not brand new and sealed, so we have a $350 listed price. It’s a nice little category, they sell quick and they sell for a lot.

At number 2 we have your boy getting in before the video game resellers.

This is a nice Wii U bundle that was under priced by a couple hundred bucks. Not only do we have the instructions, gamepad, extra games (that aren’t worth much) and all cords, we have the box in mint condition along with a couple of official Wii remotes and nunchucks.

The main draw for me was that it wasn’t your standard Wii U box. It opens the market up from regular gamers to collectors that want all of the different box variations. Yes, they’ll pay hundreds for the system within the box.

I’ve put it up for $400 and it’s already received plenty of interest.

Now we turn to number 1.

This is… a Holy Grail for many people out there.

I thought I lost it. I thought someone else got it before me. It was originally listed on Sunday and I messaged after it had been live for 2 hours. I knew it was a home run but I was too late. It was marked as pending and whilst my message was seen, it wasn’t responded too.

I was frustrated. Until I receive this message:

If you follow Flip Weekly on Instagram you would know what this is about.

This is, without doubt, a Holy Grail item for collectors of The Wiggles.

The only other one I could find is displayed in a Sydney museum.

A fully working, portable 34cm The Wiggles branded CRT TV complete with remote. It’s surprisingly light at just 9kg and it pumps out decent sound.

There’s so little detail about this TV online. No manuals online, no product pages, no reviews, not even fan pages. I’d go and check it out at the museum but it’s temporarily closed for renovations.

All I have to go off is the brand on the back, TGA. I was able to find out it was a company that operated in the early 2000’s that licensed products and distributed them within Australia. For this TV, they would have essentially gotten the skeleton of a generic 34cm CRT TV and re-skinned it into The Wiggles and sold in retail stores.

I posted this on The Wiggles subreddit and here’s how they reacted:

How do we price something like this? Obviously it’s not $10,000.

We look at similar Sold Listings. We know this product crosses into 2 different collectors markets: CRT and The Wiggles. Both pay big money for their Holy Grails.

Personally, I think it sits somewhere between these two:

Shrek CRT is on another level but I don’t see why it can’t sell for Barbie numbers. If people are going to spend $300 just on a DVD, why not watch it on your own Wiggles CRT?

I’ve listed it up for an insane $2,500. It’s gotten a lot of views in 24 hours but it’s anyone’s guess as to how long this takes to sell. Who has $2,500 to spend on something like this?

In terms of buying The Wiggles stuff in the future… I mean we’ve basically hit the limit, right? One thing I love to accomplish is selling the most expensive item in a category. We did it recently with Footrot Flats, we have a chance now to sell the most expensive Wiggles item. Time to retire from the category.

What I Sold

Here’s something you should know by now: the older your Lord of the Rings books are, the more valuable they’ll be. Providing of course they’re in good condition. Yes, you can sell re-released premium copies for hundreds of dollars but you can’t go wrong with old Tolkien.

This is a 1974 boxset complete with a 1974 copy of The Hobbit. I found these at a garage sale during November’s garage sale trail and paid just $5 knowing that they’d be listed for $150 on eBay. I received an offer on Friday afternoon via Facebook for $80 and decided to accept it to fund some weekend activities. Chances are it’s gone by Monday. Sunday Saturday Friday night.

We’ve got some more Skylanders going out.

$94.95 plus a bucket of money in postage and it’s off to Thailand. We only have 3 items from the bundle left to go.

Thank God this sold in 48 hours so I didn’t have to look at it and have it remind me of what a screw up I am.

I paid $200 thinking it was something completely different and it sold for $250. After eBay fees and postage I’m left with $7.80 in profit. Incredible! I feel like that reseller on TV. I’m making dollars!

I’d say I’ve learnt my lesson and it wont happen again but how does one prevent themselves from being dumb? They don’t, it just happens.

Just as I’m writing free I remember that I spent a couple of bucks on a new belt for this Sony Walkman. I tried repairing it, it didn’t work, but fortunately the radio did so somebody has shelled out close to $100 for it. This red variant is quite rare so I’m sure it’s going to a collector.

This next flip took negative time. It was that quick. Let me explain.

I bought a jersey off a dude last week for $50. It was a player issued Sydney Swans VFL jersey. I sold it quickly for $100 on Facebook Marketplace.

I was talking to the original seller and he’s got a hookup apparently for even more jerseys. Great, he sends me through photos of the 2 above. One’s an AFL Sydney Swans and the other is a VFL Sydney Swans. I’m keen on them so I send the guy money on Wednesday. I tell him I can’t come out until the weekend.

On Friday the original buyer of last weeks jersey asks if I have any more. I send him through photos of the 2 above. He wants both, I quote him $300. He agrees and sends me through the money.

This is a bit of a risk. The guy supplying the shirts to me gives me off vibes and there’s a chance he does a runner. Saturday comes around and he offers to deliver them to me. Weird, but sure. He does, I get them and everything is sweet.

So that means I sold these before I even had them turning $100 into $300 just like that. The whole situation seems bizarre and too good to be true. So far I’ve been able to turn $150 into $400 all via Facebook (no eBay fees) and I’ve done very little work. Heck, I didn’t even need to take photos, write up titles or descriptions. I’m sure the cash cow will disappear soon but in the meantime let’s milk that cow dry.

Side-note, something that I found a bit funny. The AFL jersey, this one:

It’s a 2025 pride jersey. It was player issued but never worn. The reason being is that it belonged to a player who just weeks prior got suspended for 5 games due to… you guessed it… homophobic slurs. The irony.

That’s all I’ve got for you this week. If you’ve made it this far, well done. Hit me up on social media with any of your cool thrift finds or sales, or you can always get in touch on our website or via [email protected]. See you next week!

Mat.

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• 100+ Nostalgic 90s Kids Shows Ranked by eBay Value

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