Issue #29

G'day guys, Mat here with Issue #29 of Flip Weekly. This week's newsletter is the most jam-packed one I've ever put together. From Saturday's garage sales where the freebies outshone the purchases, to thrift store finds that sold instantly with global interest, and an epic 8 hours spent visiting every single Noff's Op Shop in Australia. It took me all week to put this together, so jump in, enjoy the read, follow us on Instagram and then demand more.

In This Issue

• What I’ve Bought

• What I Sold

• Visiting Every Noff’s Op Shop in Australia In 1 Da …

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

What I’ve Bought

Starting off the weekend with a whole host of garage sales looking for items to resell for a profit. It was a bit of a wet day so I was worried I’d rock up to the sales and they’d all be called off and I’d waste my time but that wasn’t the case. I struck out at the first 3 believe it or not but the 4th was one I was looking forward to.

This 4th sale was posted online late on Friday night and it was for a small estate sale but listed as a garage sale. When I find a sale on Facebook Marketplace I like to click on the users profile to see if they any have active listings. The reason I do this is because:

1. I can see if the items they’re selling are good quality.

2. I can see what sort of prices they’re asking for.

3. If photos are posted I can do a cheeky look in the background to see if it’s a sale I want to go to.

This user hadn’t listed any items for sale yet (good sign in my opinion, saving it all for the sale) but had posted 1 ad:

I scrolled through the photos and was able to get a good idea of what they were going to be selling. The seller appeared to be a huge collector of decanters. In the top left of the 7th photo I noticed this:

It was worth a comp because it’s an AFL football and the Magpies are an AFL team.

Seeing that this was a 1977 decanter worth a couple of hundred cheeky dollars I knew that I wanted to get there early and see if I could snag a bargain.

To my surprise, every single one of these vintage decanters were filled with alcohol. If I was to buy any of them I would have to drink empty it before selling on eBay due to their alcohol policy. All of them were from the 70’s and to be honest they were so goddamn cool. I was tempted to pick a bunch up just to display. I asked about the Magpies decanter and it was gifted to a family friend so I can’t complain. Regardless, I got 2 items here for $5 each.

The Sony radio I knew would do really well as it was brand new and the camera was the wildcard. I’ve picked up cameras at estate sales before and they’ve been worth nothing or they’ve been worth hundreds. I don’t know enough about them but when everything is from the 70’s, why not take a gamble.

Moving onto the next sale and it was actually day 2; they had opened the day before but you wouldn’t really know it. The haul was 3 fold:

1. Action figures.

2. VHS.

3. Fish.

I asked about the price for the fish and was told $20. A bit steep for me so I became indecisive on it. I went on to pick out all of the VHS (I was told 10 for $1 which later became 50 cents each) and the bunch of action figures. I checked out and the seller started counting each item individually. 50 cents, a dollar, a dollar fifty, two dollars. I stopped her midway and offered $15 for the lot. When she countered at $25 I decided to leave the fish to see what would happen and eventually we settled on $15 total. It is always in our best interest to get a lot price, we don’t want each individual item priced because that’s when we end up overpaying.

As I was leaving I spotted a few promo cups in the corner and just had to stop. The seller yelled out “you can take them for free“ so I picked these up, which may end up being the best score of the day.

Look, I’m not going to blow smoke, you look at these and all you see are plastic movie cups. Landfill, basically. But they bring joy to some people so it’s our job to get them to the collectors. You’ll be surprised to know that not only are people looking at them, but they’re also saving/watching but also sharing. All of these promo cups are from the 90’s so people haven’t seen them for a while, and if it’s the case of the Space Jam cup, at all.

Batman & Robin glows in the dark and already has 2 saves on Marketplace with a selling price of $20.

The NRL cup was thrown up for $10 and already has 1 share.

The two NBA cups have 41 views and 1 save.

The wildcard is the Space Jam cup. If you can’t tell from the photo, the top of the cup is shaped like a dome. Inside the dome in the centre is a hole and on either side is a lever with a springboard with a plastic basketball free inside. The idea is that 2 people verse each other, using the levers on each side to put the basketball through the hoop. I’ve looked everywhere and haven’t been able to find anything like it so I’ve put it online for $99.95.

Here’s what we have in total:

When I add up these figures it makes me feel like I’m being way too generous however I didn’t list these items with wild fantasies, they’re all priced to sell. $99.95 for the fish is seemingly industry standard and $50 cheaper than the one with the box, the 1982 Spider-Man is high but there’s literally zero exact comps and it’s already gotten 2 people watching so it seems okay priced. The Crow sealed VHS will sell given its been remade this year (and sucks) plus its sealed and is only $10 more than the old school sealed VHS I usually sell.

Where the number MAY be inflated is the $100 Space Jam cup however it has functionality with the game, it has a collector base and there’s nothing else like that on the market. I have to reiterate that when I list items for sale I’m aiming for quick sales. I don’t want to hold items forever so everything is listed conservatively even though it may seem high.

You can always lower prices, but raising them back is much harder.

If you have any questions as to why I picked up these specific items, hit me up on Instagram or email me here.

The next garage sale is just up the road which is a moving sale. Starts at 10am and I arrive at 10:10am. For the first time ever, I picked up some cutlery.

I’ve never bought cutlery before, I don’t know much about it, but I’ve seen some YouTuber’s pick them up and I decided now is a good a time as any. I could see that they had a brand name on the back and were stainless steel so they should be semi-okay. Worst case scenario I end up with some cutlery that isn’t from a delivery bag and made of cardboard.

A few other items I bought this week:

What I Sold

Back in Issue #22 I told you guys a secret which can transform a regular $5 piece of merchandise into something worth hundreds. This week I sold this snow globe for $100 via Facebook Marketplace. It was under priced considering on eBay it was listed for $299 however I only paid $12 so it’s a solid 10x return in less than a month.

I picked up this Wallace & Gromit gift set on the 18th of July and it screamed Marketplace deal to me. It was only $6 and the interest was incredible, every single day people were asking me about it.

I didn’t even bother listing it on eBay because I knew it would sell on Marketplace. Sometimes I’ll pick up items that I know will 100% sell on Marketplace quickly even if it’s not for an insane ROI. This is one of those examples.

This year I’ve picked up a lot of Warhammer books, paid less than $5 per book and have easily made $1,000 reselling them. If you spot them in the wild, buy them and tag Flip Weekly on Instagram.

Bought at Saturdays garage sales for $5 and sold for $50 within just a few days.

The same person who bought the Sony radio also bought this viewmaster. I picked this up not that long ago for $4 and its turned into a good sale.

Another example that’s similar to Wallace & Gromit - I got this for $10 and flipped it in less than a week for $30 on Marketplace. I didn’t bother with eBay. When you do this for a while you’ll begin to know what can sell quickly, locally, on Facebook.

This may have been a bad buy. I sold it this week for a best offer of $255 and it’s off to Italy. At a $125 purchase price, after all fees it’s only going to leave me with around $80. Yes, it’s a profit but we’re outlaying $125 to get to it. Compare that to say… purchases in the past where we spend $5 into $100 and it’s just too much to risk, especially with international shipping where anything can happen. I think in the future I’ll hold off from purchasing something like this again.

Visiting Every Noff’s Op Shop in Australia In 1 Day

No-one was asking for it but I finally did it, I visited all 9 NSW Noffs Op Shop’s in a single, long, exhausting day that surprisingly was only 63 kilometers. For those living outside of NSW, Australia, Noffs is a small chain of 9 thrift stores that puts all proceeds towards helping disadvantaged youth tackle drug and alcohol abuse. I’ve found their prices a lot more reasonable than the other thrift chains so I decided to visit all of them in a single day. Why all in a single day? No idea. I took some photos, made some purchases and jotted down some notes if any of you guys ever want to recreate this effort of a day.

We’ve got a lot to get through so let’s get started. The first stop is Noffs Op Shop (Rozelle).

Noffs Rozelle is on a busy street but you can still get free 30 minute parking. The great thing about this location is that there’s an Anglicare Op Shop like 3 doors down so you get a 2 for 1.

The shop is small and squishy but the prices are legitimately good.

I ended up buying the Pac-Man x LA Lakers figure because for $1 it’s just too hard to pass up. I did leave Butters from South Park as I have something in the works with a lot of plush, but know that South Park merchandise does really well.

Leaving the Noffs for a second and heading into next-doors Anglicare Op Shop I spotted this vintage tie that I had to have. It’s only $5 and I never used to look at ties until it clicked that you can find some cool nostalgic prints.

It’s a vintage 90’s AFL Sydney Swans tie that has sold comps around the $30 mark. With the Sydney Swans currently on top of the ladder and with the finals just around the corner I assume it will sell quite quickly. AFL products have a few different tag variations that you can use to tell what era the item is from.

The next stop is a 10 minute drive to Noffs Op Shop Petersham. They have some street parking but I found the best place to park was on Railway Street.

This was one of the best of the day and I ended up picking out 5 things and spending $21.

I’m always going to pick up boxed Sony products especially old school type stuff like the headphones, they hold and at times can exceed their original value. I did accept a best of $40 however the buyer backed out almost immediately afterwards which is a pain. Nevertheless they’re back up for $49.95 with 4 people watching.

My favorite find from Noffs Op Shop Petersham had to be the t-shirt. It’s a 1991 Guggenheim exhibition t-Shirt that’s single stitch and was sold for a short period of time in the Art Gallery of NSW.

A shirt like this is quite rare and I’ve been unable to find anything similar online so realistically we can ask for whatever we want. We can think about the target customer, look at other old art exhibition merchandise and work out a reasonable price. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll put it up for just yet, first I need to have it ironed because it’s photographing horribly as is.

I saw this out of the corner of my eye, in almost slow motion. I could make out “3D Accelerator“ which is usually a sign of an old game and then I saw the E for “Rated for Everyone“ which indicates some type of media and then the final “PC CD ROM“ and I knew we had scored yet another Big Box PC game! This one was still factory sealed from 1998 and has American sold comps for around the $40 mark. Add on the obligatory Australia tax and this is a $50 collectors item.

EDIT: it’s gone on to sell for $53.99 + post.

I don’t like boring you guys with too many video game buys because I’m definitely not the “video game guy“ but Noffs at Petersham had a pretty sweet deal of just $2 for this Wii game plus I can then plug my other project Flip Vidya. Thanks to Flip Vidya I’ve been able to easily identify games that are worth picking up and No More Heroes was one of them.

The Animorphs books were really cool, they were in sequential order from #1 to #5 and had this 3D effect on the covers. When you get these older types of books in sequential order you can definitely ask for a premium price on eBay. Animorphs I put in the same category as Goosebump (with a fraction less of a collectors market) and if you can find them cheap enough pick them up. I got all 5 books for just $4 plus I was able to pick up enough random book for free for the 6 for $4 deal. They’re listed for $59.99 and have already garnered some interest.

We move on from the treasure trove that was Petersham and we hit up Newtown, my old stomping grounds.

Noffs Newtown is located opposite Australia Post and the Oportos and if you’re quick, you can snag a park in the little lot there. If not, Newtown (and the Inner West in general) is pretty bad for parking so grab whatever you can get. This store is quite small and from what I could tell had slightly higher prices than the other ones, so be ready for the Newtown tax.

I didn’t end up buying anything, I imagine it gets picked over every single morning by the folks on King Street who run their own vintage stores.

From Newtown we head over to Marrickville for 2 reasons. The first is the obvious one, we’re heading to Noffs Marrickville. The second is that it’s lunch time and Marrickville is known for their banh mi’s. If you don’t like standing in a long line at Marrickville Pork Roll we have good news: Delish is right next door.

I struck out at Noffs Marrickville but to be fair, my mind was next door.

With a banh mi in hand, we’re on to our next location which was Rockdale.

Noffs Rockdale is open 7 days and despite having terrible parking options, if you can find one you have multiple thrift stores all within walking distance of each other. You have a Vinnies, Save The Children and Anglicare all close to Noffs. After being inside for less than a few minutes I was told they’re closing because the volunteer needed to pick up her grand children from school and they had no other volunteers to cover. Here’s your chance to volunteer at a thrift store.

Noffs Kingsford was the next step and it was here that I was so close to finding a $500 DVD. Yes, $500. For 1 DVD. And it would have only cost $2.

I almost brought up my banh mi when I looked up comps for the cult classic animated TV show Moral Orel.

We have Volume 2 going for upwards of $150.00 and Volume 3 regularly selling for over $500.00! It's an animated show, quite dark, that parodies 1950's style religious morality shows and has themes relating to hypocrisy, addiction and faith. Volumes #2 and #3 are highly sought after due to the cult following and they're also out of print. Unfortunately the copy I found was Volume 1 which is essentially worthless (unless you bundle with #2 and #3) but at least we now have a new TV show to keep an eye out for you.

I did however spot this Childish Gambino concernt tour t-shirt for $5. There’s a few comps around the $50 mark and of the 3 active comps they range from $45 to $200. I saw one for $100 with 7 people watching so I figure it’s worth a shot. It’s listed up for $59.95 free post.

At this point in time I have to admit my energy levels are running quite low and we still have 3 to go. I rock up at Noffs Randwick and the first thing I see is a Sonic plush toy.

Sonic was only $2 and still had the tag attached. He’s gone on to sell already for $40.00. If you’re ever going to buy plush make sure you check the tags and make sure they’re official, you don’t want to buy the cheap Temu plush.

The last 2 Noffs were uneventful.

I waited around for longer than 10 minutes, moved my car closer to the store like 3 times and despite that didn’t get a chance to look inside. We’re on a time crunch and we’re crashing really quickly so we move on to the final location: Surrey Hills.

Noffs Surry Hills is incredibly small, think the size of a studio apartment in a city. I left empty handed and was so glad to be heading back home. From the day I picked up 9 items, spent $34 and listed it all up for $353.82 for a potential gross profit of $319.82. The net will obviously be less once you factor in expenses.

Note: this doesn’t include the museum shirt as I’m yet to iron and list but I’m thinking I’ll test the waters at $199.95 and adjust from there.

Overall it was quite an exhausting day but I was able to pick up a few good quality items. Noffs prices appear to be pretty consistent across their stores and I wouldn’t hesitate to go back and do the route again because I mean… I only spent $34 across 9 items for an average purchase price of $3.70. I try and aim for a 10x on my money however if you’re happy turning $10 into $20 or want to pick up the “bread and butter“ type products you can easily do that.

Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

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