Issue #87

I’ll come right out and say it. I wasn’t a smart reseller. I skipped over dolls. That is, until Monday night. I spent just a few dollars on a collection of early 2000’s Bratz and I guarantee you will not believe the total value. It was a gamble, I was willing to learn and I was rewarded for it. Let’s not waste any time, let’s get straight into a huge Issue of Flip Weekly.

P.S. if you want to hear a grown man excited to play with dolls, listen to the podcast here.

In This Issue

• What I Bought

• What I Sold

• Secondhand Opinions & PSA

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Podcast

• Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I Bought

At 6:00pm on a Monday night I opened Facebook Marketplace. I was ready to slog through uninspiring listings in the hopes of finding a hidden gem, something I’ve become accustomed to doing when I have a spare minute here and there.

After all, the more opportunities you create for yourself, the better the chance of getting lucky.

I didn’t have to scroll for too long. I saw the following listing.

I haven’t bought any Bratz dolls, cars or accessories ever before. The only thing I bought was a pillow. I’m guessing Facebook noticed I’m an active user and decided to show me a listing from just 1km away.

The description read:

With a brief understanding that older Bratz dolls can fetch a bit of money, combined with my experience of selling a $700 Blythe doll, I know that doll collectors can splash some cash.

I decide to take a gamble. I’m not doing much so I send a message within 5 minutes of it being listed and just a few moments later I’m in the car driving 4 minutes up the road.

I arrive quickly, transfer through $20, probably creep out the seller and leave with a 50L storage container completely filled with vintage Bratz dolls, clothes, shoes, furniture accessories and more. The photo in the listing barely scratches the surface of what was included in this deal.

I get home and realize that I’ve just gotten myself into another Polly Pocket situation. We have random bags, shoes and accessories that need to be matched up to dolls. The dolls themselves need to be identified and let me tell you… it ain’t easy.

Unlike Polly Pockets who develop a product, name it, and move on to the next thing, MGA likes to develop a product, name it, then release a ton of slightly different versions of it. Google Lens tells me an accessory is a part of the Play Sportz line. Cool, we’re done right? Not quite.

Not to mention the dolls themselves are difficult to identify. I take a clear, blur-free photo of the face and Google Lens tells me the doll is Jade from so and so line. I look up the line and it’s wrong, that doll has different eye makeup. So what the fuck doll do I have? I’m not kidding the difference between some dolls is the eyeliner. Do you have any idea how tricky that is for an oaf like me to distinguish? It’s not hair color, it’s not that one has an extra arm that’s easy to spot, it’s that this one has 3 eyeliner strokes and the other has 4.

I spend the next several hours staring blankly at these dolls and their accessories and eventually manage to match everything up. I’m thinking fuck my life whilst at the same time imagining this to be some little girls dream job; playing with dolls, matching clothes and shoes… ripping off feet.

I start by comping the biggest item, the car. Sorry, I mean the FM Cruiser - a dolls car that doubles as an FM radio. I don’t have any luck getting it work, the corrosion in the battery compartment is evident.

That’s not too bad. My FM Cruiser isn’t working like the ones above but I’ve got a secret weapon: this person I bought the bundle from kept accessories. Not just for the car FM Cruiser, but for pretty much everything. You know the accessories? The tiny shopping bags, water bottles, socks, things that would usually get lost over the past 20 years. All of that was included in the 50L storage container.

Whilst the above FM Cruisers are just the cars, I can sell mine as complete - something that is incredibly important to your listing price when it comes to vintage toys.

That turns what would be a $50 vehicle, into $150. It sounds drastic but take a closer look at the above accessories. Those 3 lava lamp looking things are actually nail polishes where the lid can be removed! Imagine what has happened to them over the past 20 years. This stuff, just like Polly Pockets gets lost almost on day 1.

So we have a potential $150 out of 1 item on a $20 bundle deal. What’s next? I’m thinking to myself that this might be a nice $20 into $400-$500 deal because all that’s left are the individual dolls and clothes, no other big items like a car FM cruiser. I pick up the next doll, a Sporty Spice looking girl.

This is what I’ve come to realize, one of the more popular and valuable Bratz characters. Her name is Jade, and from what I can tell she is the most sought after. Not just in this series, but overall. Jade is 1 of the 4 original core Bratz and identified through her darker hair colour. Any Jade listing I have right now has more views and watchers than the other Bratz dolls. It’s anecdotal sure, but just something to point out.

I use Google Lens and it tells me that this is from the Play Sportz Teamz Basketball product line. I search for this on eBay and all I’m getting are the modern Bratz dolls.

I’m struggling to find any Active or Sold Listings but I’m now 100% certain this is doll is from the Bratz Play Basketball Teamz Jade & Yasmin set.

I change up my searches and that’s when I see something that is absolutely shocking.

This is the exact same doll that I have, but this one is missing the original clothes and STILL sold for $220 + shipping. I love that cheeky postage cost. Someone is spending over $200 on your doll yet you’re still charging postage. Well done.

I dig further and guess what? I find one with clothes.

I can’t really believe it, I need some more data to back up this find. I decide to branch up and look on eBay for the highest Sold Listings for “Bratz Doll“. After all, this could be a one-off purchase that doesn’t mean anything.

That’s when I start to see a pattern.

The most expensive sales are all for the “Play Sportz“ line.

That’s when I know… okay, this is real. This is insane. It then dawns on me, wait Mat, that original packaging had 2 figures in the box, do we have that figure too?

No way, we do! What about the accessories? What if we have both dolls and all the things that go with them? Surely we don’t have it all?

When I said the original listing photo didn’t do it justice, I wasn’t lying. Every single item that was in the original retail box was in the 50L storage container.

What’s it worth? Well, we don’t have any Sold or Active comps for the two together. We have just Jade by herself selling for $500 so that’s a good starting price. eBay only gives us access to the past 90 days worth of Sold Listings so I jump on over to Worthpoint. I can see they have some data but I’m not paying a monthly subscription for that, so I use the alternative, called AValuer.net.

I go through all of the listings and I’m now confident of my listing price. You’re not going to believe it.

$1,000.

I’m going to list these 2 loose dolls with their basketball hoop, bags and balls for $1,000. A reminder, I paid $20 for the entire bundle. It sounds insane, but it’s true. I’ve already turned down the obligatory first 5 minute low-ball offer of $200. I genuinely think if I was shipping to the US these would have sold within the first few minutes.

Those 2 were my most valuable from the entire bundle, but that doesn’t mean the rest are worthless.

I have a combined 16 listings that make up a grand total of $2,510.

_{From $20… just in case you forgot.}

You might be thinking “Mat you ignorant fuck, there’s only 15 listings yet you said there were 16, what’s the deal?“

My 15 second attention span was running out towards the end of listing everything up so I decided it would be fun to run a $0.99 no reserve auction for the last lot.

The last lot was for a set called Wintertime Wonderland Chill-Out Ski Lodge and whilst it wasn’t complete, it still had crazy comps. This is what the Brand New set looks like in box:

The bundle I had were bits and pieces from this set. The fireplace, a few chairs, a bed, things like that. I wasn’t sure what it would go for but looking up what’s available online it gets me a bit keen.

Will I get more if I end the auction and put up a BIN of $200? Yeah, probably. But auctions are fun, and I’m so far in profit that this last bundle is all for fun, and for content. Let’s see how it goes together.

Last thing real quick. There’s nothing I hate more than an online moderator that’s drunk on their own perceived power. If you’ve contributed to Reddit you know what I’m talking about. Same goes for Facebook. I put these Bratz dolls up within a Facebook Group with the titles and prices written on the images. Look at the moderators comment on my post:

This person seriously wants me to brush all of the dolls hair, retake photos and adjust my listing. Are you serious? They’re fucking Bratz dolls, chill out.

Moving on because that’s a lot of Bratz talk, we have another really cool Marketplace pickup. A reminder that I talked all about my exact Facebook Marketplace strategy in Issue #77 and expanded on the podcast. Here’s the listing and don’t worry, there’s op shop scores later on:

I’m extremely wary when I see an item priced significantly lower than what it’s worth. You want to be snagging the ones you can resell, not items that other resellers have bought and regret. It’s not unusual to see a video game console or DVD/VHS combo with a very, very low price but there’s a few red flags that I try and avoid:

1. “Untested” is usually a reseller term. If someone is cleaning out their garage they would usually say something like “worked last time I used it“ or something similar to that. Industry keywords I tend to avoid.

2. If it’s $10 and listed days or weeks ago, it’s probably best to skip. Most of us would be on it in the first few minutes which means if it’s still there, it’s scrap.

3. Professional photos = not for me. I can’t remember who it was that said the messier the better but it can ring true. Whilst I acknowledge most people try and take good pictures of the items they’re selling, if it looks like it’s set up in a permanent work space than I know I’m not going to be getting the best deal.

4. Feedback and reviews. My ideal Facebook Marketplace seller is somebody who doesn’t do this often. How often can you clean out your garage? If you have 100+ reviews chances are you’re a reseller or someone who makes money doing something like this. The less feedback the better (although I do want a profile picture).

So with all of that said, here’s the deal. It was a sweet old lady, zero feedback, full Facebook profile, willing to meet at her house in a town about 20 minutes from me. We had a chat and it turns out this was a gift and she simply didn’t use it. No idea if it works (or how it even operates) and was happy to let it go for $50.

That was good enough for me considering the comps.

I don’t know much about cameras but I know enough to be able to look them up and comp ‘em. I went out, picked it up and once I got it home gave it a test. Not turning on. 2 batteries, none working. I’m a bit concerned but given the great state of the camera I’m hopeful. I go online to a website called BetterBatt and pick up a brand new battery and charger. It cost me just under $50. They arrive a few days later and what do you know, the camera not only works, but works perfectly. What’s even cooler is that the original batteries worked too once I gave them a charge.

I’m in for around $100 now but given the $500 listed price, I’m bound to make a profit.

A few other items I picked up this week:

A 200% sell through rate here in Australia.

I guess my social media video that reached hundreds of thousands didn’t harp on The Wiggles enough. Time for another one?

Like I’ve said before, anything Asterix or TinTin has a huge collectors market and can make you a lot of money.

Continuing on with DVD’s…

A 30% sell through rate for this old 80’s Australian soap but when I come in undercutting everyone for $114.95 it should be out the door first.

I can’t find any Sold Comps for anything but Collection 1 - makes me think, what happens if you find the complete series? How much we talking? Or even Collection 2? Keep an eye out! This is my first time ever seeing this in an op shop.

One of my favorite items to buy in op shops are sports jerseys.

This is an AFL Collingwood Magpies jersey. When I’m looking at jerseys, I’m looking for anything that indicates that it’s a bit different than a regular jersey or it has the GPS pouch. This had both. When I looked closer at the AFL logo on the front right breast area we had a special AFL logo that had a gold filler and the text “AFL Premiers 2010“.

Having a year helps date the jersey, so we then jump onto one of those “sports jerseys through the years“ websites to see what we’re dealing with (this website for example).

When I match the website up against the images on the website we can see it’s a 2011 Away jersey, used for only 5 matches throughout the season. As you can imagine the less times the jersey appears for the sale, the rarer and more valuable it becomes.

Add on a GPS tag which gives the jersey a bit of mystery and intrigue and we can ask for a bit more. We don’t have a players number on the back so we can’t be 100% sure it was ever issued to a player. So let’s look on eBay. We will price between a regular 2011 jersey and a player issued jersey.

Hoping for a quick sale, I decide to list it up for $150.00 on eBay and $100 on Facebook Marketplace.

What I Sold

You can guess my mindset when I don’t even bother talking about this pickup.

It was August 5th these went live after spending a grand total of $20 to acquire them. The attraction was that they were 1-30. We didn’t have to mess around with missing numbers, we could just say that the set was in sequential order and that’s usually good enough for collectors. Who wants to collect books #5, #18 and #23 when you can just ignore 1-30 and focus on what comes after that?

Board games are a gamble no matter where you buy them. Most would be sticky taped shut and you just have to take a chance that all of the pieces are inside. If it’s a game meant for children, the odds of finding every little small piece diminishes. For a game like this? A venn diagram showing the people who would buy this would be gamers and collectors, both of which are usually pretty good with keeping things in tact.

It’s a board game called Orlog, an Assassins’s Creed dice game. Assassin’s Creed is a hugely popular video game and it caught my eye in the same way video games would catch your eye in an op shop. Priced at $9, it had very few copies available on eBay Australia (just 1 at the time of publishing) yet multiple sold giving it a high sell through rate. It’s out the door in around 60 days and a profit of approximately $60.

In a thrift store last week I came across this vintage stamp collection hiding near the binders and folders. Opening it up I could see pages and pages of stamps from all different countries.

I don’t know anything about stamps nor could I find an exact date for when this folder was printed. I flicked through the pages and came across Germany only to see Adolf Hitler on a few of them. Surely this is worth some money? I picked it up and brought it home.

The only comp for the book I could find was an auction earlier this year.

Knowing that people bid on what’s inside the book, not the book itself, I knew the end prices would be different. Nevertheless… for a bit of fun I put it up for auction at $0.99 with free shipping. Unfortunately it didn’t get much traction and ended at $33.00.

The end price doesn’t really bother me, it’s been a bit of a lesson in stamps.

For a book like this here’s what I believe happens. People buy the collector’s book and then buy the cheapest rows of stamps they can find to fill the book. As a result, the book becomes filled with mass manufactured stamps, none of which are now rare or sought after.

Makes sense, yeah?

Now if you were to ask me “Well Mat, what stamps should I be looking out for then?“ my answer would be I have no idea. Whatever the opposite is of a book filled with ‘em? Regardless, a bit of a sinister find with those German stamps.

Ever see those videos of soon-to-be new dads impressed with the features of prams in the baby store? They’re excited and love the nifty little gadgets and functions until they see the price. That’s how I imagine parents when they see their child enjoying Ben 10. It’s all lovely and cute until they need to buy their kid a plush from their new favorite show.

Ben 10 continues to be a television show that should be inspected when you find merchandise, whether it be action figures, plush toys or any other contraption. The show only ran for 3 seasons, which is a surprise given how popular it seems to be in retail. Comp up everything Ben 10, just like I did with these plush toys that cost me $6 in total and have just sold for $120.

Quickly, I want you to make a mental note of the blue guy in the image above. His name is Big Chill. He’s one of the reasons why this plush set sold for so much. He is who you want to be finding when it comes to action figures, especially with the wings.

So when you hear Ben 10, think… Big Wings, Big Chill, Big Money.

The auction I was harping on about earlier has ended tonight. It sold for a grand total of $20.50. We’re making tens of dollars. If you want to hear me live counting down from 5 minutes to go listen to the podcast.

Secondhand Opinions & PSA

The concept is simple, we’ll throw up a reselling question, I’ll present my poorly thought out opinion and you’ll provide your own.

A Public Service Announcement for any reseller that deals in plush. Earlier this week I received a message from Andrew, a YouTube reseller who hits up the markets and thrift stores every week and produces good videos. He came across a whole bunch of fake Jellycat plush toys at a market and wanted to spread the message.

You can watch him confront a (nervous) market seller in his latest YouTube video.

Here’s what he had to say:

If you’re unfamiliar, Jellycats are a premium plush toy brand that resellers love to find. If you’re wanting to buy them in Australia, it’s something you’d find in David Jones; that should give you a good indication of the price. Like anything that is trendy and sells for a lot of money, fakes have started to show up out in the wild.

The plush are identifiable through their extremely soft materials, detailed craftsmanship and (like some high end clothes) their tags. When Andrew was at the markets he came across a table full of what appeared to be genuine Jellycat plush toys. They past the initial test with the detailed tags and perceived quality but cracks appeared when names on the tags were different to what the item actually was. Check out the video if you want to see more about it.

He’s right though, you can go on overseas B2B websites and find fake Jellycats for $2 a pop, delivered to Australia. They look real with their tags but there’s always going to be identifiers.

I don’t know enough about the brand to go into too much detail but just be aware and know that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is (apart from finding $2,500 worth of Bratz dolls on Facebook Marketplace for $20.)

That brings me to this weeks Secondhand Opinions question.

If you have any interesting stories or examples, feel free to get in touch at [email protected]. Emphasis on interesting.

That’s all I’ve got for you this week. Let’s hope the upcoming week brings us some more $20 into $2,000 deals. Enjoy this weekends garage sales, I’ll see you next week.

Mat.

P.S, listen to the podcast here.

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