Issue #74

What’s up, Mat here. It’s been a big week, your boy has had the opportunity to talk to Yahoo News about the state of thrifting in Australia. I know most get their daily news and opinion pieces from Yahoo but if you don’t see the article when it comes out, look to our socials and I’ll link you to it.

The reason I was able to have a chat with them is due to a video I put out on Thursday night on TikTok and Instagram. In the short video, we go over the state of some thrift stores in Australia and I highlight one particular store that had a 1st edition Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for $500 and a Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for $1,000.

You can watch the full video on Instagram here or TikTok here. If you’re a veteran Flip Weekly subscriber you’d know that these prices are insane. I honestly couldn’t stop smiling when I asked the lady if I could check them out and I had to bite my tongue from going on a rant when she said “these ones must be special or something?“.

No… they’re not special. Millions upon millions of copies of these books were printed, you can find 1st editions on eBay for around $15 each, if not less. I think this perfectly summarizes the state of thrift stores in Australia quite well… poorly researched premium items marked up extremely high without any oversight. I mean if you’re going to charge a customer $1,000 for an item, the least you can do is basic research, right?

I since went back to the Vinnies and the books are no longer there. Sold to an unsuspecting customer? I’m going to guess away by the manager, hopefully with a lesson learnt.

Anyway, enough of that, let’s get into the buys of the week.

P.S. if you want to hear more about this or even experience the full rant, listen to this weeks podcast.

In This Issue

• What I Bought

• What I Sold

• Secondhand Opinions

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Podcast

• Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I Bought

There’s no secrets here at Flip Weekly, if I find something valuable and worth buying, I’m going to share it with you. I’m about to tell you about a best selling book series that you may or may not have heard of (I hadn’t) and if you find what I found, you’re going to make easily over $100 per book. Let’s get into it.

This is a series created by American fantasy author Sarah J. Maas. Sarah is responsible for the series Throne of Glass, Crescent City and the one shown above, A Court of Thorns and Roses. Over 40,000,000 copies of her books have sold, yet this is the first time I’ve ever heard of her or any of those series that are incredibly popular.

If we see multiple hardcover books placed next to each other which all look to be part of the same series and an author you don’t see often in thrifts, give ‘em a comp. My process for comping these was to search on eBay Sold Listings for the series title, A Court of Thorns and Roses, and sorting by highest price. I wanted to see where the money was for this series and if we were getting lucky.

The data showed that if you find the very first book in the series, aptly titled A Court of Thorns and Roses, with a signature it’s most likely the 1st edition / 1st printing and you can get over $1,000 easily.

I couldn’t find the 1st book in the series, but I did find the 2nd, 3rd and 4th. They’re called:

• A Court of Mist and Fury - 1st Edition, 1st Print, Hardcover with Dust Jacket

• A Court of Wings and Ruin - 1st Edition, 4th Print, Hardcover with Dust Jacket

• A Court of Frost and Starlight - 1st Edition, 1st Print, Hardcover with Dust Jacket

When it comes to book collectors, 1st editions and 1st printings are the most sought after and believe me, people will pay big money especially if they’re in hardcover. Let’s take a look at the comps for all 3 books.

After extensive comp research I realized that I had spent $17 on 3 hardcover books and I can list them up as a lot for $400. If I listed them individually I could probably get close to $500-$600 but I’d rather wait for the right buyer to take them all off my hands. If you do not know how to tell if a book is a 1st edition or a 1st printing, you’re going to want to learn. Why? You see that A Court of Mist and Fury above sells for $250 and you find that book in the thrift. You spend a couple of bucks on it thinking you’ve struck gold but you realize later on that it’s just a generic copy that sells on eBay for next to nothing.

To help you out, I wrote a guide on how to tell if a book is a 1st edition. It’s on the Flip Weekly website here - completely free for you of course. In the article I go through the entire process including using real world examples. If you’re a visual learner this should you out big time. If you’re still confused after reading the article hit me up with any clarifying questions - I might even include them in a frequently asked questions section on the page.

By the way, I knew nothing about this series and even after doing comp research, it doesn’t exactly tell you about the content of the book. I assumed after doing that it was some sort of fantasy novel.

Then my partner told me to read Chapter 55 of A Court of Mist and Fury. I was not prepared for what I read. If you want to hear me reading parts of this chapter, listen to this weeks podcast. Note: do not listen out loud or if you have children around, this part of the book gets real weird, real quick.

Something that isn’t real weird, something wholesome is this next cute find:

For $3 we snagged this Pingu Makes A Discovery VHS from 1996. When you see that ABC Kids logo (look at the bottom right in the above video) on a VHS, you can usually make a couple of dollars and you know your listing will get plenty of eyeballs. Especially on VHS, “Pingu VHS“ has a sell through rate of 90.38% and the average sale price has been sitting around the $50+ mark.

I couldn’t find any exact comps for the title I found, but there was 1 Active Listing…

It appears to be an outlier and with no other Pingu VHS selling for this much money I think they’re asking a bit too much so I wont match their price. Instead, I’ll aim for around the average sale price of $50. A reminder with your VHS:

1. Look at the film before buying for any mold.

2. Test before listing, and when testing, snap a photo and upload it to the listing, it will help with your conversion rate. Buyers would like to see that it’s actually working.

I really paid up for this NRL jersey at Savers. Out of principle I was going to leave it behind but 1) it’s hard to leave an NRL jersey behind and 2) I figured if I priced it right I could flip it quickly. It’s a 2013 South Sydney Rabbitohs jersey but to be honest, not entirely desirable. That said, I’ve found that I’m able to get at least $40 on Marketplace and $50 on eBay for the standard NRL jersey. I’m going to price it up at those exact numbers and see how we go.

Garage sales were few and far between this weekend so I jumped onto Marketplace twice just to see what was out there. I found 2 listings that I thought were potential home runs. Let’s go through them.

This was the most exciting and has started something I want to do more of, something I’ll call the Facebook Marketplace Video Game Lottery. I’ve found the best Marketplace listings for video games are from somewhat inactive accounts and the photos and layout are bad. The few things that struck out to me with this listing was 3 things:

1. The price being $100. The console alone is worth about $100 so providing it works the worst that can happen is a break even.

2. The game on top is Canis Canim Edit which is the alternative name for the infamous Bully. It’s a $30 game and not one you usually see in bundles.

3. The most exciting and intriguing part was what was listed as “the folder full of games“. Who knows what could be inside it - you know I’m a gambling man so this tickled me in all the right places.

I messaged at about the 18 minutes after listing mark and was out the door 15 minutes later, cash in hand. I arrived and the dude told me the reason he gave the deal to me was because everyone else was asking about the games. It seems that when it comes to video game deals, don’t ask questions, just say you’re ready and willing to come out then and there. Risky? Sure, but it is Facebook Marketplace.

Once I got back home I was able take a look at everything. In total we had a PS2 console with memory card, 3 controllers, 2 Singstar microphones, 10 games and the mystery folder.

Here’s a list of the average value of everything bar the mystery folder.

Basically nothing exciting, the value comes from the accessories and console. The games are mostly junk titles and without a huge score in the game folder, we’re chalking this up to a waste of time - maybe I’ll be able to get $200 as a bundle on eBay.

So what was inside the mystery folder?

My heart skipped a beat when I saw this. A copy of Silent Hill on PS2, even without the case is worth a lot of money. The only problem is that this is faker than a Rolex in a Vinnies. In fact, the entire folder is full of pirated games. This is a massive L and a huge disappointment… oh well, that’s what happens when you play the Facebook Marketplace Video Game Lottery, maybe next time we’ll score with a huge win.

The next Marketplace deal isn’t the most exciting topic, but the returns could be huge.

Thomas & Friends as a category is something I got over really quickly but I’m a sucker for rare toys, especially when they come fully boxed. This is a very early 2000’s Thomas & Friends Talk ‘N’ Action Magic Rail Set. Thomas runs on some batteries and when he goes over certain tracks he speaks or sings. What stood out to me was just how old the graphics looked and we know that vintage Thomas The Tank Engine can do very, very well.

We have no Active Listings and not much activity in Sold’s, but we do have 1 set outside of the box:

And a boxed version, again, for some reason in Japanese.

I couldn’t find any in English so I was excited to pick this up and see what sort of value we can extract from a $25 purchase. Unfortunately once I opened it up I realized 2 things:

1. I re-read the title of the listing and it said “blue plastic pieces“

2. It’s missing the most valuable piece: the train.

I guess in my excitement I missed this crucial detail. Annoying, because I also asked this:

Not to worry, let’s see how valuable the box and contents is without the most important piece. I put the item up for auction on eBay with a $24.99 starting bid. After 2 days we’re sitting at 115 views, 7 watchers and a current price of… $26. What do you think it will end up at?

What I Sold

Put a Spot the Difference puzzle in front of me and I’ll miss everything but drop me in a thrift store with thousands of books, and somehow I can spot the Warhammer 40,000 logo.

I've made good money flipping Warhammer books and the trick (at least for me) is simple: it’s all about the logo on the spine. Memorize that symbol. Burn it into your brain. Once you do, it’ll start jumping out at you in the wild. In most cases, Warhammer in the thrift is going to get you paid so don’t ignore it.

The purchase paid off! This South Sydney Rabbitohs jersey was listed up on Marketplace at 3:08pm and sold at 5:36pm, basically 2 hours later. I’m not one to want to turn $15 into $40 but when it comes to jerseys, priced right they sell quickly and with no fees on Marketplace it’s essentially like double and a halving the money in your bank account 2 hours later.

I picked up this 1996 Space Jam movie theater promo cup from a garage sale for absolutely nothing. It was in a lot with a bunch of other 90’s pop culture cups and the host must have assumed they’re just junk. I certainly didn’t, movie theater promo items can be extremely collectable and I literally couldn’t find anything else like this one online. I thought this was cool, it has a little basketball flicking game in the top dome which still works.

It did take just under a year to sell, most likely because I had it listed for $100 - a bit expensive for a plastic cup. That said, it’s sold for $50 and is off to Mexico where they paid $42.40 in postage so I mean… basically $100.

I turned down multiple $100 offers for this Footrot Flats tin can jigsaw puzzle and when one came in for $150, I thought why not? I’ve been itching to put the other 2 that I found up for auction so now that this is out the door, I’ll start it up and let you know how it goes.

Read last weeks Issue to see the other 2 that I found and vote in the poll below to give me your thoughts on how they’ll go at auction as a lot, knowing that they look how I feel most of the time.

Pingu is so goddamn cute and with a huge collectors market and high sell through rate it wasn’t a surprise to see this go in just 3 days. Whether you’re at garage sales or thrift stores, always look out for old school video cassettes - you might even get as lucky as Australian YouTuber Foul Mouth Flipper. He turned a $2 VHS found at a garage sale into $500 in just 26 minutes - take a watch here.

The PS2 bundle wasn’t a complete waste of time, we have a $220 + $25.25 shipping sale price which should net us $79.43 in profit. Not the best outcome but the thrill of the folder makes it worth it.

I knew this dino hand puppet was going to sell quickly, it was the only one within Australia and priced identical the previous sale. Picked up for $7.99 at a Savers and out the door within 12 days. Like I said last week, it’s a bit eerie how realistic this hand puppet looks in real life, you walk down the aisles of a thrift store with this thing and it legit looks like you’re holding a raptor.

Secondhand Opinions

The concept is simple, we’ll throw up a controversial, or at least spicy reselling topic, I’ll present my argument whether it’s poorly thought out or not and you’ll provide your own.

Last week I asked you “Should you give discounts to eBay users who claim to be disabled, on welfare, a senior or pensioner?” and here are the results:

Looks like most are impervious to the sob stories. To the few that would give a discount, please link me to your eBay store, I’ve got a few sad tales I want to tell you.

This weeks topic is: Is it wrong to cancel an order and relist an item at a higher price if it sells too quickly?

Here's a scenario for you. You list an item, it sells within minutes. You get that good feeling, the dopamine hit from eBay's KA-CHING but then another feeling... almost like a sinking feeling. Did you underprice? Some resellers would cancel the sale and relist it for more. Is that wrong?

For me I think it's fine, but to be honest, I'd never do it.

If something sells instantly, it's not a failure in my eyes, I'm going to take it as a lesson. You sourced the right item, you nailed the demand, you just failed on the price. But I mean, that's part of the game, I'd rather take the win, ship it out and make a mental note for the next time. Cancelling to me feels like poor form.

What do you think?

You can vote, you can email in, submit a form on the website or even get in touch via social media with your own thoughts.

Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

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Flip Weekly Podcast

Introduced as an accompaniment to the newsletter, the Flip Weekly podcast is for people who want even more reseller content. You can find the podcast on all major podcast streaming platforms or you can listen directly on the Flip Weekly website here.

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100% Free Resources to Help You

Flip Weekly have created the following resources to help you become a better reseller.

• Ultimate List of YouTube Reseller Channels

• Google Sheets Reseller Spreadsheet

• Memorize Video Game Prices with Flip Vidya

• eBay Sell Through Rate Calculator

• How To Tell If A Book Is 1st Edition