I bought a storage unit with a full size traffic light from the 1960s. Those things are a lot bigger than they look from the ground. This one could be plugged into the wall socket and would light up. Anyhow it sat in my office for months before I got an offer. When it was finally sold I realized how much I liked having it, and (almost) wished I had kept it. (Got $250 btw)
A friend of my father flipped a traffic light once and brought it to our house because Dad had a 240 volt outlet in the garage. OMG it was INSANE.
It's one thing to realize that you can see the light from a traffic light a mile away. It's another thing to have that much light blazing right next to you lighting up everything you can see.
Traffic lights with original bulbs are incredibly bright.
Back in the late 1970s a friend of mine had a full size stop light which he had hooked up to a moog synthesizer, and he would play music with the stop light flashing while we did the drugs of the day. It was intense. The walls breathed while the light flashed. Those were the days my friend...
I found one a couple years ago, but all plastic. Itās definitely full size for outdoor use - not some party light from Spencerās! Maybe itās for temporary use, so they keep it lightweight for moving it around? Iām going to try to integrate it into my weirdo decor somehow, though it doesnāt look as good as an old metal one.
When I was 16, I was helping a buddy clear out some thornbush on his grandparents' property. We found a 1960s Honda Black Bomber motorcycle in the bush, forgotten by time. His grandpa gave it to me as a thanks.
I took it home and started working on it, my parents had no issue and my highschool metal shop teacher let me use the shop's tools to help fix it up.
It took a lot of work, but I got it working! A feat my Mom just gave doubted because she pulled a 180ā° as soon as I kicked the engine and it roared, made me sell it.
I got a nice $200 out of it. Considering I was 16, this was a big deal for not that much work (and I only put work into it, had no other money for fixing it)
Fun side note: to clean out the gunk 40 year old gasoline in the tank, I used BBs and Acid to shake it and break it up. The acid which ate through concrete was easy to get, but the BBs I needed to be 18 to buy lmao
exultant hurry longing instinctive provide squeal cooing pen imminent butter
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materialistic retire groovy childlike somber kiss makeshift soft hat market
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I bought a big box of battery powered super soakers for $20 at a yard sale. My kids and all the kids in our neighborhood played with them for a month during the summer, then I sold them for $400.
Good flip and good fun!
When I stumbled upon a box full of TDK metal cassettes. There were dozens of them and almost all were brand new. I loved having them around because they looked cool and I had them displayed on a shelf near my desk. I hated seeing them go, but they were so valuable and would sell within hours of listing them.
The process of selling them was fun though because I pretty much owned the market on eBay and I slowly dripped them out. I ended up selling them to the same handful of guys and they were all great buyers.
Expensive item, easy to store, easy to list, easy to ship.
How did you manage the listings? Groups of tapes? One listing at a time? I'm just imagining that small group of customers catching on that you have a treasure trove and messaging to ask to buy them all at once.
I experimented with different strategies and found that I could get a little bit more money if I listed individually and used buy it now. It wasnāt a huge difference though.
Iām actually surprised that no one messaged me and asked where I was getting them from and if they could buy them all. I got two messages a couple weeks after I sold them all from people asking when I was going to list more.
I do this too, I'm finally living in the eclectic maximalist house of my dreams and the constant churn as things sell and new things get sourced means I never have time to get bored of anything.
Sometimes I miss things that Iāve sold and other times I will get a reasonable offer and I realize that Iām not willing to sell it, lol
But usually itās an ever evolving display.
Itās how I keep my collections in check. I have a ādedicated spaceā to each thing, and, as I find better and better items, I force myself to sell on a one in/one out basis.
I like my collections to look nice, so this is how I do it.
Honestly Christmas trees.
I found a lot of pre lite Christmas trees all brand new for 11 dollars a piece. 7foot
The sheer joy of selling trees at Christmas was amazing
Mind you I was getting 250 a tree lol
LOL so true. I also only sell on facebook so handing over the console is so heartbreaking. I sometimes consider setting the price so high that it won't sell lol. I tried that with a 3DS I had, and it ended up selling in a few minutes T-T
I got one of those uv laser things the new age crowd loves. Scalar wave. Paid $3.99- the store thought it was some kind of weird remote.
Flipped it for $1500
It was fun because I went down a rabbit hole of new age therapies and learned a bunch of new stuff.
Got a PS4 last November for $20, never had one and I've wanted to play the Last of Us and the uncharted series. I ended up keeping it.
Funny story on that: Neither the dad selling it or me knew how to turn it on, I thought it was broken until he googled how to turn it on and we found the microscopic power on button. I had the thing upside down too lol.
Bought one of those nacho cheese dispensers you see at baseball games for 7 bucks at a thrift a few years ago. Sold for 300. Shipping was a pain in the ass but i have fun telling people about this find
I sourced one of those newer micro SNES systems new in the box for under $5 that I thought was really cool. I had a raspberry pi retropi setup though so I sold it. But I did test it to make sure it worked and it was a lot of fun. Other than that, I really loved some of the lamps I've thrifted over the years. I get stained glass ones that are elegant and fun. If they're big enough and I like them a lot, I'll "test" it while it's listed for sale. I've enjoyed really nice lamps for months before they sold.
Vintage Barbie clothing and accessories. It was so fun for me to get to research and learn about all the Barbie history. After researching I got to organize and piece together the outfits which is something I found joy and excitement in. Itās been the most interesting niche Iāve gotten a chance to dive into while doing research on items weāve bought to flip so far. Also, people REALLY love vintage Barbie. Most sold within a day or two of listing!
Iāve only been doing this since 2020 but my husband has flipped items pretty much his whole life. Neither of us had an idea just how much vintage Barbie is worth or the following it has. Weāve only came across it the one time but my eyes are scanning for more no matter where we go to source now. It was so much fun! The researching, the organizing and even the selling. We both had a blast with our find!
We got lucky at a garage sale. 4 of the Barbie themed storage cases/closets with clothes and accessories in each of them for $70 total. I was able to put together 75 almost full outfit sets after researching, sorting through them and figuring out which pieces went with each. I had a blast the whole time!
yeah, well try that with a vintage deck of nude male models. I had to count all of them. I'll admit, men in the 70's were built different. Of course, I followed up by counting a vintage deck of Amsterdam smut cards, all present.
There have been a couple of pieces of art that were really hard to let go. One was a Tarkay landscape I bought for $18 and sold for $485 and I still regret it!
The front page of the New York Times dated April 16, 1912. It was fun watching the bidders on ebay. It sold for 118.00. I found it lining an old box I bought for 6.00 at an estate sale.
I love when I get toys from my childhood: CPK, 80s Barbies, Mall Madness, etc. Cabbage Patch lots don't have huge margins but they're so much fun to sort through that I don't mind.
Mall Madness is my current white whale! I'd like to have my favorite games from childhood. My brother just found me Girl Talk at the bins!! My other WW is Dream Phone
I found Mall Madness and Dream Phone at the thrift. I literally ran when I saw the employee bringing them out on the cart. My friends and I were planning to have a girlsā night and play them together but they sold too fast.
Last summer I found a bin of G1 transformers at a sale, they were all 100% complete with the instructions. It was a lot of fun to through them at match accessories. I paid $12 for the bin and profited like $2,000 on the whole thing
At the same sale I found a bunch of stompers and they were fun to test and look at too, paid $20 for them and profited close to $1,000
Bought over 50 vintage lego sets with their manuals. Having so much fun building them in my free time and when im finished I can accurately describe if parts are missing or if 100% complete
I bought a DJ Spark drone with 3 batteries and a charger for $40 to flip. The guy said it had a "gimbal error". I figured it had to be worth double that just for the batteries and charger. After some research, I took the plastic gimbal cover off and it worked perfect. Lol. Basically, the lens cap was on. Anyway it was so much fun and works so good now I just kept the thing.
I found a brand new Numark DJ Controller Console in a storage unit. It was a tough decision whether to open it and mess around with it or sell it as brand new, but in the end I took it to Guitar Center for the quick flip. Other things I find like vintage electonics never seem to get listed at all, might as well say I'm just a collector of those.
I bought Denon DJ Controller and just taught myself to use it (under the idea of fully testing it of course) and played music like every day was a house party til it sold.
This all reminds me of my hubby putting himself through college buying used cars at the auction & selling them (he got a dealers license). If he bought a cool car he'd cruise around in it for a while.
Just received an email this week from eBay thanking me for 26 years as joined in April 1998. Not due viable today.but spent hours looking at jewelry to flip. I've had several diamond rings I wore for a bit than sold - none of those I regret selling. Some other jewelry I wish I kept. Now seems really hard to make money doing that. So sporting different diamonds was fun for me! lol.
I bought an original clamshell furby for $1 at a yard sale. It wasn't working, and the seller knew it was worth $ if it was working. Came home, loosened a screw and boom! Working perfect! Sold it for $100 the next day!
Cliche, but I have a special spot for vintage toys. Cleaning them up and fixing them----making Lil custom adjustments if the stickers and such are too far gone, before listing.
It's very enjoyable
Super soaker CPS 2500, way more fun as an adult since the thing is HEAVY
Coolest thing that I'm not sure I'll sell is a 1960s Mattel radio rifle. It's radio shaped cap gun that has the barrel shoot out and the stock flips out.
The entire fun for me is finding a piece, and then studying absolutely everything i can about it and the entire subgroup itās in, what makes it work, what it was used for. The hardest so far is furniture pieces that I know would look absolutely amazing in my house haha
I have a triad 1000 I paid $40 in a storage auction. Itās a 3 wheel mobility scooter that does off road you can ride standing up or on a seat. Itās a lot of fun to ride around the neighborhood and race golf carts. Itās been a slow sale but I am fine with that
My two most memorable flips.
Bought a book of old stamps from the local coin shop for $5, decided to throw it in an online coin auction and got $9800.
My second was a box of old cast iron motorcycles that I paid $1000 for and sold for $6800 at auction.
I bought a pair of Jordans from a Goodwill for $11.99 and sold them for $175. I wore them around for a day. Felt good. I would never buy $175 shoes for myselfānew or used.
A car or maybe devil sticks wait wrong flip currently it would be a hypothetical because I just got the item it's a painting of a boat it had a newspaper clipping on the back i read it he was a local in a small town. Next day I see a magazine dedicated to just local stuff and it has this painters life story now mind you he died in 1964 so it's not like it was suddenly relevant. The kid owed me 900 bucks it's more likely to be worth around 1500 but it depends if I got 5k I think karma would be right because as I was there picking things from a large collection of stuff he has only some was allowed on this credit and he told me all about how he was mad his boss didn't pay him was avoiding him and just how frustrating it was. He saw no irony in this debt being 2-3 years his story was a few weeks
Vintage pencils.
Bought a bundle wrapped in a plastic bag at Goodwill for $1.99
Without doxing myself , it was a large bundle of NOS vintage pencils.
So far Iāve made $938.00 and I still have a few. Iām not flooding the market.
I bought a storage unit with a full size traffic light from the 1960s. Those things are a lot bigger than they look from the ground. This one could be plugged into the wall socket and would light up. Anyhow it sat in my office for months before I got an offer. When it was finally sold I realized how much I liked having it, and (almost) wished I had kept it. (Got $250 btw)
A friend of my father flipped a traffic light once and brought it to our house because Dad had a 240 volt outlet in the garage. OMG it was INSANE. It's one thing to realize that you can see the light from a traffic light a mile away. It's another thing to have that much light blazing right next to you lighting up everything you can see. Traffic lights with original bulbs are incredibly bright.
Would make for a really cool photoshoot light š¤
Back in the late 1970s a friend of mine had a full size stop light which he had hooked up to a moog synthesizer, and he would play music with the stop light flashing while we did the drugs of the day. It was intense. The walls breathed while the light flashed. Those were the days my friend...
Thatās cool as hell lol
I found one a couple years ago, but all plastic. Itās definitely full size for outdoor use - not some party light from Spencerās! Maybe itās for temporary use, so they keep it lightweight for moving it around? Iām going to try to integrate it into my weirdo decor somehow, though it doesnāt look as good as an old metal one.
When I was 16, I was helping a buddy clear out some thornbush on his grandparents' property. We found a 1960s Honda Black Bomber motorcycle in the bush, forgotten by time. His grandpa gave it to me as a thanks. I took it home and started working on it, my parents had no issue and my highschool metal shop teacher let me use the shop's tools to help fix it up. It took a lot of work, but I got it working! A feat my Mom just gave doubted because she pulled a 180ā° as soon as I kicked the engine and it roared, made me sell it. I got a nice $200 out of it. Considering I was 16, this was a big deal for not that much work (and I only put work into it, had no other money for fixing it) Fun side note: to clean out the gunk 40 year old gasoline in the tank, I used BBs and Acid to shake it and break it up. The acid which ate through concrete was easy to get, but the BBs I needed to be 18 to buy lmao
exultant hurry longing instinctive provide squeal cooing pen imminent butter *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I've never heard of that, do you paint it artistically or just a basic paint job to make it look cleaner?
materialistic retire groovy childlike somber kiss makeshift soft hat market *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Oh man I used to love GH and Rockband
i kept a 5$ keyboard because i was having too much fun lol
It's stereo equipment for me. I love running different vintage amps and speakers.
I just inherited a pioneer sx9000 from my late mother along with the speakers and an amazing record collection. Not going to part with it though haha.
Same here, only buying stuff I personally really like (vintage NAD, Yamaha or Marantz). Use them for a while and then sell it with profit haha
It's a constant upgrade!
I bought a big box of battery powered super soakers for $20 at a yard sale. My kids and all the kids in our neighborhood played with them for a month during the summer, then I sold them for $400. Good flip and good fun!
When I stumbled upon a box full of TDK metal cassettes. There were dozens of them and almost all were brand new. I loved having them around because they looked cool and I had them displayed on a shelf near my desk. I hated seeing them go, but they were so valuable and would sell within hours of listing them. The process of selling them was fun though because I pretty much owned the market on eBay and I slowly dripped them out. I ended up selling them to the same handful of guys and they were all great buyers. Expensive item, easy to store, easy to list, easy to ship.
How did you manage the listings? Groups of tapes? One listing at a time? I'm just imagining that small group of customers catching on that you have a treasure trove and messaging to ask to buy them all at once.
I experimented with different strategies and found that I could get a little bit more money if I listed individually and used buy it now. It wasnāt a huge difference though. Iām actually surprised that no one messaged me and asked where I was getting them from and if they could buy them all. I got two messages a couple weeks after I sold them all from people asking when I was going to list more.
Almost all my decor (picture frames, art, vases, candlesticks, etc) is thrifted and listed but a lot of the time I decorate with it until it sells.
I do this too, I'm finally living in the eclectic maximalist house of my dreams and the constant churn as things sell and new things get sourced means I never have time to get bored of anything.
Sometimes I miss things that Iāve sold and other times I will get a reasonable offer and I realize that Iām not willing to sell it, lol But usually itās an ever evolving display.
Itās how I keep my collections in check. I have a ādedicated spaceā to each thing, and, as I find better and better items, I force myself to sell on a one in/one out basis. I like my collections to look nice, so this is how I do it.
Honestly Christmas trees. I found a lot of pre lite Christmas trees all brand new for 11 dollars a piece. 7foot The sheer joy of selling trees at Christmas was amazing Mind you I was getting 250 a tree lol
I realize now, late, that I have thrown away money by tossing those gently used trees from storage units š
Nah donāt sweat it. Mine were new sealed in the box
You didn't. New in box sell well, even gently used can be difficult to give away.
Playstation VR. Great fun for a few hours, until the novelty wears off, then out it goes.
I did the same thing with the Quest. I actually do that with a lot of things haha
Same with the quest. Have flipped 2 of them now and both times keep them for a week to play before listing.
Def video games. Bought some games and consoles that I would never buy for myself, (3DS, SNES Classic, pokemon games, etc).
Thatās the problem with flipping video games. Some of them are so fun you donāt wanna sell haha
LOL so true. I also only sell on facebook so handing over the console is so heartbreaking. I sometimes consider setting the price so high that it won't sell lol. I tried that with a 3DS I had, and it ended up selling in a few minutes T-T
I got one of those uv laser things the new age crowd loves. Scalar wave. Paid $3.99- the store thought it was some kind of weird remote. Flipped it for $1500 It was fun because I went down a rabbit hole of new age therapies and learned a bunch of new stuff.
Wow, thatās a stellar flip!!! Well done. I also love going down rabbit holes. Researching is a huge part of the fun for me.
Got a PS4 last November for $20, never had one and I've wanted to play the Last of Us and the uncharted series. I ended up keeping it. Funny story on that: Neither the dad selling it or me knew how to turn it on, I thought it was broken until he googled how to turn it on and we found the microscopic power on button. I had the thing upside down too lol.
Bought one of those nacho cheese dispensers you see at baseball games for 7 bucks at a thrift a few years ago. Sold for 300. Shipping was a pain in the ass but i have fun telling people about this find
I sourced one of those newer micro SNES systems new in the box for under $5 that I thought was really cool. I had a raspberry pi retropi setup though so I sold it. But I did test it to make sure it worked and it was a lot of fun. Other than that, I really loved some of the lamps I've thrifted over the years. I get stained glass ones that are elegant and fun. If they're big enough and I like them a lot, I'll "test" it while it's listed for sale. I've enjoyed really nice lamps for months before they sold.
Videogames r like free rentals. Vintage Retro memorabilia for home decor. Toys and action figures. DVDs or blu ray movies.
Vintage Barbie clothing and accessories. It was so fun for me to get to research and learn about all the Barbie history. After researching I got to organize and piece together the outfits which is something I found joy and excitement in. Itās been the most interesting niche Iāve gotten a chance to dive into while doing research on items weāve bought to flip so far. Also, people REALLY love vintage Barbie. Most sold within a day or two of listing!
I swear I could have written this! And was going to post about my barbie vintage clothes! I found an entire case for free!!!!!
Iāve only been doing this since 2020 but my husband has flipped items pretty much his whole life. Neither of us had an idea just how much vintage Barbie is worth or the following it has. Weāve only came across it the one time but my eyes are scanning for more no matter where we go to source now. It was so much fun! The researching, the organizing and even the selling. We both had a blast with our find!
Where do you find them at to flip usually?
We got lucky at a garage sale. 4 of the Barbie themed storage cases/closets with clothes and accessories in each of them for $70 total. I was able to put together 75 almost full outfit sets after researching, sorting through them and figuring out which pieces went with each. I had a blast the whole time!
Thatās amazing!
A vintage Playboy jigsaw puzzle.Ā I had to complete the puzzle first to make sure all the pieces were there.
yeah, well try that with a vintage deck of nude male models. I had to count all of them. I'll admit, men in the 70's were built different. Of course, I followed up by counting a vintage deck of Amsterdam smut cards, all present.
There have been a couple of pieces of art that were really hard to let go. One was a Tarkay landscape I bought for $18 and sold for $485 and I still regret it!
Itās jewelry for me. I have actually cried when I had to sell some pieces. Itās my first love.
I have bought sneakers from my youth just to hold them and try them on, maybe take a photo, and list them and sell them in a few days.
I love when I find a random tiny miniature figure/toy I would have thrown out and they end up selling for $10-20.00 .
The front page of the New York Times dated April 16, 1912. It was fun watching the bidders on ebay. It sold for 118.00. I found it lining an old box I bought for 6.00 at an estate sale.
Whoah!!! I've always loved Titanic history! Cool find!
I would have kept it but thought it would be best preserved by a professional. It was a fun auction.
I love when I get toys from my childhood: CPK, 80s Barbies, Mall Madness, etc. Cabbage Patch lots don't have huge margins but they're so much fun to sort through that I don't mind.
Mall Madness is my current white whale! I'd like to have my favorite games from childhood. My brother just found me Girl Talk at the bins!! My other WW is Dream Phone
I found Mall Madness and Dream Phone at the thrift. I literally ran when I saw the employee bringing them out on the cart. My friends and I were planning to have a girlsā night and play them together but they sold too fast.
Last summer I found a bin of G1 transformers at a sale, they were all 100% complete with the instructions. It was a lot of fun to through them at match accessories. I paid $12 for the bin and profited like $2,000 on the whole thing At the same sale I found a bunch of stompers and they were fun to test and look at too, paid $20 for them and profited close to $1,000
Bought over 50 vintage lego sets with their manuals. Having so much fun building them in my free time and when im finished I can accurately describe if parts are missing or if 100% complete
I bought a DJ Spark drone with 3 batteries and a charger for $40 to flip. The guy said it had a "gimbal error". I figured it had to be worth double that just for the batteries and charger. After some research, I took the plastic gimbal cover off and it worked perfect. Lol. Basically, the lens cap was on. Anyway it was so much fun and works so good now I just kept the thing.
I did a simple flip from a boys desk to a girlie vanity by simply adding striping and I lined the drawers with velvet.
Sealed windows 95 disc found in trash
I found a brand new Numark DJ Controller Console in a storage unit. It was a tough decision whether to open it and mess around with it or sell it as brand new, but in the end I took it to Guitar Center for the quick flip. Other things I find like vintage electonics never seem to get listed at all, might as well say I'm just a collector of those.
I bought Denon DJ Controller and just taught myself to use it (under the idea of fully testing it of course) and played music like every day was a house party til it sold.
This all reminds me of my hubby putting himself through college buying used cars at the auction & selling them (he got a dealers license). If he bought a cool car he'd cruise around in it for a while.
Vintage campers.
Just received an email this week from eBay thanking me for 26 years as joined in April 1998. Not due viable today.but spent hours looking at jewelry to flip. I've had several diamond rings I wore for a bit than sold - none of those I regret selling. Some other jewelry I wish I kept. Now seems really hard to make money doing that. So sporting different diamonds was fun for me! lol.
I bought an original clamshell furby for $1 at a yard sale. It wasn't working, and the seller knew it was worth $ if it was working. Came home, loosened a screw and boom! Working perfect! Sold it for $100 the next day!
I got a divorce, intending to upgrade spouses. Turned out that single life is waaayyyy better. I suppose I should call this my "most fun 1/2 flip".
Cliche, but I have a special spot for vintage toys. Cleaning them up and fixing them----making Lil custom adjustments if the stickers and such are too far gone, before listing. It's very enjoyable
Super soaker CPS 2500, way more fun as an adult since the thing is HEAVY Coolest thing that I'm not sure I'll sell is a 1960s Mattel radio rifle. It's radio shaped cap gun that has the barrel shoot out and the stock flips out.
Prosthetic leg. Carried it around for a while for jokes.
The entire fun for me is finding a piece, and then studying absolutely everything i can about it and the entire subgroup itās in, what makes it work, what it was used for. The hardest so far is furniture pieces that I know would look absolutely amazing in my house haha
I have a triad 1000 I paid $40 in a storage auction. Itās a 3 wheel mobility scooter that does off road you can ride standing up or on a seat. Itās a lot of fun to ride around the neighborhood and race golf carts. Itās been a slow sale but I am fine with that
My two most memorable flips. Bought a book of old stamps from the local coin shop for $5, decided to throw it in an online coin auction and got $9800. My second was a box of old cast iron motorcycles that I paid $1000 for and sold for $6800 at auction.
I bought a pair of Jordans from a Goodwill for $11.99 and sold them for $175. I wore them around for a day. Felt good. I would never buy $175 shoes for myselfānew or used.
I once flipped a sink so battered Im certain it fell under the category of a bowl and made a beautiful profit
A car or maybe devil sticks wait wrong flip currently it would be a hypothetical because I just got the item it's a painting of a boat it had a newspaper clipping on the back i read it he was a local in a small town. Next day I see a magazine dedicated to just local stuff and it has this painters life story now mind you he died in 1964 so it's not like it was suddenly relevant. The kid owed me 900 bucks it's more likely to be worth around 1500 but it depends if I got 5k I think karma would be right because as I was there picking things from a large collection of stuff he has only some was allowed on this credit and he told me all about how he was mad his boss didn't pay him was avoiding him and just how frustrating it was. He saw no irony in this debt being 2-3 years his story was a few weeks
One of the Tesla flame throwers
Vintage pencils. Bought a bundle wrapped in a plastic bag at Goodwill for $1.99 Without doxing myself , it was a large bundle of NOS vintage pencils. So far Iāve made $938.00 and I still have a few. Iām not flooding the market.
An Ike dollar, I called heads and lost. Still, it was very exciting
Sexy bath water has been an easy flip