A few months back I came across a Craigslist ad offering a bunch of board games for $40. Did some searching on ebay sold listings for a few of them and found there was some money to be made. The Monster's Inc Scare Factory alone would all but cover the investment. Offered $45 if they'd deliver and they took it. Later that day I had a nice pile of games delivered to my doorstep and was pleased to find the majority of them to be complete. The lower end games like Bingo, Chinese Checkers, and Don't Break the Ice aren't worth shipping, and Battleship, Operation, Harry Potter Levitation Challenge and the Small Soldiers pinball didn't work, but I was able to sell the game pieces separately.
Board games are one of the more annoying things to ship. The free USPS boxes don't always cut it, and it often takes two non-flat-rate boxes to contain one game. There are large flat-rate board game boxes available, but they're not thick enough for a lot of games and aren't cheap to ship at $15. Fed Ex might be a better option for some games. I've already sold most of
these, including a set of dominoes that I forgot to include in this
photo, for a net total of around $93, so I've already doubled my money. I can probably make at least another $40 profit from this lot as the Monster's Inc set has not yet sold.
If you're interested in purchasing any of the remaining games, you can find them in my ebay store.
It's hard to imagine old electronics being worth anything what with them being obsolete and all, but certain items can bring in a staggering amount of cash. Keyboard bundled with modern day PCs are good enough to get the job done so most aren't aware of the wide array of options available to them. Most vintage keyboards are referred to as "mechanical" because each key has a mechanical switch of its own responsible for its input. There are a variety of different switches, most of which are no longer produced. The infamous IBM Model M uses what's known as a buckling spring, and is probably the noisiest of them all, but extremely comfortable and lasts for years, and individual springs can be easily replaced. Keyboards bundled with today's computers use membrane and/or rubber dome to detect key presses. These don't last nearly as long and lack the distinct tactile feeling of a good mechanical keyboard. Once you try one, there's no going back.
Selling media is a great way to quickly raise your positive feedback count and reduce your defect rate. I paid $100 for this lot of a little over 200 DVDs, half of what the Craigslist ad was asking. 50 cents a piece is about the maximum you want to pay when buying large lots like this. Listing at $4.50 a piece minimum for the more common titles will net about a buck each after shipping and fees, so selling these at a yard sale or flea market for $2 each might be the way to go, but if that's not an option then it only costs 5 cents each month to keep a DVD listed. There were a few seasons and sealed titles in this lot which tend to bring a few bucks per sale. Cyberscape in the bottom right stack is probably the least common DVD of the entire lot, but there also don't seem to be a lot of buyers. Maybe I'll be able to get 10 bucks for it, even if I have to sit on it for a while.
So far, I've made 31 sales off of this lot, for a net total of $64.98, so I'm fast approaching the break-even mark with plenty of DVDs left to sell. I might be able to triple my money if they all sell. This isn't fast money, and more reselling than flipping, but it helps to have a bread and butter source of consistent sales, and these are easily shipped with DVD-sized poly bags which are dirt cheap.
UPDATE: I made my $100 back plus an additional $85 from ebay DVD sales but things were slowing down. With over 100 still listed, I was eating more than $5/mo in renewal fees, and at roughly $1 profit each I wasn't even breaking even. After digging through and picking about a dozen to keep for myself, I threw the remaining 109 up on craigslist and priced to sell at $75 for the lot. Couldn't have been more than a week before I had a buyer, putting my total profit from this lot at $160.
Financial independence is a dream many have, yet few are able to actualize. It's a daunting, arduous quest, but one well worth pursuing. This site will serve as a log of each juncture of said quest, documenting the treasures I find along the way, how much I'm making, and links to purchase the items should anyone reading this be interested. With summer coming to an end, opportunities to source inventory are dropping off rapidly, so a lot of these early posts are going to be things I've recently acquired. There may also be some informative posts along the way where I pretend like I know what I'm talking about, but don't expect many of these, at least not in the beginning. I've only just gotten my feet wet in the world of flipping on ebay, so this will be a journey for both of us. Welcome aboard, and stay tuned.
