Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper share how they lost $2,000 in three seconds flat on an eBay sale.
I Went To Jail For Selling An Item On eBay
Check out our free training: https://learn.fleamarketflipper.com/free-workshop-registration
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fleamrktflipper/
You can find us at: https://fleamarketflipper.com/
$2000 Lost In 3 Seconds Flat
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we're talking about how we lost $2,000 in an investment in three seconds flat. Alright, guys, so we are excited about this episode. We just recently went to a conference and we had a lot of fun at the conference, learned a lot of really cool stuff. But I made an investment that we lost the potential for a $2,000 flip in three seconds. And we'll talk about that in just a second, but before we do that, we'll jump into kind of the stuff that we learned and at the great time that we had at this conference.
Melissa: We love to always be learning, always investing in ourselves. Like we love to go to conferences, We love to listen to podcasts and books. And so we hope to be able to bring some of that stuff that we learn back to you because it's really I don't know it's super cool. Like we, we learned a lot and so we have a whole bunch of stuff we're not gonna do it all in one episode. But we have a whole bunch of stuff that we can go through for the next couple episodes that I'm excited about but before we went to this conference, so this is kind of like a business conference, marketing, like.
Rob: It's our software, the software that we use for our company. That they put the conference on, they put the trainings on, they do all that kind of stuff.
Melissa: A lot of mindset, a lot of business, a lot of like, you know, just every aspect of business. So it's super cool to go and be around people, be around all these entrepreneurs that are doing awesome things and to learn from them and to hear the speakers and just have some really cool conversations. But, and this is our fifth year going to this conference, but when we had a little bit of a hiccup trying to get there, we almost didn't make it.
We almost missed our flight. And I posted this in our stories because I said, Almost missed our flight and the police were involved and then people were like, what, what happened? What what in the world, you can't leave us hanging? So we thought we would talk about that really quick because we almost did miss our flight and it was pretty stressful.
Rob: It was. So we were on the way to the airport and I saw there was a police officer right next to me in the turning lane when we were headed on to the main road away from our house. And she pulled up, actually she pulled behind me once we got on the main road. And I guess she ran my plate, pulled up beside us, looked in the window and saw that I was driving.
And then pulled back behind us and actually pulled, pulled me over. And this was happening when we were on the way to the airport to catch our flight. We usually go probably two and a half hours early, so we had a little bit of time to play. But not a lot. Melissa is very much a worrier and she was freaking out about the whole thing.
Melissa: Also, because a couple years ago we did miss a flight and we ended up having to spend 11 hours in the airport. We got there as the door was closing because TSA was so ridiculous. And so yes, now I make sure that we're there with enough time to park, to go through security and get there. Cause our airport in Orlando is not the greatest.
It's horrible. It's horrible. It can be very busy sometimes. So you have to be ready for it.
Rob: You do. So the police officer pulled us over. I pulled over into this little parking lot. She pulled us over. She swung open my door, grabbed my hands, slammed me up against the car, and put me in handcuffs. And I was like, what is going on?
So I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. That's not what happened, but she pulled me over, and she said, sir, do you know your license is suspended? And I said, I do not. Actually, I think she took my license first, because, she ran the plate. So I think she took the license, went back to the, the police, the, her car.
I came back and said, do you know your license is suspended? And I said, I did not know that. Otherwise I would not have been driving. And she goes, yes, it is suspended. It's suspended on three accounts. And I'm like, what did I do? How did my license get suspended? I had no idea. So she said, she looked and she asked me something about our insurance.
And I said, I know we had a hiccup with our insurance. We were on autopay. Something happened with one of our credit cards where we had to get a new credit card and we didn't update the autopay on it. But I fixed it. I fixed it and there was no problems with it. So she goes, it is something to do with insurance.
So, she said, but your three counts on your suspension. So I have to, take your license and I have to take your license plate off of your car. And you guys have to, and thank goodness Melissa was with me. Her license wasn't suspended. And, she said, I'm gonna turn my head. And you guys have to figure out how to get back to your house and pick up
Melissa: We were only a mile away, though, which was good.
Rob: Pick up another car, and then from that we could go to the airport, but I could not drive. Melissa had to drive. Melissa started getting upset, and she's like we're on our way to the airport. What are we gonna do? So the police officer was super, super nice. She's like, well, I'm gonna end up, instead of taking your license, I'm just going to cut the edge of your license off and you have it for ID at the airport.
So she was super nice on that. She even told me, that she felt bad that the whole thing was happening, that I had no idea what was going on with the insurance. She's like, I will even throw this out. If you contest this, I will actually throw it out because I see that once you get everything fixed, you're perfectly okay. And we'll, we'll drop the charges and all that. Not charges, whatever the ticket, the fine for it. She said, we'll drop it in just as long as you get everything taken care of. So super, super nice, police officer. Yeah, we're very thankful that she was nice. It could have went a lot worse.
Melissa: But it took us still because she had to get the license plate off.
So that was taking time. She couldn't get it off. So she had to call another officer to come help her take it off. And so it was like 30 minutes went by and I'm like, we're going to be late. We're going to miss our flight. But in that moment too, Rob has been, is really good about this and I struggle with this.
So like in that moment, he's like, it is what it is. If we miss our flight, we'll have to find another one. Like we'll figure it out. It's not that big of a deal. And in the overarching thing, you know, you do have, that is a great way to go along in life, essentially. Like it's a great attitude to look at things because I was getting upset.
And now you can feel yourself getting anxious. Like you're going to miss, but what's the worst that could happen? You miss your flight. Like. Really? Then you get another flight. There is always a solution. So anytime like something happens, like you're, you know, worried, even, you know, relating it to your eBay business, relating it to flipping and something, you know, you get a return, you get all this stuff, you know, look at it and you can move forward and keep going and you don't have to dwell on it or get like super upset about it.
So.
Rob: So anyways, with that whole ordeal, ended up calling the insurance company. They sent me the paperwork for the right paperwork, told me they were sending it to our, our state, to update everything to make sure everything was all right. Like I said, everything on our end was stellar. It was no problems, but they had notified the state, saying that I didn't have insurance.
And that's how I got the, the, and the three counts of once I called the state, they told me the three counts, we have three vehicles, three registrations. So that's why I had three counts of a suspended license because of those three vehicles. So, everything was taken care of, but in the moment Melissa, we had to go back and get another car.
One of our other vehicles, Melissa drove us to the airport, we parked, I called I think the next day and got our insurance company, got all the paperwork taken care of them, called the state, they told me what I needed to do, so all that stuff was taken care of, so you know, All that being said, it was a crazy, crazy trip to the airport, but we went to this conference and now we want to get back to, the actual title of this episode, which is how I lost $2,000 or the opportunity for a $2,000 investment.
How I lost it in three seconds flat.
And you guys might be wondering about that.
Melissa: Okay, before we talk about, I have one more thing I wanted to add. Another thing you get pulled over and you're driving with a suspended license and you're like, you had no idea, and I was upset about the airport and you did get a little bit worried about like, I think they can arrest me for that.
So that was one thing that you did. We're a little bit worried about but, because you were arrested at one point.
Rob: I have been arrested.
Melissa: For an eBay item.
Rob: It is no fun to go to jail.
Melissa: And it is a fun story. I think it's a fun story now. It was not a fun story when you went through it. But it's episode 85.
We've talked about it kind of, we went into detail on that, on what happened. It was all because of an eBay sale years ago, many, many years ago, but it's a cool, it's a fun story and you're still here.
Rob: I think that was over 20 years ago. Yeah, it was around 20 years ago that I went to jail. And I did not want to go back.
I do not want to go back. Jail is no fun, I didn't spend a long time there, but it sucked.
Melissa: The funny thing is, is like, if anybody knew you, like the fact that you went, got arrested and went to jail, it was pretty funny. So anyways, okay, back to, so our, our conference was in Vegas. So Vegas obviously is where people love to go and play the casino.
We were not big gamblers though, so that was not really an appeal to us. But on the last day, one of our friends wanted to go play something he didn't even care what it was.
Rob: No, I think he wanted to go to the slots or something like that. And I said I played roulette before. I played roulette on a cruise.
I said it's pretty much you can either go black or red or you can go evens or odds so you have a chance of just throwing something on and typically doubling your money with it. So I was like, let's just go do it the roulette table so we both went to the roulette table we were gonna do twenty dollars and then the I think the limit are the, the buy in was $25.
So he threw down 50 bucks and I threw down $50 and we both put it on, I believe it was red, on red on the roulette table. The lady spun the wheel, took three seconds for that wheel to side that, that little ball to stop spinning. And it landed on double zero, which if you know, roulette, the row, the double zero is green.
You lose if you're on even, even. No, you lose if you're on red or black, and you lose that. So, In that moment we lost 50 bucks like that and I remembered why I don't like gambling and why even in our business I am not a gambler I do not like to take chances like that because $50 went out the door that quick.
Melissa: And that $50 could have made us a thousand to two thousand dollars easily in a find so, a Facebook marketplace find that we could have turned it into a thousand or two thousand dollars on eBay.
Rob: So that's the upsetting part. Like if you guys even remember just the prosthetic leg we sold, $25 we paid for that, sold it for a thousand dollars. Another one recently that we sold was the total gym, the medical total gym, paid $40 for that and sold it for $2,500. So this is not uncommon for us to be able to throw $50 or less into something and make a thousand to two thousand dollars.
It's very, very common for us to be able to do that. And this is how I lost that $50 didn't make anything. And all I, all I stood to make, even with that $50 is $50 into a hundred dollars. If I would have won, if it would have jumped onto red or black, whichever one I put it on. Those numbers are not very great. They're not, that's how I would have been able to do it.
It was a little fun. Just for the rush of being able to do it. And if I was able to go, I probably would have done it once. I think my buddy said three wins and then he was out. If he won three times, he was done.
Melissa: Oh, you guys went with that in mind?
Rob: But we lost it the first time in three seconds. What? So we were out immediately and I had no temptation to throw any other money down.
We never, did a, a slot machine or anything else like that. That was the only $50 we put down on one thing and lost it. And we were like, all right, that's why we don't gamble. We know how to make money flipping items and teaching other people how to flip items. That is what we will stick to. So, it was pretty, pretty crazy, but it was such a, such a fun event that we're able to go to and learn more about.
Melissa: I wanted to add too that you're not a big gambler, like whatever at a casino, but you're not a big gambler in our business either. So we don't take like crazy risks. Like we, we don't even like to invest a lot of. You, you'll invest a lot if you really know that there's a big payoff, like I'm, when I'm saying a lot, like a thousand dollars, we don't even go, most of our stuff is $50 to $200 is what we're investing to make, you know, several grand is what our goal is 10 X.
But typically we get a little bit higher than that now. Cause we're just pickier with the items that we buy, but people do ask that a lot. It's like, well, what about, what if you don't sell it or what if, you know, you have a bad buy, but you can do so much research before and know if it's going to be a good buyer or not.
And you might sit on a little longer than you want, but you still can know you don't have to take a risk. We're not big risk takers in our business.
Rob: So this is such a great time to give you guys the opportunity to see how we do stuff. Right now we have Tuesday, Tuesday night, we are running a challenge to show people how we do not gamble, how we do not risk on a take risk on items that we buy.
It is an amazing training that you're not going to want to miss. It's a three day, training that we do that is actually we will go into detail with how we find these items. That is what we do when we actually invest, versus the opportunity for me to invest $50 to make $100. We do not do that in business and I shouldn't have done it at the casino, but it was kind of fun.
So we ended up, we'll do some fun stuff like that every once in a while. But right now Melissa will throw a link below. You guys can jump into register for that challenge. You're not going to want to miss it. Guess what? It's a free challenge, so you don't even have to go out any money for that. We're gonna let you guys jump in there, and partake of all that information for three days.
You will absolutely be so glad that you did it at the end of it, guys. So if you have not gone to the challenge, go check it out. You're gonna have so much fun going to it.
Melissa: Yep, and I just wanted to I had a couple notes for oh, absolutely.
Rob: Sorry. I always jump ahead.
Melissa: You do.
Rob: I don't usually go by notes. I'm just going on the fly.
So Melissa will keep us up to date with what we need to know, and then we'll go from there.
Melissa: No, I just wrote down like, like buying out items at the right price. A lot of times we're buying items that are, you know, what I said, like 50 to a hundred dollars, but if you're buying them at such a low cost of what they're really worth, that you're not going to lose money.
Even if you turned around and sold it for what you bought it for, like you're not going to lose money. A lot of our stuff, even if you buy it, and it doesn't work you can still sell it for parts you can and for more than what you invested in. So like we're not taking big risks that we're going to go and lose a bunch of money. We know that the item is what it's worth it's usually worth about 10x what we're paying for it and finding those items happen.
So much more than people think, like a lot of people are like, oh that's a once in a blue moon type of find, which we will dive into a sourcing demo in the challenge as well, so you can see that if you jump in. But you can still, you won't lose money, as long as you're buying items at the right price, because your money is made in your purchase.
Rob: I'll give you another example, one of our recent trips that we came back, we were away for the weekend, I don't remember where we went, but I found a Matt Damon's and we might've talked about this. I don't remember. We did. Okay. Matt Damon's treadmill and the treadmill needs a little bit of work. It actually needed a belt on it or the, the, the pad super, super high and expensive, expensive treadmill. And I've been going back and forth in my head. I haven't told Melissa this. Back and forth in my head. What am I going to do with this thing? Am I actually going to try and get it fixed? Am I going to do something with it? But that alone, we paid $150 for it. Pulling that apart, if I don't end up choosing to fix that, $150, like Melissa said, $50 to $200, that's kind of our comfort zone of being able to do that.
The motor alone inside of that treadmill should sell probably for $500. For just the motor, if I took off a couple pieces of it, I probably could make $1,000 off of a 150 investment. Just by pulling a couple parts off and doing that. That is the stuff that we're talking about. Is we're not taking a big risk, a risk on what we're investing in.
Because we know no matter what, and the way that you can check this out when you are buying something, even if something that you don't know if it works or doesn't work, you can check and see what the parts are listed for and selling for on eBay before you actually throw out the money to invest in that item.
And that's what we do. We want to make sure no matter what we're doing, I don't, I don't, I'm not just investing $150 to make $150. That's not my goal, my goal, but I don't want to lose anything. And I want to make sure I worst comes to worst. I didn't lose anything. I didn't lose anything on this investment. But like I said, I should be able to have no problem pulling off a couple of parts off of this treadmill and selling them for a 10 X in that investment. A thousand dollars, $1,500, just on a couple- the motor, the electronic panel, the board, all that kind of stuff that does work. The only thing bad with it is the belt and the belt you can see if, if I, if I choose not to do the belt and change it, I'll part it out and we'll make some really, really good money just on the parts. And it'll be a lot easier than shipping the whole treadmill itself. Which, yeah, which is, is one of those things that you think about when you're actually doing these and figuring out the best way to actually approach.
Melissa: You didn't know it was Matt Damon's treadmill when you bought it. He told me when I was picking it up. Yeah, he said, this was Matt Damon's treadmill. I'm like, oh, well, that could be a selling point. But now if you don't sell it as Damon's.
Rob: I can sell it as Matt Damon's treadmill's motor, but I'm not sure that will be that appealing to somebody not to have the whole treadmill to sell.
But, this business is so much fun. We have so much fun with, these stories that we're able to come in contact with these items and hopefully you guys enjoy this. Like I said, Melissa and I love this business. We love what it enables us to do and we love to teach other people how to do this, how to really capitalize on this business, the same way that we do it.
Yeah.
Melissa: So thanks guys for hanging out with us and we will see you on the next episode.
Rob: You guys are awesome. Have an amazing day and we'll talk to you soon.