Learn what Rob & Melissa from Flea Market Flipper sourced on their six-week road trip across the U.S.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast – Recap Of Our 6-Week Road Trip
Rob: What's up, guys. We are back from six weeks on the road with over $30,000 in inventory.
Melissa: We're gonna dive into what we found in just a minute.
Melissa: All right. So we just got back from six weeks of traveling across the country. We hit 19 states traveled over 10,000 miles, and yeah, and picked up 17 items worth almost $32,000. So we're gonna dive into what we found.
Rob: That's right. We found stuff in thrift stores. We found stuff on Facebook marketplace and found stuff on offerUp and Craigslist. We picked up some cool stuff all around the country. We didn't even have a huge trailer, we pulled a, like a 14-foot v-nose enclosed trailer, filled it up. We probably could've fit one or two more things in it, but it would've been even tighter than what we had, but that's what we brought back. 17 items with over $30,000 in inventory. So are you guys curious? What did we get? We're gonna jump into it right now.
Melissa: Before we jump into that, I wanted to kind of talk about how we got started doing this. This is our third year going across country doing this.
And it really stemmed not even from the first time we did it from the 127 yard sale. So we went to the 127 yard sale, which is a 690 mile yard sale from Alabama to Michigan, we did that. I don't remember what year it was probably like 2017, I think was the first year we did it. Yeah, we've done it two or three times.
And then it was just four days of looking for stuff. We brought our trailer, our kids were in tow, like they're like another yard sale. But you know, it was a lot of fun to find.
Rob: It was a good time.
Melissa: Find stuff on the road. And like, we just stopped at hotels and picked up stuff and it was a whole work trip too.
So we got to write it off. So, yeah.
Rob: And last year we tried to schedule a trip around the U.S. to spend with the kids, going to state parks and stuff like that. And then we were gonna end up on the north side of the 127 yard sale. The only problem was by the time we got our road trip, we finished the road trip and ended up in Michigan, our trailer was full. We had already bought so much other stuff throughout the country, that we didn't really have a lot of room in the trailer to buy anything else on the 127. So, we ended up stopping at a couple yard sales, getting a couple little things and then we took off to the house.
But, just how it's a great time. It's a great family time to be able to go across the U.S., Visit state parks and national parks. Yeah. And get to see that, show the kids that, and then also work while we're doing it. We're able to find cool stuff in little towns and big towns all over the place.
So we have a blast doing it.
Melissa: And I think another reason why we like to do it too, is, I mean, obviously we love to see the country and love to get into nature and it's just something fun to do with the kids. But also to, we get a lot of people that say, you know, they live in a rural area or they can't find anything. And I think it's like, there is stuff everywhere.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: And we actually find more sometimes in rural areas.
Rob: In smaller areas for sure.
And you can find greater deals, awesome deals in small areas. So, yeah, don't let that stop you, hold you back. If you guys are in a small area, you can still find amazing deals.
You might not be looking in the right place. But trust me, there are deals everywhere, whether you're in a big town, a small town, whatever it is, you can always find used stuff to flip.
Melissa: And when we're on these trips, we don't usually stop at a lot of thrift stores, but we do whenever we stop for a little longer period of time, like, we stopped at some friends and family and my mom's house.
She had a really good thrift store that we just found, which was a lot of fun. But usually before we stopped somewhere, Rob asked me. He's like, okay, where are we headed tomorrow? And the night before in the hotel, he starts looking at that zip code and like, okay, what can we find in that zip code on Facebook marketplace and OfferUp.
And then he tries to schedule meeting up with somebody if we can. So.
Rob: Yeah, cause a lot of times we're only in a town for 24 to 48 hours and I have to try and get the person to respond back to me. It's not like you have everybody's phone numbers, you can call 'em up in the old days from the classified section and say, Hey, can I come look at this?
Now it is messaging. And some people don't have their notifications turned on, so you have to be able to coordinate this within a 24 to 48 hour period and make sure you can meet them. Sometimes a lot of people work and they can't meet you in the middle of the day. So you have to be able to do all that from the road.
Quite a few things we tried to set up and I didn't get the message back. They didn't message me back until we were already a couple towns, yeah, couple towns up. And there was no way we could go back and get it. So there's awesome stuff that we actually missed on the road just because we could not coordinate the meetup, before we got out of the town.
Melissa: But then we tried to throw it back to our members group too, like absolutely. Who's in this area? Go pick this up cause you can make some money on it.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: So it's a lot of fun. And one other thing before we dive into, the numbers is we had a fun, event that we attended was, that we spoke at, which was so crazy.
We might have to do a whole podcast episode on that because it is something that was way out of our comfort zone. Speaking on stage in front of over 800 people and it was crazy. Yeah. But it was talking about eBay and talking, helping these kids like start and open their minds to different ways to make money.
And it was a lot of fun.
Rob: It was, it was a blast. We had a good time doing, it took a lot of preparation on our part because we were so uncomfortable getting up in front of that many people on a stage, but we had a blast doing it. So yeah. We'll have to see if we can set up a podcast to talk a little bit more about kind of our, our process that we went through and the whole, the whole thing for sure. Yep.
Melissa: The morning we walk in there, we were first to go and the morning we walk in, they open the door and we're like, holy buckets, this room is a lot bigger than we expected.
Rob: It was huge.
Melissa: We weren't really expecting it that big, but it was pretty big, but it could have gone one of two ways.
We were either gonna
Rob: pass or fail.
Melissa: Pass or fail and we passed and it we think it went pretty good.
Rob: It was very, yeah, it was very cool to be able to do that. And we are honored that somebody asked us to do it, the presentation and gotta speak to that many people.
It was a lot of fun.
Melissa: Yeah. A lot of fun. And we'll definitely have to talk about that more for sure. Because doing scary things is not easy. We definitely thought about that a lot.
Rob: But that's your growth when you are reaching out of your comfort zone, when you're doing that stuff, that is when you see the most growth.
And that's the same for us. I don't always wanna be in my comfort zone. I want to be growing constantly. So that was one of the things I definitely did not wanna, do this. I did not want to go on stage in front of that many people. But I knew we needed to do it to be able to grow.
And, yeah, we did. And it was a blast, so, yeah, but that's enough about that. We'll try and do something else with that. Let's get into the nitty gritty of what we are able to get and how much we should be able to make on the items that we actually picked up.
Melissa: It's kind of fun cuz sometimes you go over these things and you remember exactly what state you were in or what parks you were near.
So, we'll try to run through these real fast. So, I think the first, I don't know if these are exactly in order, but.
Rob: No, they're not.
Melissa: So the first one, I think this was the first one was the pop 36 popup hood. 36 inch. No, that wasn't the first one.
Rob: It was not.
The first one was a, like a 45 inch. But anyway, so this is a 36 inch popup hood. This is a kitchen hood. Called telescopic, pop up, whatever you wanna call it. It actually sits behind a cooktop. You press a button and it lifts up and then it actually sucks the, it's a vent hood. It sucks the air down below the cooktop and you have a vent down below that you connect it to, or an exhaust pipe that you hook it down below to.
So really, really cool. These are very, very expensive and desirable. I've sold a couple of these in the past, picked this one up for $30, and we should be able to sell it for a thousand dollars.
Melissa: The kitchen set.
Rob: Kitchen set, this actually got at a thrift store in Colorado, and we bought a whole set.
This is kind of a vintage classic. It's a really, really cool set. It's gonna take the right buyer, but made it's pretty cool made by Thermador. It is white, but it's not the type of white set that you would think of and not like a cheap looking white set. It's like a white glass set. Yeah. Really, really cool.
It's a double oven. 36 inch gas cooktop, another popup vent that goes behind that. And then a 36 inch warming drawer that goes underneath the cooktop. So really, really cool set. Yeah, we are very, very excited to get that. How ?Much did we pay total for that?
Melissa: $200 for the set.
Rob: $200 for that set. And I'm estimating that at least at three grand, we should be able to get three grand for that set.
It's a very, very unique and very cool set. So excited about that.
Melissa: And then the 45 inch was the first one that we got the Jenn-Air.
Rob: 45 inch Jenn-Air. And this is actually the first one that we got the 45 inch cuz we got a couple of these cooktops. The 45 inch that we got is a glass. It's got a downdraft.
So it's same similar thing to a popup vent except for this one's built into the cooktop. You press a button and the exhaust fan sucks it down into event. And this is 45 inches. So I think there is one portion of it has a skillet or a, that's not the right word for it. A cooking area. I can't think of the right word for it, but then you have, I think, six burners on top of that, that you can cook on those as well.
So really, really cool set. What did we pay for that? $65?
Melissa: $65. Yep.
Rob: $65 snag that bad boy. And we should be able to get at least $1,800 for it.
Melissa: And the two warming drawers.
Rob: Warming drawers. These were awesome.
Melissa: I found these, I found that one at the thrift store.
Rob: You did. I think you did. This was at the same thrift store we bought the set from.
Melissa: Five bucks each.
Rob: These were not part of the set. These were Thermador still. It was a Thermador, warming drawers, but they were only 30 inches versus the 36 inches, five bucks a piece. Yeah, we should be able to get, what did we estimate on that? $500. So $250, $250 a piece.
I'm pretty confident that that's what we'll be able to get on those, $250 a piece for these warming drawers. Like I said, Thermador, 30 inch really, really cool set.
Melissa: And the Nordic track.
Rob: Nordic Track. Picked this bad boy up at the conference. So we were in Phoenix, at the conference, I was surfing the marketplace, while we were in bed one night, I think I pulled out my phone or while Melissa was getting ready for bed. And I jumped on there and looked and found this Nordic Track. It was free, a Nordic track achiever. Somebody was just wanting to get rid of it. Set up a meetup, actually went and picked it up. I tried to give the guy some money for a sandwich.
Melissa: You just tried to give him like $10 or $20.
Rob: Exactly. I tried to give him money and he said, no, I don't want it. You guys just go ahead and take it. So I grabbed it and put it in there. Should be able to make about $300, $350 on that Nordic Track. Nordic Tracks still are selling hot. So, love when we can snag one of those.
Melissa: Yeah. And the easy stand was also the thrift store.
Rob: Easy stand. This was another thrift store in Colorado, and I don't really know what this does. I think it's a special needs, unit, something like that where a kid gets strapped into this. And I think you can lay 'em back or you can put 'em up to, to feed 'em and stuff like that.
Don't know that much about it. I have sold some in the past. And what did we pay? $35 for that?
Melissa: Yeah. $35.
Rob: Yeah. And should be able to get what?
Melissa: I put $1,500.
Rob: Yeah, roughly $1,500. I think you can get a little bit more than that, but $1,500 I was very conservative on this. Yeah. Should make some great, great money on that.
It was in really, really good condition.
Melissa: And the miscellaneous pipes.
Rob: Pipes, this was really cool. This was at a thrift store as well. This thrift store was huge, huge. It had a lot of stuff.
Melissa: And we went a couple times cause it was near my mom's house. Yeah. So we had gone a couple times.
Rob: And they had somebody donated it.
I think it's gas pipe fittings, a lot of them.
Melissa: Galvanized right? Or not steel.
Rob: I think galvanized. Yeah, I think they're heavier. Yeah. So it's a galvanized pipe fittings. They had a lot of 'em in the boxes brand, spanking new, that a company donated. So we picked those up. I think we picked them up for two bucks a piece.
What'd you figure out about $20 worth of them? $20 total for them.
Melissa: So $200 bucks.
Rob: And roughly make $200. And these are very, very small, not, not big at all, but we'll be able to make, probably, I don't know, $200 to $250 in that range a piece for them selling them. So cool, cool things.
Melissa: The RV satellite.
Rob: The satellite. This is another, we got this at the thrift store too store. Yeah. Yeah. So we picked this up at the thrift store and paid $10 for it, I think, figured out what, $150, $200?
Melissa: $180.
Rob: $180. So yeah, just under $200 were what the comps were. It's a dome looking like satellite dish that you set outside of your RV, plug it into power, like your cigarette lighter.
And then you also have an antenna cable that you connect to the back of the TV. It's very mobile, very quick and easy to be able to set outside on the ground, pull it in when you travel. So pretty cool. I paid $10 for it, but like I said, just under 200, we should be able to snag be able to sell that for.
Melissa: The Honeywell.
Is that the cell?
Rob: Yeah, these are our same thrift store. We snagged these as well. Honeywell, it's a purifying, cell, that you clean off these things. They look like they're brand new. I don't, I don't, I'm not a hundred percent sure, but they were, what did, what were the comps on those?
Melissa: $130 for both of 'em.
Rob: $130 to sell 'em together?
Melissa: Yeah. Yeah.
Rob: Okay. So $130 to sell as a set. Yeah. And we paid $10, for them. So, yeah. Killer deal on that. Not very big. We'll be able to throw those in easy, a little box. I'll be able to ship 'em so, yeah. Cool, cool flip as well.
Melissa: Electric panel, I think Generac. I don't. Oh, the electric panel, that's it for $15.
Rob: So an actual, like a panel that you put on the side of your house to connect a generator to it. It's a breaker panel. We paid $15 for it? Yeah. Yeah. I think comps, the lowest thing that was listed was like $750. What did I,
Melissa: you put $650.
Rob: $650 Okay. So I think the lowest one I did, I found listed was like $750, for the same type of panel. So yeah, $650, no problem. Conservatively we'll be able to get that for it. Really, really cool panel.
Melissa: And the funny thing is those last couple items we found together. And they're not like those are small for us typically, like they're gonna go in a box and they're not very hard to ship. And we posted some of these, like on our finds as we're going along the road on Instagram.
And some people are like those are way too big to ship. And we're like, yeah, no, these are pretty small.
Rob: These are going boxes. Piece of cake.
Melissa: We call these smalls, but you know, whatever. Yeah. It's all good.
Rob: That's cool.
Melissa: The solo flex that was in Boise
Rob: Solo flex. So found this, it had some, rubber bands with it too, but this, I believe this was a freebie as well. Yeah, wasn't it?
Melissa: Yeah, it was.
Rob: Somebody had this at a yard sale and threw it on I believe it was marketplace and they just wanted to get rid of it. They couldn't sell at a yard sale. Solar flexes are still I've sold 20 some years ago, it's like Nordic Tracks tracks too. Exactly. Sold solo flexes. And this one I'll probably part out cuz they didn't have a ton of rubber bands with it.
The bands that they used for it, they had a couple of 'em. But I'll probably part out they had the leg piece and the other pieces, the other steel pieces. We'll probably part it out. And what'd we figure out make $400, $500 out of it.
Melissa: Five yeah, $500.
Rob: Yeah. Make $500 on parting it out. The leg thing alone sold on eBay for $500.
So, it's one of those things that, yeah, we should be able to make a little bit of money just parting that out.
Melissa: And that same day you got the oven.
Rob: Which oven was that?
Melissa: The oven for a hundred dollars.
Rob: I don't remember, double oven?
Melissa: It was in Boise too.
Rob: Oh yeah. Yeah. That was an awesome one. That was a Jenn-Air oven. That was a, that one has a downdraft on it too. So this one's a little bit different. I went there expecting to pay $125 for it. When I got there, she could not find the actual downdraft motor, from the oven. So, she wasn't there. The person I was communicating with that was her husband. And he said, yeah, if the parts aren't here, I don't really wanna sell it to you.
This is a gorgeous oven. So they didn't have that piece of it. So I said, well, can I give you $60? And if you find the other one, I'll come back and give you another $65, for the rest of it, I'd really like to take this if I can. And he's like, absolutely. So he gave it to us for $60.
I have to either get a downdraft motor, which you can get 'em on eBay, fairly reasonable, $70 to $100. I can buy it on eBay and put it together and we should be able to sell this for over $2,000 or right at $2,000, a really gorgeous, gas range, the oven and gas cooktop with the downdraft on it. So, once I get the other portion to it, the little, fan that actually makes it a downdraft, once I get that we'll be able to get, like I said, around $2,000 for it.
Melissa: And then the oven and the cooktop that we got together.
Rob: That's a really cool one too. That was a good one. This was a Jenn air and it was a double oven stainless steel. And then I think this one was another 45 inch, but it was gas this time. Instead of the last one was electric, a glass, the last one was a glass cooktop.
This one is gas. So, like 45 inches, really a slide in this is a little bit different design too. It slides into the spot, more expensive, more desirable. And we got that for, I think we paid a hundred bucks a piece for each Yep.
Melissa: Yeah. And we had to take it outta the wall.
Rob: We had to uninstall this one out of a house that was getting demolished.
So we actually, pulled 'em apart. I had to take my screw gun up there, take it apart. And then Melissa helped me actually bring it out, loaded into the trailer. So, what do we estimate on that one?
$2,000, 2,500 each. Yeah, yeah, right around five grand for those. And this is a beautiful set of, a cooktop and a double oven.
So that one will sell really good.
Melissa: And then the last two were the big money makers were the turbo chefs.
Rob: The needle movers. And I was pretty excited about these when I found these late one night after we stopped driving. That's when typically I'll just pull out my phone and look, I found these bad boys.
The guy was asking a thousand dollars for one. He only had one listed a thousand bucks for it. I offered him $500 for the one. He didn't get back to me in time and we actually had to take off from Salt Lake. Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere in Salt Lake. We had to take off from there, and go over to Boise.
And we were spending like five days in Boise, Boise, Idaho. So I tried to coordinate it on my way back through going to Michigan, if I could swing in and meet with him and it actually worked out when we got there he said that he actually had two other ones back in the shop, that this one.
Yeah. And I asked him if he would do two for $800. And that was all the cash that I had with me. So he said, absolutely. He went and grabbed the other one. We loaded one in the trailer. He went and grabbed the other one, brought it out and we put 'em both in, but these bad boys, these are not that old.
And they should sell for $7,500 to $8,000 a piece.
Melissa: What do they retail?
Rob: Conservatively I think they're in the $13,000 to $15,000 range. So, and this guy had a restaurant or something. They quit using them or they went out of business or they closed it down. I don't know exactly the whole story, but, they just quit using 'em and they are only a couple years old.
So, yeah, they, they, you're excited to find out very, very, very desirable and they're worth, worth some good money. So those are definitely what moved the needles. Those two right there, were worth like half of what everything else that we put together was, so. Killer killer deal on those. I think those were our last buys weren't they?
Melissa: That was it. Yeah. And we hightailed it to Michigan. So we ended up spending $1,455.
Rob: So $1,400 for all that stuff. That's what we got it for all throughout the U.S. Only had to go $ what was it? $1,455.
Melissa: And then $31,760 is our estimated what you expect to get.
Inventory. That's fine for the, for the items. And I, I wanted to also say that a lot of the reason we can do this is because people will not ship these large items. Like they won't, they just don't want to, like, they wanna get rid of a house is being demolished. A business is going outta it. Like, you don't know the reason or people are just selling it.
They just wanna out of their house. They redo their kitchen. Yeah. They redo whatever and they don't wanna mess with it and ship it. So they just get rid of it for super cheap. We will offer shipping and get it on eBay and then we can ship it.
Rob: So, absolutely. That's what we love. We love to be able to offer these items to anybody, anywhere in the U.S.
Typically we don't do the freight shipping when it goes overseas. Right. But anywhere in the U.S. Somebody who wants one of these items, we will throw it on a pallet and we will ship it and it opens the door for so many more buyers. That we can actually ask more money for these, not more than they're worth.
Yeah. But we can definitely give the buyer still make good profit on our end. But still give the buyer a great item that we can get shipped to their door.
Melissa: So if we average around 50% retail, but I mean, you're getting something for a hundred bucks and if retail's $6,000 and you're, you know, so you're
Rob: sitting pretty and that's what, that's what we look for.
That's what we really specialize is finding the, our money on all the stuff that we do is in the buy. So we try and find 'em for the right price.
Melissa: Yeah. So if you're interested at all in learning about freight shipping or, and how to find these it, these deals and that you can make more money on. Check out our free workshop, because that is what it's all about, because this is how we do our business.
It's our business model of high profit, low volume. So.
Rob: Absolutely. We love it. It gives us more time. Like we did this on a, sorry, a six week road trip. Yeah. That we were able to spend time with our kids, spend time with each other and have such a great time. But we are able to find amazing deals safe.
Easily pay for the road trip, while we're out there having a blast. So check it out, go check out, grab your free seat for the workshop. Check out. We'll tell you guys more about what we do.
Melissa: So I'll have to total total up those, gas prices. So we'll see how much , but this is a trip that we would wanna do no matter what.
So like we love to travel and visit places that if we can have it'll be a work trip and be a lot of it, a write off like that is pretty darn cool. So.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: So even though gas prices are not fun right now. fun times. So yeah.
Rob: You guys rock have a great day. We will see you on the next episode.
Melissa: We're glad to be back.
Thank you guys. We missed you.