Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about their first buy of 2023 — a $32,000 flea market find.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - $32,000 Flea Market Find!
Rob: What's up, pro Flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about the $32,000 find we found last week.
Rob: Alright guys. Today we are talking about this $32,000 find that we just picked up last week. The biggest find of the new year. We're so stoked about it.
Melissa: Of the new year we're a week in. Woo-hoo. But he was actually very like whenever, I don't know. That's one cool thing about this business is, you know, you just go on with your day and all of a sudden, then you find this amazing deal and like his energy just spiked up and is just so excited and ready to, I don't know, make some money, but have fun and find treasures and all the good stuff.
So it's just, it was really, it's fun to see your energy just like peak up.
Rob: Super exciting. $32,000 guys. This is on the conservative side, what we should make off of this flip. So it is very, very exciting when that comes. The best part about this, and we'll talk about the ins and the outs and everything that happened in this, this acquiring, this item or these items.
Yeah, we'll give you guys kind of the points of, you know, stuff you really need to know if you want to get to this level in flipping, which is really, really cool. So.
Melissa: Yeah, and also want to apologize if the sound is a little off. I don't know. We probably told you guys, but our office flooded the other day a couple weeks ago and yeah, so we haven't had a chance to put new carpet in it.
Really echoy in here. So you probably noticed it on the audio. We'll have to get it fixed hopefully soon.
Rob: Yep.
Melissa: So. So, and dealing with that, that was a lot of fun, so I came home, or I came out of the office the other day and he is in the living room taking pictures of this item that he picked up and, yeah.
Rob: So, what is it?
Melissa: What was it?
Rob: So this is what we got, guys. My contact, one of my contacts from the flea market messaged me, a picture. He actually, the first picture that he messaged me had three, hospital or ambulance stretchers on a trailer. And I told him, how much do you want for them? And he went off with a crazy number like he always does cuz he knows we negotiate back and forth. So that's what I ended up. He told me he had a lot more of 'em and he told me to come look at them. So I went over and negotiated with him. And we ended up getting 12 hospital ambulance.
Melissa: And it wasn't just one.
Rob: No, it was. 12 of them , which there's a couple of different points I'll make to this, but when buying how you like to do things, it is buying in bulk. You're able to get a better deal on it. So, yeah, that's what I did. I negotiated to buy all of them from him because that's how he gives me a better deal, and I was excited about that.
Trying not to show my excitement because I knew what they were worth. But trying not to show my excitement to him. And, yeah, that was kind of the ordeal. So we bought 12 stretchers, and I went in and he told me originally that he wanted $500 per stretcher. So he knew the value is there, they're, expensive stretchers.
He knew the value was there and he was trying to get the most out of me. And, I fired back at him for the 12 stretchers. I, I fired back and said, hey, I'll give you two grand, for the stretchers. Which that was our starting point. So he had a starting point. He knew where he had me at, and I knew where he was at.
Melissa: It's a dance. It's a negoti, the negotiation's just a dance. And, and you guys, you do this every time. He always starts out higher. Like most of the people, they start out higher than they want. You start on the low end, so then you can meet in the middle hopefully and come to an agreement.
Rob: And I saw his smile perk up because he knew when there was $2,000 in it.
He's like, all right, I got him at $2,000. What else can I get out of him? And it ended up going to, he told me I had to come up on the price. He, he wanted $2,500, for the lot of 12, which I agreed on, but I threw more stipulations. Now this is pretty cool when you do have somebody that you create a contact with, somebody that you've done deals, and him and I have gone through thousands, tens of thousands of dollars that I bought from him.
So we know each other pretty well. We we're, we know where each other live. It's not like this is just somebody outta the random, so I made a deal with him. I came up to his price, $2,500 for the stretchers. But I did two things. I got him to throw in a couple more pieces, that he had on his trailer, which one was a lift, like a $2,500 lift.
A wheelchair lift. I got him to throw that in on the deal. And then two oxygen manifolds that you can put one line into it and it has like six or seven lines off of it, so multiple people can breathe off this manifold. He had two of those, the oxygen manifold. I had both of those listed for a thousand dollars a piece.
The wheelchair I had, I haven't listed that yet, the list, the lift yet. So I got him to throw those things in. But the best part about this whole deal is, I got him, I had, and I rushed over to him when he had him. I didn't. Good time to go to the bank or anything like that. I had a hundred dollars in my wallet, $120 in my wallet.
And I got him to take the a hundred dollars, give me one of the stretchers that I could take with me. And I told him I would pay him $400 more tomorrow. And then after that, I would give him the rest of the remainder of the money, the $2,000. And a week on Friday, the next week I said I had another check coming in and I would do it.
He went back and forth with me. He jokes with me and all that kind of stuff. So I ended up getting this first stretcher for a hundred dollars outta my pocket. I brought it home that night, put it on eBay, got it listed, and actually got one offer within six hours for $2,300, for one stretcher. I had it listed for $3,400, so I thought that was a little bit low.
I went back and said $3,000 and the guy didn't take it. But it's one of those things. It's always a dance back and forth, but all that being said is there's tons of lessons throughout this process and I wanted to get to a couple of 'em.
Melissa: The biggest one. Yeah, biggest one being create relationships.
And we've talked about this before because it is so important in this business, in any business in life, like creating relationships and it. It has to be a two-sided thing though. It can't be a one. Like you can't go into just all about you. Yeah. You can't go into thinking, I need to create relationships to be successful in my business because I have to do this.
Like it's a reciprocating thing. Like it has to be both. Both sides benefit. Like you have spent thousands of dollars on this guy and you have made, met a lot of money on him, 10 20 hundreds of thousands. A lot of money on him. But you both have benefited from this relationship. Yeah, and it has to come to that.
So it's, you can't just go into it thinking like, well, what can they do for me like that? That's not a good way to think. Like, oh, I can, yeah. Anyway, so yeah, just wanted to add that in, but.
Rob: No, that's good for sure. And it's one of those things where, and I'll give you the flip side of the coin here for him, he's a scrapper.
He gets this stuff for free. So I know he didn't pay a penny for these. He gets 'em for free to get rid of.
Melissa: He's made his own contacts.
Rob: Exactly. And he has, and throughout the years, with lot of businesses. Exactly with businesses, he gets contacts that people say, come pick these up. Come get rid of 'em, which is what he does. Then he calls his contacts of people that he's sold to throughout the years, and he tries to sell 'em at the highest dollar. So, on the flip side of this, if he didn't have me, somebody who was interested in these, he would take them to the scrapyard and he would've got probably about $15 per stretcher that he got. Probably $15, maybe $20.
I don't even think he would've got that much, to be honest with you. Instead he brought it to me and I paid him. It ended up being we, we figured out, I paid $2,200 for the stretchers. I paid.
Melissa: Put $300 to the other stuff.
Rob: Yeah. $300 to the other pieces that we got, $200 to the, the wheelchair lift and a $50 a piece to $183 per stretcher.
Yeah. So it ended up being, he got $183 per stretcher that he got, which he got a little bit more, he made all the money up front, $2,500. So, he made more money and, and that's it. His other option, if he couldn't find somebody to buy him, he was gonna get $10 to $20 on scrap for these. And that's what he does.
Now, his business model is quick. He turns stuff quick. Yeah, he gets stuff. He either sells it or he takes it to the scrapyard, empties his trailer, and he's done in a day. It's like 24 hours he holds onto stuff and does it. Now on the flip side of that is you can't make the most amount of money possible when you don't get it out to the highest bidder. Now that's where we come in and he even made the comment to me, hey, you're gonna sell one of these for how much you're paying me for all of 'em? And I said, you know what? I'm gonna sell them. I don't know exactly what the price is yet. Cause I hadn't done all the comps.
I just knew the name of it. I said, I don't know what I'm gonna sell for. But the thing you have to realize is, I might sit on these for a year. I might take a year to make my $32,000, which I didn't tell 'em the price, but I might take a year to sell these bad boys. You're getting your money right now.
You are walking away with, well, next week you're walking away with $2,500 next week and your hands are washed, you're done. You don't have to deal with anything else. I have to deal with the rest of it. And he thought that took it and he is like, yeah, you're right. So, that's how I negotiated, that's how my negotiating tools with him sometimes are.
So, anyways, that's the flip side of the coin. He could have made probably $10 to $20 per stretcher, which, what does that work out to be at $20 a stretcher? $10, $200. Yeah. So he may, may have made $250, versus him making $2,500. So, it worked out on both ends. We, we made out, we did, we we're both doing well.
I'm just sitting on it a little bit longer so I can make more money on it.
Melissa: So, and putting the effort of listing and putting on eBay. So like there is more steps involved.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: To make your money, but it's still a very good turnaround, so, absolutely. And hopefully we can get, are these ones all there's two different kinds, right?
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: But are they ones that you can take pictures of and then list multiples?
Rob: Multiples. Yep. So I got two different types out of the deal that I did with him. Eight of 'em are one type and then the other four are a different type, different. So I can list two listings and then do multiple listings on each one and just keep selling them over and over and over until they're sold.
Melissa: So, so how does somebody go about making, like creating a relationship if you're thinking, okay, I wanna get in this business. This sounds great to have people. Texting me stuff that they have, like, does that really happen? Yes. A lot of people do this and you can do it. It's not, it didn't take you very long because I think when we, you always just did this on the side and you never really told anybody about what you did.
Really. Yeah. You're just like, you know, wanna buy stuff or whatever. Now, like, we're a lot more open with. I, you know, I'm, I look for stuff. I buy stuff. I sell stuff. Like that's kind of what we do. But at the flea market, he was very consistent from when we started. We jumped into this seven years ago full-time.
Like this was our bread and butter. We had to make this work at that point, like we needed, we had three little kids. We had to make this work. So you were there every Saturday and almost every Sunday too. And you see the same people over and over again. So if you go to some of the same thrift stores, you go to some of the same flea markets, you go to some of the same auctions, you see the same people, you see the same managers, the same vendors, and you just are nice to them and start conversations.
I mean, you're pretty good at starting conversation, I feel, but just being nice.
Yeah. It's not that hard.
Rob: Yeah. It's just building a relationship. And that's all that I did in the beginning and it didn't take me that long at all. No. I still remember the first thing that I bought from this contact that I got, these things, I bought a, air compressor, a diving air compressor that he got for free.
I think he got it outta the trash, to be honest with you. And he was selling that stuff to the flea market, and I think I paid him $80 for it, something like that. And it was like a $2,500 unit. But from then on out, him and I, I knew the kind of items that he would get. He would get really cool, expensive stuff and he'd get it for free, and then he'd give me a really good deal on it.
So, when I started seeing him over and over at the flea market and the stuff that he got, was more commercial stuff, was really higher end stuff. I was, I started building a, a relationship with him and I got his phone number and said hey, you have any of this stuff? And slowly by surely we built that, that relationship.
And I did this with a number of people from the flea market who week in and week out had the cool stuff, that I knew I could make money on. That's how I built those relationships with them. But you can do that at the flea market. You can do it at thrift stores, you can do it, even at yard sales. You can do it at yard sales.
If you find somebody who has some cool stuff and you ask 'em, hey, how often do you get this stuff? I mean, you can build a relationship very quickly with somebody at a yard sale if they have a constant flow of merchandise, and the merchandise that you like, you can build that relationship, get their phone number, come back and, and keep buying and buying and buying from them.
Yeah. So it's a huge point to create those relationships.
Melissa: And you don't know what else those, those people have. What else they have? We know a lot of times people like, hey, I wanna come back to my storage unit and see you can come check out what I have. Cuz they didn't bring everything to the flea market or they didn't, you know, so we've done that several times.
Yep. And that's how you get people's numbers and you're just nice to 'em. You even made a contact with a manager at Lowe's because we would get scratch and dent stuff. You would get it, remember they would price it down and then you'd negotiate. Yep. And you'd be, you could negotiate at Lowe's.
Rob: So , Frankie, Frankie was our, our contact.
I still remember that guy, and I bought some stuff from him in probably over 10 years, but it was one of those, it was, it was one of those things that we were nice to him and then we saw him on, they did their markdowns on Saturday, put stuff out and we'd go in and talk to him and ask him to bring the price down a little bit more and he would do it.
So it's just one of those things, you really have to be consistent. Wherever you're going, whatever you're doing, be consistent and you'll start to see those people to be able to create the relationships, the contacts that you need to.
Melissa: So, yeah, and even, don't discount even on social me or, not social. Yeah, like Facebook Marketplace offer up, if you look on people's listings and then you see they have multiple listings, like they might be somebody where maybe they're scrap or maybe they, they do this too and they're doing it in the local market and it's just, you never know. You know, it just pays to be nice and, and start a conversation with people.
Yeah. So, so you found a couple that were on OfferUp that had the multiple, the kinds of stuff that you like to buy? Yep. And then you look and they have one thing listed, like, oh look, they've got 10 of these types of things listed. And that's what I like to, to sell. So.
Rob: And it's not that hard. It's not that hard to just do a little bit of extra research before you go to somebody.
If you're buying something on Marketplace, offer up, to find out if they have multiple items like that, that you can create that relationship. And then when you're there, all you have to do is, you know, Hey, I see you get these things. How often do you get these? Can you call me next time you have it? Can I leave you my phone number or can I take your phone number?
Can you send me a text? You know, when you get one a picture, it's very, very simple to create those contacts, but those contacts will pay you. The contacts that I have made through the last couple years have paid me thousands, tens of thousands of dollars on the deals that I've been able to find.
The other thing that you have to remember on this, I didn't have to wait for this contact to take this stuff to the flea market to sell it. He messaged me when he got it and I went and picked it up that day. I went and picked up that one, picked up the other ones the next day. So I got all of the items, I got all of these stretchers by paying the guy $500 upfront, $2,000 in a week.
Now my goal was to get the one listed and get it sold that I could pay him the rest of his money. And have that done. So, as of the time of recording, we still have I think four days before I do it.
Melissa: You could've taken the offer.
Rob: I could've taken the offer, could've, would've paid for it. I could've. And, but I wanted a little bit more out of it, and I think that's fair to do. So, it's one of those things that, yeah, absolutely i, if I can get the one sold and pay for all of 'em, and then I just have to wait for the other ones to sell, that's a really, really good practice.
Melissa: But you wouldn't have been able to do that deal if he wasn't, if he was just some person you didn't have a relationship with. Exactly. So you guys have trust built in. Yeah. You know, you make these deals, you know, so often. So, there's a trust that you wouldn't let, just let you take 12 of 'em and not pay. Yeah. But you know, but absolutely just the $500, so having that trust there is, it does help a lot.
I also wanted to add in, we have members too, that have created relationships with, what, not retail stores, but like, like different kinds of stores and departments and, and you can get to know some of these things like, If you get to know the people that are getting rid of the return pallets or the, there's so many different people that you could get to know, if you make an effort to.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: To do so. So, so that can help and definitely just be nice and be friendly and don't make it all about you. Make it about them. Yeah. And yeah.
Rob: Just a friendship. Just create a friendship with people. It's really, really cool when you do that. What can come of it?
Melissa: So, and you both win. It's a win-win situation, so, and stuff gets saved from the trash.
Like, it makes me sad to, if you say like, he ends up throwing a lot of stuff in the, you know, like, and that's kinda like, ah, all that stuff just goes and it's wasteful. Absolutely. And it could be reused and it's perfectly fine. We just have to get, we people just get rid of stuff. So.
Rob: Yep. Put two and two together, put people together and be able to create those relationships and then be able to create the income.
He made good money on it, we made good money on it, or we'll make good money on it. So yeah, just some stuff to think about.
Melissa: I'm hoping when this one goes live, we got that one sold, so we'll see. Yeah. Let us know.
Rob: We got a couple days to get it done and get it paid for. Excited about that. So, guys, that was really the point of it.
Melissa: First find of 2023.
Rob: It is the first buy, and it's got a huge exponential possibilities. And like we said, $32,000 is conservative. We're underneath anybody else who is selling these things right now, so we can.
Melissa: Yeah, some of 'em should go for $3,000 and then there's a couple for $2,000 each.
Rob: Right, exactly.
So, and if I wanted to like, a lot of stuff that we preach is about having good feedback and asking more than what the competitors have, if they have lower feedback or if they don't do it as much. So, and we totally could be at $4,000 a piece on these. And, yeah, I'm at this point right now where I wanna get the one paid for.
And then if I raise the price, I mean we're talking $40,000, $50,000 if I decide to sit on them for a little bit or price them where they really should be. So it's really cool. The potentials are endless where you're able to, do this business so, so exciting. Where else am I gonna get a text on a Tuesday afternoon?
Come check these bad boys out. And I got $32,000 in inventory. With only.
Melissa: Like, you just have to, again, if you're listening to this as audio on podcast, just think of like you, he looks at the text and just lights up like completely. It's so much fun. And he comes home after he leaves for a little bit, he comes home just like ecstatic and so excited. Yep. So, and that excitement will come back again once they sell. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's fun. It's a fun job. You know, it's fun. Yep. To see you. So excited. So you guys are awesome. Thank you so much for listening, and we will catch you on the next episode.
Woohoo.