Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper share the flip of the week that sold for $7,500.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Flip Of The Week $7,500 Trash To Treasure
Rob: What up guys? On today's episode, we are talking about a trash to treasure. We found something in the trash, turned it into $7,500.
Rob: Flip of the week.
Taking something from the trash and turning it into $7,500. Excited about this one.
Melissa: And I think this is actually maybe the flip of the year. I need to go back and look and see, I know we had one sale that was over this, but it was multiple items at one time, so it was one transaction, but I think this is actually, the highest flip of the year. So I'll have to go back and check that.
Rob: And the only one that came from the trash at this price.
Melissa: That's true. That's true.
Very true. So we'll dive into all of like what we had into it, any fees, and of course the profits, which is always nice to talk about on an item you got for free.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: But before we dive into that, I did wanna talk or acknowledge the fact that we are about to get hit by a hurricane. We are recording this.
Rob: We're getting the winds right now.
Melissa: So we're getting the winds. We are in the hurricane, so it's coming our way. We're in central Florida, Orlando area.
So it's coming our way. We wanted to try to do this. We, our lights have been flickering and we realized we didn't have a episode done for Friday. And yeah, so hopefully we get this done before we lose power. So.
We do, we have 20 mile an hour winds outside the window right now, and trees are blowing around.
Rob: We're not crazy, crazy in the middle of it, but we are feeling the outer bands of the hurricane. So that's pretty cool.
Melissa: And some of our friends have already lost power, so absolutely hopefully we can stick through it.
Rob: But in the midst of that, I was dropping off our, freight shipment two days ago that we are talking about.
Melissa: Oh yeah. You're trying to, to get it out before the, the storm started, for sure.
Rob: Yes. So we're doing that.
Melissa: That was yesterday.
Rob: Was it yesterday? So yesterday. Time flies when you're having fun.
Melissa: It's because we had to prep for the storm too.
Rob: Yeah. . So you guys might be wondering, okay, let me tell you the story, how we found this joker.
You might be wondering how we found it in the trash, how we sold it for so much money. So I was in Carline, this is a couple months ago. I was in Carline and I look over next to the dumpsters, at my kids' school and see a couple machines. They're actually, floor machines. Machines they use for two of them were to clean like gymnasium floors, so they buffer and a, she had scrubber or buffer, something like that.
And then the third one was actually, a machine that you stood on and you wrote it around and it lifted up to about eight foot. So you could do work on ceilings, change out lights, do installs and stuff like that. So all of them were over there in the trash. So I went, picked the kids up, swung the car around into the inside, ran inside and said, hey, are you guys, I saw some stuff out of the, the dumpsters or you guys throw on those things away?
They said, Absolutely. And I said, Do you mind if I take them? They said, No, absolutely you can, you can grab 'em. So I said, I'll be back in 45 minutes, an hour, I'll be back with my trailer and we'll get those bad boys loaded. So I went home, got the trailer, brought her back and brought Melissa with me, brought the muscles, and we got back.
We loaded them up. That's how we found 'em. So.
Melissa: We can't just say we loaded them up. So, Cause yes, we loaded. We loaded them up. He needed, I, I went with him to go get these things in the cause we to like steer 'em and put 'em, We had our, our kids with us, but it wasn't just wheeling them into the trailer.
It was an event. It was definitely an event because we went, you got the first two scrubbers, the blue ones and they were fine. And then.
Rob: The first two I figured out to how to unlock 'em. So these are electric, they're battery powered, each of 'em are like 36, 24 and 36 volts, which means three batteries and two, actually four smaller batteries. Anyways, so I figured out how to unlock the first two. The third one, we did not figure out how to unlock it, so we were.
Melissa: You looked everywhere you thought.
Rob: I did. We were physically musing this thing, and you're talking about something probably weighing close to, I don't know, 700 pounds, 800 pounds and Melissa and I, it's on wheels, but they're locked wheels.
Melissa: They're locked wheels. That is the key. They are locked wheels because the safety break is on it's safety break, is not supposed to move. So we're trying to push this thing and you might have seen it when we posted it on Instagram and like yeah, you might have seen it.
Cause a lot of people are like, the safety break is on, the safety break is on the button's, right under the thing. Turn the brake off. It would've been nice to know. Yeah. At the time because we push, not only did we push that thing, he went and got straps and ratchet strapped and tried to leverage it to pull it up over the walks of the trailer, pushing it.
And yeah, so it was a fun time.
Rob: But I will say we got the first two in, cuz we got three machines that came out of the trash, out the dump by the dumpster. We got the first two in, and Melissa, the one that we just sold for $7,500 was the one. Melissa said, Leave it behind, we don't need it, just leave it there.
And I'm like, no, this one is worth. I'm gonna figure out how to get this joker in here. So, Yeah.
Melissa: Cause I was gonna, it was taking us like 45 minutes. We're trying to get this thing.
Rob: It took a long time this thing in.
Melissa: And yeah, it was a, it was a beast. Anyways, we got it in.
Rob: So it is called a crown wave.
Melissa: And you, oh, you found the button right after.
Rob: I did like, right as we got it in the trailer.
Melissa: Really?
Rob: There was a full down, it was a secret compartment on the front. If you ne if you ever mess with a crown wave on the front end of it, it's got a little door. That doesn't look like a door. It folds down and it's a secret to order. It's got a button there. So you, we could have turned it off and this would've been 10 times easier.
Melissa: A lot easier.
Rob: So, but anyways, that's what we found. We actually found it at, like I said, my kid's school, we found it. They were throwing them away. They were getting rid of 'em. They had been sitting at work for a while.
Melissa: I think they, they'd just been sitting there cuz they weren't working. So, And they needed to be fixed.
Rob: Yeah.
So that's the big thing. And also to be safe, I mean, to be fair. I ordered one of the wheels, because it had been sitting for a while. One of the front wheels looked like it had cracks, which it didn't help in pushing the thing either. No it, it was losing plastic. They're plastic wheels, so it was losing plastic.
So I ended up ordering that from the local manufacturer. Actually I didn't have to order it. I just went and picked it up cuz they had one in stock. And then I had to put batteries. They all four batteries inside this unit were bad. I went and bought new batteries. How much did we pay? It was like $600.
Just shy $600.
Melissa: $600 for everything.
Rob: So we did put $600 into this, but I knew the profit was there. That's why I was willing to do that. So we had $600 invested into it. Once it was all said and done, I put one wheel on piece of cake and this total time spent on this machine was less than an hour, putting batteries in and putting the wheel on.
So not that much time at all. Probably took us more time loading the dump thing with the break on than it took me to put, a new wheel and the batteries into it. So, but then we sold it for $7,500. So killer, killer flip. Absolutely love it when we make. Those high of margins on our flips for sure.
Melissa: Yeah, no, it was a, a nice little, it was cool too, cuz you sold it right when we were about to start the conference. We were hanging out with the kids they had off school and it was like, it came through. We're like, yes, this is awesome. So then we just shipped it out this week. So absolutely. It was a, a fun little sale.
So you want me to dive into it?
Rob: Absolutely. You guys might be wondering what is the underline? What did you guys make on this after you put money into it, after eBay fees and all this?
Melissa: What are the profits?
Rob: Cool notes on this one. As we're going through this, I'll, I'll make up to you guys, so for sure.
Melissa: All right, so we sold the item, they sold the, the wave for $7,500.
Now what, at any time that I report any of what we sold it for, I don't include the sales tax that somebody pays because eBay collects it and remits it. So I even know like our screenshots sometimes have more. It's, we sold it for $7,500 so we don't have to worry about the sales tax. Cost of goods sold zero and then $600 for our batteries in wheel.
Yep. EBay fees were $202. Did you wanna add?
Rob: Yes. So you guys might be wondering, how the heck did we sell so cheap on eBay? This was the fees alone. Yes, the fees, exactly. So typically eBay's fees are, roughly 13% is what you have to pay for seller, or what's it called? Final value fees.
And the processing fees that they put, you have to pay roughly 13% and that usually goes up to $2,500 and then it drops down after that. Different range. They make it very, very confusing. Just let me shortcut you there. Very confusing. But if you go over $2,500, they typically do 13% till there, and then it drops down a lot of times to 2% or 3% after that.
Well, this was in a total different category that I had no idea about. I actually called eBay to ask them about that. Because we were shipping this, I wanted to make sure when the buyer got that, the this, that there was no way for them to come back and say hey this is not as described cause it did cost me.
I shipped this, I put it on a pallet and I shipped it and I said, I wanna make sure that I'm covered under this and they're not gonna be able to come back and do that. And they said, oh, well you need to go into this category. And that's where we're talking this out right now. I don't remember what category it was.
It was something in something in industrial or commercial it is. And where I had to pay, which I don't like paying, insertion fees or listing fees when I list something, but I had to pay $20 to list this.
Melissa: That's a one time fee though, not a recurring fee.
Rob: It was a recurring fee. I did find out it was recurring, so it was $20 a month for 30 days.
And I ended up paying this, which you didn't even have that in cuz I didn't tell you that. We paid for this for I think two, two months. Yeah. So it was an extra $40 over all these fees. Cuz I paid for two months. Once I switched it into that category, I had to pay every month a $20 fee. But it put me into a category that the buyers cannot claim, not as described.
So no matter what, they can't come back and say hey, this was not s described, anything like that. Cause this was an older unit, I think it was manufacturing in 98. It was an older unit. It was a branch on the roof, so it was an older unit and they cannot come back after it's 10 years old. They can't come back and say anything.
Definitely over 10 years old. But they can't come back and say anything about it. So, anyways, that was really, really cool. And the fees on this, since I paid $20 insertion fee, the fees on it were super, super low. Yeah, cuz we usually pay 13% and they're 2.5%, 2.5 on in this category, so, which yeah, it was awesome.
All, all being said. Yeah, it was really low.
Melissa: So you'd add another $40 to that. But, also we did have the promotions as well, so you did promote it. So for, and that was $242. So that was actually more than the, the eBay fees. Yeah, So, so $202 and $242, were our eBay fees and then the shipping cost label, the was $576.
Rob: $576. That's what we paid to ship it. Put it on a pallet, actually, altered a pallet that I had. Put it on it and we shipped it out and still 576 shipping has gone up recently. Normally I probably would've paid about $350 for this, to ship it, but it has gone up. And this was going from Florida, everything, yeah.
Yeah. To California. So it was a really, really far shipment. So anyways, worked out. Not super, super upset about that. California's usually more expensive too. Yeah, it's just so far away from us. That's the deal.
Melissa: So our total profit was $5,880, which might be $5,840 I'll have to check those.
We'll deduct that for you.
$5,840.
Rob: $5,840, guys that we got something out of the trash and was able to turn it into $5,800. I love it. I absolutely love it. So jazzed up, so excited when we're able to, make that kind of money and just be able to, to do these types of flips. I absolutely love it.
Melissa: We recently got a comment that I thought was interesting.
Like somebody's like, well, how are, do you always sell these things or how do you know, like to get it and is it worth it? Like, well, for one, this thing was free, so, but it, it did take some work to load the stupid thing into the trailer. So it did take our time. But you don't really take risks on stuff. No. So you knew even for parts, you could make money on this thing.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: So it was totally worth grabbing it, and if you made it half of that, it would've been worth it. So.
Rob: That's a really good point too, that she brings his parts. I, I could have probably parted this machine out and sold it for more than $7,500 because everything was working on it. I didn't, I wouldn't have to spend the batteries.
I could have just sold the motor, sold all the stuff. But the, the deal with that is it takes a lot longer to move all those parts versus just selling it as one machine. That's why it, it goes back and forth. I probably could have made like $10,000 on parting it out, and that's the case with a lot of stuff.
Nowadays, you can make so much money on older items. People need the parts and they don't want to, when you go to a dealer and try to buy. They're insane. They're just so, so expensive. So people are always looking for those parts. So that was a really good point. But this was also a decent machine. That was really, really cool.
Got some cool videos of me riding around with the kids. It was a lot of fun. So it was cool. I love that kind of stuff too. And another point to this whole thing is we still have two more of these machines.
Melissa: You haven't even listed them yet.
Rob: I haven't, I haven't even checked 'em. I had 'em in the trailer and I haven't even checked them yet.
So I have two more machines. One of 'em was taken apart, so they had, it was in pieces, but all the pieces were there. The other one, there's, it just might need batteries or the batteries charged on it. But it's two more machines that should be around the same price, five to $7,000, per machine if they're running.
And if not, I'll have to part the other ones out and still should be able to make that much money. It just take me longer because I'll have more parts going with it. Yeah.
Melissa: And another question that we get all the time that we actually just got, I posted this, on Instagram and other places. I posted a short of this clip of this video, and people ask, how are you able to ship so cheap?
And I wanted to kind of segue into, if you're listening to this right now, during live, or if you're watching the replay and listening to replay, then it's, it might not be open anymore. But we have, we're opening for, we did right now for listening. Flippy University is open and right now we are planning to close it on Sunday and we are not gonna be opening it as it is right now.
Rob: That's right.
Melissa: So it's gonna be completely different. So this is the last time that you can jump in. If you've been on the fence wanting to jump in, it's last time, you can jump in and have lifetime access.
Rob: That's right. We were in, you might have heard Melissa, we were at a conference last week. And yeah, we've learned a lot about our business.
What we should be doing to help better serve. We can better serve you guys, guys for sure to, to do that. And these are, it's kind of a, a revamp of how Flipper University runs.
Melissa: It's restructuring.
Rob: Yeah. And that's, that's what we're doing. So that's what we're working on. This is gonna be a last time that everybody's grandfathered into Flipper University.
Melissa: For lifetime access.
Rob: Lifetime access into the Facebook group, into the course and all that. So if you're listening to this right now, it is live. You guys can jump over there and jump into Flipper University. And once Sunday comes, yeah, the doors closed, and then we start the revamping, restructuring, of Flipper University, which we're super, super excited about.
But this is the last chance that people will have to get in with lifetime access.
Melissa: And it's, if you wanna check it out, it's fleamarketflipper.com/flipperu and we'll put it down below too in the show notes if you wanna look at it. But we, freight shipping is kind of our jam. It's kind of where we took our business to the next level. It allowed us to just make so much more money in the same, if not a lot less amount of time. And that really benefits our family. It allows us to do more like with the coaching and with putting content out there and helping other people. It just allows us to do so much more.
We don't spend a lot of time looking for stuff. Yeah. And listing and, and ship. I mean, shippings, you know, one item for $7,500, how many little items do you have to ship for that?
Rob: Yeah. And I will tell you too, I had this listed locally the whole time that it was listed on eBay. Yes. And I didn't have a one person reach out locally. That just goes to show you what shipping does. What it will allow outside shipping. Yes. What it will allow you to do in your business For sure. Because if you're getting it to a bigger audience, chances are, and I had a, I even had this sold before we went on our six week road trip over the summer. I had a guy to buy it right then, reach out a week after we were gone and said, I wanna buy it.
I wanna come and pick it up where I wouldn't have had to ship it. But he found it on eBay and said he wanted to come and pick it up and buy it. And I was like, I won't be home for another four or five weeks. So I lost the sale back then, we had to wait a little bit longer and then I ended up having to ship it out.
But that just shows you the power of eBay, getting it, you know, nationwide or worldwide, even on some of your items that you're able to do that. And that's where we've honed in on the, the larger item shipping. It just lets us make so much more money.
Melissa: Yeah. Cause we used to list all of our stuff, all of our big stuff, like, well that's too big, it's gonna go on Facebook or it's gonna go on OfferUp, Craigslist.
And now we barely use those platforms. We should be, we should be crossposting everything more than we do, but eBay still makes most of our sales so, and it's just worth it for us to ship and get to so many more people.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: So, yeah, so thank you guys.
Rob: Awesome.
Melissa: Thank you so much for listening. We hope to see you in our members group and just thank you for always listening and watching.
We love you guys.
Rob: You guys rock. We'll see on the next episode.