Rob & Melissa from Flea Market Flipper interview Ray Solorio from The Nashville Flippers about getting started reselling on eBay and where to source items.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Interview With Ray From The Nashville Flippers
Rob: What's up, guys? On today's episode, we are so excited to talk to Ray with Nashville Flippers, so excited that he's gonna come bring the information for us and give us a little peek into his business. So, Ray, thanks for jumping on here and doing this with us.
Ray: For sure. For sure. Thank you so much, Rob and Melissa for having me, if you don't know, my name is Ray, one half of the Nashville Flippers.
My brother-in-law Dustin and I we've been reselling part-time for around five going on six years now. So we're really excited. I'm really excited to be on your guys' show and talk reselling.
Melissa: Awesome. So fun. We actually got to be on your YouTube live last night. So that was really fun to talk to you.
So now we get to ask you stuff about your business.
Ray: I love it. I love it.
Melissa: It's going to be fun. So give us your, you and your brother-in-law are doing this together kind of, and you're doing it part-time. So tell us, like, how did you get started in this, in the flipping?
Ray: I know that the origin story between Dustin and I.
They're different, but kind of similar. We like interweave paths, but as you can see behind me, I have boxes and boxes of these sneakers that are sitting in my living in my office. So the first introduction to eBay for myself was I'm a huge sneaker collector. Right? So back in, back in the day I had all this sneakers and I'm like, man, I need to get rid of some of this stuff.
What's the best way to do it? And that's where I discovered eBay. So I started reselling my personal collection on eBay, you know, used sneakers just trying to get rid of 'em making money or whatnot. Right. So I did that completely forgot about eBay for a long time. And then about six years ago, I remembered, hey, I need a, I need a, you know, you have all this stuff that's coming outta your bank account each month, your gym membership, your Netflix and all this random stuff that comes out.
I'm like, I need to find something to kind of pay for all this stuff that comes out every month and I'm like, well, I can sell stuff on eBay, but what do I have to sell? So real, just really easily I would go to like five below or the dollar store and scan stuff on eBay and just see if I can make five bucks on an item.
You know, if something costs five, if I could sell it for like $18. I'm like, man, I can do this and sell the same thing. And my Netflix subscription and my gym subscription would be paid for for the month. Right. So I started doing really well on that. And then it just grew into yard sales and Amazon liquidation stores.
And I told my brother-in-law, hey, I'm making this much money and doing this on the side. Let's do this together. Let's try this. You need to try this. And so he's like, okay, let's do it. And then we did reselling for about a year and a half and we were doing really well. And I told Dustin I'm like, I wanna tell as much as many people as possible that they can make this much money just doing it part-time. And so that's when we started a YouTube channel and it evolved into, TikTok, an Instagram page, a podcast. Yeah, that's just kind of snowballed into what it is today.
Rob: That's awesome. And I've never heard that type of take I've and, but it's an amazing, it, it, it's a cool tweak. Hey, I have these subscriptions that are coming out every month.
How can I pay for those subscriptions with flipping dude? That's amazing. I love that. That's so cool. Such a, like a mind hack that you can think about and that'll get you kind of your goals to get started. And yet then you progress from there.
Melissa: Grow to the car payment grow.
Rob: It's awesome.
Ray: Exactly.
Yeah, cause it's like, man, I don't want to give up my wWE network subscription, you know, but it's like, you know, find different ways to pay for it.
Melissa: I think that is a, a kind of the way we think too about, you know, instead of cutting back, keep cutting, cutting. You can only cut back so much.
Ray: Exactly..
Melissa: Before you, like, don't enjoy anything anymore, you know?
Ray: Exactly.
Melissa: You still have to be able to enjoy life. So then just have to make a little bit more that's it. To enjoy those, those little things for sure.
Rob: For sure.
Melissa: And which platform did you start with? Did you say?
Ray: We like eBay. eBay is like our number one.
I mean, I would say 99.8% of the stuff that we sell is on eBay. We do a little bit of Facebook Marketplace just for the bigger items that we might pick up. But, you know, eBay is our, eBay's our bay, you know, that's, that's our bread and butter right there.
Rob: Yeah. So you started out with shoes. Are you still doing shoes or what? Where's your bread and butter?
Ray: I do love and that's back to finding things to flip for, to purchase things that you want. So I still collect shoes here and there, but I don't necessarily resell shoes. I mean, I can go to a thrift store or an Amazon bin store or a Goodwill bin store. And I know what shoes to pick up, which really helps.
We don't really specialize in reselling shoes.
Rob: Okay.
Ray: We could, but just, you know, the shoes that are reselling for a lot of money, it's not like it was back in the day before I remember waiting in line and guaranteed the shoe that I won my size. Now it's like, you have to put in an app, win a lottery, and it's like, you may profit, maybe $50 after it's said and done.
So. Yeah, I like wearing 'em. I don't necessarily like reselling the hype sneakers if you will.
Rob: Okay.
Melissa: The sneakers selling business is a, that's a crazy one to get into.
Ray: Yeah. It's, it's a monster for sure.
Rob: So do you have anything else that you do? Like you, you specifically look for it now or do you, what are you, what are you drawn to?
Ray: For finding things to resell, like, what are we drawn to? Yeah. I mean, Dustin and I, we really, I mean, we're a 36 year old millennials. Right. You know, we're we grew up in the nineties. So any nostalgic nineties thing that we, we are drawn to it just because that's what we like to resell, you know, video games and Pokemon cards, collectible toys. And, you know, you see a Kermit the frog right here. Like things like that like really, really get our juices going. So if we can find that nineties nostalgia or anything that reminds us of what we were when we were kids, that's really like what we like to sell. It makes us feel good, but we have to remember that not everybody likes that stuff. So, you know, a lot. I don't know, just random stuff that we'll just find to make a buck on is completely fine. You know?
Melissa: It's vintage now, back from whenever we were kids.
Rob: So I like the word nostalgic better though, because we've been saying, it doesn't sound as old as vintage.
Like you usually refer to it. So I really like that.
Melissa: You got that game boy, not that long ago. You're really excited about, I felt like a game. Do you still have it?
Rob: I do. I have a couple game boys to show the game. My problem is I like that stuff. I have a hard time selling it because it brings me back to my childhood and I'm like, I wanna collect this and let my kids play.
And I don't really wanna get rid of.
Ray: So, yeah, the good thing about finding that stuff is, you know, like I have a couple like in box, you know, I have a super Nintendo and like a Sega Genesises like complete in box. I would find like at a yard sale and I would never find any stuff unless I would buy it on eBay.
So it's a good way to find some of the stuff that you never had when you were a kid. So, yeah.
Rob: That's awesome.
Melissa: What, so when you were starting out six years ago, you said about that, what did you know the shoes? So that's why you wanted to start or did, did you just branch into the different things and learn the different items?
Cause it can be overwhelming. That's where a lot of people, when they're trying to start, they get overwhelmed by, they don't know to start. There's all these things like that I can look up, I could be here for days looking up items. Like what do I even start?
Ray: I say, you know, start what you know, so we, we knew about shoes.
We knew about our childhood, if you will. So we know that, okay, this, Hey, Arnold collectible, Funko, pop may sell from, you know, just things that you know, but, what really the big game changer. So we live in Nashville. There's a, like a Amazon distribution center in Lebanon, Tennessee, where it's like 30 or 40 minutes away south of us.
So there's these Amazon liquidation bins. They're popping up everywhere around, around Nashville. Right? And so we found one 20 minutes away from us. We went there for the first time and we were completely hooked. We've never been into a Goodwill bin place, any kind of bin store. So we've been going to that every Saturday for the past six years different ones and you just dig and hopefully you find something that's profitable and we just scan it or look it up. So it's easy to kind of do that, you know, and not waste a lot of time because again, we do work full time, so we have to make sure that we maximize our time, the best way that we can and not just go to a thrift store every moment of every day, hoping to find something that's profitable on a Saturday morning.
If it's a good Saturday morning, we can easily net $2,000 every time between the two of us, you know?
Melissa: Yeah.
Ray: And then have the rest of our Saturday free to do whatever we want.
Rob: Wow. That's awesome. Heck yeah.
Melissa: So we've never been to no Amazon bins. I didn't even really knew. I knew that. The Goodwill bins, but I never know Amazon had bins that's really, and they probably are everywhere.
Really? Right?
Ray: Yeah. They're in the south mostly because of the labor laws and regulations and stuff. It's a little better. And, you know, whenever someone purchases something on Amazon and we've all done, it we've bought the wrong thing or something happens it gets returned and they just, they can't resell it.
So it gets liquidated to the highest bid and they also have, you know, Target shelf pulls, Walmart shelf pulls anything that is in clearance and didn't really sell, it gets liquidated into these places. And we found, I found iPhones in there, iMac computers, you know, Bose headphones, iPhones, iPads.
Everything you can think of. We've found in those been been places.
Rob: How, how do, sorry? How do they price it? So it's in a bin and do you pick it and are there individual prices per unit?
Or how do they price it?
Ray: Everything, depending on the store, the, we go to a couple ones. There's three of them in particular, one of them is five, everything in there is $5.
And there's $5 on the day that we, they restock and throughout the week, it gets cheaper. So by the Friday everything's like a quarter, but by then, there's really not anything worth picking up. But, there's like $5 ones, there's $7 ones, $8 ones. The better ones there, I've seen some up to $15 an item, which is that's a little much for me.
I'm trying to think of something recently that we found. I know if you go to our Instagram page and our, if you go to our TikTok, we have the largest following on there on TikTok. I post the constantly things that we find in there and we found, I found an Xbox one there one time, brand new, still in the box.
For, for $5, we have a whole YouTube video about it. And, a lady there was looking for one for her boyfriend. So she just gave me I think it was like $300 and I just gave it to her. She was hoping to find it and she didn't find it. So she gave me the money and that was like and I didn't even pay for it. Think about that. So it was just the finding fee. Last black Friday, this store had two PlayStation fives. They posted on their social media and I was the first one in line and I completely missed it. I didn't, it was like right in front of me and I completely missed it. And it's the video that I filmed.
It just hurts me every time cuz I can see it in the footage. It's right there. And I pick up another box and someone just came by and swooped it right up. And I was the first one in line. So I'm like, man, I'm guaranteed to get this PlayStation five.
Melissa: How early did you have to get there?
Ray: It was pretty early.
It was pretty early. It was the, it was not my, not Dustin, but my other brother-in-law were having Thanksgiving dinner. And, I also got him into doing it part, you know, part-time making extra money and I'm like, hey man, do you want to just go, go ahead and go and wait in line. He's like, yeah, man, let's do it.
So we spent the night in the car, in the front of the store, we were there when they closed. So they knew that we were in front of the store and when they opened, we were still there and it was painful to watch me miss that PS5, just sitting there in the bin and completely neglected.
Rob: Dude. That's crazy.
Melissa: It's rough because you have the video, you replay it over and and over again.
Rob: What about big stuff? So do they do any like the bins? I know it's called the bins, but do they have any like the larger items that they have returns on and, and liquidate them or is that a different whole other portion?
Ray: I think that might be a, I mean, they do have, I, they do have like furniture and stuff.
Rob: Okay.
Ray: But they put it separate and they price it individually.
Rob: Okay.
Ray: Which is still a pretty good deal.
Rob: Okay.
Ray: But it's just like individually priced like this, but the $7 bin store that we have one day, they had pallets of karaoke machines with like the TVs and stuff.
But they individually priced those cuz they knew that eventually they were gonna sell. Yeah. It's like, yeah, we can't put $7 on this thing. We gotta put at least a hundred bucks or something on there, but they do have like furniture and I think they had a pallet of like power wheels. So they built 'em all they put 'em all together and they put prices on 'em and stuff, so.
Melissa: Okay. Okay. Interesting. We have to go check these out.
Rob: Heck yeah.
Melissa: Now we gotta go to the Goodwill bins. We gotta go to the Amazon bins. We gotta find all yeah.
Ray: Amazon bins for sure. The trick for people they always ask is what's the trick what's going. How do you find the profitable items at these Amazon bins?
The key is to follow them on social media, you know, figure out how the store works and then be there, probably want to be the top 50 in line. Right. Okay. And even if you're the first, like the story that I just told you, you're not guaranteed to get that big, big ticket item. I've seen people way in the back of the line find like iPhones and the key is to not just, you know, you bring your Ikea bags or you, you bring whatever, grab what you think is profitable. Throw it in your bag and you can look it up later and just keep it moving, you know?
Rob: Good tip.
Ray: Cause you can always put it back. You can't, you know, you don't wanna stop and look at it and try to scan it or figure out what it is.
Cuz then all the good stuff is already. Getting picked up.
Rob: Yeah, absolutely. That's a great tip.
Melissa: Yeah. What is one of your most memorable besides the missing the like memorable flips that you did, have done?
Ray: I would say one day, I think Dustin actually found a Samsung phone that day, but one day we went to our $5 bin bin store and I found probably, you know, those Cabella big buck hunting games with that comes with the gun.
So I found it came with the gun and then the Nintendo switch game, I found four of those. Right. And some guy bought all of all four of 'em and I think he bought 'em to sell on Amazon cuz they were brand new. And then the same day and the same bin, I found these, you guys have kids, so you probably know what this is, those outlet sock monitoring systems for like a baby.
Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ray: So another tip, any, any packaging that you see that kind of Bluetooth links to your phone? Throw it in your bag every time. So I found, I didn't know what it was. So I found this, this thing and I'm like, what is this? I knew what it, you know, I knew it linked up to your phone.
So in the same bend, there was like five of them. So I just threw 'em in my bag and I pull it out and there's a lady next to me and she's pregnant and like really pregnant, pregnant. And she was like, oh, you found one of those. I've been looking to get one for my baby. She's like, how much do you want for it?
I don't know, gimme $50 or gimme $100. I didn't know what, how much it was at the time. She's like, are you sure? I'm like, yeah, you're pregnant. I'm not, you know, I just found it, you know, gimme $100. She gave me $100. I handed it to her. I looked it up. It's like a $350 thing.
Melissa: Wow. Wow.
Ray: So the $100 paid for all the stuff that I had. And then. All the rest of, you know, the $350. So that was probably one of our biggest, one of my biggest finds.
Melissa: That's a fun one.
Rob: Wow. That's cool. Yeah.
Melissa: So where do you keep like store all of your stuff? I can see this.
Ray: In my, I have a garage.
Melissa: Okay.
Ray: So I have a garage with every, all the packing supplies and all that stuff in there. This is my home office, if you will. So I have two, I have a listing station that I'm sitting right here. So anytime I want to come in here and list, and then I have another listing station in the garage, just because it's easier to just to bring in the inventory listed and then put it away.
But if I have smaller items, maybe, you know, like little action figures or something, I'll just throw it in a bag and I'll do it here while I'm watching YouTube videos or listening to a podcast or whatnot.
Melissa: Yeah, that's good to have a system. I think having a space helps so much where you actually can take your pictures, get it listed.
Than having to always have to clear out for sure a area to do it. I think.
Ray: That sounds like a disaster. Yeah. I can't imagine having to do that every time.
Rob: Yeah, for sure.
Melissa: Yeah. What on average, do you have, like, as far as items listed, like how many, how many? We're always curious, like volume.
Ray: We like to, we don't, again, we, we do this part-time so I think I currently have around 500 items listed.
Melissa: Okay.
Ray: You know, for us, I think it's good. Cuz we want, I like to keep everything moving, moving. Yeah. Yes. I'm in the selling business. I'm not in the storing business, you know what I mean? Yeah. So I want to keep it in, keep it out. And I think, I don't know how many items Dustin has. I think it's probably less if not around the same.
Melissa: And you can. And how much on average are you selling? Probably?
Ray: Like items or what? Like price point?
Monetary. Yeah.
Per on my, what is it, cost per item. I think it's around 40 to 30, which that's kind of like where I want to be. Yeah, because yeah. It's easier for me to sell a $30 item than sell like a hundred dollars item.
You know what I mean? Yeah. So especially if I'm getting it for five bucks, that's easy flip all day. Yeah. That's nice. You know, but I love finding those a hundred dollars items, don't get me wrong.
Melissa: They are fun.
And you're doing this all just in your garage, which is awesome because a lot of time people do think that you have to go right away, go get a storage unit or go and know no like you do with what you have. So, yeah.
Rob: That's awesome for sure. That's really cool.
Melissa: Can you think of any bad buys like bad?
Ray: Oh man. Bad buys.
Melissa: You thought were gonna be amazing.
Ray: Well, I haven't, I haven't processed this by Saturday and this is really new.
So I had a coworker that recently retired, well, she's been retired for like year and she hit me up. She's like, hey, I know that you resell my grandson's getting rid of all of his Nerf guns. Right. I don't know anything about Nerf guns. Not anything about Nerf guns and I'm like, would you like to buy these Nerf guns?
I'm like, well, send me a picture. Whatever. She sent me a picture of big, a huge pile of Nerf guns. I think there was like 50 Nerf guns, right? Different sizes, cross boats, things like that. And I'm like, okay, how much do you want for the Nerf guns? She's like, gimme a hundred dollars and you can take all of 'em.
And I'm like, okay, if I sell each Nerf gun for like 10 bucks, I'm gonna be making a profit. So it's a risk cuz I don't know anything about Nerf guns. So hopefully that's not gonna be my worst buy. Because I still have to process like 50 Nerf guns and I'm not looking forward to it and it doesn't excite me.
And I know there's so many parts and moving pieces and some of the Nerf guns may be broken, you know, cuz they're like some of 'em may, may need batteries. So hopefully that's not my worst spot.
Rob: Hopefully not a bust. Yeah. That's cool.
Ray: Hopefully not a bust, but a good thing about going to an Amazon bin store or a bin or Goodwill bin store is that your risk is really low cuz your price point is, is low five bucks. I can lose five bucks, you know? Right.
Rob: Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Plus the way you're doing it, you're throwing it into a bag. You're checking it before you buy it so it's really hard to lose that money, even, even though it's only $5 cuz you're checking before.
So that's cool for sure.
Melissa: I'm curious how you, you, you work full time. You're doing this. You're reselling part-time, but you're also doing videos and podcasting. That stuff takes a lot of time. Like we know it does. That probably takes more time than the actual reselling sometimes. So.
Ray: Well, I've been. And I took art for school. Right. So I got to, you know, piddle with Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, some editing software, all that stuff. So I kind of know a little bit like going in. Yeah. So it wasn't the barrier of learning wasn't as large, if you would say. Yeah. Right. And I'm always, people need to always be educating yourself on how to easily do things.
So for instance, the podcast that we filmed yesterday, It was live. So that's content that's live. People can go back there and watch it. So it's a rerecorded prerecorded video if you will, I'll take the audio, I'll put it up. And then on the same thing, I'll take little snippets of that. And then I'll put it into a nine by 16 and put it on TikTok or Instagram reels or whatnot.
So, same thing with YouTube videos. I'll take little clip, its, and then I'll make a video. Or if I'm at a thrift store, I'll quick, quickly take a video and then later I'll put it together on my phone and do a voiceover or whatever, and I've gotten really good at it. So it takes time. So it's, there's different avenues and tips and tricks to kind of maximize your time as best as possible.
Rob: Right? Yeah. And I think you more, you do just like you're saying, the more you do it, the more comfortable you get with it, the better, the quicker you get, the more efficient you get with it.
Ray: Exactly.
Rob: So that's cool.
Melissa: So are you doing most of your listings, like in the evenings after work or?
Ray: I do the majority of my listing. I do. I try to list and this doesn't always happen at least five things, a day, which again, this isn't always happen, but the majority of my listings is I do it on Saturday. Saturday is really like my reselling day. So source try to list everything that you purchase that day on Saturday.
And then if there's anything spillt over. I try to do as minimal as possible on Sundays, just because that's the day of rest. You know, we really don't want to do a lot on Sundays. So, but have fun on a podcast, you know, late Sunday evening , you know, but, yeah, I try to not do as much on Sunday. If anything will list a couple things that are left over for Saturday and, shipping wise, either I'll come home and I'll ship every, you know, get everything ready or before work, I'll get everything ready and, and do my thing, but.
Melissa: That's awesome.
Rob: That's cool. You got a great system system. Nice system, for sure.
That's awesome.
Ray: I don't have, I don't have any kids yet. so that does help. So, that does help.
Melissa: But they also, I mean, it does throw a little more into the mix, but they also know like they watch, they see him packaging stuff, they see him like trying to get them to start listing.
I'm like, man, when our nine year old gets to where she's getting closer, she could really do listings for us. We could pay her to get some stuff listed.
Ray: That'd be great.
Melissa: Amazing. And what a great skill set to learn, how to do this stuff. For sure. So yeah, so that'll be fun
Ray: I had a family friend, we did a, you know, he wants to get into like video recording and stuff.
So I'm like, hey man, come with me. I'm going into this, Funko pop, con not a, like a pop swap. They call it where you can change out, you know, meet different people in the, in the community and kind of see their collections and buy, sell, and trade. I'm like. Why don't you film me going around asking people questions and he's like, okay, cool.
And I'll buy you lunch and I'll throw and you can buy whatever you want there. Right. He's like, I think today he's a freshman now, but before he was like in eighth grade and his skills were so off and I'm like, we need to, which that was a mistake on my part, cuz I never told him, okay, you need to hold the camera this way.
Make sure you're not too shaky or whatever. I figured. You know what they said when you assume something, you know? So I just gave him the camera and I'm like, just point and shoot, you know, but he didn't know how to do it. So the, the footage was extremely shaky, but, but hopefully down the road, he can be our video guy.
So we can always have somebody recording us while we do stuff. So that's the ultimate goal.
Rob: That's awesome.
Melissa: Need to get one of those,, the steady things, yeah.
That like takes the shaking out.
Ray: It was well, see I did it on my, so I was interviewing people at the time, so I had like this road microphone, so okay.
You know, so it was connected to the DSLR. Oh. And so it wasn't like a GoPro or anything. So it was very. You know, jittery back and forth, but he's learning, he's learning.
Rob: That's cool.
Melissa: It's a great skillset to learn too. Exactly stuff that will help them out for sure. Yeah. In the future. Cause it's all electronic sales, digital stuff.
Rob: Well, ray, we wanna be respectful of your time. We greatly appreciate you doing this. Where can people find you? Definitely let us know. We'll put some links below for sure. But where's the best place people can reach out and hook up with you?
Ray: Yeah, for sure. So of course you guys, if you want to learn, if you want to check us out.
Make sure to subscribe the YouTube channel, the Nashville Flippers, follow us on TikTok, the Nashville Flippers Instagram, the Nashville Flippers. And if you wanna listen to our podcast, it's called this week in reselling available everywhere you can listen to podcasts.
Melissa: Awesome. I'll definitely have all those links in the show notes so you guys can check them out. Definitely go up, follow him on your favorite platforms.
Rob: Yeah. Ray, this has been so much fun. Thank you so, so, so much for doing this and, yeah, we'll talk to you soon.
Ray: Yes, sir. Thank you so much, Melissa and Rob for having me and take care guys.