How Dominic Carone from Prime Time Treasure Hunter makes over $5K per month reselling comics, Disney, and other unique items in his part-time flipping business.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PrimeTimeTreasureHunter
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prime_time_treasure/
Podcast Episode 23 - Prime Time Treasure Hunter
Rob: Awesome. On today's episode, we have Dominic here with Prime Time Treasure Hunter, and we're super stoked to be able to talk to him and create some great tips from his business today. So Dom, thanks for jumping on here and spending some time with us today. We greatly appreciate it.
Dominic: I appreciate it too.
Thank you very much for the invitation. It's an honor to be on with you both.
Melissa: Yeah, welcome. So, tell us, to start off, just tell us a little bit of background and tell us a little bit about yourself and how you kind of got started in this whole thing. And yeah, let us, let us know.
Dominic: Yeah. So, technically if you want to go back to, when I originally started with something that you could refer to as reselling would actually be when I was a teenager and I would take some of my comic books from my comic collection and bring it to the, English town auction in New Jersey with my friends, we'd wake up like six o'clock in the morning, drive out there with some plastic tables and chairs and sit out there all day and sell something.
You know, comic books that we had doubles of, or, you know, just didn't want anymore and wanted to save up to buy something more expensive. But we weren't buying them originally for the purpose of reselling. That was just something we were due to get rid of them. But in terms of what we would nowadays call reselling that really goes back to when I was in graduate school and, eBay had just come out.
And so this is like a few years after, this is around 1999, 2000. And, we were in Fort Lauderdale, Florida at the time, my wife and I, and we would just go to this big, gigantic outdoor flea market called the swap shop. And we would just start buying stuff that we thought looked cool. There was no phone apps or anything to check.
So we made a lot of mistakes, but we also had a lot of scores and those scores hooked us into it. And, you know, we just built up our, you know, our eBay sales that point, but then I went on with my career for those that don't know, I work full time as a neuropsychologist in a hospital. And so I'm like, mid-career at this point.
And so about three, four years ago, I started to try to move into the reselling aspect and the social media aspect of things more intensely. And, I started up the YouTube channel. I started up the Facebook group that I run the reselling resource center and, it's just been, you know, onwards and upwards from there.
And, it's become, you know, a significant part of our family income. And my wife's been helping out who we call Mrs. Primetime. She's been helping out with things, more, particularly over the last year.
Melissa: Okay, I have to ask real quick. Did she like reselling when you first guys did it together?
Like, was she really into it too? Or does she?
Dominic: Yes, because yes, because one of the things we love to do is we love to go to garage sales. We'd love to go to rummage sales and she has fond memories of when she was a child going around with her grandmother who would take her to these places. It's one of those things too, because I took my kids to these places when they were younger.
Now they can't stand it. They did it, they hate it. They don't, they're teenagers. So they don't like much of anything, obviously. But, so my wife said that that's how she was at one point. And then when she got older, she became nostalgic for it. And you know, now it brings back good memories.
So she loves doing it. And that's something that. I spend a lot of time doing, have a lot of fun together with it.
Melissa: Yeah, that's awesome. Cause I, I married into it. This was not my thing. He's the one. You're the flipper.
Rob: Similar to you, I actually started in 96, 97, when eBay came out, we started flipping flipping as well.
And my parents did it is when I was really young. My parents would go to yard sales and they would resell stuff in the classified section. So, yeah, we got, we got into eBay early on, so you've seen all the crazy changes in eBay throughout the years. It's insane. But I you have a question, so comic books is where you started.
Are you still big into comic books or have you branched out and done other stuff now?
Dominic: Well it's my primary area of focus. However, I do everything in anything. So if you go to my eBay store, you will see advertising memorabilia from all over the place. You will see clothing, you will see cups, you will see barware you will see, anything you can make, you'll see dolls. I mean, it could be anything and everything. So I have really diverse, eclectic tastes, but comic books will always be the, you know, the, the mainstay in core.
Rob: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah.
Melissa: When you said that you used to have to kind of make mistakes, cause there was no phones that, that is something that a lot of people nowadays, like don't realize that it was so much riskier back then.
Dominic: The thing is, I remember when I was going around and looking at things at the flea market and see, we had the computer at home. We had that and you could look things up on the computer. And I kept having this problem that I would buy something that looked cool and I thought I'd be able to flip it. And then I go home and see that there were already 10 other people that had it on eBay.
And I was not going to be able to make any money off of it. And I was like, if there was just a way, just a way that I could bring the computer with me to the sales, I'd be golden. What an advantage that would be, and sure enough. Now we have apps.
Rob: I still remember in the late nineties we had the same problem.
We'd go to, we actually go to auctions and I would buy stuff, hoping that it would be worth money and you'd bring it home. But I still remember the card. I don't know if you might remember this. There was a card that connected to a cell phone provider. You could slip into the side of your slot of your lap top.
And it had a little antenna that stuck up and you could get a cell phone reception. I remember when that came out, I snagged that. Super excited.
Melissa: Well you still didn't have internet your phone.
Rob: You did. That was when you could do dial up and it would dial up from that little card. It was so cool.
Dominic: You reminded me of the modem sounds now.
Rob: That's what it was. It was crazy.
So when those were the old days, it was a really cool, yeah. People do not realize how easy it is to resell now that you can look everything up. It is, it is, you can look stuff up before you buy it before you invest. So larger investments is a lot easier to take a larger investment now into something versus when you had to guess back in the day.
Dominic: And another thing people don't realize is how it used to just be auction. And so, you know, taking a risk a lot at a time and you had to decide, do I start it low? Do I start at high? A lot of times, you know, your decision worked out well and other times you got burned. And so then they started once they moved to buy it now that was it. There was no looking back with that.
Melissa: Do you do any of your, maybe collectible stuff on auction still?
Dominic: Very rarely. It really has to be something that is in very high demand and there's very, very low supply of it, including it's not currently listed on eBay at the time I'm listing. The best example I could give of that would be wrestling, promotional cards.
I don't mean cards like playing cards, but I mean, like they're big posters that would show the card of the event and all the different matches and they would have pictures of different wrestlers. Like if you find vintage ones of those, those always sell best on auction on eBay and they'll go for hundreds of dollars.
So I came across one once and I listed on eBay in auction format and sold for like 300 bucks. And if you go and look at the sold history for those, that's just how those sell, so it really depends on the item.
Rob: That's awesome. Yeah. Great information for sure.,
Melissa: So you obviously have a day job that you're working.
And, so you're doing this, you know, as a reseller part-time, but at the same time, you're also sharing it with others. So how many hours a week do you typically put towards your reselling?
Dominic: Literally as much as possible at this point. So whenever I have spare time, I call it spare time, basically when I'm not doing my regular job is when I'm doing it.
Because the thing is, is now it's easier because my kids are older. They're teenagers, they're involved in other things, you know, they have afterschool curricular activities that they don't want their parents anywhere near, you know, it's unlike when they were little. So I couldn't be doing what I'm doing now, if they were, you know, when they were three, four or five years old, when I was just spending all of my spare time with them.
So I'm glad I had that time and those years. And, so now it's just easier for me to do it. So I'll come home. You know, from, from work and, you know, obviously spend time with my wife. But then, you know, after that, it's just that anything I could do related to reselling whether it's listing, packing, making YouTube videos, interacting with my Facebook group, all sorts of things. I pretty much spend most of my time now I do, I work in other fun things sometimes. Yes, I take breaks, but I do a lot of multitasking. So I'll like when I'm shipping and stuff, I'll watch a cool Netflix show that I haven't seen yet, or I'll listen to a podcast, things like that.
So you gotta do all that. I think that's one of the ways you get some of these other things done is with multitasking.
Rob: Awesome. For sure. We can relate. Melissa a lot more than me, but yeah, for sure. So, but I did have a question too about eBay and we were talking about it is eBay, your main platform that you're selling on?
And do you sell any other places?
Dominic: Well eBay is my main e-commerce platform. Every once in a while we'll flip some furniture. I say we, that really means I will be the muscle and pick it up. Mrs. Primetime will say, get that, drive out and get it. Or we'll be at a garage sale. Take that put it in their car and,she'll do the, you know, the, like the redecorating work on it and stuff.
And we'll flip it locally. But you know, again, that would be like a Facebook marketplace type of thing, sometimes Craigslist, but we don't do Mercari for example, or Etsy or anything like that. Now with the YouTube channel, I have had selling events on my channel. And so, you know, sometimes I'll do like an auction on there.
I'll do a buy it now event. And I don't do it that often, but it is a way that I do sell stuff sometimes.
Rob: Awesome.
For sure, that's cool.
Melissa: What year did you, or when did you start your YouTube channel?
Dominic: Well, this is going into the fourth year. So total of three years at this point, I just finished my 1000th video the other day.
Rob: Congrats. That's awesome.
Dominic: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I actually just today hit 35,000 subscribers, literally just today.
Rob: That's huge. That's awesome.
Melissa: So I would not necessarily consider, like the social media part of it, it takes up a lot of time. Like content creation takes up a lot of time, but I don't think I would put that as far as like, it's not really towards your reselling business.
So you're probably putting, I mean, you're working a lot. I'm curious, like what would be your average monthly from reselling that you make typically?
Dominic: About five and a half thousand. Okay. Yeah. So 90 days total right now varies between $15,000 and $17,000. We're trying to, one of the goals this year is to get that 90 day total up to $20,000 and get the number of listings solidly up to a thousand.
Rob: Awesome. Awesome. And how many, this is another question. So how many sales, roughly to get you at that $15,000 to $20,000 range? How many sales do you typically go through? And I guess that's a 90 day period or 30 days?
Dominic: Yeah, so pretty, yeah, that's 90 days total. So pretty consistently that's about 460 sales. Usually, usually when I calculate it, the average sale, our average sale is somewhere around like 35 bucks.
Something like that. So, you know, that's because we have a mixture of high dollar collectibles. In addition to, we're not afraid to put in some low dollar items, we don't go lower than 10 bucks, but, you know, we have, some of those things there, like for example, stuff that we'll find in bulk, like I'll find at a garage sale. Just recently there was a little Bob Ross. Remember Bob Ross, there was a little Bob Ross book called lunch notes with his little famous sayings in it. So I saw it at a garage sale. I can't remember. I think the lady wanted like 10 to $15 for all of them. They were like 15 bucks. So I just put them in my, eBay store for 10 bucks a piece.
And, you know, that adds up though over time, they're all sold. I just sold the last one the other day. So I don't mind doing that kind of a business cause that's real easy, real small. It even something like that could be not expensive to go first-class or media mail
Melissa: Do you do all the listings or and the shipping, or do you have fulfillment?
Do you have anybody that helps you do it?
Dominic: We do it all. We, now my wife is mainly what she decided to come in on last year is mostly the jewelry end of the business. So she added that component to our store. We really did not have much of that beforehand. She also added a lot more Disney type of items into the store as well.
So those are the two things she loves. So if she was going to come into the business, she wanted to go in with what she had a passion for. And so that's, you know, that's really helped out and has brought in a lot of sales. I do all the shipping. I've shown her how to do some of that, but right now, I'm doing all of that.
Maybe she'll take more of that role on it at some point, but yeah, we do all our own listings and everything.
Rob: That's awesome.
Melissa: We want to get to where we can have somebody start listing. Cause that's always, the
Dominic: problem.
The problem is trying to find someone who do it as good as you do. So you have to give up a little control.
Melissa: I know. And what you said, though, that your teens don't really want to do it, I'm like, I'm really hoping our kids are going to have, they want to start listing and make a couple bucks. But I dunno, we'll see.
Dominic: Right. They just might need to negotiate with you a little bit. That's all.
Melissa: They can start helping us with some listings.
Rob: And I was going to bring it back to one of the main, this is a really cool point that you made, even like your comic books, you say, you know, that's what your desire, that's what you're really good at.
And it peaks your you enjoy it, it peaks your interest and your wife, the same way, Disney stuff or jewelry. That's what I mean. That's one of the easiest places to start is flipping is where you stuff that you enjoy, stuff that you have a hobby at or stuff that you like. So that's a, that was a really great point that I wanted to bring back attention to because it is, it's very important for people who are trying to get into this business, who don't know where to start, start with the stuff that you like.
That's the easiest place to start and start flipping with that stuff
Dominic: And the other thing related to that, that I bring up, I think there's a point, especially for people who are newer, starting out is that you're going to encounter some times where you're going to have a slow sales period. And what I would suggest in those periods is going back to that thing that you love, because a lot of times people will go off of that cause they start branching out and they don't remember what their core is and what, what their passion is because they just started going off of it a bit to try to expand.
So go back to that, because that thing that you love the most, since you love it, the most, you probably know it the most out of any other area and you could probably sell it the most because of that. So, you know, start listing 10 20 of those things first, before you start going back into other stuff to just start getting those sales going.
Rob: Yeah, that was a great point. Yeah. And I, I totally can see it too. People getting off track with stuff that they love, and then bringing them back in and doing it yeah, no, it is an awesome, awesome point for sure.
Melissa: So I'm just curious with the comic books now, we're pretty big into the Marvel movies cause we love to see them. We just saw Spider-Man. So now are all your Spider-Man like comics do they go up now?
Dominic: Very good. That's a very good point. I always tell people, be aware of what Marvel movies are coming out. And to some extent, the DC movies know about them about a few months in advance. And if you have anything that related to that start listing at about two to three months in advance, that's exactly what I did with.
When I knew the movie was coming out soon, it was going to be popular. I literally went over to my area. I got all my Spider-Man trade paperbacks, for example, listed all of them. And every day it seems like, you know, something from that is selling. So that's awesome.
Melissa: That's a really good movie, I enjoyed it.
Dominic: It was cool. I liked it.
It was cool.
Melissa: Yeah. So if you had to think of like one or two things that were really instrumental in helping you grow in your reselling business, what would you think those would be?.
Dominic: I'm very, very motivated because I just don't, I don't stop. I keep going. I don't let things take me down for a long period of time.
I feel that if you stop, you get stuck and it's like, you know, they say the saying a rolling stone gathers no moss. Oh, that's what happens to a lot of people. When something bad happens, they get a return, and they're just, they just get deflated and they don't do as much. And as a result, that's hard for them to get back on track.
I have a rule that I refuse to get down about something for more than 24 hours, if it's really bad, that's really bad. So 24 hours, that's the rule. That's the cutoff. Then the next day I got to move past whatever the heck it is. And so that's been helpful. The other thing is just being extremely goal directed.
So like I was telling you about some numbers and stuff that I want to hit, same thing with my YouTube channel, very focused on that. And if I don't hit that, if I come up short, like I did with my YouTube channel this year, I try to figure out what the heck went wrong. So I could put in a plan to fix it for the next year going forward.
So that's important too, is realizing when you're messing up and you're, cause a lot of times people will mess up. They don't realize it, or maybe they kind of know in the back of their head, but they don't want to acknowledge what it is that's causing it. And so they just keep repeating the same thing over and over and over again.
And I always say, I'm not going to do that.
Rob: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's it. Those are amazing points.
Definitely.
Melissa: Is that thedefinition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result?
Rob: So, no, that's a hundred percent. And we did an interview the other day. I think it was David Funk who was talking about, and if you look at it in this way, I love your 24 hour rule.
If you look at it in this way, When you do make a mistake, when you have a return, when something does go wrong, how can you grow? How can you learn from that mistake? So you can try to not have it again. And I think that's a really good thing, plus not dwelling on it and letting it keep you in the dumps for sure.
It's letting go of it. That's a huge, huge thing in this business. And then the focus. The focus that's my problem, Melissa is better at me than focusing on one, something on one thing. And I think that does help you a lot. It helps you grow a hundred percent when you stay focused on that. Yeah.
Dominic: Yeah, for sure.
Rob: Awesome.
Melissa: Yep.
Can you think of any like flops that come to mind? Like I know, you know that maybe we're not a good buy?
Dominic: A bad buy?
Melissa: Like, yeah a bad buy.
Dominic: I'll give you a mistake and a bad buy. How about that? Well, bad buy in quotes, because I almost find some way to sell something eventually, but, there was one point I have it on one of my videos for a few years ago, I went to the flea market.
And I bought this big box of ties. Now, these ties were all dry cleaned. They were all pressed. They were actually in the plastic sleeves. I'd say there were probably 200 ties in there. So I got them for 50 bucks. So I had them in the shed for a while and didn't list them immediately. Then the pandemic hit and Mrs. Primetime was like, you know what?
I think I could probably list those ties. So I'm like you. Okay. So I brought the ties in and she started listing. The problem is people aren't going to work as much anymore and not wearing ties. So it was really a bad decision to hold off on it because I just had this assumption. Well, people always need ties.
Now they're selling. But maybe one a week. So not like they would've sold beforehand. So that was definitely, a mistake. And those are going to be long, long tail items, in terms of that was a bad by any mistake in a way. So, in terms of, a mistake outside of a bad buy, I’ve done what I think many people have done before, which is mix up items that you're sending out to people.
You just get things crossed or you send one person the other person's package and vice versa. And so I came up with a way to not have that happen by writing what the, cause basically I packed down here and I put the labels upstairs. So I'd take the package up there. So what I, what I started to do is just write down the name of what the item is on the actual package.
And sure enough, I still made the same mistake again. And I said, how the heck did I make this mistake? Because I wrote the names on there and it turns out one of the items was, it was a statue and the other item was. I don't know if you ever heard of Smallville it's where just super Superman, you know, lived when he was younger.
So they were Smallville comic books. So I write really small despite how big I am. I have tiny handwriting and when I wrote it all, I was really able to make out was the s and the e smallville statue messed them up. So now I'm like, well, I got to refine the system either even further that I can't have any kind of matching letters at all.
So it's got to be very distinct what I put on the package. So always learning, like you said, even if you come up with a plan. That plan might need to be fixed too at one point.
Rob: I love it. Great advice. Great advice for sure. But you're learning and you see the mistake and you're going to try to correct it. So that's awesome.
Melissa: On the flip side of that, can you think of any like really home runs that come to your mind of some of your favorite, favorite flips?
Dominic: Yeah, probably my favorite story is when I went out, to meet up with a guy based on a ad that I posted locally on Craigslist, telling people I'm looking for stuff in bulk to purchase collectibles, things like that.
And I mentioned all sorts of examples of things and, met up with a guy and he had all this stuff in a trailer. He was basically throwing stuff in there. He used to work for Got Junk, and so after he cleared the places out, he was allowed to take anything that he thought was valuable that was going to already go in the trash.
So he'd just taken, thrown in his trailer. So he had accumulated so much stuff that his girlfriend or wife wanted him to start getting rid of some of these things. So I met up with 'em and, on a second meetup, he brought some comic books that I told them I was looking for, that he found in this house.
So he brings it the second day. I flipped through our meal quick. I see that theirs looks like some good old books in there. Got it for a really low price. I didn't take them all out. Literally they're sitting next to me right here for a year in the box. I don't go through them because I just have so many comics and so many things.
So I decided one day just to look through it. This is a year later and I pull out, what's known as giant size X-Men number one, which is one of the most desirable comics out there. So I paid literally pennies for this book. I kid you not at that time. So it was a few years ago. I listed on eBay and literally within five minutes, it sold.
$1,250.. Now, if I would have held on or what it would sell for a lot more now, but you could say that any time you sell something.
Melissa: Wow.
Dominic: That was crazy. That was crazy. I couldn't, I was blown away.
Rob: That's awesome. And only one of the comic books and you had more in there that probably were worth some more.
Dominic: Oh yeah. Yeah. But I was just laughing cause I'm like, I can't believe, I didn't even know.
This thing is sitting next to me for a year.
Melissa: It's sitting next to you.
Rob: I love it. That's crazy.
Melissa: It's so exciting too. It gets your energy going. You see that. Oh, so it just gets exciting. Yeah.
Rob: That's awesome. Yeah.
Melissa: Well I think, yeah.
Rob: Cool. Well, awesome. Well, Don, thanks for jumping on here and giving us some great information, some great tips.
Your YouTube channel is amazing. You're always giving away free tips and, some amazing stuff to implement. So please tell people how they can reach out and they can contact you and see some of the stuff that you're doing.
Dominic: Yeah. Yeah. So there's several ways. The YouTube channel is primetime treasure hunter, really easy to find and do lots of things on there.
Lots of tip videos, treasure hunt. Thrift battles, all sorts of fun, live shows and things. So, you know, come on by check that out. Then there's the Facebook group that's called the Facebook reselling resource center. So we have about almost 29,000 members in that now. So it's a very, informative group and there's no trolling or bullying allowed in there.
So we monitor that real strictly with the moderator team and everything. So. It's a pretty, and we have selling events and there's the people who actually make money. It's free for free to join that. And then, I'm somewhat active on Instagram and there I'm at prime underscore time underscore treasure.
Rob: Well, perfect. Thank you again for jumping on here and giving us some of your time. We appreciate all your information and your great tips. And yeah. Thank you. I hope you have a wonderful day.
Dominic: Thanks Rob and Melissa.