Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about one of their biggest flops in flipping!
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One Of Our Biggest Flip Flops!!
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode we are going to talk about one of our biggest flip flops.
Rob: Alright guys, so today we love talking to you guys about all the flips that we do, but today we're going to give you one of the biggest flops that we actually did.
Melissa: Yeah, so we, you know, we like to talk about, you know, the stuff we find for a good price and are able to make extra money on, but we do get asked a lot, like some of what of our Failures or what are our finds that didn't make money or that we lost money on?
And there's one in particular that I think about that was a big flop. There's a couple of good nuggets to take away from stuff you should have done differently. Absolutely. So we thought it'd be a good story to share because you wouldn't have done things differently had you, you know, hindsight 2020, so.
Rob: That's right.
So this item was a commercial or would you call it an arcade? It was a bowling and I think it was from the 70s or the 80s one of the bowling arcades. So the sucker was like 10 foot long you roll like this slider down the table and there's pins that are you knock the pins down. So it's a bowling, I forget the name of it, but it was one of those bowling arcade. So you put quarters in. It was in a bar or something like that we bought this on a, a trip that we were, I don't even know, we were in North Carolina?
Melissa: No, we, okay, so just a quick back story. We had, we drove back to North Carolina, we finished up our road trip, our very first road trip across the country in 2020, this was, and we finished up and you found the bus wash. You found the bus wash. Was that the bus wash? Yep. Yeah. And we had to put it with the trailer?
Rob: We had an enclosed trailer. The bus wash wouldn't fit. That's right. So we had to finish up in North Carolina. Yes. We had to finish up the trip and go back home without the bus wash.
Melissa: And you really wanted to go get it. And this bus wash made us, was this the one that made? 14. Yeah, $14,000. So it was worth the trip back to go pick it up.
But when we go pick something up, you want to fill the trailer. Like, you're looking for stuff. So that's where it started. So you were looking for stuff while we were there.
Rob: I was. And I found this arcade. Looked really nice. Looked good in the pictures. And I negotiated the deal. How much did we pay for it?
$175. So $175. I negotiated the deal. He was probably asking like $250, something like that. $300. I talked him down. Got him to it. Well, we went to pick it up. And it was in a rough shape, like, it was an old one, some of the particle board that was actually built, you could see where it was chipped off on edges, and it was just really, really, really rough, which brings us to our first lesson, I should have walked away, and I did not, I did not walk away from it.
Melissa: You got too emotionally attached, because you like games like that. I do like games. You like those arcade things, and you, you enjoy those personally and you should, and you say like, yeah, that's, it's pretty cool, but it was not in great shape.
Rob: So that was the first reason why I should not have bought it because I went there and the lesson for you guys, if you get somewhere and it is in different condition than you expected or you negotiated the price to walk away from it or tell the buyer, the seller that you, you can't take it because you didn't know that it was in that kind of condition.
Melissa: A big thing that you don't like to do, you don't like to negotiate to a price and then get there and try to dicker down because you've already negotiated and you don't like when people do that to you and so you don't like to do it to other people either. It's like, we've already negotiated down, we, that's good, so at this point you, it's like, walk away or do you want to negotiate more?
Rob: Well, it's a good tactic to do is say, hey, it's a little bit rougher than I thought, I'm, I'm gonna have to, and if the seller really wants to sell it, they might come back and say, well, what would you give me for it? Because they already sold it in their mind. They're ready to get rid of it, and then you can say, well, to be honest with you, it needs this work.
I wasn't expecting this work, but I can go this high on it. You have that option, and that's the way that I would normally do it, and I didn't do that on this one. I just actually paid for it, took it apart, put it in the trailer, and I should have walked away from it. So.
Melissa: And it was tough to put that thing in the trailer, too.
It was. I remember, we were trying to finagle it next to the bus wash and try to, like, put it. It took us, we were there a couple hours. We were, right? Taking it apart. Absolutely. Like, trying to put it there. Yeah, I remember that.
Rob: That was a bad, so the first lesson I should have walked away. And I wish I would have walked away.
And that would have solved the whole problem. But we didn't, I took it apart, I got it into the trailer, we got it, we brought it back, and I ended up selling it. So we paid $175 for it. What did we sell it for? $550. So $550 as is.
Melissa: Which like, okay, you didn't want to fix it, right?
Rob: I did not, it was not working properly.
It powered on, but it was not working properly. And I didn't want to put any extra time into it. So we actually sold it for $550, which, we made money, but we sold it on eBay, and we had to ship it, and like you said, this was 10 foot long, so, shipping was...
Melissa: So we have, we sold it for $550, so normally you'd think, okay, $175 to $550, that's not horrible, like, you at least doubled your money or more, so, shipping, or, eBay fees were $71.
Shipping materials were $50 for the wood. 'cause it was a larger pallet you had to make. And then shipping label was $264 for this one. 'cause it was a larger pallet, which isn't too bad. But at the same time, no, but for a $550 item, and this is where we always say that, that, that around that 500 to a thousand dollars mark sometimes is not worth shipping freight.
And that's what we tell a lot of our members. Like you have to, it has to be worth a certain amount before shipping freight is worth it. And this was not worth it because we ended up losing $10. So losing $10 is not the end of the world, obviously, we didn't lose thousands of dollars, but the time involved there was a lot of time in this one. So it was definitely not worth it.
It was definitely a fail.
Rob: And we didn't make a special trip for this. Like we said I was trying to fill up the trailer right as much stuff as I could when we went back.
Melissa: You did get one more thing on that trip. We got the oven that we sold for a lot of money
Rob: as well $2,500 or more. I think it was $2,800. It was a nice one and you sold it quick. We did.
We paid $200. The funny part about that one was when we got there, the guy's like, you're flea market flipper. And I was like, oh no, this is not good for me. I think we paid like $200 for the oven. And then we turned around and sold it for almost $3,000. But so we got $3,000 out of that. The bus wash that we bought, we paid 500 for, and we sold it for 14, 500, so we made really good money on that.
And then we had the flop, which was the arcade, I would have been so great if I did not do that. We had a lot of time invested into that, I had to take pictures, I had to palette it up, so. We lost more than $10 to be honest with time, but $10 on paper, that's what we lost. So couple of great takeaways and a great lesson.
If you get to a place, like we said, and it's not what you thought, walk away from it, just tell them the, and it might even be a deal breaker all around. Like I should have just walked away, not taken, not try to get them down on the price. I should have just walked away, but it might, it might not be that big of a deal breaker, but if it's not what you thought it was.
Do not feel bad by saying, hey, you know what? I didn't know it was missing this, or I didn't know that it was this rough. I didn't know this. I'm going to go ahead and pass because I can't do it. And they might say, hey, is it worth any less to you? Would you pay less? You can negotiate then. But if you've already negotiated before you get there, I don't like that.
Like Melissa said, I don't like to try and negotiate again once I get there. And this is not me. Yeah, exactly. It's not a tactic to get them down so low and then get there there and get them down lower. I don't want people to do that to me. So I don't want to do that to people as well. If I get them down to the price that I want to pay for it, before I get there, and the condition that I think it's in, that I know I can make money, then I pay the price.
I don't try to negotiate, that's just not what I do. But if it is in worse condition, and it, I still might be able to put a little bit more work into it and make the money, then I can negotiate a little bit lower if they offer it to me. If they say, hey, what would you pay for it, I want to get rid of it today, and then you can say, well, to be honest with you, I, you know, I can give you 50 bucks, or, to be honest with you, it's not worth my time, I don't want to put that much work into it, I thought it was in better condition, so I'm just going to walk away, and you can totally do that as well. And this would not have hurt me, because I had two items in the trailer that were worth a lot of money, and I would not have had lost a night of sleep on this if I had walked away from it, but I didn't.
Melissa: So that would be the first one is one, walk away. Second one. I was going to add, also, know, like, what your time is worth, for one, like, first, we should have just walked away from this whole thing. Like we should have, what did you think you could get for this item? This is between $2,500 and three grand.
So that's where, and that would have been worth it to ship it, pallet it up and get, that would have been worth it. But at $500, you, you just wanted it gone. And at that point we probably could have even put it on marketplace for, did you have it on marketplace too or not?
Rob: I probably did, but that stuff's harder to sell locally.
It's just what our business model is, is you can't sell for a lot of money locally.
Melissa: Yeah. So, yeah. So know your numbers and know your, like what, what your profit margins are and kind of know going into it, if I can sell, if I can sell it for this, because that's one cool thing about this isn't really a gamble.
Like, you can look up items and see how much they're worth and see what they're selling for, what they sold for, so you don't take a lot of risk in the stuff you buy. But the condition of this one was not in great condition. That's where it hurt us. But know like how much, you have to have some wiggle room for eBay fees for shipping costs.
And that's why we're looking for items at a certain price so that we have enough room to cover our profits. Absolutely. Does that make sense? Absolutely. To cover for our time and involved.
Rob: And the buyer paid for shipping and all the stuff on top of it. I mean, if I did, I might've done free shipping on this, but I knew it was going to cost me roughly two to three hundred bucks.
Yeah. So the buyer's paying that for it. But that, that threshold of $500 is really, really tight when you're, you're shipping freight stuff.
Melissa: It really needs to be closer to $1,000.
Rob: Absolutely. So, that's pretty much what we did at one of our big flops. And this happened a couple years ago. Typically, like Melissa said, we're not gamblers.
I don't go out and, you know, expect to, I mean, buy something and be like, okay, well, now how much can I make on it? We do all that research before we do it, before I negotiate it. I know all that stuff ahead of time. So we're not big gamblers. We're methodical. Is that a right word? Methodical in what we do in this business.
And it helps us be successful in what we're doing.
Melissa: One cool thing too, once you start doing this more and more, you also get a library in your head of stuff that is worth. So it makes it a lot easier to start spotting some of these things and knowing. Yes, that's worth my time. No, that's not worth my time.
So you can kind of sort those out once you, you know, you sell some of the same kinds of items for a while. So that helps too. Absolutely. So yeah, so that was our big flop more recently. It was a kind of a cool story because you loved it so much. And then finally afterwards, you're like, good riddance. I need that thing gone.
Rob: And another takeaway is guys, we make mistakes too. It's not like you'll never make mistakes in this business. This is one mistake. It is absolutely. And guess what I learned from it. And I will not do that again. Next time I come up to something like that. And I know it's in that rough condition. I walk away from it and have walked away from stuff in the past, but I didn't do it to this one because I was emotionally attached. I was like, this is going to be really, really cool if I get it back. I can play with it a little bit. The kids can play with it and then I can sell it. I can make two, three grand on it and it'll be awesome. But it wasn't.
Melissa: One other thing before we finish is I wanted to add that we do, if you go somewhere to pick up an item, it is a really good practice to look around the, either their local area marketplace, offer up, or even stop at thrift stores.
Make the trip worth your while. Like, if you know I'm driving an hour to go pick up something worth $1,000, $2,000 or whatever, go and make a, you know, spend a couple hours or ahead of time, like do the research ahead of time and see if you can pick up two or three items and it make it the trip really worth it.
You do that a lot. I do. We should have said no to this item, but we do that a lot because it makes it so much better. So like, cause we were just going there for the bus wash, we ended up getting this and then the oven. So we had three items that we were coming back with.
Rob: But it added, the oven alone added almost, yeah $500 after shipping and eBay fees, probably $2,500, into what we made on the whole deal, which easily paid for our travel, paid for our hotel and all that kind of stuff. And then the bus wash was icing on the cake. We made a ton of money on it. That was our anniversary. It was. That was. We get, we got somebody to watch the kids.
We made the trip back up and we drove
Melissa: up and drove back in a day or one night. North
Rob: Carolina, from Florida to North Carolina. So it was fun though. It was good. So. Yeah. That was funny.
Melissa: Awesome. All right. Well, thanks for listening, guys. We appreciate you so much. If you have any questions that you'd love to hear answered on the podcast, we would love to get those answered for you.
You can go to fleamarketflipper.com/question and we would love to feature your question.
Rob: You guys are amazing. Have such a wonderful day and we'll see you on the next episode.