Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about their most expensive flip ever!
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Our Largest Most Expensive Flip Ever!
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about our largest, most expensive flip ever. All right. So today this is a fun topic. It is definitely our highest flip that we have ever done to date that we're actually going to be talking about.
Melissa: It's the highest percent ROI, but it's the highest value dollar wise that we've ever sold.
Rob: So, and what was it? $25,000 is what we sold this item, single item for on eBay. We sold it on eBay and there were a lot of different aspects to this flip. So we wanted to dive in and kind of talk through it and kind of give you our lessons we learned throughout the process as well.
Hopefully it will help you if you get to the point where you want to invest in one of these higher profit flips. Definitely we'll, we'll go through some of the do's and don'ts of how you should navigate it for sure.
Melissa: This one was probably not one you'll come across very often, but it was definitely an interesting flip and this is coming back to a time, this is right at the same time that we went full time.
So you were a little more like, okay, we're doing this full time. We've got to really go big or go home. And so that's where you are going to the flea market every weekend. You were going to multiple auctions. You were really into sourcing and finding these items. So, and this was one, I will have to say that I was against.
Rob: So, and I was excited. So I came across this at a local auction. I was there, I went to the auction, got super excited about it. I called Melissa up and said, hey, you're never going to believe this is a really, really cool thing. And what it was was a, parking lot security tower. So to explain it, if you don't know what that is, it was sat on a trailer.
And then it actually lifted this little box. It could hold, I think, like three, four people inside of it. It's just a little room that actually sat on a ground level. You open the door up, you got inside of it. It had an air conditioner on top, a generator on the trailer itself. So it was all self contained.
You got into this thing and then it lifted itself up to like 25 ft in the air. And what they used it for is like theme parks or big, big parking lots to keep security a watch around the whole parking lot. And that's what it was. It was a parking lot security tower is what it was. So I saw it. I was excited.
I'd never seen one before and I was super excited about it. So I called Melissa up and told her.
Melissa: And I was not excited about it because It was a $5,000 investment, and that is more than we
Rob: but you didn't know that offhand because this is a bid. So it was an auction, but I was had, I had to figure out how much before that I was actually going to pay for this.
And I think to be honest with you guys, like my cap was probably like $2,500. And
Melissa: when you get, so there's one, there's the first tip when you're in an auction, a situation, know your top dollar and stick to that top dollar. Although you didn't stick to your top dollar and it still made a profit. So we'll, we'll go with that.
But you, you get sucked in and you have to know that it's you're in the heat of it. You're going, you used to do this on the online auction. One of the little ones nearby you go and you're bidding. It's all online, but still you see the other person bid, the next person bid. And this is really where, how eBay started with auctions and stuff.
Now they're not, auctions don't really do anything as much, but. But there are still other auction sites out there, but you got to know that you get sucked in and you go higher than you normally would.
Rob: First lesson, set your, your high limit, and then don't go over it. And this one worked out in our favor and I'll tell you a little bit more about it, why it worked out in our favor, but I had said it, I didn't really want to go over $2,500. Got sucked into it, ended up, ended up spending $5,000 on this. Now you might be like, all right, why would you spend $5,000? You went double what your, your thing was. So about this item, so there's a couple different lessons, like I said, throughout this whole story that we'll, we'll tell you, but this item, the retail on the item, the only comp that I could find, I couldn't find any completed listings on eBay.
I couldn't find any other information about it, but I did find the specs for how much the item cost originally. So retail on the item. And I believe it was like $127 or $130,000, to build this. So it's a specialty item. And when it costs that much money, you guys know if you've been around here for a little while, we try to, the best case scenario that we're really looking for, 50 percent of retail, is what we tell people to start at the, when you're selling something, exactly when you're selling something.
Now, depending on condition, if it's way better, it's almost a new condition. You can ask more than that. If it's not as great, it's not an excellent condition or you can't test it for whatever reason. Then we go underneath 50%. So this one, I knew 50 percent of retail at $120,000 or $130,000. I mean, that's, that's a lot of money.
So I didn't think I'd be able to get that much, but I knew at a $5,000 investment that I would make my money back at least, but I was hoping that I could really hit a home run with this as well. So that's what we did. And like I said, no eBay comps, none had sold on eBay that I could find. I couldn't find any other ones that had sold online, but I was able to find.
The retail on it from the manufacturer. I think it was original paperwork from the manufacturer.
Melissa: And that, I was just gonna say, that goes along with some flips that you do. It's like, just because there's no sold comps doesn't mean that it's a bad buy if you can know the retail. So, cause how many sold comps would there be for something like that?
Really? Like, not a lot.
Rob: Sometimes it's exciting though. If you can't find a sold comp on something like this, that means yours when you get it posted is going to be the only one online. And typically nowadays when you post something on eBay, it's going to go into a Google search. When somebody searches on Google for parking lot security tower, it's going to throw you to the eBay auction and you're going to be able to find people that way.
So sometimes it's exciting about it. And the biggest thing about this, the biggest lesson was the retail was super high. If the retail was like $20,000 on this and I spent $5,000, I probably still would have made a little bit of money, but at the same time. The retail on this was so high. I knew there was a lot of money to be made.
Melissa: I don't remember the phone call that did you call me on the way or did you wait till you got home? Sometimes you would wait till after to tell me how much you spent. I think you probably came home and then told me after.
Rob: Broke it to her nice and easy because, and I guarantee it started a fight because of that's how stuff worked.
That's a lot. It is. It's a lot of money to invest.
Melissa: It's a lot to invest, especially where you have three little kids at this point. We're going all in on this. And that is a big investment on something that, like, I still had to know that you knew what you were talking about. Like, I mean, to me, it was still a big if, like, is it going to sell?
What if it doesn't sell? But it did sell.
Rob: It did. Within a month. It did. Sold very, very, very, very quickly, to somebody on eBay. And this is where the story gets a little hairy. So, got it listed, put it on eBay, sold it in less than 30 days, really, really quick. So you probably could have got more money for it.
I probably could have got a lot more money. But we were happy. We were happy. I listed it for $30,000 and somebody shot me an offer for $25,000. And like I said, it was fairly quick for something like this. This is a high dollar item. I probably could have got probably $50,000 for it. And I, the guy who bought it probably would have still paid that much money for it.
So he sent me an offer, probably thinking that I wouldn't have taken it. I was excited to take it cause we spent $5,000 on it. So $20, $20K, right out the gate in 30 days is pretty, pretty sweet. So, I took the offer, the guy paid through PayPal, this was PayPal back in the day. And what happened was he paid through PayPal with a credit card.
He wanted to use, and I found out all this stuff after the fact, but he wanted to use a credit card to get the points for using that much money on his credit card. He paid for it. He came down. PayPal actually put a hold on it. I thought it was a temporary hold. He came down, picked up Which is not, it's not abnormal.
No, he came down and picked up the item, the, the trailer. He sent a, a driver down. He was a couple of states north of us. Yeah, but he sent a driver down picked it up on this actually has a title as well because it's a trailer. So I had to release the title to him. We did that everything's changed over.
Well come to find out, PayPal, I think their normal hold probably like two or three days something like that. The the hold didn't go away, so I called PayPal up and I got them on the phone and trying to figure out what's going on and they said oh, yeah, by the way, this is a high transaction. We're gonna hold this for six months And I said six months you're gonna hold $25,000 and they said yeah. We have the we have the right to hold it for six months and if, if we deem that even after that six months we want to hold it for another six months, we can. We're allowed to and I said, wait a minute $25,000.
You're gonna do this And they said, yeah, absolutely. This is what are, in our terms and conditions, it states that we can do this kind of stuff.
Melissa: And I was like, alright, this is like a high risk is what they're saying. It's a high risk, so.
Rob: So, thank goodness I was on, like, I had my buyer's phone number because of the transaction.
I called him up. There's a lot of transactions. I asked him if there's any way we could refund it. And he's, he's already got the item now. Mind you, this is, it's done. I asked him if we could refund it through PayPal and then have him do a wire transfer and go that route. You did that? Even after he had the item?
I did, I did. Wow. I asked him if we could do that. And he said. No, he wanted that, but he was willing to jump on a three way call with me and PayPal and tell PayPal he was not coming back for the funds. He already picked up the item and he was happy with the item and he would not be coming back to do a refund.
And that's what PayPal, to protect themselves, they didn't want me to take the money out and then he to come back and do a refund on that transaction and get all his money back. It was liability on their side, so, which is really, really crazy. But, all being said, so he got on the phone, I got as high as I could in PayPal management. Got somebody on the phone and he said, hey, I'll, I will sign an affidavit saying that I am not coming back after this money. You need to release the funds to this gentleman so he can have his funds. He doesn't have to wait six months or a year to get it. PayPal said, yeah, sorry, we can't do that.
And that was the end all be all is what they said.
Melissa: And he was a lawyer. So this guy was like, he knew the legal stuff. He said, I'll sign something and he was willing to do that. Which, one other quick note, when you are dealing with these higher dollar things, you get better buyers. Like, these Typically, you know that is risky though to refund it when he has the item like that is a
Rob: but I had talked to the guy a couple times on the phone.
Melissa: Because he had the stuff and the thing but so normally probably now you wouldn't do that. But yeah, we wanted our money.
So we're trying to figure out what to do. But yeah, so the but usually people who are spending $25,000 with you are a better quality buyer and they're not somebody that's a tire kicker. So yeah, that is coming back for a refund for $10.
Rob: Exactly. So this story does end good. So instead of waiting six months to a year to get our funds back, we started doing some research and somebody else said something about going to our, I found a forum or a blog, about
payPal and they said, go to your local congressman. So, file a complaint with your local congressman. So we went down to our local congressman, told them what was going on. They said,
Melissa: They gave us a form to fill out as a physical form at that point.
Rob: I think fill out this form. And they said, what do you want to see happen with this resolution. What do you want to see? And I put in the bottom, I said, you know, filled out all the information, what it was, eBay auction, the guy, I, the whole story, we put it all in there. And I put in the bottom, I want PayPal to release my funds immediately so I can get them back into my account.
And we filed the claim, or the, the form, and the complaint, and within I think it was 72 hours, PayPal released all the funds back into my account. I was able to pull them out of PayPal immediately and put them into the bank. And we got our funds within three days of the whole issue after we filed the complaint with our local congressman, so. They weren't doing something, right?
No, moral of the story is if something ever happens to you like this you can go and go to a a local congressman or a complaint where you can fill something out and they I know our local congressman went on our behalf to PayPal and said what's going on here You guys don't have the right to do this. And that's why they released the funds back to us.
So, yeah.
Melissa: Another point to add to that is when you are starting to do some higher value flips, like we, you know, we love the $1,000, $2,000 flips. Like that's kind of our bread and butter. Like we love that, those flips, but you, when you're just starting out, you don't want to jump in and open your eBay account and start selling those items.
For one, it's a little bit harder. You don't have feedback if you're just starting, but for two, if you jump in and start selling. Like a $2,000 thing, a $3,000 thing, eBay's gonna be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on? So you want to establish a history with them. And we had sold some bigger stuff at that point, but we hadn't done a $25,000, anything that big.
So that was reason to have a flag to hold it for a second, but not for six months. No, absolutely not. So, but when
Rob: if it was seven days, you can understand seven days, let something clear, let the guy get the item. Right. He's doing that sometimes.
Melissa: Right. And that's okay. That's understandable. But six months, six months.
No, $25,000. Come on, hold it for that long. But to protect yourself because eBay has gotten stricter in the last year with new sellers. If you're going to start selling higher value stuff. Create that relationship with eBay. Start selling lower stuff, get your and then start growing from there. Get you, what is it?
Get your account established so they know that you're a legit seller. And it's a track record with, yeah, it's a track record with eBay. They want to make sure that their buyers are not getting scammed. So it, they're the mediator for both sides. So.
Rob: It's just a little point. That's the moral of the story.
So this by far was our most expensive item that we had sold to date. It was a really hairy transaction, but I would have done it again in a second just because the whole thing worked out. And it was, it was an awesome flip.
Melissa: Do you remember the PayPal? Actually, they came after you, they held that money and then they said you had another account attached from years prior that they were a thousand dollars. They were trying to take a thousand another thousand dollars. We're like what the heck out of the blue
Rob: They tried to link another account to mine and say you owed a thousand dollars on this account. You're right I forgot about that and with the complaint that I filled out I said I want my thousand dollars back to the falsely took.
And I want all the funds released. And like I said, within three days it was all put back into my PayPal account where I had full access to pull out the extra thousand dollars out.
Melissa: That was interesting.
Rob: Yeah. And you know, the crazy part about this was you would have thought something like this would have caused a red flag for PayPal to end my whole account altogether and saying, okay, we're not taking you anymore. But they didn't, they gave me all the funds and the guy used them over and over again. And we still use them time and time again. So, that kind of surprised me that they let the whole thing play out like that versus saying, okay, you're a high risk. We're not doing this anymore. But they had the conversation with myself, with the buyer.
He guaranteed that he wasn't coming back for a refund. So all that stuff being said, they could have probably just released the funds immediately. But we had to go one extra step to go to a congressman, who actually filed the complaint and got it done. So, yeah.
Melissa: And I know there'll be people listening.
They're like, oh, don't use PayPal. We still have used them. We still like, I mean, there's no, we've used a several different payment processors and none of them are perfect. They all have their own issues and they're all not fun to work with. So I'm going to say that. And is PayPal the worst? Maybe, I don't know, but we still do use them and we still do recommend.
People to have it as an extra account. Because if you do a sale, like that's not through eBay or not through or whatever, you do a local pickup. It's nice to be able to create an invoice like quickly. It's an easy platform to use. So we do still use it. So anyway, it's just a little thing so.
Rob: Awesome, guys, hopefully you've enjoyed this story.
Hopefully got some nuggets out of it. If you ever go to a super high dollar flip, hopefully you'll know the right way to navigate it. If not, definitely reach out to us. Let us know if you're having any problems. We'll help you the best that we possibly can and go ahead.
Melissa: No, just thanks for listening. We appreciate you guys so much.
Rob: You guys are awesome. Have an amazing day and we'll see you on the next episode.