Rob and Melissa Stephenson, of Flea Market Flipper, talk about what they picked up for $45 and flipped for $1,500.
Check out Appliance Flipping: https://www.applianceflipping.com/
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fleamrktflipper/
You can find us at: https://fleamarketflipper.com/
What We Flipped to Turn $45 Into $1,500 This Week
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about how we turned $45 into $1,500.
Rob: Alright guys, so on today's episode, we're talking about our flip of the week. This item that we actually purchased for $45 at the local flea market, and then we turned it around and sold it on eBay for $1,500.
Melissa: And I have to add that I spotted this item at the flea market, and you almost, you did walk right past it.
And I said we should look that up cause it looks expensive to me. And you always say that things look expensive or they don't look expensive. And I don't ever really understood. But I'm like, that looks like it could be worth something. Yep. And to me, I thought it was, it looks like it looked like a cheaper brand.
Rob: So I was going to walk right past it. I actually didn't see it, but I was going to walk right past it because I didn't think the profit was there on the item. So Melissa said, check it out. So I was like, all right, let's check it out. So we looked it up and come to find out, retail on it was over $2,000. I think it was $2,000 or $3,000 for the retail on it.
And I was like, wait a minute, this might be a good one. So then I talked to the guy. Yep. Melissa found it. I talked to the guy and the guy told me that it worked. He offered to let me go plug it in because at the flea market, vendors are lined out outside. They, a lot of them don't have power, but he guaranteed me that it worked.
And I had seen this vendor before, so I knew he wasn't really trying to sell something that was broken. So I didn't even take it or try it or anything like that. I took his word on it and we got it for $45. $45. So what is it? You guys might be wondering what is it? It is a panini press that we got. One of those ones that is inside of a, like a sandwich shop, that you press the, the paninis or bread or something like that and it cooks them.
It's got a lower and an upper heating element in it, so it actually cooks from the top and the bottom. And it was made by Star, I think is the name of it. Star pro max is what it's called panini press. So really, really cool unit that we got, we turned around and we got it for $45, put it on eBay and it's sold within, I believe it was like two weeks.
Melissa: Yeah. Usually when people ask us how long we sit on stuff, sometimes we do sit on stuff a little bit longer, but usually it's because it's not listed, not because it's not listed and not selling. Yeah, and I mean, sometimes the appliances might take a little bit, but not, I mean, some of them, I guess you're the one you just listed, sold within three weeks It did.
So they're usually a couple weeks. You know, some of them, if they're unique, you might sit on them a little bit longer, but this one's only two weeks that you listed it and it's sold. So.
Rob: Found the right buyer for it. Killer deal.
Melissa: And that is another thing that people like, well, how did you find the buyer?
You didn't find the buyer. You listed it on eBay. And eBay found the buyer because the buyer was looking for that item. And that's kind of why. This business model works and that's why we talk about like why. Why? Wouldn't that guy go and list this thing on eBay? And we have a lot of friends at the flea market now like well you do you've made a lot of relationships with people Yeah, and they know that you sell on eBay.
So, why don't they take the stuff that you're buying from them? They know what you're looking for. So why don't they go and post that on eBay? Like what would what's the reason?
Rob: They don't have an eBay account. They don't want to create an eBay account. They want their money immediately. A lot of people know that eBay is more of hey, I gotta sell it. Somebody's gonna pay me for it.
I might not get my money immediately. I got to ship it out. So it's a lot longer process than actually just selling it at the flea market, selling it at a yard sale, selling it on a marketplace to where somebody comes and picks it up. So there's a lot of different reason the vendors that I deal with at the flea market typically they're buying stuff and their business model is buying it from a storage auction, bringing it out.
They're buying a lump, a whole bunch of items and they bring them out and sell them piece by piece to the flea market. And they get their money super quick. They're taking a lot less money than they could actually get for it, but they're moving the items really, really quick.
Melissa: So it's just different business models.
Rob: It is absolutely.
Melissa: Yeah. So ours is just a little different. You, you would rather go and see all the stuff that they just bought and pick out the one or two things. Like if you could go to a storage unit auction and pick out one or two things. Like that would be ideal, but you can't do that. You have to buy the whole unit.
So you'd rather go to the people and maybe you're going to pay more than they would overall in the storage unit, but still $45, you just turned into $1,500. You can't really go wrong with that. So, and even just this, this same week we sold that, what was it? The range. That was $120. So two items, $4,500 this week.
And I mean, that's crazy. And how much invested? $45 plus $120? $165.
Rob: $165 into $4,500, which is insane. It's insane that you're able to do that in this business off of two items. One of the items will go on a pallet. The other one, it's still right behind us. I'm actually getting ready to package it up today.
Melissa: You can see it if you're on video, but.
Rob: If you're watching the video, yeah, it It's still right behind us.
I am getting ready to package it up today, but it's going to go in a box. It's not, doesn't weigh a ton. I probably say it weighs about 70 pounds, but it will go into a box and it will ship in a box FedEx or UPS. So.
Melissa: Most of this stuff that is a little bit larger, most people will say, oh, that's too big to ship.
Even just this panini press, it has to go on marketplace, but why does that not work as well?
Rob: Yeah. Marketplace. So if you guys are, know anything about us, marketplace is the local market. You're dealing with only the people who can see it in the local market, which depending on your town, some towns might not have that many people in them, but 20 to probably 50,000 people, depending on how big your town is, will be able to see it in your local marketplace.
Now, when you jump onto eBay and you listed on eBay, you have potential of reaching people like I could have sold this to another country. Literally with international, yes, international shipping. I could have shipped it to another country. So eBay has, I think right now they're around 135 million registered users, which not all those people are looking at this item.
But when you have a bigger pool of people, you have more people looking for these individual items. And that is why we sell on eBay because around the country we'll ship stuff and even around the world if somebody finds the right item that we're selling, it just gives us that much more potential to be able to buy.
I mean to be able to sell stuff. And the bigger pool of people is awesome, but typically we can sell for more money because you have more people looking for those items.
Melissa: Yeah, and eBay does not pay us to promote their stuff. They should. I feel like they should.
Rob: They absolutely should.
Melissa: But we're not paid by eBay.
That's just the platform that has worked the longest for us and the best for us. And still, even sometimes I'll post stuff and people are like, people still buy on eBay. Yeah, it's really the second largest to Amazon for this reselling. And I still think it's better than Amazon for reselling because Amazon still you're buying a lot of new stuff for the used stuff.
Nobody typically thinks, oh, let me go save money on a used item and buy on Amazon. Like that's not the mentality. Most of it's like, what can I order that's going to be here tomorrow that I need? So I feel like is the buyer on Amazon. So.
Rob: Yeah, it's definitely, eBay is by far the biggest platform out there that does deals with the used items.
So that is why we use it when another market, another platform comes along, that's better than eBay, we'll start using that platform just as well and see if it gets better than eBay. But for now, eBay by far, they have the corner of the market on used items. So.
Melissa: One quick thing also, not necessarily about this flip, but I had a question.
So why, like we get this on social media a lot. Why do are you able to sell older appliances? Like why why do they sell for so much money? Like you said this is retail. How old is this? Do you think?
Rob: I'm not really sure.
Melissa: Okay, maybe not. I don't know how old it is. Who knows. Five, seven years? Why do appliances hold their value?
Rob: So well if you take the range that we sold, I think that one's probably about 20 years old, and the reason why is the range that we sold actually, if they discontinue anything and somebody might have had this range before and they wanted the same exact range and it's discontinued, they can't go buy it from a store or anything like that, they're going to go to the second hand place.
They're going to look on eBay. They're going to look wherever you can find second hand appliances, which like I said, eBay is the biggest market out there for second hand appliances. And then we're willing to ship it anywhere in the country. On freight shipping so that allows us to be able to get right to those people who are looking for these, but to be honest with you guys like back 20, 30, 40 years ago, they made appliances way way better than they do nowadays and they lasted a lot longer. So a lot of people will have a really cool appliance, and they liked it and they used it for 20 years and then they want the same exact appliance. They want to replace it with and you can't go buy the same exact appliance. This is 20, 30, years 40 years old.
You have to go to that used market and that's where we do it so, hopefully that makes sense.
Melissa: So, I, like, I was going to break down the eBay fees. Cool. You haven't created the label yet for this, but you said about a hundred dollars?
Rob: No, yeah, right around a hundred bucks it'll cost me for the, the Panini Press to ship it, so.
And you didn't charge extra for shipping? I think I did free shipping on this, so I did $1,499. I was at the top of the market for what I could sell it for, so I knew I could build in, and I figured it was going to cost me about a hundred, a hundred and fifty bucks to, to ship it.
Melissa: Yeah, and so that, but that is a big thing too, like we like, you like to do a lot of free shipping because the customer then doesn't have to think about shipping or have to, we do both, I feel like you do both, but you have so much profit into the item that you can do that and you know and you build it into the price, so. So it sold for $1,500, well, $1,499.99 to be exact, about $100 for shipping and eBay fees $195. Did you promote this? I don't think you did promote this.
Rob: No, no promotions. I haven't done a lot of promotions lately.
Melissa: Yeah, you haven't still. I've been trying not to do promotions. I've been sending out offers when I do get watchers on items.
Rob: Okay, so, so, and I, you did send an offer on this. That's the crazy part. is, I did send a couple offers on this and they didn't take me up on the offers, and then the person who actually found it paid the full price for it was, it was $1,499. So I like to try and do that with my items as well. So, you guys know I got $45 in this.
I can, I mean, I could have sold it for $1,399 or $1,299, $1,000 and still made really really good money. So I try to price my stuff knowing i'm going to send out offers and I did send out an offer for the range that we sold almost at the same time as this. The range that we sold was $3,200 and I sent an offer out for $2,999 so three thousand dollars is what I sent the offer on and that pushed that buyer over the top and he actually bought it for three thousand dollars once I offered two hundred dollars off. And I'll do that a lot of times on our stuff I don't accept offers when I'm listing the item, so I just have the buy it now price with no, you can't reach out to me with an offer.
And then when I start getting watchers on the item, I will send out those offers and eBay actually then reaches out to the potential buyer who's watching it. And they'll send them the offer and give them 48 hours to actually accept the offer. So like this, I did send out a couple offers, nobody took me up on it.
And then when the right person found it, they bought it at the full price, which because I didn't accept any offers, they didn't think I would take any less than I actually did on this. Yeah.
Melissa: So after eBay fees, shipping costs, and what you got into it, you made $1,150 on that.
Rob: Over $1,000! And guys, I will not have over two hours of time into this, putting this thing together.
So over $500 an hour. On this once I box it the longest thing is going to take me to actually box it other than that, it was it was already clean. I wiped it down took a couple pictures of it, took a video of it, got it listed. Trust me less than two hours worth of time into this to make over a thousand dollars. We love it.
That is an amazing.
Melissa: What's gonna take longer if you want to video it for our members. So you're gonna video the process and that like duplicates what it is the actual time it takes. If you just, you know, went and did it, it's a lot quicker, but for sure to do a video so they can, can, benefit from that for sure.
So, yeah. So I just want to kind of ask some different tidbits of this flip from start to finish, because like some of those are great tips on how you list your items. And I know like promotions, we go back and forth, which we are always testing and tweaking. That's the cool thing about you still doing this every day is you're always.
Trying new things, seeing what's working now because those things do change over time. The basics never change. Like the foundations don't change, but little intricacies of different platforms could change. And so we're always out there testing and trying what works. And right now for you offers are working better than promotions.
So that's kind of what we're sticking to right now.
Rob: One of the other biggest tips that I can give you that I've been doing on these items, both items that sold, I will give you the key to selling these items and being a very, what's the right word I'm looking for, successful in flipping larger, higher profit items is I'm doing videos.
I took a video of this thing working. I actually had a temperature gun that I took, showed what the temperature was at the top and the bottom plate, just so people could see that it is actually working and I'm not selling them something that they plug in. They're going to get in this plugin and it's dead.
I did that for the range. I did that for this. I do this for almost all of my items that are higher profit, higher dollar items, just to give the buyers that reassurance. So if you're not using videos yet, I strongly, strongly suggest you start adding them into your listing. So, and if you're selling $2, $5, $10 items, it's not really worth it.
It's not worth the time to do. With a more expensive items, high profit, high expensive items is what you really want to do to give you the, just get the edge on your your competition with that. Yeah. So.
Melissa: So we have also gravitated, I don't know, gravitated, we do sell a lot of appliances. So I remember one year we went to, one of our road trips, cause like we've mentioned before, we like to go in the summer, bring our trailer, see what we can find across the country while, while visiting national parks and state parks along the way. And one year we came back and I think we had 17 items and 14 of them were appliances and it's like, oh, and it was like $30,000 of inventory that we had spent $1,000 on. So we're like, oh, I feel like this is kind of where we've niched down because it makes the most money.
So it is a very high, high value niche. So.
Rob: Yeah, I mean, and this is the thing, you can get like this $45 investment turned into $1,500 in two weeks. The other one was two or three weeks for the range, a $120 investment into $3,000. That's what the potential of appliances are. There is so, so much potential, so many appliances in the local market, whether it's the flea market, thrift stores, yard sales, all over the place on the side of the road, you can buy, I mean, you can get appliances for free and then turn around and either sell parts off of them or sell them, fix them, do whatever you want to do.
But there's just so, so much potential in appliances. And like Melissa said, when we did come back from that road trip, that's where we're like, okay, listen, we got to put something together to really help people make this money. Make the money on the appliances, learn how to spot those appliances, to clean those appliances, to test those appliances.
That's what our goal was with it. And that's what we really came out with the appliance flipping course.
Melissa: Yes. We have this program for appliance flipping specifically. If you want to check it out right now, it's at 50 percent off. sent off. So you can check it out at the link below or go to applianceflipping.com and it should take you to the program and see if it is a good fit for you. It's our favorite niche and yeah, we're excited about it.
Rob: It's only for the next couple of days at 50 percent off guys. So if you do want to jump in, do it, do not wait. This is the only thing out there that gives you the potential of really making some serious.
We just told you two of our items sold, in the last couple of days and sold for $4,500 together that we had $165 invested. And we do this year in and year out. We do this all the time with these items that we're not paying a lot of money for, and then we're able to turn around and sell them for great profit.
And neither one of these are price gouges either. These are items that people are really, really need, really, really want. And we're giving them to them underneath what retail is on them.
Melissa: Yeah, one of our members just posted yesterday he had a $4,000 sale, on an old, like, stove, cast iron stove. A cast iron stove, which was super cool.
So, so yeah, the money is there in appliance. The potential is there. The potential is there. And we would love to see you inside of our members group if you take the jump in. And yeah, let us know if you have any questions.
Rob: You guys are awesome. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. And cannot wait to see you on the next episode.