Recent Posts

Patience when Flipping


One of the main parts of flipping for profit is to have patience. When I buy items I don’t normally have a planned date when something has to sell by, or I want to start trying to discount it. The reason for this is because I know once I have bought I don’t have much control over when something sells. The vast majority of items breakdown very simply between the supply and demand curve. This thought process takes patience. I don’t know when someone is going to make a decision to buy, but as long as I’ve purchased an item that is in demand and did not pay too much I will be able to make more purchases and sells over time with an inventory that is growing and make a good return on a small amount of money.

Patience

I’ll probably get the exact saying wrong, but people tend to over estimate what can be done in a year and vastly underestimate what can be accomplished in ten years. If you keep this in mind and have patience you can grow a very small amount of money into a significant stake over an extended period of time. If I think about the amount I started with in my change jar and what the possibility could be in a ten year time frame from possible ranges it is a very wide range. From a most simple version I will build a framework about how patience would be your friend over time in a situation like this. If I were to get a 30% return on my initial amount it would be almost $500 at that time. As well, I could then make $150 a year off of the inventory moving forward. That would be five times the amount I had when I started every year. I think a $150 a year extra would be a nice thing to have from change that had built up over the years. This amount does not assume using future change to increase the value.

YearAmount30% returnNew balance
1$36$10.80$46.80
2$46.80$14.04$60.84
3$60.84$18.25$79.09
4$79.09$23.73$102.82
5$102.82$30.85$133.67
6$133.67$40.10$173.77
7$173.77$52.13$225.90
8$225.90$67.77$293.67
9$293.67$88.10$381.77
10$381.77$114.53$496.30
Growth at 30% a year for ten years

Another possibility is I am able to get 75% return on my initial amount in the change jar every year for 10 years. This is possible when flipping. This would put me at an inventory of $9698 in inventory which I could make $7200 a year off of before taxes. $600 a month is not life changing, but gives a lot of options for what could be done with it. This amount could pay all of a family’s utilites and still have money left over each month.

YearAmount75% returnNew Balance
1$36.00$27.00$63.00
2$63.00$47.25$110.25
3$110.25$82.69$192.94
4$192.94$144.71$337.65
5$337.65$253.24$590.89
6$590.89$443.17$1034.06
7$1034.06$775.55$1809.61
8$1809.61$1357.21$3166.82
9$3166.82$2375.12$5541.94
10$5541.94$4156.46$9698.40
75% a year return after 10 years

At the end of the day remaining patient will allow the power of compounding to work its magic and turn into something which could be a reasonable amount of money which throws off a good amount a month and in a year. Building an additional monthly and yearly flow not tied to a job is a pillar of creating value for yourself outside of your job to allow you to do other things in life financially. I am excited to see what will become of the amount over the years from the start of just over $36.

September 13, 2022- Sale Number 2


I received an offer for the Biscuit mold and accepted it today. It sold for $13.00 and the person who bought it paid for the exact amount of shipping on the item. After all the fees were paid to sell it I profited $2.63 over the purchase price of $7.03. This item was bought on 6/29/22 and with it selling in 76 days its annual return on the amount invested would be 360%. The return percentage of this item was $2.63/7.03= 37.41%. With the ability to reinvest the amount you made in an annual interest rate and selling an item 4.8 times in one year you would arrive at an annual rate of return of 360%. This is another good win for the change jar flip. This increases the amount up to $46.09 from the initial start of $36.38. I am up $9.71 in profit, or 26.6% off the initial investment.

New purchases- Two Puzzles and a Coffee Cup

Once I dropped the sale off at the shipping store to go out I made another trip to a Goodwill. I found two Coca Cola puzzles I’m going to package together as one item and a Christmas coffee cup. I paid $6.91 for the puzzles and $1.18 for the coffee cup. I feel confident based on the amount of interest in Coca Cola nostalgia I will be able to sell both of these together and potentially make my first $10 plus in profit off of them. I don’t know much about reselling coffee cups, but think this may be a good area to try outside of puzzles, which I have a bunch of right now in terms of the overall inventory. This puts me at a total inventory value of $49.35 and makes me overinvested by $3.26. As I’ve said before I’m ok with this amount because I could likely find this amount of change around if I looked for it. I have 20 items and still expect to sell around one item every 30 to 60 days based on my inventory level. I’ll update again when something sells or I decide to find some free items to list.

Coca Cola Puzzles

Current Inventory

ItemCostDate PurchasedSoldProfit
Autumn Puzzle$1.186/13/22
Bridge Puzzle$1.186/13/22
Ireland Puzzle$3.456/27/22
NFL Puzzle$2.376/27/22
Globe Puzzle$.606/29/22
Animal puzzle #1$1.186/29/22
Animal puzzle #2$1.186/29/22
Music Album puzzle$1.186/29/22
Iowa Puzzle$1.186/29/22
3 Hole Punch$1.186/29/22
Biscuit$7.036/29/229/13/222.63
Silver Plated Vase$4.647/20/22
Serving Dish and Bowl$9.297/20/22
*Antique building Puzzle- $4.647/25/22
*Star Wars Puzzle$2.377/25/22
*2 Hot Wheels$2.108/3/22
Star Wars Puzzle$1.188/31/22
Animal Puzzle$1.188/31/22
Animal Puzzle$1.188/31/22
*2 Coca Cola Puzzles$6.919/13/22
*Christmas Coffee Cup$1.189/13/22
Overinvested $3.26
Total inventory amount$49.35
*Indicates purchased from Profit

August 31, 2022- Update


I have been thinking about how many items I need to get a consistent one item a month to sell. In this regard I found a little bit more change in my car, and went to look for more items in the under $2 range to build up to 30 items which should get me to around 1 item a month on average. I haven’t sold an item in one month at this point and will think about ways to get to the 30 items. If I keep the reinvestment amounts low and look for some free items or sell some items I have around the house I can get to the 30 items fairly easily. Looking back on my purchases I should have decided to invest to get the total of 30 items with the least amount of investment possible to ensure a sales moving forward. These three additional puzzles put me at 20 items. I will update again once another item sales or I acquire more items to sale. Consistency of a sale every month is going to be the best driving factor to grow the inventory to a level where the reinvestment into more and more inventory will allow the inventory to start throwing off as much as I started off with.

Car change 8-31-22

What the future amounts could look like

This is purely a thought experiment and I don’t expect the inventory to look like this in a year from now, but this is why I want to grow to 30 items to get one on average selling a month. With 30 items at an average of $3 per item of profit on each item sold. I am setting a conservative expecation to double on each item I buy right now at the minimum. The results wwill be different than the doubling amount as I go, as evidenced on the first sale I had on July 31st. In month ten this estimate takes into account the expectation of selling more than one item a month based on the number of items at a percentage of them. If this estimate is close the value will almost doubled by the end of 12 months. This might not seem like much, but this doubling could happen the next year easily too which would have turned $35 into $140. At $140 inventory there would be over 100 items at $1.18 per item and would average selling 3-4 items a month. At $3 an item this would be around $10 a month in profit from $35 to start with. With another year the inventory would be close to $300 and have around 250 items and likely sell around 7-8 items a month. This amount should be throwing off around $20-25 a month. This amount of money would start to be able to really grow the inventory in a different way than the build up for this time of consistency of sales a month. I’ll talk about that more later as the inventory continues to grow and what I will do. There are other thoughts which can go into this to allow the inventory to get to a level which is more significant. You could take a few dollars every month and invest it into inventory to help it grow too. If this was done by the end of one year you would have an inventory of around $100.

MonthNumber of Items3% of inventory sell per monthPotential ProfitInventory value
1301$3$38.40
2321$3$40.76
3341$3$43.12
4361$3$45.48
5381$3$47.84
6401$3$50.20
7421$3$52.56
8441$3$54.92
9461$3$57.28
10481.44$4.32$60.96
11511.5$4.50$64.68
12541.62$4.86$68.58

Current Inventory and Cash

ItemCostDate PurchasedSoldProfit
Autumn Puzzle$1.186/13/22
Bridge Puzzle$1.186/13/22
Ireland Puzzle$3.456/27/22
NFL Puzzle$2.376/27/22
Globe Puzzle$.606/29/22
Animal puzzle #1$1.186/29/22
Animal puzzle #2$1.186/29/22
Music Album puzzle$1.186/29/22
Iowa Puzzle$1.186/29/22
3 Hole Punch$1.186/29/22
Biscuit$7.036/29/22
Silver Plated Vase$4.647/20/22
Serving Dish and Bowl$9.297/20/22
*Antique building Puzzle- $4.647/25/22
*Star Wars Puzzle$2.377/25/22
*2 Hot Wheels$2.108/3/22
Star Wars Puzzle$1.188/31/22
Animal Puzzle$1.188/31/22
Animal Puzzle$1.188/31/22
Cash-$4.83Over invested
Total inventory amount$48.29
*Indicates purchased from Profit

My First Online Flip – January 2005


In late 2004 one of my relatives told me they had sold a couple of books on Amazon. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but that conversation would lead me into the world of flipping items online. From this small seed that was planted in my mind I thought about it and had seen a small store close to where I was working that had some books for sale.

I did what I thought was the best thing before I bought a book to see how much it would cost me to sell it on Amazon. I went through and read what fees I would have to pay to sell on their marketplace. I also estimated what I thought it would cost me to mail the book. Then I went to the store and wrote down the names of some of the books which were for sale. The books ranged in price from $1- $3. I found one that looked like a winner to me based on the numbers when I ran it through the costs I had calculated. I bought “Golf for Dummies” for $1.

“Golf for Dummies” Stock image. Not the same version I would have sold.

I didn’t keep good enough records back then to see how long it took to sell, but remember my first sale happened very fast. From what I remember it was in a matter of a few days. There was a lot less competition on Amazon in 2005 when I started out and I could sell items very quickly. I made $2.29 profit on the first book and immediately went back to the store and started buying more books. I was hooked quite quickly. I have kept records since January 2005 on which I still look back at sometimes and think how amazingly consisent flipping online has been with the effort I’ve put into it and the return on my money. In January 2005 I made $31.67 profit on $7 in books.

I knew moving forward I would be flipping items for as long as I could think. The return on my money was so outsized for these small amounts compared to many other things I could think of. Pretty simple concept to start with a minimal amount of risk which offers a very low barrier to entry and the returns allowed for reinvestment in a fairly easy way to be able to flip into more.

I continued to buy more books as 2005 went on and had made over $500 in gross profit by the end of the year. That was over 70 times the amount of money I started with. Sure, there are other things I could have did to make $500, but I didn’t have to go work for someone else to do it and it taught me how to flip items online which I could use moving forward. The freedom of time and return is something I enjoyed back then and still to this day. I was buying books from $.50 to $3 during this period and did not have one month where I ever lost money. Making almost $50 extra dollars a month from $7 in that first month to start with is a phenomonal thing to be able to do. The $50 a month can help most people starting saving so they can have a rainy day fund in case they were to lose their full time job, or let them start saving for retirement, or anything they could think of.

August 3, 2022- More purchases needed


When the first item sold on July 31st an unexpected thing happened after I made my purchases to reinvest in flips. The item got more bids and sold for more than my initial amount I had as a starting bid on Ebay. This meant I needed to invest $1.25 to be fully invested. I was at the grocery store on August 3rd and wondered over to the toy section to see if I could find something in this price range. I found two Hot Wheels for $1.05 each with tax. I decided to buy both because I could package them together as one item and double the amount invested easier. The cost of shipping would not change much with items this light and gives me a better chance of selling. I think this strategy will work well on smaller items and help to make resell items move faster than listing only one Hot Wheel at a time. Both Hot Wheels were on sale and would have normally been $4.99 each, but you can find things like this very often if you take a couple of minutes to look in most stores. Total inventory amount is at $44.75 right now and I am over invested again slighty based on these purchases, but am good with the amount because it is not much more than I could find in change in my car. The over invested amount is $1.29. I have 16 total listings for sale, but 17 items because I am putting the Hot Wheels as one listing. I will update again when there is another sale. I am going to guess it will still be in the 30 to 60 day range for another sale.

2 Hot Wheels

Current Inventory and Cash

ItemCostDate PurchasedSoldProfit
Autumn Puzzle$1.186/13/22
Bridge Puzzle$1.186/13/22
Ireland Puzzle$3.456/27/22
NFL Puzzle$2.376/27/22
Globe Puzzle$.606/29/22
Animal puzzle #1$1.186/29/22
Animal puzzle #2$1.186/29/22
Music Album puzzle$1.186/29/22
Iowa Puzzle$1.186/29/22
3 Hole Punch$1.186/29/22
Biscuit$7.036/29/22
Silver Plated Vase$4.647/20/22
Serving Dish and Bowl$9.297/20/22
*Antique building Puzzle- $4.647/25/22
*Star Wars Puzzle$2.377/25/22
*2 Hot Wheels$2.108/3/22
Cash-$1.29Over invested
Total inventory amount$44.75
*Indicates purchased from Profit

July 31, 2022 – First Sale


Good news to report for this date is I have made my first sale in change jar flip. I sold the Disney Puzzle on July 31st. It is exciting to have the first sale happen, because it reaffirms my experiment to see how much a change jar can be turned into is a realistic thing to do with a small amount of money. Even better news in this situation with the sale was instead of doubling the amount I hoped to make on the $1.18 invested in the puzzle I made $7.08 of profit. This is a 600% profit on that initial amount which will let us buy more than one more additional item to add to the inventory and get me closer to the 30 items so I can get on average of one sale a month. The $1.18 turned into $8.26 and has grown the total amount can potentially invest to $43.46. My return of $7.08 on my $36.38 in about two months shows that with small amounts you can make enormous return percentages and I believe this will be proved over and over again as this continues on in the future.

1st item sold

Annual Return Thoughts When Flipping Small Amounts

Annual return on your investment is a strange concept to think about with a small amount of money invested, but I will talk about it time to time as this progresses. Here is the understanding of what occured with just the Disney puzzle selling. If this money was never reinvested than when it was 6/6/2023 the annual return would be 19.46% on the $36.38. If you could maintain buy and sell one item a year and get 19.46% on the total moving forward after 30 years you would grow the $36.38 to $7,542. There is great power in compounding amounts over and over again. This is the path most people are able to take to build up their nest eggs over time through standard investment medium like 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts and investing in them on a regular basis.

What the First Sale Lead to- July 25, 2022

I used Ebay to sell the first puzzle and got a bid on it early in the week and knew it was going to sale. On Ebay I assume the buyer was going to pay based on the bid, because they had a good feedback. Knowing the sale was going to happen I decided to go an try to find items to add onto the amount of the potential profit. I went to Goodwill again and bought two more puzzles. The first is of a historical building and cost me $4.64. This one could end up being a doubling of the cost based on what I found, but I feel confident I can double my invested amount on this flip. The second one was a Star Wars branded puzzle and I paid $2.37 for this one. I likely will make a little less than this one when it sells, but in the past I’ve had good experience with Star Wars items moving fairly quickly. If it doesn’t move I’ll buy another Star Wars item and package them together to get them out the door and flipped.

Current Inventory and Cash Equivalent

ItemCostDate PurchasedSoldProfit
Disney Puzzle$1.186/6/227/31/22$7.08
Autumn Puzzle$1.186/13/22
Bridge Puzzle$1.186/13/22
Ireland Puzzle$3.456/27/22
NFL Puzzle$2.376/27/22
Globe Puzzle$.606/29/22
Animal puzzle #1$1.186/29/22
Animal puzzle #2$1.186/29/22
Music Album puzzle$1.186/29/22
Iowa Puzzle$1.186/29/22
3 Hole Punch$1.186/29/22
Biscuit$7.036/29/22
Silver Plated Vase$4.647/20/22
Serving Dish and Bowl$9.297/20/22
*Antique building Puzzle- $4.647/25/22
*Star Wars Puzzle$2.377/25/22
Cash$1.25Needs to be reinvested
*Indicates purchased from Profit