How to Turn a Bucket of $20 Thomas the Trains into $175 – Trash Talk Episode 3

Thomas the train and muglife are back at it in epsiode 3 of trash talk … where I turn your trash, into cash!

The reaction from my community so far has been phenomenal and I’m already fired up and planning for tomorrow morning’s filming of episode 4! Nothing makes me happier than seeing all the tweets and comments come in from Vaynernation out there are making a few hundred to a few thousand bucks by selling stuff on eBay:

It really is stunning to me how practical it is to buy items from garage sales, resell them, and make an extra $100 – $1000 / week.

In these Trash Talk articles, I break down the highlights of the episode and try to go more in depth on the flip tactics you see on screen, so we can really eliminate excuses once and for all 😉

Enjoy!

Finding “hidden” products at garage sales

When you go to garage sales, people might have more products in their house that they’re just not putting out for sale.

But if you ask, a lot of times they’ll be willing to sell it to you.

In one of the first garage sales I hit up, the sale didn’t look too good. So I asked the seller if he had any video games for sale.

He asked me to come back in an hour while he went inside and checked.  

It didn’t pan out when I came back… but this can still can be a good way of finding products that you wouldn’t normally find.

How to negotiate for lower prices at yard sales

At the third garage sale, we found a giant box of Thomas the Train items!  

We talked about how valuable Thomas the Train products are in Episode 2, so you know how big of a deal this is.  

The lady was ready to sell the entire box for $25 at the lowest. I wanted $20. I could tell she was hesitating, and was saying she didn’t know whether her husband would be okay with it. So I asked her son to call him and ask.

The dad was cool with it, and I ended up getting the box for $20.

Sometimes, the best way to get the deal is by putting a little pressure on the negotiation, but still being respectful of where their asking price started.

Some of the products I flipped

I also hit up a thrift store this time around in addition to garage sales. They’ve also got a ton of cheap items to flip.

Here’s some of what I bought:

Old school yearbooks are surprisingly valuable items you can flip. At one of the garage sales, I found a few yearbooks from the 1950s that I relisted for $9.99.

I hate that I bought these New York Giants sweaters since I hate the Giants, but I knew it would be a monster flip so I did it anyway. I paid $8.88 for this Vintage 80s sweater that I re-listed for $90.

One of the most surprising finds of the night was this deck of cards, which I bought for $0.50 and relisted for $11.99.

As a lot of you know, I’m a huge fan of mugs 😉 This one I bought for $0.25, and the highest bid so ar is $38.

These Thomas the Train products were some of the biggest finds we locked down. I bought the entire pack for $20, and listed for $228.86!

“The Flip Challenge isn’t as easy as it sounds.”

Sometimes, I get messages from people saying that the flip game isn’t as easy as it seems. Like you can’t just drive to garage sales, buy stuff, and flip it for thousands every weekend.

The answer to that is pretty obvious to me:

If you’re just starting out, of course it’s not going to be as easy. It takes time to learn the nuances.

For example, you might not know the pricing differences between Hot Wheels cars with red lines vs the regular ones. You might not know the nuances of how to list an item that has a tag vs one that doesn’t have a tag.

There are a lot of nuances like this for every category of collectibles.

But for a lot of you, you have the time to learn.

Think about it: This week, I made around $300 with about 5-7 hours of work. Even if it takes  another 7-8 hours to list and ship everything on eBay, that’s comes out to around $20 / hour.

Depending on the week, that number could be more or less. In Trash Talk Episode 2, I made a couple grand from a day’s work. This week was slower.    

But still… for a lot of people, that’s kind of money is would make a difference in their lives. Especially if you’re doing it on the side, or on the weekends. If that’s you, I implore you to give this a shot instead of complaining that flipping “isn’t profitable”, or that it isn’t “worth your time” to drive to garage sales.

Here’s what to do:

Google “Townwide Garage Sales” and enter your city or state.

Find one near you.

Drive there.

Ask to buy items for less than what they ask for.

Find what they’re selling for on eBay.

List them, and wait till they sell 😉

Watch Trash Talk Episode 3 below: