Trash to Cash. A podcast about making a living on eBay.
What Sells On eBay: Minnetonka Concho hat, GE Wildcat Record player, Vtg Raven Ski suit, Super Madball, Legos Creator, Pyrex percolator, Jesse James print
Home›Forums›What Sells On eBay: Minnetonka Concho hat, GE Wildcat Record player, Vtg Raven Ski suit, Super Madball, Legos Creator, Pyrex percolator, Jesse James print
Steve – Such a neat variety of items you sold this past week! I recently learned about the Webcore company when I bought one of their record players at an auction last year. I sold it a week or two ago.
I found this 1982 Dungeons & Dragons card set in a case with other ephemera. It’s actually 4 sets together. I decided to put them up for auction, and they sold for $37.82. I paid about $0.25. http://www.ebay.com/itm/183623680492
This Cadillac patch came out of the same case as the card set above. Didn’t sell for much, but another $9 to my sales this week. It did take some research to figure out the logo. http://www.ebay.com/itm/183573965929
Recently, someone posted in their numbers in the forum and mentioned that they recently listed a Rolls Razor in very good condition. I knew I had one, so I checked up on it. I didn’t make any changes, just closed it as-is. And then it sold a few hours later! Paid about $1, sold for $26. http://www.ebay.com/itm/183335045206
Last October, I purchased this pilates Pro Chair at the minimum bid of $1 in an online auction. I had listed everything else from that auction, but I put this off because I needed to verify that the chair was working properly. When I got back from my year end trip, I realized that I needed to list it right away to fulfill someone’s new year’s resolutions. Sold about a week or so later for $79. http://www.ebay.com/itm/183622672160
Sharon,
Pretty cool sale on the D&D cards and LOVE the bonus Caddie patch sale. The Pilates chair will make an AWESOME funky plant stand for your buyer come mid March or so!
Hi Ryanne, thank you for hosting another one of Steve’s outstanding ‘What Sells”!
Steve, The Super Madballs jumped right out at me, found a cache of them, and have been enjoying sporadic sales! I have the cheap ripoff footballs, even the vintage fake Madballs do well, sometimes better, however there are repops turning up after a Madball resurgence.
Nice Hike with the dogs!!!
I wondered if you ever thought about repairing stereos and other audio as a sideline? Probably more money just buying broke, repairing and selling for yourself however. Better use of time!?
I just received a message from the Madball buyer stating that it was deflated. I told him that time, temperature and air pressure differences from air travel could be the cause and suggested he pump it up. Haven’t heard back.
I think this year is going to be good for any vintage related space stuff especially the Apollo program as July 20th will mark 50th anniversary of the 1st manned landing.
Steve, my knock off Madball footballs are new & deflated in the bags, they were sold that way. not sure about the real Super Madballs.
Well, if Space stuff might gather interest soon, I’m stacked with miniature overpriced one shots on Etsy!
Steve another great video! I especially love your mid century home decor and furnishings. Is your house all MCM? How many years does that take to stage? wow!
thank you
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Thank you Sally, I moved into this house 2 years ago but had collected a few items for about a year before that, now I may have a bit too much and every now and then I’ll put something up for sale. I’m always on the lookout for the next MCM treasure.
My sales have been less than stellar, but I wanted to share this one by Lynn Chase. The place mats I sold for $120 are unusual but keep an eye out for her stuff – especially china. It can go for really good money. Examples of solds The art work is very well done and it’s high end. I paid $6 for my place mats at the indy thrift.
Also this $40 ephemera sale is cool because I sold the day I put it in a Pinterest party with the Facebook Thifting Board. A bit hard to price so I have more but only listed this pair first to test the waters. It may be helpful to participate or pin your items this time of year to bring them attention. Also, most of the sales were lower than this on Ebay, so the buyer didn’t shop around.
Finally, I forgot I left this Easter decor up from last year. Paid $3. Beistle is a good vintage paper brand for holiday items and people like the honeycombs.
I’ve parted out a couple reel to reel players so far and the idler wheel has been nearly the first thing to sell both times. It must wear out after a while. Here are some of my different kind of sales last week…
This paint by numbers art set came out of a box lot. I only paid $4 for the whole lot (each sellable item came to .67 cents). The box set contained two 8×10 pictures and little tins of paint that were sealed shut so I couldn’t’ tell if there was paint still paint left inside. I listed it for $20 and it sold almost instantly. Maybe I should have priced it higher. But oh well. https://www.ebay.com/itm/303028709633
I acquired this old Zippo lighter in a box lot of odds and ends. I paid $21 for the lot with each sellable item costing $2.33. Zippos are all over the map in terms of sold prices. So I decided to let the market determine the value. I set it as an auction starting at $30, and the bids started coming in almost immediately. I’ve never had that happen before. It ended up selling for $60 with 11 bids (9 unique bidders). That tells you there’s a good market for vintage Zippos, even plain ones like mine. https://www.ebay.com/itm/303025576670
I love ephemera! I love doing the research and it’s so easy to store and ship. It doesn’t always bring in a lot of money, but it always sells reliably. This little Merle Norman cosmetics sales booklet came from a treasure trove of papers and catalogs (a lot of John Deere stuff which I priced quite high). This was the first of that lot to sell, and it sold for $20. Each item from that box lot ended up costing me $1.56. https://www.ebay.com/itm/303028759107
Here’s my big sale of the week. I really paid up on this Golden Shield brand transistor radio at an auction for $35. But it looked pristine and still had all the original paperwork and box! I brought it home and plugged it in and it didn’t work. Boo! I made sure to completely convey that in the description though. It still sold after a few week for full price of $160. If I had the knowledge of electrical repair, I know I could have gotten more for it after fixing it. Oh well, still a good price! https://www.ebay.com/itm/303029617647
Nice sales.
That Zippo auction price was most likely the provenance of the paper work and box, that would seem to be rare.
Cool old transitor radios always do well, although I haven’t tried it on something that small and tight I’ve begun replacing capacitors on a few amps with success, just takes a good soldering iron kit.
Thanks, Steven. That’s what I was thinking to when I listed it.
It probably was just a simple capacitor or something like that. Hopefully the guy who bought it will know what to do. And he gave me positive feedback so I know he wasn’t disappointed.
Doubly: In my first year of selling on eBay, I purchased a lot with many vintage lighters, maybe 4 or 5 were Zippos. Not knowing much, I listed them in groups of two or three, and they sold almost immediately. For the past two or so years, I’ve been looking far and wide for Zippos, and I did not find any that were cheap enough to flip.
I expect that the price was so high for the one you sold because of the company name on the front. It is rare to find a Zippo with the name inscribed of a smaller business.
I had no clue that Zippo’s were worth anything…they usually “smell” like butane when I find them and just figured they were like ashtrays – a thing of the past.
I see a lot of them around where I scavenge – they use to be made right here in Niagara Falls – I’ll have to take a closer look at them next time I’m out scavenging as some unique ones may have been ditched by former Zippo employees in my area. They are always in the cabinets with watches, jewelry, etc. at every thrift store in the area.
A sale I’ll never forget was a worn Zippo EMPTY little box, earliesh mid century, picked out of a ‘junk’ basket for 25 cents, sold for $65 a few years back.
I just looked it up because I vaguely remember a store/outlet in the tourist area of Niagara Falls and thought they made them there. It turns out they did, from 1948 up until 2002. It was the only place other than Bradford, PA where Zippo’s were manufactured.
If you go to the FAQ on their website, it’s actually pretty neat. It shows what a Canadian vs. American Zippo markings look like, and what all the symbols mean. I had no clue they had a system like British Silver Hallmarks for dating a lighter.
Oh, yes! I used that hallmark to figure out when my Zippos were made. They all had original inserts as well. The inserts and the cover have their own date markings, and, if the lighter stopped working and someone returned it for repair, the company may just replace the insert. Then the insert and the cover would be from two different years.
I did not know about the Canadian factory, and I’ll keep a look out for it should I ever find them in the wild again.
What did I pay for it? About 10 years ago I bought it non-working for $50. I had to re-route one wire to get power to a board and it has been great every since.
Nice, big items like that are hard to move, both literally and figuratively.
It was once my dream to own a pinball machine as I grew up in the early seventies playing them, loved the loud ‘knock’ when you scored enough for a free game.
One of my projects when I retire is to build a “multi-cade”. I’ve been collecting ROMs and marquees for years, and to build my own machine these days is really simple. It will be easy to make a cabinet (or buy a original cabinet and put modern electronics in it) that runs some of my favorites like Zaxxon, Ms. Pac-Man, and Paperboy – however, my #1 quarter eater as a kid was Spy Hunter and that is more complex of a build.
My wife can’t figure out the allure of an arcade game in it’s intended format vs. playing it on an emulator with a joystick.
As for the allure, if she didn’t experience it then it is hard to explain. It’s the total experience: lights, sounds, smells, that giddy feeling when a new game showed up in the arcade, etc, etc.
I don’t even have to play my games to enjoy them. I just like having them all turned on with the lights out and music playing while other people enjoy them. I’m recapturing a moment in time. Alas, I no longer want to maintain them and I don’t want machines breaking down on me anymore. They’ll just sit instead of getting fixed and that, to quote Marie Kondo, would not spark joy.
I like the whole ambiance of it as well…the arcade scene in the mall in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” captures the scene I would like to be in.
I’ve been to a few retro-arcades, but they just can’t capture the moment again for me. The sounds, lighting (I like walking into an arcade with just the games for light), and games are there, just not the same with the people being 40 and 50 years old in modern clothes instead of 80’s teenagers. Plus, a few I’ve been to have too many generations of games all mixed in. A Street Fighter II, Big Buck Hunter, or Golden Tee can’t be beside a Dig-Dug, Asteroids, or Berzerk.
One of the reasons why I want to build my own machine with modern parts is the maintenance – I’ve had friends who had a few machines and they are painful to fix if an oddball part is needed. I’ve been planning my machine since the 90’s – and each year it is easier and cheaper to build one. The latest setup I like is just a tiny Raspberry Pi running an emulator connected by HDMI to a small flat screen – the most expensive part is probably the wiring, buttons, and joystick these days. It won’t be the same, but will be enough when I’m ready to build one.
I hope the new owner of the Paperboy machine enjoys it – I know if I spotted one in the wild I would be pumping quarters in it like crazy, and probably not last more then a few minutes these days…
Buttons and joysticks are cheap. Crappy JAMMA arcade machines are cheap, though not as cheap as they used to be. There are arcade auctions still in some areas, as well as arcade/pinball trade shows where you could get a complete 2 player machine for super cheap. Then you just need a JAMMA adapter to allow you to interface directly to the controls and monitor.
I’ve made a few MAME machines over the years. I became quite fond of the 60/1 multicade boards and sold several multicade machines. I’ve made some real nice ones, as well as a few junkers I just slapped a multiboard in.
Steve, I love seeing your solds video each week. I had a sale earlier this month that I thought I would share. I love craft kits and booklets since they’re so easy to store and ship. I found this Women of the Bible Quilt Pattern booklet and sold it for $110. I paid about $1 for it and had it in a pile for several months before getting around to researching it. I couldn’t believe how much it was going for and quickly listed it once I saw. It’s from Augsberg Fortress so I think it’s a limited number of books printed.
Wow Donna, that really was great sale.
I have a number of quilting books listed as a lot but not nearly as valuable as the one yours sold for.
Nice find.
I learned to buy good quality wool blankets on old episodes of Scavenger Life. I bought this Scandinavian wool blanket for $5 at a yard sale, hoping to get $100-125. Let it go for $88 in 4 months.
Discovered a new (to me) high end men’s shoe brand: Grenson. Love their customer service! I contacted them about sizing b/c I didn’t know if the size printed was a US or UK size, and they also told me the style name and color name of the shoe. Purchased for $8 at an independent thrift store. Sold in a week for $99.
Purchased a lot of new in package Soft Surroundings silk curtains (3) and pillow shams (3). All 6 for just $20 at a yard sale. I vaguely remembered the brand from someone posting on SL about selling this brand’s clothing for good prices really quickly, and I ended up having similar luck with these. Sold the curtain panels for $89 each and the shams for $35 each. Everything sold within 5 months.
Yes, high quality wool blankets are worth the trouble, which reminds me I should get a few more listed off my dead pile of those.
Thanks for the tip on Gren, not a brand I would’ve recognized or thought was valuable.
Home › Forums › What Sells On eBay: Minnetonka Concho hat, GE Wildcat Record player, Vtg Raven Ski suit, Super Madball, Legos Creator, Pyrex percolator, Jesse James print