A flea market vendor named Sandra had a rough day when a crowd picked through her table and walked off with a ton of her stock for very little money. An eBay reseller who had bought Loungefly backpacks from her saw how shaken and upset she was afterward. What he did next has turned into one of the nicest deals of his career, and she is now bringing him boxes of Lego to sell.
The reseller is Matt, who runs the Flippedit YouTube channel out of a single car garage in Australia. He says Sandra’s stock was ravaged at the flea market, and she wanted to sell more goods she had at home. When he went to her house, he paid her an extra $500 on top of the asking price to secure them.
An Extra Payment That Still Did Not Feel Like Enough
Matt says Sandra was very appreciative of the extra $500. Still, he went home unhappy with just that, because he knew she had been so badly shortchanged at the market. So he quietly sold everything under a consignment arrangement in his own mind, without telling her.
The second batch was more Loungefly bags, and he sold all of them quickly on his YouTube channel on her behalf. Using a tracking tool to work out the numbers, he was able to hand Sandra an extra $1,100 worth of profit that she never expected. By his count, he had paid her $2,350 in total.
Sandra Comes Back With More
Because he had treated her so well, Sandra did not need convincing when he suggested a consignment deal for any future collectibles. A few days ago, he received a text from her saying she had cleaned out her third storage unit and found a ton of Lego and more Loungefly bags. She asked whether she could drive over and have him list everything in his eBay store, with a 50/50 split.
Matt said yes right away. He now has 25 brand new Lego sets and 16 Loungefly bags in his possession that he did not have to pay for. At a rough guess, he puts the value at about $6,000, which could mean around $2,000 for each of them once fees, postage and cost of goods are taken out.
How the Deal Is Going So Far
When he checked his records, Matt had $4,621 worth of stock listed, including 13 active eBay listings of Sandra’s Lego. Five sales had already come through, two Lego sets and three orders of Loungefly bags. Out of the 16 bags, six sold to people who watched his earlier video, leaving 10 still to list at a minimum of $150 each, which he says adds another $1,500.
In the last 48 hours, he says, the deal brought in about $1,000 in sales and a profit of $945 after $69.80 in shipping and $17.37 in fees. A 50% split means roughly $500 each. Two of the Lego sets, listed at $129 and $119, sold in under 24 hours to the same buyer, who paid for one shipment, so there was only one package to send.
A buyer also reached out to ask for all of the One Piece Loungefly bags, which had $660 worth of value, for $550 because he could ship them together. Matt agreed, and he says sales from that video reached $780 worth of bags straight into his bank account.
Why Matt Says Kindness Paid Off
Matt says the whole arrangement was built on trust and on being a good person up front. He points out that many people go to flea markets and garage sales looking to lowball a seller, and he says he has found the opposite works better after six years of selling on eBay. He believes giving someone a great deal first builds a connection that leads to more business.
He admits it was partly strategic, since he knew Sandra had more stock, but he says it worked as a double win. Sandra reached out to him on her own, and he did not have to ask. He says people buy from and work with people they like.
The same thing happened with another contact at the flea market. Matt paid him $150 for a deal worth about $380, and the man was so surprised that he threw in Dyson vacuum parts and a broken camera that Matt sold for parts at $85. A Sanyo VHS player from that deal sold for $100 within four days.
His Rules If You Want to Try Consignment
For anyone curious about consignment, Matt explains it as taking someone’s stock without putting money down, selling it for them and splitting the profit after fees, postage and cost of goods. He shares several guidelines he follows.
- He does not accept less than a 50% share of the net profit.
- He avoids cheap stock, since a 50/50 split on a $20 or $30 item leaves very little. Everything he has consigned averages over $100.
- He tracks everything in a spreadsheet or software and keeps each person’s items in labeled tubs, because the owner legally still owns the goods.
- He pays out on a 30-day rolling basis, checking numbers on the 30th of each month.
He also puts one question to himself on every deal: is it good stock that will sell fast, can he earn the person’s trust to take it for $0 down, and will the profit be worth his time after costs? If the answers are yes, he says, the deal is worth doing.
His month is not slow either. He reports $5,264 in revenue and $1,000 in profit, with the profit margin sitting at 20% because of a $2,800 bulk buy he has not worked through yet. Without it, he says, the margin would be around 40%.
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