Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses from the ground up.
We also have a weekly zoom call and private discord for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash use book guy to join the channel and gain
access to the full length podcast zoom call and private discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode. What is up everybody?
Welcome into another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike next to Johnny and over here to my side here, we have Mike.
Well, I'm not going to tell you what he is. He's a reseller.
And he's kind of going to just take us away. What he sells,
what he does part-time full-time. Is he making any money? So Mike,
welcome to the podcast.
Appreciate you coming on this morning and hanging out with me and Johnny.
Take us away, Mike.
Hey, thank you. Yep. I am a toy seller.
Um, it does include toys, dolls, blush.
Um, I like, you know, all of those, um,
I've been reselling in some capacity for probably seven, eight years,
all kinds of things.
So I've shipped accordions on eBay and baseball bats and all of that,
but finally found my home, uh, in toys. And, uh,
I've got a pretty good business doing toys and they're plentiful in my area.
And it's, you know, it's, it's not a passion, passion of mine, but I do,
you know, I had my old eighties vibes as a kid.
I liked the Ninja Turtles and Ghostbusters and things from that era.
So it makes it a little bit more enjoyable than like say laying out a shirt
or a pair of jeans or something like that. So, um, kind of a plus there.
And, uh, full-time.
Full-time eBay or Amazon. Do you sell on Amazon at all?
I know a lot of people kind of everybody's scared of Amazon, but, uh,
what's that look like for you?
I was an Amazon seller who moved over to eBay,
basically. Um,
I was a seller on Amazon back in the wild, wild west days, the,
uh, you know,
heating up the stickers on the clearance items and peeling them off, um,
chasing around like extreme bolos. Um,
the definitely the wild, wild west days of Amazon. I was there for a long time.
Um, my biggest success with Amazon over time,
I created a private label type bundle,
which ironically ended up being in the toy category.
When I first did Amazon, I would do anything that made a buck.
So lotion and health and beauty and toys and just
anything. It was always just the flip game.
I eventually made, um,
a toy product type bundle where I basically took a bunch of
products, got them into one box, um,
made a name for the box. And, uh, it did very,
started to do really well. Um,
it ended up getting picked up by like a creator on TikTok and it
was getting like three to 4 million views because of this
guy, not really necessarily because of my product,
but he was already a big creator. Um, and that thing went really crazy.
We would hit like a 5,500 rank in the toy
category in December. So if you can imagine, I mean,
I was ripping through those things. Um,
I wasn't rich yet, but I was doing good. And then COVID happened. Um,
I had a bundle that required multiple pieces,
mostly coming from China. And, uh,
the complication of that bundle was I was dealing with like three to four
different, more than that, probably five different wholesalers, Rhode Island,
Utah, uh, New York, um,
um, some of them coming off guys from eBay, different
product. And when COVID hit,
they started putting inventory restrictions in and they started looking at, um,
they did not look at seasonality.
So I had a toy product that needed five times as much product in
November and December.
And they gave me this weird baseline number and they started restricting how
much I could send in that paired up with a bunch of trucks or not
trucks, ships being stuck at ports that were coming from China.
And I basically had to dissolve that product.
Amazon kind of did not help me too much in that regard. I mean, I, I,
not an Amazon hater. I think it's an incredible platform.
And I'm looking to maybe play around with it a little bit more.
I still have my account, but, um,
I took a pretty big blow mostly due to the COVID.
And that was kind of the end of that product because I couldn't keep it,
I couldn't keep it in the same place.
And so I had to put together, you know, too many components.
It was like a two item bundle, but this was, to be honest,
we called it a 35 piece bundle. Um,
some of them were like multi-competities of a little thing in there.
But anyways, so, um, I've done books on Amazon, uh, as well,
but now I am a hundred percent focused on toys on eBay.
So I know Michael a bit. We're in the same group.
He actually runs the toy called and a tech and sports reseller,
great in his podcast. And I've attended that call quite a bit.
And I was telling Michael before we started recording here,
back in the day when I was an everything seller and I was trying to narrow down
to a niche, it was a coin flip between toys and media. It really was.
And I was attending both calls on a regular basis,
but my decision to do media and books, as you all know me as the book, uh,
one of the book guys now was solely based off toys just weren't in my area
in abundance. So I was like, well, I guess the choice was made for me.
So I said, wait, didn't books. And again, it's not a regret. It was just,
I really wanted to do both, but it wasn't just,
it wasn't feasible the way I was trying to do my business model,
unless I decided to move and I didn't want to move.
And I still kind of don't want to move.
All right. So we'll, uh,
we'll bug him about how he gets his toys because I see a lot of toys. I mean,
Johnny's out in the middle of nowhere, but I have a lot of mom and pops that do,
like, uh, I don't know. The toys are basically a quarter 50 cents,
or they got like the bags of toys.
That's kind of like the big thing you see on like reselling YouTube is like,
look at this bag of Pokemon cards or bag of Skylanders or something like that.
Like now we're going to figure out, listen,
you don't gotta give away all your secret sauce, but help us alone here.
How do you source your toys? What does that look like for you?
Uh, yeah, great question. And I think in most, yeah,
I don't know exactly where Johnny's out, Johnny's at,
but you're saying it's a little more rural or smaller area.
Um, most American cities,
it's toy should be plentiful. Um,
especially cause the way kids go through them,
I have a daughter and you watch them,
they're like into this thing for five months and you're buying all this stuff
from target. And then you're like, wait, you're not into that anymore.
And that stuff just keeps getting donated. Um,
and parents get overwhelmed by these things piling up,
but it's just constantly donated. So yeah, the bags, the bags are fun.
The bags are good. Um,
these bags that you'll see at savers or goodwill or whatever,
um, generally not a lot of cohesiveness. Uh,
there's someone in the back kind of piling things in bags, 3.99, 5.99.
Um, because things are donated somewhat in a cohesive manner.
Sometimes the person will see like, Oh, it's all dinosaurs that came in.
And they will keep them kind of cohesive. Um,
so thrift stores is a huge yes. Um,
because when you're looking at one of these bags,
you typically can identify a figure in the bag that's 20,
30, 40 bucks. And then you have all that extra stuff,
which can be put into lots or, um,
or maybe you get two or three pieces in there.
But the game with the thrift stores is definitely, you have to know your stuff.
Um,
you have to kind of research and know what's good or just touch a lot of stuff.
And a lot of way I've learned is just by looking things up all the time.
Um,
you can Google lens through the clear plastic bag. It is a pain in the butt,
but you can basically turn the bag around, stretch it out and be like,
what is this guy and use your Google lens and ID items through the bag.
And then, uh, you know, check the solds on eBay and go, okay,
this one guy's selling for 25 bucks. The bag is 399 and cool.
I got all this other stuff. Um, so that's one way I source. Definitely,
um, in that bag method, um,
most toy stores will have stuff that's just too big for the bag.
So you'll go in the thrift store and you'll kind of scan the shelves.
And that's always a faster because you kind of boom,
you'll grab like a briar horse will be up there cause it's big.
And those are quick snags. So usually like open shelves.
Once you get good and you sold a whole bunch of toys,
you normally grab things quick that are loose. Uh,
plush is kind of the same way,
just big items that you're shifting through and moving and moving and,
um,
got to dig deep always like with plush, you know, and,
and always got to dig.
And a lot of people don't and that's where they miss cause a lot of people also
hide things. Um,
so I find a lot of the toy bags that are supposed to be hanging like buried down
in the plush. Um, so yeah,
thrift store is game on always incredible.
It's very easy for me. I was at thrift store just the other day.
I was probably in there 20 minutes and I essentially had like a half cart full
in like 20 minutes.
I was doing a Facebook marketplace pickup,
which will lead me into my next way to source.
And I had time in between. I was like, let me run in this thrift store.
And I just crushed it. I think my spend was 109 and change cart was half full.
And because I practice and I do this a lot, it's a lot of just boom,
boom, boom. We're not even looking at comps anymore.
I'm in some stuff I'm looking at comps. So, um,
yeah. So thrift stores should be,
should be on everybody's list to source toys.
But if you are in a rural area or you only got one or two little thrifts and
they don't do the toy bags, um, they still should have toys,
but they might not be in that format. Maybe they just pile them around.
I don't know how they do it, but, um,
basically describing it correctly. And yes, I live in a rural area.
It is exactly just described it. It's maybe four shelves.
Yeah. So that can be tough. Like for me, I'm in the, uh,
I'm in Boulder here today. Um, that's where I've got my little office,
but basically Boulder, Denver Metro. If you look at Denver, excuse me.
Um, there's just, I mean, I can probably type in Google,
like thrift store and there's 15 in 15 minutes.
So I'm going to have that advantage here so you can just hit tons of
them. Um, so unfortunately for, you know, again, Johnny mentioned,
I'm in tech's group. Tech is a great mentor of mine.
And one of his pieces of advice is looks like you have to drive further.
Yeah. Some of us, cause most of us,
we might be in a rural area,
but many of us are two hours from the big city. Yeah. No excuses.
You got to get driving. Um, you can do online arbitrage.
We'll talk about that. I don't do a lot of that Facebook marketplace. Um,
probably pretty good for a rural person because you can narrow it down just to
your area. Um, that's a beautiful thing about Facebook marketplace.
You can drag that little bubble. Um,
you can put in your zip code and set yourself up and you can go wide or you
can go close. Um, I'll narrow mine down close when I know I have a lot of stuff
to do,
but maybe I want to jut out and I'll periodically look throughout the day.
And I know, Hey, if anything does pop up,
it's something I can get to without destroying my day.
Other days where I got all my listings done on my head, I'll go wide. Hey,
today I could go an hour if something amazing pops up.
Facebook marketplace is absolutely incredible. The algorithm,
I don't know what it is or how it works,
but if you regularly search GI Joe Ninja turtles, all these terms,
you can also save them and be notified.
I don't really have success with the notifications more.
So it just puts it in front of my face. Um,
so what to be successful to truly be a successful,
like toy flipper.
And if you want GI Joe's and you want to turn like 200 into
600 kind of margins, um,
and get like these huge GI Joe lots that are underpriced or Ninja turtles,
I personally think you need to be on this like every 20 minutes throughout the
entire day. Those deals in this kind of area, um,
they do not last.
I had a Pokemon card, which I don't do a lot of, but this guy had like
a hundred pounds of bulk Pokemon card and it was free. Um,
and I have a flea market vendor,
which will go to flea markets after Facebook marketplace.
By the time I got to his house, which was about an hour period,
he had told me he had 92 messages.
Um, Pokemon is a massively hot category,
but usually if I'm buying GI Joe's that are massively underpriced,
there's already people backdoor and me, there's already people offering more.
If it's too low, it's,
you got to be fast and you've got to be personable.
Um, we've, I talked about it in the, um,
the other, the call, like you have to separate yourself.
If the guy's got a GI Joe law for 200, it's going to be worth 600 in auction.
How do you stand out?
And it's a lot of us just firm clear. I have cash.
I can come now. I can be there in 15 minutes.
I can be there in 20 minutes.
A lot of people lose out on Facebook because they're just sleepy. Like,
Oh, like can I come after work or can you hold them till tomorrow?
You can't.
I got it. I got a great idea for you, Mike. So to be more personable,
you could do a photo shoot and dress up as a GI Joe one day,
right? Then you can dress up as a Ninja turtle.
So when you message these people, you can be like, Oh my God,
I'm the biggest GI Joe fan. Look,
here's a picture of me dressed up as a GI Joe or white Belangelo.
Then they can't deny you at that point when you're sitting there in full GI Joe
gear. I mean, then you're just in automatically.
They don't even want your money.
They're just like come dressed as a GI Joe and take it all.
Yeah, no, and that's, I mean, that's probably a little exaggerated, right?
But it's like, you're right. You kind of do something that makes this guy go.
Okay. This guy's like crazy GI Joe fan.
Like I'll just let him have it.
But I ironically said that to the one guy I saw,
he had a post for GI Joe.
And then I kind of looked through his other posts and he had like a star wars
post and it had some kind of corny,
like may the force be with you at the end of his like, and I said, okay,
this guy's kind of got a little sense of humor. So I was like,
as soon as he started saying like, well, what, what will you offer?
I was like, what do you mean? What will you offer? The ad says 125 or whatever.
It was, he was already getting like, trying to put me in a bidding war.
And I was like, what will I offer? And I kind of joke, I said, well,
I'll offer what you asked for, right? Isn't that what the price is?
And I said, look, if I get it for that price, I'll find a pair of GI Joe,
Joe boots and put them on and wear them on over, you know,
or something weird like that. And it, it made him kind of chuckle and he goes,
oh, it's too hot for boots. And like, that was it. The deal was locked.
So sometimes you gotta say weird stuff. Um,
I leverage my daughter. Like if I'm trying to get a hundred littlest pet shops,
I might not white lie much, but I'll say my daughter and I will be there at noon.
I mean, that helps, right? Because you, it's easier than being like
this 40 year old guy's going to come over, you know, and resell these tomorrow for
three times the amount. So that little leverage can help, but being human
and being fast. And I just don't think people always get that with Facebook marketplace.
They're really sleepy. Oh, will you do, you know, the GI Joe's are already $400 under price
and someone's going to message, well, will you do a hundred? That person's doomed.
Cause whatever the asking price is, I'm going to pay.
If you telling me, which unfortunately this guy was like, someone already bid this
a lot of times I'm annoyed by that. I might play the game a little look, I'll go to 30,
I was just trying to pay what you're asking. I'm a man of my word. I guess I'll go up for you, but
yeah. So Facebook marketplace is huge. And generally what happens is you'll open your phone
and the biggest and best deals, in my opinion, I've done this thousands and thousands of times
in all reselling categories. It'll just be in front of your face like magic. I mean,
so I don't, I save all my searches. So they're frequently sold out. And I don't know,
I don't know if you've ever heard of Facebook marketplace, but I've heard of Facebook
marketplace. So they're frequently saved and I always type in and look for things. But every
time I almost ever get a good Facebook marketplace, it's just picking up the phone, going to the
market. And it's like, I don't know, you know, these phones do listen. I mean, that's proven.
They listen to you. But it's somehow the algorithm works really great. So right now,
little is patched up is really hot. GI Joe, Ninja turtles. And that's usually what happens. I pick
up the phone, call me up a number of times, I pick up a message, I pick up a message, and I'm
like, hey, I've got a message. So a lot of times if I'm 30 minutes late, I'll message the person
and I get that response pending sold somebody beat me to it. Flea market. Incredible as well
for toys. We talked about this in the other group a lot as well. You get a lot of like weekend
those people are going to not research a ton or price it. They're just, we're moving this stuff
everywhere. Let's just bomb it at the flea market. And you can get some really incredible deals from
vendors that are not consistently there. You know, they're there for one time the whole year and you
catch them there with their giant tub of Ninja Turtles. And you say, how about a hundred bucks
for everything? You know, or there's like vendors, I have a vendor that I built a relationship with.
I have a couple of them, but one primarily that sources all week at the thrift stores. That's what
they do. They buy those bags for $3.99. And then they dump it on its table and they say $2 a figure.
And that's their business model. All the action figures go over here. These are two to three.
All the little tiny little people are a buck a piece. And they make an incredible amount of money
going to thrifts all week, organizing it nicely at thrift store and marking it up.
But there's still enough margin for me. Same topic we talk about with in the other group as well is
just, you don't beat people up a lot if you want to build a relationship. There's a guy that has
some sort of action figure you like, and he says five and you're very profitable at five. Don't
ask him for four or three. Just buy it. That always rubs people wrong. I mean, there's no way it,
maybe if you're going to buy a hundred items, then you can say, Hey, if I buy a hundred action figures,
would you throw me a little deal? That doesn't annoy people. But when they hold up one item and
you're already beating them down. So I had built a relationship with them by just not being a pain
in the butt, just paying what they asked and showing up all the time. The more and more I showed up,
it's a lady and a husband and a wife. They started to remember what I was buying.
And I would be looking at the tables and the lady would just come with a bag. Boom, it'd be full of
like J.I. Joe. She just handed it to me, which was raw. It was raw from the thrift store. She had got it,
never made its way to the tables. She just handed it off to me. That evolved and evolved and evolved,
um, to where now I get there in the morning and I unload their van back door opens. I pull all the
toys out that they sourced all week. I throw them all under a table. I cover them with a sheet
because there's like vultures and people behind me trying to dig in there. And I go through each
bag, raw bag. The only difference is they pulled the price tag off of it. So I know they got the
bag for three ninety nine, but I don't mind because I see a forty five dollar Spider-Man in there
and they're going to charge me two or three bucks for it. Um, so that's that's takes a while to
build those relationships, but I have that one set like a like it's a steel trap. I mean, if it's
snowing, they'll say, come over to the house and I'll go to the house. Um, and people do not
enjoy me very much because I'm taking all the good stuff first. But yeah, so anyway, I don't want
to keep chatting. Maybe you have more questions or no, this is great. This is great knowledge,
but I do. I do have a question for you is, um, a while back we had a lady on her name was Sabrina.
She talked about Barbies and what I found really fascinating when she was on, there are different
types of Barbie sellers, either from the hair, the accessories to the actual figures to complete
inbox to just lose figs. Can you talk about the toy category as a whole? You kind of went over it
a little bit with like plush and stuff. How many different cat subcategories of toys are there for
people to dive into? It's massive and it can be, it can be really detrimental. Um, we talk about
this a lot in the, in the toy call because of the diversity of toys. I mean, you could have like a,
uh, you know, Disney Pixar car that's three inches long. And then you could have the
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Technodrome, which is, you know, it needs to ship in a 20 by 20 by 20
box and it's worth $32 stripped or it's worth 300 with all the parts, you know, and this is
a rough exaggeration, but the complexity is like so extreme, so many directions. It's really hard
to narrow it down within the niche. And you can do stuff like that. You can gear yourself towards
plush where you're like, I'm just not touching anything with pieces at parts. Barbies, you can
be like, I'm not even going to dress these girls in the shoes and all that. I'm just going to run
it as an auction. It's so incredibly complex from the shipping, because you're going from little
tiny things to huge. And then the processing is massive. And that's a topic we often discuss. Like
you don't just get the Technodrome and the bag of all the weapons and accessories to it and just
list it. You might have 45 minutes to figure out, okay, this gun goes here and this missile attaches
here. I know it's missing the decal here and these can just destroy toy sellers. Toy sellers is a
great, selling toys is a great way to like build up a death pile if you're not careful. Also,
you're getting this toy bag and you're going to get excited. Oh, this one's worth 45. All those
other little trinkets are worth a buck or two and those start building up. So you have to have
processes for everything to get this stuff processed, or you need to learn how to say no
and be like, I only deal with these five categories of toys, but man, the diversity is just.
Right. I mean, look at your back wall. There's all different shapes and sizes back there too.
Yeah. I mean, you're looking at like, yeah, plush. I mean, the Ninja Turtle Van is going to be
something that needs five or six different pieces and the value is going to go up 30, 40 bucks. If
you have those or it's not going to have the value. Yeah, it's just, it's unreal the amount
of diversity, but it can be done. You just have to be aware of it. And we get a lot of people like,
you know, in the other group that are like, oh, I got this huge lot of GI Joes just seem like a deal.
And now you have like a span of nine years of GI Joes. And then you've got a pile of 132 weapons,
each the size of a grain of rice. And, you know, Cobra Commander or whatever is $9 with the gun
in the backpack. He's $42. And you have to meld these two together. Then you have to meld them
correctly. Otherwise you're going to get an angry customer because you're like, Hey, this is the
1984 version gun. You gave me the wrong gun. And the ad said it was the, you know, so it can get
incredibly complex. There are a ton of resources though, which I guess go that direction for this
stuff. There's like Yo Joe and all these websites will literally help you get there. But these are
the things you have to be ready. If you come home with a hundred GI Joes and a hundred weapons and
vehicles, it's not getting listed in five minutes. You need six hours, four hours to do it right.
Or you can pile it on the table and make it all presentable and clearly seen and run it as an
auction. If it's a high demand item, you'll do great. But yeah, you're so many different directions
of processing with toys. And you start to learn like I'm never buying connects again, or I'm never
buying this ever again. Or you really like it. I don't buy transformers, which is a massively
popular category. I hate them. My brain does not transform transformers. Well, I'm really impatient.
I'll buy some of the G one vintage because they're like high dollar, but there's plenty of modern
ones, but it could be missing the tiniest little shoulder pad piece, elbow piece. The guy who's
buying it knows what it's supposed to look like. I don't, I'm fumbling with it here, but I have
other toy sellers who just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They build them like a Rubik's cube, you
know, like they're good at it. So I have certain things in my category, just skip over. And people
at the flea market, you don't want those transformers? Nope, go ahead. Cause I have a million other
things I can sell that my brain works better on and processes quicker. So you need to make those
decisions. And it, it's for me, it's really weird. Like I have a really hard time with Bratz dolls.
I have a really great time with Monster High dolls. For some reason, the Bratz dolls, they all have
like slight eye variations. They're very hard to ID and get dressed correctly for me. Monster High,
incredibly fast. And I get it. So I will literally pass one doll line and take another. I need to
just, maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm an oddball, but I think as I've gone through it, you start to
realize like, we all know like a board game, it's probably the last thing to get listed. Oh, this
board game is worth all this money, but it's going to take 30 minutes to figure out or more to figure
out each little pieces in there. And that lands in the death pile. So there's a million types of
toys that you better be ready to process. So is there a certain era of toys that's either
really popular or really high profits? I would, my go-to would think to be 80s toys be the most
profitable out there, but I may be wrong. Yeah, a good question. It does change as time goes on.
Big, tall GI Joes, we're probably crushing it on eBay 10 years ago. But as people, I don't know,
they, I've been kind of interested in studying the evolution of age, but at some point someone turns
30 or 35 or 40, or there's all these different, you see it with like car guys, you know, they're
in their 50s or 60s and they're buying the car that they had. And we've seen like trends in cars
change and trends in toys. I would say right now the 80s and 90s is massive. And one way to learn
about toys is just to go to Target or Walmart and walk the aisles and see what's out there. And
you'll see Transformers, Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters, all this stuff being remade. They're making almost
every single Ninja Turtle practically that was made in the 80s is in Walmart right now, which you
also have to be careful about. There's a new version now, same exact toy. The date is different.
I can tell the plastic difference by looking, but you could get caught up if you're like, oh, a bunch
of vintage Ninja Turtles. And they're all 9.99 right now, Walmart brand new with all the weapons.
Do you think that's attributed to like media, like with movie, they're remaking the movies,
like new Ghostbusters, new G.I. Joe's. Does the movie industry impact the toy industry on a massive
scale? I think it does. And I think that has always, it's always been kind of a scheme, I think,
of the movie industry in a way, not really a scheme, but they knew Garfield was always popular
or whatever. So we can just, it made money once, make it again. And that's why they keep, you know,
I don't want to say they're not creative, but they've seen all these properties do incredibly
well. So they have this keep, everything's been out, Pink Panther and Garfield and just over and
over again. So toys see that same cycle for sure. And then eventually, you know, Ninja Turtles will
be like the tall 12 inch G.I. Joe's or like depression glass, you know, depression glass,
or all these things that like were super hot, they're done. Like you can't sell a piece of this,
whatever pottery or glass 10 years ago, you could see, you have to really be up on the
trends. I'd say 80s and 90s is very safe for now. We'll see how the impact is of all the modern
reproductions of those, if it really affects it. I still feel like most of my buyers are wanting
like the old original stink bug from Ninja Turtles with his weapons, even though you can get him at
Walmart looks exactly the same, exact same way. I mean, but if you feel it or you look, you can
tell it's modern to an extent. But I don't think that will hurt it. I think it's kind of recharging
it. And they're not making every figure. So that kind of helps. But a lot of my business is modern
stuff, stuff that gets lost. And the biggest way I should expand into this, I win is not being the
G.I. Joe guy, the Ninja Turtle guy, the He-Man guy. Because when I'm at the flea market digging,
there's always a guy over my head behind me. And he's got three items in mind. G.I. Joe, Ninja
Turtles, He-Man. He knows nothing about Paw Patrol. He knows nothing about Pepper the Pig.
He knows nothing about, I don't know, another modern line that was on Netflix four years ago,
three years ago, two years ago. The biggest bolo I always talk about in the, I even hate to share it,
but why not share the love, is the Peppa Pig potato guy. He's like 40 bucks with his hat.
It was a plastic toy from five, 10 years ago or whatever. Peppa Pig's still airing right now.
And in the toy category, 40 bucks is pretty good. 30, 40 bucks because your buy cost is like a
quarter, 50 cents a buck. But that one potato, he has to have his hat. The hat falls off. He's
got to have the hat. He's only like 20 without the hat. But it's like a $40 figure. It's sold
like nine times. And every single He-Man guy, and Ninja Turtle guy, and vintage guy, never looking
for Peppa Pig. It just doesn't register. So when I buy my toys are from 1975 to 2024. And I know all
of these other lines, and that's how I'm able to kind of kill it, come home with hundreds of items
from the flea market of all years, and catch people slipping because all their... And I catch
the vendors slipping. Vendors are smart enough, even if they don't know a ton, to be like,
this is like a 1980s something. Let me Google it. Let me look it up. And now it's a He-Man. It's
worth nine, but they looked it up. They still think it's worth 25 because that's what vendors
do sometimes. And when you hold up the little Peppa Pig guy, they're like, oh, give me a quarter for
that. Give me a buck for that. Ninja Turtle, give me 20 for that. I mean, they'll almost...
Like a vintage Ninja Turtle, I get guys at the flea market saying, oh, $10 a piece. I'm like,
they're $5 a piece on eBay. Unless you get all the weapons and get them complete, then we start
seeing the price. But that's a huge advantage I have. And I would encourage anyone who wants
to sell toys to learn the new stuff. I'm curious because I'm in thrift stores. Probably 90% of the
stuff I saw is coming from thrift stores. So I want to throw some things out there that I see in
a lot of thrift stores that maybe resellers think are worth it or if they're not worth it. So
this is not set in proof. I just want your opinion on these different brands or these different types
of items. Funko Pops, you mess around with that? Is that market dead and gone? What do you think
on Funko Pops? Because they are out in thrift stores. And let's say right now, Goodwill will
charge more than probably Funko charges retail price for some of these things.
Excellent question. I just sold a Funko Pop for $70, I think, with a damaged box.
It was from the Inside Out movie. The character was called Sadness. Inside Out 2 is airing right
now. Just started airing about a week ago. Funko Pop, what I do with Funko Pop, eBay has the barcode
scanner, which is terribly like, I don't know why they, I love eBay. So I'm not an eBay complainer,
but it's really slow. Like you hit barcode, it's like, hello. And then it like takes a minute to
engage. Once it engages, it's a really great tool for Funko Pop. So I was at the flea market
yesterday. I scanned 30 Funko Pops and bought zero. My vendor just prices them all at like 10,
10, 10, 10. So when there's one that's 80, I'm paying 10, I'm selling it for 80. And that's what
you need to do at Goodwill. You got to scan every one. And if they're always putting their Funkos
at 10, 15, 20, yeah, you're going to buy one out of 70. So Funko is still good. A lot of people slip
on loose Funko. I sell a ton of loose Funko. Now we're talking $12 price, but up to $50 price,
totally out of the box, just a rare figure. Typically, if it's selling for like 40 or 50,
in the box mint, it'd be like 110. But there's these high demand characters, just like the inside
out one I scanned, not this week, but last week is when I got it. It sold within a day or two.
So yeah, use the barcode app is my personal recommendation on eBay. If you're an eBay seller
of Amazon, I can't totally help you with that. But you just like anything, look it up. But yeah,
Funko Pop, great question. Beanie Babies, Beanie Babies, Beanie Babies. Beanie Babies, I don't touch
it. Come on, dude. I sold Beanie Babies probably about a year ago. I sold the three Chipmunks from
it, Alvin and the Chipmunks. I paid like 99 cents a piece and the set sold for $50. I'm not saying
I'm going to put out a Beanie Baby course, but there is a chance I have sold them and I've made
some money. I'm an optimist, so I agree with you. I put them in the Transformers category for me.
There's a lot of complexity and misguided sellers with Beanie Babies, so it's really hard to navigate
the correct solds. We all know like the Princess Diana and we see these Beanie Babies where like
error code has error. But I could see like a... I'll buy Ty, which is like the Ty brand,
T-Y, which is the Beanie Baby brand. I just bought like an Energizer bunny, excuse me, Ty.
So it's kind of like a Beanie Baby, but it was like a buck and it wasn't even... It's not a
high seller, but it's just such a prominent character. What about Nerf? What'd you say?
Nerf. I see Nerf guns in every Thresh. I don't mess with Nerf either. You're right,
it's everywhere. There are like two guns, maybe three. There's a couple guns. There's one big gun
that's really expensive, but you have to have all the parts to it. Beanie Baby's just hard to
navigate. I want to stay on that for one more second and then I'll go to Nerf. But I'm like...
All things are possible. I'm an optimist. I really think you could learn the Beanie Baby category and
run a pretty good business. It's just very... The depth of that one category is so... It's really
hard for me to navigate that my time is better spent elsewhere, but I could see like a Disney
character or certain ones. The biggest advice, which is not really that exciting, is the high
to low search. And this is how I think every single toy should be approached when you're in
your learning stages. For Nerf, just go high to low and you're going to see lot after lot after
lot. Those are going to be all the high ones where someone has like 32 guns, but scroll down enough,
and you'll see that gun I was mentioning. I can't remember the name. That's 250 or 300.
Then you mark that in your brain or write a little note like these two Nerf guns, the red one with
the yellow and this one. I will look for those at the thrift store. That way, you know every thrift
store in the world has like 40 Nerf guns, but you're just looking for those two. McDonald's toys.
McDonald's toys. I'm going to keep you moving here because I got a lot because in my alternate life,
I was a toy seller. McDonald's toys, they're everywhere. Are any of them worth any damn money
because they're all in those little plastic bags you can't barely see into? What's the deal?
The problem. Completeness helps a lot of those. You got to separate yourself.
So if it's like Toy Story and you have all six, you can get like $22.99 or $24.99 or $14.99.
Not a category I mess with much. I was at the flea market yesterday. There was a giant bag of them.
I kind of peered through it a little bit and I put it aside. That's generally my process.
There are some trends that happen with McDonald's toys. Yes, I will buy the hamburgers
and the dinosaurs that transform. That 80s, 90s vintage era of the transformables, I think they
called them or exchange. I forgot what they call them. There are some of that. The nuggets,
so the chicken nuggets that are old. They re-released those recently. I can't remember
the artist's collab, but the old nuggets and a few of the vintage are doing pretty good, like the 80s
ones. But there are people who become like beanie baby experts. There are people that get real deep
in McDonald's and you could probably find a couple that will do well if you have like all 20 of them,
all 10 of them. I think my research is correct, but as far as I know, you would think like Mattel
or Hasbro would be the largest toy producer in the world. My understanding is McDonald's is
when I did some research that McDonald's makes more toys than any other toy company.
And they are a burger company. So that leads back to what you're saying. They're everywhere.
So you don't get that the supply demand pull. It's everywhere. It's plentiful. And they're
typically not known for being like really all that quality. You're going to get a figure. It's
going to be it's made cheaply. It's made just for a kid and it's not articulated. So I would say for
me, 99% of the time it is a pass. Outside, I will always pick up. You know what I'm talking
about? The member, the little hamburgers and stuff, the French fries. Those will sell all day
long. You get six, seven of those. You're going to get 20 bucks, 25 bucks, anywhere in that range.
If you get a nice little set. What about board games? What about board games? Put me on a board
game you would buy every single time you've seen it. Because there's lots of them in thrift stores.
I know you hate seeing if all the pieces are there, but is there like some board games that
are really worth it? Like Mouse Trap. I remember playing Mouse Trap growing up. It's got all those
damn pieces inside of it. But is there any BOLOs that we all should know about that are not really
produced heavily? So if we see it, we know we're buying it. There's a whole bunch. We did some
calls in the past. Again, it's not something I buy very often due to the complexity of processing
and not being quick. Once you try to get to putting 30 items up a day on eBay, those things can
really throw a wrench. The McDonald's, or not McDonald's, the Monopoly, I think it's the 70th
anniversary cabinet game. It's wood, really identifiable. It's like this thick and it has
drawers that pull out that are wood. So it's almost like a cabinet. That's a good one, but you have
to be prepared to ship it. It's really heavy, but I don't know what that one's going for. 150 or so
or 200. I think it's called the Monopoly. Pretty sure it's 70. You can just type in like Monopoly
cabinet or wood edition. You'll get that. What's the other one? Is it Fireball Island?
There's several. There are a great ton if you want to really, because I'm not educating everybody
here perfectly, but if you just go on YouTube and you type in like top 20 board games for resale,
there's a lot of guys who've done great videos on them. But if I'm at a thrift store, my focus is so
little in that section, just due to processing and then not being all there, the time it takes to
find someone and say, hey, can I open it up? And you're in the thrift store for 40 minutes,
counting pieces with people around you, or you're gambling and just taking it home because it's
sealed, taped shut with the Goodwill tape. Mall Madness is a good one. That's that, like a lot
of the girls like that one where it would talk and it would have, like you were cruising around the
mall. There's at least 30 incredible bolos though. What about Furbies? Furbies worth anything?
Furbies are great. You have to be a little bit aware of corrosion issues and it's kind of like
selling a VCR. You get a lot of user error. Why is this not working? They could be possessed. Some
of those things are possessed as well. They can be. Yeah. All right. So now I got a tip on your eBay.
Did you do eBay? I asked all the eBay sellers this question. You got it out there. Promoted listings.
Are they necessary? Do you use them? I promote everything. I run Promote, not the new whatever
promotion they have, but the basic promotion standard, I think they call it. I promote
everything. I promoted things as high as 10%. But now I personally go much lower than 10% now.
And I do fine, but I promote every single item. Yeah. So I might go ahead. What's your holy grail
toy? Like if you were, if you wanted to find one toy out in the wild, like what's, you got to have
some kind of list here, something on your mind. Yeah. Your bucket list. You just want to touch it
one time. I have not found Scratch the Cat yet from the Ninja Turtles. And that's probably the
first one that really comes to mind. Scratch the Cat is, it's been a while since I've looked,
several hundred dollars if he's complete. And basically for anyone that wants that Bolo,
it's basically a cat like in a prison striped uniform. It was just, I think a tail end release
with Ninja Turtles. So they didn't make quite as many, but that one stands out. Scratch the Cat,
look that one up. That one's. When you sell it or keep it. Oh, I sell everything. I ain't keeping it.
Well, we need to know what is like the one toy. All right. Well, what's the one toy you would keep
if you came across it? You're going into the Michael vault, never to see the light of day.
You only open it once from Blue Moon. I don't know if I would keep anything right now. I'm in such a
growth mode with my business that I kind of, I had some stuff that I built up. I got to be honest.
And it wasn't that long ago you had showed that before the call, that little Gizmo guy,
I was kind of tucking away, not to the level. There's a few people in the toy group. These guys are like.
They're toy guys where you kind of got to be like, are you selling anything or you just
collecting everything? But no, most of my guys are selling, but they do keep stuff.
But for me, I, I, like I said, I'm, I heard another one of your podcasts. I think it was the one you did with
Hanley where you were like, I don't care about books. I'm not going to keep anything.
I'm going to keep books. I'm that way with toys. I'm just lucky enough that I think they're cool,
easy to list. And I'd much rather list them than a coffee cup or a pair of pants. So yeah,
I was an eighties kid and I had Ninja Turtles. I liked toys when I grew up. I mean, I did like
toys and I think they're really cool, but there, I can't even think of anything I would keep
because for me, 500 bucks is 500 bucks right now. So even if.
Even the table long six inch GI Joe battleship thing. The USS flag. Yeah. That thing.
Flag is cool. I'm not crazy GI Joe guy, but the flag is awesome and it's incredibly valuable too.
It'd be up for sale. The only reason I would keep something and I'm sorry to be party pooper, but
I'm selling everything, man. I'm selling everything. For the money. I love it.
I'll look at it for like a week and be like, this is awesome, but it's going up for sale. So yeah,
like, but scraps, the cat would be probably the one that I would get and be like hold it and admire
it for quite a while. And then I'd be listing it. But I will say this as I built up that little pile
and I was kind of organized list little, I mean, it was like 40 items that were just kind of like
the gizmo. Like I was from when I was a kid. And, but one day I came in the office and they were
displayed all beautiful. And he said, you know what? I'm just listening to this crap. I said,
you know what? When I'm wealthy someday and I've created generational wealth for my family and I've
got a load of money, you know, if, if God willing, if all that we can make that happen, I will rebuy
this stuff and I'll have a little man cave and I'll have my little Ninja turtles here and my little
couch and I'll be chilling down there looking at the stuff. But when you're in grow mode and you
got a family and bills like tech says the bills come every day, just not in a spot to be like,
I get to enjoy it. That's what's cool about this. I get to be like, wow, this thing is incredible.
And I'll send like a picture to Lee in our group or something or Eduardo or somebody and be like,
dude, this thing's amazing, but it's getting listed. So it's just a perk to sell them toys.
So good question. Let's talk about the money as a toy seller. And let's just say you're two years
in the game and two years in the game, how much can a typical toy seller who's actually serious
is doing it full-time. How much could they expect to make in the industry in a range value? You can
Oh, I mean, a hundred thousand less than, Oh yeah. You could easily have a hundred. You could make,
you could have a hundred thousand dollar profit. Very easy. You know, I've exceeded over a hundred
thousand in, in eBay sales without, you know, having basically a full-time kiddo around my wife
works full-time. So I'm full-time dad and then doing it every second I can. But yeah, no, we've
got sellers in the group, exceeding 200,000, 250,000. We've got people that are approaching
gross approaching 300, 350,000 just within our little group. The same, you know, like a media
seller or a clothing seller, the potential is exactly, I think equal. It's just, right. It's
all you, you know, it's all the person themselves. And just making sure you can source the stuff,
you know, you have to find, you know, it's another techism, but what's in your area, you know, what's
easy to find, what can you, so yeah, there's, and then you've got companies like wheel Jack's lab
that are massive and they're probably doing, I don't know what they're doing, but maybe they're
doing 700,000 a year gross. Maybe they're doing a million gross. There are stores that, you know,
Doing zero because they have a gigantic overhead. Yeah. Well, you never know. You can't start it.
Yeah. I mean, gross profit at all. You never know, but I think you could very much have,
do a half million a year on toys gross. No problem. No problem at all.
Now, what kind of size store does a toy seller need? Like what's a good starting point for a toy
seller's store on eBay? Less than a thousand, more than a thousand. I don't know. We see sellers that
like crush it with 1500 item stores. There's just the stuff's turning. We see stores that are
10,000 items that have a slower sell through, but they have everything. Yeah. I mean, you could,
you can start making a couple hundred bucks a week with toys very fast and you don't need a ton of
items. I mean, there's plenty of items regularly that I pick up at the toy store that are two,
three bucks and sell for 40, 50. So you only need to find a couple of those day a day to get going.
So if you're just starting out, but yeah, I don't know if there's an ideal size. I know a lot of
guys who have like 2000 item stores, 2500 item stores that are doing, someone in our group, I know,
I don't know the exact stats, but he probably sits around 2500 items. And I think he's on track to
do over 300,000 gross with a 2500 item store and running probably kind of like me, I run kind of
like my stuff's always selling. So if I put 30 up a day, 30 go out. And that's how a lot of these
guys that have like a 2500 item store, 30 are going up, 30 are going out. And they're not,
stores not really growing, but they're still producing upwards of like 300 grand.
What about best offers?
Yep, a lot again, a lot of times I do follow a lot, you know, tech's a big mentor of mine. And
I think tech or not, if eBay is telling you or providing these tools, I think the more
that we can use those, there's a reason why eBay has created it. And I think the algorithm is going
to favor listings. It's just my theory that have a best offer. I was recently invited into the
advanced seller program or whatever it's called. Yeah. A lot of people were like, that's just a
game by eBay to like sell your promotions. So far it really has not been, they have, I can't get the
list from the lady. I tried to get the list because she keeps talking about the 28 or however many
points to be optimized on eBay. And because I was doing buyer groups, because I was doing newsletters,
because I was doing markdown sales, because I was doing best offer, because I was doing 60 day
returns, all of these things, from what I'm understanding with it, I'm having a zoom call
every week for I think six weeks with an eBay rep. Because I was like a techism is do all the
things all the time. Tech always said, I'll pay 10% promoted to earn an extra million dollars in
sales. So I think it makes sense that if the tools are there, they're going to benefit the algorithm
and allow the customer, maybe the customer is on the fence. And man, I would really love to do that
for 80. But, and you're at 95 and you don't have best offer on. But good question with best offer,
I think you can pull it off some listings. Occasionally I'll play the game where I'll
few items I'll put up and I'll be like, this thing's worth 100. There's four of them in the market.
I'm priced a little bit lower than the other couple guys. I'm just turning off best offer.
One change I've been doing on some of my lower priced items. Let's say it's like a
Briar Horse and it's $12.99 or $10.99. Let's say everyone in the markets at $13.99 and I come in at
$10.99 or $11. I'm beating the entire market. Occasionally on those, I'll turn off best offer
on really low priced items, because I'll beat the market already. So I'm like, they should choose me.
I have an active 15% 15 to 25% coupon 24 seven. So if I'm 10.99, 11.99, the highest for the other
people are 13.99. I've got my coupon they can use. I'll turn the best offer off. So I have been
experimenting on lower stuff because I you'll get killed. You know, if it's 7.99, all of a sudden,
your offers come in. So I think if you're going to turn best offer off, you should be very, very
priced to sell them. The last zoom meeting you're going to have with eBay, they're going to try to
sell you a timeshare I heard. You're gonna be like, well, this is our sixth meeting. Now we got Mike
real going in and he's going to buy the eBay timeshare somewhere in the Bahamas. Yeah, some
sort of pyramid scheme thing is coming for sure. I guess, I guess we'll wrap it up here. I'll let
you give final thoughts on the toy category overall. And you know, if somebody's looking to
get into toys, maybe some I don't know, boost of confidence that this business is possible,
it still exists. And yet, you can have final thoughts here, Mike.
Yeah, I think it's a phenomenal category. Thanks for having me on. I truly appreciate it. I know
I'm quite a talker. So hopefully, there was some value out of all of my yappies.
There's so much value in this call. And I feel like we need to have him on again at some point,
because he just wants to share. Yeah, I don't got to talk the whole time. I like when people
talk. I know. It makes our job so much easier when the guest does all the talking. It's great.
Go good, good. Because that's yeah, I get going. I got my coffee here. And so yeah, toys are,
you can, like I said, I know several people personally that are doing hundreds of thousands
gross. And I know them well enough to know they're making a lot of profit on that gross.
Toys are plentiful. Toys are everywhere. And they, a lot of people don't understand the value of
them. And the more you can stretch yourself away from the common, like we talked about Ninja
Turtles, He-Man, all that stuff that's like really known, you'll do a lot better because people will
price the more modern stuff or the stuff they don't know cheaper. So make sure you learn.
I see a real big pattern with toy sellers of like, they're very narrow focused to like vintage and
GI Joe and all the stuff that's popping up on YouTube and the YouTube videos. And they're missing
all of these like modern lines. But yeah, the category is great. Toys are everywhere. And
typically you could have a much better buy cost than a lot of other categories. Maybe not as low
as books guys, but toys is one of the low ones.
Wow. We appreciate all your insights today, Mike. And this is Gizmo he was talking about. And Gizmo
is pissed off that Mike would sell him for $30. Gizmo, I will never sell you for $30. But I'm the
same way with books. I'll sell any single book. If you're interested in more about the toys,
he hosts Toy Call and of course, Tekken Sports Group. We have a lot of Tekken Sports. Basically,
you know, people that host the calls over there, we have them on the podcast because they're a
wealth of knowledge. He's also going to have his Instagram and YouTube link down below. I tried
talking him into doing more YouTube. Maybe he will come around to the thought of doing more YouTube.
But Mike, thanks for coming on this week's episode and we'll speak to everybody in next week's
episode.
Thank you, Mike and Johnny. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to another episode of the
Resellers Mindset Podcast. Today's full episode and all previous episodes are available to all
YouTube members along with the weekly Zoom call and private Discord. Head on over to
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