The Great Mouschi Flip Quest of 2015

[Smidge]

I've always wanted to do something like this and you have just motivated me to start! Good luck!

[CW]

Cool thread. Good luck!

[mouschi]

Thanks to this flip quest, and it being garage sale season, I decided to hit it full force yesterday! There were some pretty cool pickups for $66.50 total.

Rifle Scope - $5


My Little Pony Items - $5


Sand & Water Table $5


Discs $1 (includes the others below as well)


Gaming Chair $6


Fisher Price Train set $5


Gator Mount Motor Guide for boat w/digital Display $10


4 ft long body pillow of $100 bill 50 cents




Bobblehead of Clemens $3


Tail Light for Trailblazer + boot & Dave Ramsey financial set below for $15




Beanie Babies $1 (some of these might be worth something ... cool!)




Vintage ride on train "Mighty Kacey" - came with a large track - may be a good sell too $5




Picked up 2 of these for $2 each


$3


Some highlights of the day:

- I asked the owners of a garage sale how much a tie cost - when another buyer already had it around his neck. The buyer's wife said I could have the man if I bought the tie. While we were all laughing, I declined questioning how much she thought I could get for him.

- We went to one sale that said "POWER RANGER TOYS". The dude had a boat load of star wars, star trek and power ranger toys. Vintage, etc. He was mega high priced, and I struck up a conversation with him. When asked why he was selling, he said with a straight face "The apocalypse is coming. Have you heard of the blood moons? We are 3 deep now, and have one more to go." I would have thought he was messing with me, but everything about him and his body language showed that he was being serious. LOL!

[mouschi]

Here is the latest -
Yesterday, the Dell disks sold for $17.75 and the gaming chair for $25.

[timzcardz]

Just reading this now.

Thanks for putting a smile on my face on the way to work.

Good luck in your quest.

Have you considered making the quest into a video game? Kids love those games with "quest" in the name, don't they?

"Mouschi's Quest". Hmmmmm.😃

[mouschi]

Thanks for the kind words! I should go to nintendo with that idea

[mouschi]

A stormy saturday morning foiled our garage sale plans, but I did pick up a nice card lot last night. I picked up a previous card lot, but it was over my budget, so I didn't throw it into play with the flip quest.

[mouschi]

It has been slow going lately, but today, I told another CD for $9 and the Dave Ramsey kit for $40.

[mouschi]

Ahh yes, and I gave the beanie babies to my dad to sell, so I'll gotta take those off the list as well.

[mouschi]

Here is the latest - the JJ Watt shirts sold for $120.

[mouschi]

So after a long night of fun, picking up 220,000 cards ...



and secretly going to my parents house around midnight to setup some christmas reindeer...



then posting on facebook so they and their friends can see it ....



we went to bed, and got up (not so) bright & early to hit the garage sales. We didn't get much at all, but here are a few things:

115+ DVD's (the pic doesn't show all of them) for $20


Driver Ed in a Box $5


And finally, a binder of baseball cards. The binder was one of several plus some boxes that the seller had marked for $5 each. I quickly thumbed through all of them, all while the seller was insisting that they are really good cards, etc. Mostly commons. On the front page of one, I spotted a Jeter dugout which I figured I could at the least make my money back on it here locally by itself, so I said what the heck ...



When I got home, I saw it had Bo Jacks & Nolan Ryan gold signature cards (Nolan showed below)



Not a huge pickup by any means, but hey, after dealing with NON cards all morning, i had to get a fix!

That means my total investment for the day was $30. I sold the 2 memory cards also for $28, so my $1 or so investment from a week or two ago nearly funded all of what I got today

[timzcardz]

Following along.

Maybe you could work up[ to flipping for Canseco's house. That would be a cool collectible! I remember several years ago seeing the listing for his house.

[mouschi]

A buyer came over for the DVD's for $60. Things have been slow as molasses, but at least we have progress in going forward an not backward!

[CW]

HA! Nice reindeer!

[autograf]

This is like an episode of 'Two Broke Girls' where they post how much money they have at the end of each show. They have antics that cause them to lose or gain money on each show. And they're not difficult to look at either. Since we can't see your picture (and you CAN'T be as nice looking as them), keep coming with the pickups and sales. It IS interesting.

[timzcardz]

Tom, I hadn't thought of Two Broke Girls, but do you remember "The Brill Report" maybe 10-15 years ago?

It was a hobby online/email thing by Bob Brill, and one of the things he did for the year was start with a small sum of money (maybe $10 or $20) buying one thing and though flipping it and a series of subsequent buys/flips see what total he could get to by the end of the year, or how long it would take to get to a set amount of money, say something like $5-10K.

Each week he would report on what he bought, sold, and what his current total of cash and assets was.

He took a hiatus back in 2008, and that ended up being the end of it.

[mouschi]

With all the excitement of my road trip, I have found it difficult to buckle down and get through everything. However, here I am with an update.

I sold the Arthur Court dishes for $33, and some of the trains for $30. In addition to this, I picked up a $100 lot which included this:


An Elvis Andrus 1/1 mini leather - tons of other cards came with it too.

[mouschi]

So, I have several updates today.

Firstly, after fees, the main lot of cards I just picked up sold for $137. Then, the sand & water table sold for $25.

But of course, I picked up some more goodies! How? Today, the Tri Star card show rolled into town. It is one of the few things that gets me to brave the houston traffic, and drive past where I worked 15 years ago ....



See the circle? Yeah, I was there. Fun fact - I was MISERABLE and deeply depressed working there. I eventually got fired. The first and only time, too. Turns out it was the biggest blessing ever.

I entered the show and started looking for Canseco cards (I found ... NONE.) and things to buy.

Total introduction count for the Canseco story / Beckett headline: 4
Total # of comparisons to Rollie Fingers: 3

While I was walking around, I got a text from my friend saying her dad was there. Her dad was the guy who gave me a 1989 Fleer complete set, and within a little over a month, I flip quested it to a 1999 Topps Traded Josh Hamilton autographed rookie (a big deal at the time.) It was my first flip quest ever. #memories.

We ran into each other and spoke for a good while, until he had to get a phone call. I decided to take a stache selfie with him in the background to send to my friend.



Later, he returned the favor while I was talking to another dealer ... well at least he tried. Ultimately, he had to ask me how to turn the camera around. Then he took the pic and sent to my friend. I asked her for the pic, and here it is:



This was about as exciting as things got. I did pick up some cool things though for the flip quest, like:

a box of 1971 and 1972 topps baseball ... around 1,400 or so cards.



and a box full of game used Astros pants. Many of them had some nice patch work on them as well.



The damage came to be $140 for everything

[mouschi]

A few things have happened recently:

one pair of game used pants, the vintage cards and a tail light sold for $207
I also bought a nice dresser for $10.

I hope to have a really good update to this flip quest in a few days as well!

[mouschi]

Over the past few days, some things have sold and a huge, huge, HUGE thing happened for the flip quest! Here is the summary:

First, I sold the 1/1 Andrus and the rifle scope for a total of $88 after fees.

Now for the biggie.

I ran into a former Canseco collector who I gave my checklist to. I asked him if he had anything I needed. He emailed me and said "Do you need this?"

Attached in the message: A 1990 Donruss AQUEOUS! This is one of the many white whales I have swimming about the ocean. We went back and forth and ended up doing a deal for $413. I would not have been surprised if, at the end of the flip quest, I would not have been able to have found any on my list in the initial post, so I'm really pumped about this ... not to mention that he had about 26 other cards on my list that I didn't have. That is huge also, as that type of quantity simply doesn't happen anymore.

[mouschi]

Buying and selling has been pretty slow going this week, but today I sold the Easels for $140. I also sold over 200k cards in my garage that were not a part of this flip. Since he was buying all the other cards, I told him he could have the binder of cards that is mentioned in my flip quest for $10 extra. He accepted! So, that means we can add $150 to this.

[mouschi]

I sold the PSP lot for $111.75 - interestingly enough, it was to a guy who has purchased about 400+k worth of sports cards from me in the past. No other white whales have surfaced yet, but I'm still crossing my fingers and toes that something comes up, as it looks like I have enough to pull the trigger pretty much any one of them and then some.

[mouschi]

Slow going for sales, but today we did pretty good with some purchases.

We grabbed this suede love seat for $15


This play system for $5


This boat for $8


and the following:

Build a bear lot w/13 bears, some furniture and clothing $25 (+FREE Elf on a Shelf WOOT)
Littlest Pet shop lot $10
Yacker Tracker $5
Stuffed Tea Set $1
Kids Easel / Desk $5

$74 well spent, I'd say!

[swarmee]

Nice pickups in the modern toys genre. Those should all make some money.

[mouschi]

Things are still slow going, because I have many other things going on, but I thought I would update for the first time in about 11 days.

I picked these beauties up for $10. They are about 3 feet tall. A sticker said $5 on one of them and I asked the lady if it was $5 for all 3 or $5 each. There were a gaggle of women gasping at me even asking. "$5 would be a real good deal for you, wouldn't it?" So I said "yeah, but what do you expect? It is a garage sale, so ...". The gaggle laughed a bit as to say touche.

Instead of walking away because they offended my honor, I figured I'd just grab 'em for $10


I also got this kid stool for $8.



The last piece of buying I did was this little lot here:










Total, I have spent $58.

Here is what I have sold:

Littlest Pet Shop lot for $50
Camcorder for $35 (YEAH!)
but then the buyer said it was broken (BOOOO)
I promised to give him a refund and because "I was honest and nice" he only asked for $25.
So ... Camcorder: $10
Dolly Parton Doll (from the doll lot) $18.50
Bloat Up Boat: $50

In total, this means we can add $70.50 along with a few cool profitable pieces to the pot!

[mouschi]

Time for an update!

I sold the majority of the cards from my last update for $55. The rest of the cards, I put with this lot that I bought this lot for $60 yesterday:














I ended up selling all the cards above and the leftovers I mentioned for $56.50 so now I have a nice silver coin to add to the mix

A build-a-bear sold for $20
The kangaroo climber sold for $50
The Guidecraft Kitchen Stool sold for $50
and last but not least the ankle boot sold for $20

That gives us a profit of $191.50 to add to the pile, and we are now over $1,000 - now if only one of my white whales would surface!

[KCRfan1]

What does the wife think of you plunking down a $1000 for a card? Any " discussions " about that or other things to do with the cash?

[mouschi]

Originally Posted by KCRfan1

What does the wife think of you plunking down a $1000 for a card? Any " discussions " about that or other things to do with the cash?

I've actually never bought a card for $1000 before - As I have been reselling for years now, my philosophy is pretty much this: If I'm buying a card, I try to make sure that I can sell it for as much if not more than what i bought it for. It doesn't always happen, but you won't see me spending hundreds of dollars on a card "just to have it" that I will never be able to get it back out.

Now, with that said, I'm not planning on selling his cards anytime soon, but if things get tight, I know I'll be able to without taking a "hit" or at least a big one

[mouschi]

Weekend update!

Bought a few things:

Nissan truck stereo for $6
Indoor Smores maker for $1
Die Cast Tie Fighter in a case for $1
AP US History book for $5 (not sure why I got this ... lapse in judgment I guess!)
2 foot long canoe collectible $5

The only thing worth showing a pic of though is this:

A 1 foot tall monkey reading a book statue for $10


He's gorgeous.

I also sold the silver dollar for $104, so this puts me up $76.

[mouschi]

Nothing too crazy happening here, unfortunately! No white whales have surfaced ... yet.

However, I do have a few updates:

I picked up a small lot of cards for $60, and flipped them for $100.
The ps2 went for $40, and the couch ended up selling for $75.

That gives me a total of +$155

[mouschi]

Update time! It has been snore city for the past several weeks on this thing, as I have been mega busy with other things, and white whales are hard to come by. But anyway, here are some things to note:

I have sold the following:
play house 110
cd head unit 35
star wars item 15
3 oriental pieces 40
build a bear clothes 101
wii games 25

The wii games would have gone for $40 (and they did) but the guy who bought them said 4 of them didn't work. I was baffled, but didn't want to rake the guy over coals or anything about it. I asked him to clean the discs and he said he did, but they still didn't work. I ended up refunding him $15.

I normally wouldn't think anything, but I found out something pretty ugly about a person I know. They do things like I mentioned above intentionally to get money and free stuff. Apparently they do it all the time. Makes me sick to think that someone would do that!

I also sold some schooling books to a mom that was supposed to be $20. She gave me $10 cash and a $50 check to hold some other books for her for a day.

That day never came.

Even after contacting her a few times, she broke several promises to pay up. it looks as if this woman who seemed to be a nice and genuine person decided that she didn't want to be bothered with something little like someone elses money.

In the end, it isn't a big deal because it is just $10, but it burns me that people can be so inconsiderate as this.

I also picked up a nice little resell lot of 2015 baseball, football and basketball for $130. I've been too busy to list, but will do that shortly!

Now for the *possible* BIG news. I may be in the dealings of grabbing a white whale! I am having a very difficult landing the plane with the seller, but if all goes well, I'll have a good update next time I write!

Anyway, to total it all up, I have $196 to add to the pot plus a bunch of sweet cards!

[mouschi]

This is the final official post of the 2015 Flip Quest.

Since my last post, I have made 2 or 3 very quick flips of 2015 baseball, football and basketball cards, netting me $465 in profit. This brings the total to $1,938.75.

The Red Crusade dude apparently rocketed off to Mars or something, because I have not heard from him again, unfortunately. I still hold out hope for the future.

That doesn't mean that this Flip Quest was a bust though!

Earlier, I had picked up the biggest single acquisition for my collection, ever - and guess what? It was a mere $38.75 less than the total that I had left for the Flip Quest! I find it very cool that the ending price was very close to the purchase price of the below cards.

I had drained Paul, a former super collector of a lot of his low end stuff, and like an addict, I went for the "hard stuff". That's right, peeps - low numbered, autographed, patch stuff. Hardly any of this ever sees Ebay so I was fortunate to have picked up this in one swipe. Here are the goods:

2003 Donruss Recollection autograph #/12


Very difficult to find minor league card (generally goes for $40 to $100)









Quite possibly my favorite patch card of him ever!












How can you not love this card? Dual check cut auto book








...............

[mouschi]

continued ....







You've heard of a button card ... what about a button hole card?


Another one of my favorites












Another hard to find pricey minor league card












I believe that is about it. Anyway, this puts me far ahead of the game as compared to waiting to find these on ebay.

So, in the end, I did get a white whale - the 1990 Donruss Aqueous, but I am really loving the cards I got above.

Thank you for reading this season, and we'll see you in '16!

[baseballfan]

great stuff congrats!!