My first "flipping" attempt in a while... A FAIL or not?

I'm not talking about this kind of flip.  But here's some funny, and some cringe worthy, flip fails, for those of you too lazy to try to go make money flipping stuff for profit.

"Flipping" is today's buzzword for buying something cheap, and then reselling it fairly quickly for a profit.

When I was a kid, back in the dark ages of the 1970's, my dad did this all the time, but he called it "wheeling and dealing."  I went with him to gun shows from the time I was maybe 8 or 9, and with both of my parents to garage sales, yard sales, and flea markets on a regular basis.  My mom was a consumer shopper at these, looking for items she would use at home.  But my dad was a wheeler/dealer from way back.  He never tried to make big money doing this, it was more for fun.  But he nearly always made some money.  I learned haggling and wheeling and dealing by following my dad around as he did this.  I'll talk about some of his better deals in future posts.

If you read this blog, you know I'm homeless right now, since I escaped North Carolina and landed in Richmond, Virginia randomly about 3 months ago.  Now there's a whole big bad stereotype that comes with the term "homeless," and I don't fit much, if any, of it.  I don't drink anymore.  I'm not an alcoholic who had to quit, I just worked as a taxi driver for years, driving drunks home every night.  I worked  7 days a week, got random drug an alcohol tests, and basically just didn't drink during those years.  I'm not opposed to a beer or two every now and then, but I don't really like beer, so I just don't drink.  I also don't do any drugs, prescription or street drugs.  I also am a talented artist, who actually sells work on a regular basis.  And I'm a small business minded guy, with entrepreneurial tendencies, at heart.  I wake up wanting to do something cool to make a little money.  So I'm not the typical street bum, although most people see me as just another bum, because I look like one these days.

So, lame ass stereotypes aside, my way out of homelessness here in Richmond is to create an income, from zero, that will rent me a room and get me going again.  I'm working on getting my artwork selling in a new city.  I'm selling some, but it's just not steady money yet.

But I've also been watching a ton of Gary Vaynerchuk videos (like Trash Talk in the next post), and I've been getting the urge to do some wheeling and dealing again.  I bought storage units and sold the stuff back in California for years, before the TV shows about it.  I was trying to turn that into a full time business to escape taxi driving, but couldn't make it happen.  When you drive a taxi, that's all you do, you're always in a certain spot waiting for fares, all day, every day.  There's no down time to really do decent flipping.

Right now, I'm in a new city that I don't know well.  I don't have a car, so garage and yard sales are pretty much out of the question for the moment.  This also holds me back on a lot of Craigslist deals.  I can't buy storage auctions, because I have no place to store anything.  Even my own clothes are in a duffel bag, in a trash bag, stashed in the bushes right now.  Oh, and I'm just scraping by money wise, panhandling for food money at times, when needed.

Even with all that working against me, I decided to try a type of flipping I did a bit in NC, thrift stores.  So I took a bus across town to the Goodwill Outlet store here.  Unlike normal Goodwill stores, most of the stuff at outlets stores is piled in huge bins, not organized, and not priced.  You dig through, bin by bin, grab what you want, and you pay by the pound.  They weigh the stuff at the register, and you pay a standard rate for most stuff, and a lower rate for books, because they're heavy.  At this Goodwill outlet, they have some things priced, and they also auction at ton of stuff off, so the outlet bins aren't as good as the Winston-Salem outlet store was in NC.  But there's still stuff to find.

I needed new shoes, because the soles were literally ripping off of mine, so that was priority one this day, and the main reason I went to Goodwill.  I found a pair of shoes really quick, luckily I have small feet in a popular size.  Then I started digging through the bins.  Here's my three finds from my first trip.

 This is an L.L. Bean canvas garment bag.  Looked like it had never been used.  No wheels, which most people want on luggage today, but you can store suits or women's dresses in it when traveling, throw it on your shoulder, and go.  It's still highly functional.  I got it for $1.00, it wasn't weighed.  Seriously, one fucking dollar! These sold on Ebay for $39 at the time.  But, I don't have the resources to sell on Ebay at the moment.  I tried Craigslist.  No luck.  It wound up getting wet because I had it stored in a trash bag in the bushes, and it got nailed when the remains of Hurricane Michael blew through town.  Then it got moldy.  So I tossed it.  One dollar loss, but good find.

 Wahl Color Pro hair clippers.  Research showed these are basically a consumer version of the high end Wahl clippers.  These actually worked, I plugged them in at Goodwill and shaved my arm hair to test them.  These were weighed with the item below, and I paid 41 cents for them.  The whole kit, with guards and plastic box, was $22 to $35 on Ebay, I couldn't find a finished sale.  I had the clippers, no guards or box.  I put them on Craigslist for $15.  No luck.  So I took them to the FBM/Powers Bike Shop D.I.Y. World Championships BMX contest last weekend.  I painted them gold (theme for prizes at the comp), and held an impromptu best trick contest on the curved wall ride.  I'm out 41 cents, but I had a blast, and Adem, the guy who won my best trick contest, had me autograph the clippers, since I produced some BMX videos BITD that are moderately legendary now.  Priceless. You can see Adem do a can-can rail slide at 9:28 in the clip at that link.

 I was so stoked I found this, COMPLETE, in the bins full of crap at Goodwill.  It's a cardboard scene of Snoopy's dog house, that you see in the bottom of the bottom pic.  Then you pull the vinyl characters off above, and place them in the scene, where they stick right to it, and peal off to change them.  I paid 40 cents for this.  It's the 2007, 35 year anniversary remake, of the original 1972 set.  They sell for $9-$10 on Ebay.  I tried Craigslist, no luck, and I gave it away at the BMX contest.

So, from a technical standpoint, these items were a flip fail.
I'm out a whopping $1.82 (plus tax).  These items were actually selling on Ebay for about $68 total.  So I got good deals, just couldn't manage the flip sales while homeless.  But it's a win to me, because I found that there really are good finds at the Goodwill outlet store here.  I just need to get a storage unit so I can store stuff safely, and I've already got re-signed up on Ebay, so I can get to flipping soon.  I also need to get a new bank account to use my Paypal, I'm working on that, too.

Plus, in the bottom of the bottom pic, you see my feet.  Those feet are in the $100 Nike Free Run shoes (in really good condition) that I also bought at the Goodwill outlet store for $3.00.  I'm wearing a $3.00 sweater I got at Goodwill right now, an Eddie Bauer jacket I got for about $1.75 at a Goodwill outlet in NC, and I have my art supplies in a messenger bag I also got for $3.00 at this Goodwill outlet store.

So, my point is, flipping in alive, well, and definitely possible, here in Richmond, Virginia.  It's possible where you live, too.  If you need some extra cash, are an artist who needs to supplement your income or suppoert your habit, or just like bargain hunting, check out the next post, where Gary Vaynerchuk, owner of a $280 million a year media company, goes garage sale hunting.