Rob and Melissa Stephenson teach people to buy cheap items from thrift stores and Facebook Marketplace, then resell them on eBay's 160 million buyers. They've flipped a prosthetic leg for $1,000 profit and large signs for $10,000, turning decluttering into steady side income.
really high-end prosthetic, and he put it on eBay and someone bought it like within a few hours for $1,000.
Zach, welcome back.
Hey, how you doing?
Good. Uh, so this week you've got a story on a guy who calls himself the Flea Market Flipper who has found goods and items online starting with like, uh, shoes, baby clothes, things like that, and has worked his way up the line to now buying and flipping construction equipment. So tell us a little bit about this guy.
Yeah, so it's a couple, Rob and Melissa Stephenson, out of Florida. They basically run this site called Flea Market Flipper. It's a really cool community. It's kind of an educational blog where they teach people and give them the tools of how to how to flip things. And it could be anything like you said, from baby strollers, purses, shoes, all the way up to forklifts and treadmills. I think Rob was at the point last year where he's like buying like 40-foot Harley-Davidson signs from like motorcycle dealerships and like shipping them across the country and selling them for like $10,000. You can do some really interesting stuff with flipping, but it's kind of this interesting world and it's an interesting way to make a little side income that is kind of accessible for anyone if they have a few tricks that they can use. It's not going to make you into a millionaire, but you can make a couple, you know, $100 here and there just off the junk you have lying around.
It adds up, I guess. It reminds me of— so our founder Sam Parr tells this story of when he was how he got his start as an entrepreneur when he was like in his teens. And then in high school, I remember him saying like he went on eBay and Craigslist and sold stuff. He did this thing where he approached like the graduating seniors on the baseball team and he bought their equipment for like not much money because he knew they weren't gonna keep playing baseball. And then he sold it on eBay. So it's the kind of thing that I think, I should say, people at any level could do, and especially now, more relevant than ever with people being out of work and needing some side income.
Yeah, and another thing about the current time we're in is a lot of thrift shops are still closed. So more people are cleaning out their homes than ever before right now. So you have this like huge amount of excess stuff that people are getting rid of, but there's nowhere for it to go. So, you know, I go for a run every day and I even see it around here outside of San Francisco. There's just a ton of stuff sitting on the side of the sidewalk that people are throwing away because they can't bring it to thrift stores. So, you know, one thing that Rob recommends doing is, you know, sometimes there's not a demand for something locally. So people will give something away for free on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. And you can take those things where there's no demand locally and put them on eBay where there's a national demand and suddenly you have a potential pool of 160 million people to sell something to. There's always someone out there looking for something.
In our house, it's baseball cards and basketball cards and things like that. So my kids are into collectibles. So I'm sure there's a big market for all kinds of different products and services. What's the craziest thing you heard that he's flipped?
Let's see, there was a— he told me a story about how he flipped a prosthetic leg. He went to this flea market and this guy had found this prosthetic leg at an estate sale and had no idea what it was, was kind of creeped out by it and just wanted to get rid of it. So I think he bought it for like $30 and it turns out it was like this incredibly fancy, really high-end prosthetic and he put it on eBay and someone bought it like within a few hours for $1,000.
And then maybe they flipped it for $10,000.
Sure, yeah, I think it was worth somewhere around $10,000. So yeah, it's pretty nuts what people find.
Fascinating. Well, I look forward to hearing more about it in the Sunday email that's going to come out in a few days. And thanks for joining us, Zach.
Yep.
