Camille and I have been trying our hand at Flip Life, that is, going to yard sales, buying someone’s junk for cheap, and selling it on eBay for profit. We’ve made a good chunk of change so far—plenty to pay for our textbooks, a few meals out, some tanks of gas, and our podcast startup costs (more on that soon). We’re still sitting on a good bit we’ve yet to list.
Today we were out flipping, looking through old kitchen appliances. Then a car pulled right in front of the driveway rather abruptly. A gentleman hurried out of the car and grabbed two long boards for sale. They were nice but large and used, so we didn’t think much of them at first glance. After scooping those, the man continued to rush around the sale, almost bumping into me at one point. We left soon after. We don’t have much tolerance for people like this.
While walking to the car, Camille mentioned how we should’ve picked up the long boards when we saw them. She was right. Though difficult to ship, each board was worth around 50-60 dollars. We would’ve made a killing. We were bummed—at this point we’d been to 5 yard sales and had struck out all 5 times. That could’ve made it all better.
But maybe that man bought the boards for his son who’s been wanting one, or maybe he flips junk for a living and hasn’t had a Saturday off in a decade. We made peace with it and started driving to our last sale of the morning.
My Maps app had two ways of getting there: a straight shot or back roads. Camille get’s motion sickness, so I chose the straight shot. While approaching a red light, Camille yells, “Garage Sale!” We can’t park so I let her out while I go to find parking. Long story short, this woman was selling some of her son’s PC gaming tech. There was also a box of almost new Pokemon cards. All in all, we could get anywhere from $250-500 for everything we picked up at this stop.
We could’ve regretted not picking up the long boards. We could’ve called it there, too defeated after 5 strike outs to try one more time. Instead, we chose to be grateful for the opportunity to go out flipping together. We chose gratitude over regret, and it lead to a jackpot. It almost always leads to some kind of jackpot.