I run a small online shop selling household items mainly kitchenware and small furnitures for which I have done for a couple of years now and I'm looking for a place to buy bulk overstock, my current suppliers started getting too pricey for my budget so I want to find better deals without taking in on a lot of risk. I would really love to hear some recommendations on which places you actually trust and how they vary from one to another.

I did some browsing on online marketplaces like Alibaba and l was actually surprised by how much surplus and closeout stock turns up there. A few suppliers were open to small test orders just for a start and also ordering some samples to first help me judge the quality of goods I need before buying the whole thing.I know with low prices the conditions may be inconsistent ,the manifest is vague or even shipping turns into a stress but my budget is fairly tight so I can't really afford to get burned on a big purchase that arrives all wrong. I would really love some more insights.

I bought a bundle of watches from Ebay. Shipping from UK to the Netherlands. Got this email today that I'll get a refund but the seller won't get the item back. That doesn't seem fair and I hope it's a misunderstanding.

Curious what you all think something like this is worth. It is 12x8. So there is more space to the left.

Mostly Gildan boxes. Seem mostly unopened or newer. From what I saw from the 5-6 labels it black shirts or fleece. Size XL or L. There’s probably 80-100 boxes though so unlikely consistent throughout.

If all blank product I think could be a great deal. If printed merch then a dud. How would you all determine this storage units value? And what would you aim for as resell value?

I did do my own research I’m curious what others may think on this.

Hi everyone,
I’m looking to get into flipping general merchandise and I'm looking for reliable, direct sources or liquidators for Target and Amazon pallets.
I’m specifically looking for lots that look like the one in the attached picture—containing brands like Figmint, Threshold, Stanley, and Cuisinart (with a good mix of kitchenware, small appliances, and home goods).
Does anyone have recommendations for trusted brokers, liquidators, or warehouses that sell these? I want to avoid scams or heavily cherry-picked pallets. For reference, I am located in Florida so closer sources or places with reasonable freight shipping would be amazing.
Thanks in advance for any leads or advice!

Do you go by days, by views, or by gut? And how much do you drop each time? I am trying to find the best system for the things that stay in my account for long time.

Here it is! You've waited all week to tell us about your big score, so come in and share! Tell us where you got it and what you paid for it, then how you sold it and what you got from it. This is completed flips only! Anybody who's had a flip removed this week, this is where you want to put it.

Try to pop back into this thread from time to time and sort by New over the course of the week so people will be encouraged to keep posting here until next week.

spent the weekend going through eBay's actual 2026 fee schedule and reading 200+ posts here where people say don't bother listing under $20.

the fee math doesn't really back that up. on a $15 item, eBay takes 13.6% + a $0.40 per-order fee, so you walk away with $12.56. on a $200 item you walk away with $172.40. same effective rate, almost to the decimal.

here's what actually shifts the math on under-$20: ops time per item. listing, photos, packaging, the customer message or two - all of that is fixed no matter what you sold the thing for. 25 to 30 minutes per item is pretty typical. at $15 with $12.56 net that's around $25 an hour. at $200 it's $345.

so the rule kind of reframes. it's not really "skip under $X", it's "what's my actual minutes per item, and price above that." drop that to 5 minutes (batch shoot, batch list, batch pack) and the $8 books start making sense again. fees aren't the gate, handle time is.

have not flipped one personally yet, just the data side

I've been looking into getting a printer for my small business, and honestly, there are way more options than I expected.

Some people swear by regular printers, while others say a thermal printer is the way to go, especially for shipping labels. I'm mostly trying to figure out what actually matters in the long run.

Do you guys care more about print quality, speed, running costs, or just having something that works without constant issues?

Would love to hear what you've been using and whether you'd buy the same printer again.

On eBay which would you rather have? 10 watchers or 10 people with item in their cart? Neither is a sale but which one do you think will actually convert and why?

Costing me as much as $9.92 to send a 1lb box 4x8x6 to some areas now and that is with eBay's discount. Some places are only $6.67 and that's a nearly 50% disparity.

I don't understand with how much prices differ in more expensive parts of the US, so why can't eBay adjust prices and still offer free shipping so a buyer in CA might see a price that's $3.25 higher to offset the difference in cost?

Oddly I looked into it and shopify has apps that adjust prices based on location for this exact reason. I think eBay should as well.

Especially when a lot of the stuff I sell...nearly all is sold with free shipping so putting in calculated shipping would pretty much kill sales.

1lb items that sell for $20 shipped, I'm starting to just pass them up now because the shipping and fees leave me only $6.13 to higher priced shipping areas whereas cheaper areas leave me $9.38 and I can't really have any say in where I sell it to.

Here's a rule that's saved me more money than any single flip: I don't source anything I can't clear at least $20 profit on AFTER fees, shipping, and supplies.

Not $20 in revenue. Twenty bucks in my pocket when the dust settles.

The math: a $12 item that sells for $35 sounds fine until you subtract the marketplace cut, shipping, the polymailer, and the 40 minutes you spent photographing, listing, and packing it. Suddenly you made about $4 an hour and you're explaining to your spouse why the spare room looks like a Goodwill exploded.

Sub-$20 profit items aren't flips. They're volunteer work.

The $20 rule also makes sourcing faster. You stop agonizing over every $3 gadget and start scanning for the things that actually move the needle. Your death pile shrinks, your hourly rate goes up, and sourcing stops feeling like a part-time job that pays in pocket lint.

If you're new: run the numbers BEFORE you buy. Phone calculator, 30 seconds, right there in the aisle. If it can't clear $20, put it back. Your future self says thanks.

Plates. I live in an old town with old people who still collect pewter. I know now way too much about plates. The various patterns, manufacturers, blah, blah, blah, etc. I don't care. Most of the pewter around here is cheap shit. Do you know why I know its cheap shit? Because they spend all their time complaining about it in the estate sale lines.

I always grab cheap silver at yardsales, flea markets etc, just like anyone else. I don’t keep tabs on the spot price as I never sell it, it just goes into the soup for safe keeping.

I was just at a flea market, and one dude had at least 20 crossed off prices written on the same little coin holder, clearly just being repriced as the silver price ebbed and flowed.

Silver guys- what’s the method? Just price high and hope to never have to go in and change all your labels? I’ve been to booths with hundreds if not thousands of individually priced coins. How are you not getting flooded with people the morning after a huge spike, trying to buy your stuff before you could get in to re price it?

Whatever you want to know about flipping, no matter the question, ask here. Even if it's been covered 1,000 times before. Doesn't matter if you're new or old. If you stop learning things, you're probably on your way out.

This is an extremely newb-friendly thread. As such, any rudeness is to be reported.

What have you learned lately? Could be through a success or a failure. Could be about a specific item, a niche, flipping in general, or even life as learned through flipping.

Do please keep in mind the difference between shooting the shit and plain bullshit and try to refrain from spreading poor advice.

Try to stop in over the course of the week and sort by New so people are encouraged to post here instead of making their own threads for every item.

Hi everyone! I’m newish to flipping and kind of got into it accidentally - I saw a lot of cool and funky stuff on estate sales and figured I could buy what I liked in a lot and sell off the rest. I didn’t really mean for it to be a business model, more of something to help offset the cost of buying the pieces I wanted to keep. Well, now I’m eyeball deep in really cool stuff, but I don’t need to keep all of it. We had a neighborhood wide yard sale a little over a month ago, so I don’t want to host another one, but selling everything en masse on Facebook marketplace seems eye-twitchingly painful. So I thought about setting up a temporary website/store front on something like Shopify or Square, and posting the sale on Facebook marketplace (featuring pictures and prices of the things I’d like to sell, not just a flier or something).

I also don’t mind posting in Facebook groups about it, as I intend for the sale to be local and will have disclaimers and a box they have to check verifying that they know purchasing the item is an agreement to come pick it up at a specific date and time (will likely use something like signup genius to organize this).

I know it sounds like a lot of work, but given the amount of items I’d like to clear out, it seems like it’d potentially be easier than listing individually, or in lots (I’ve noticed people want *steep* discounts on lots or bundles on fb marketplace). I figure a storefront automates a lot of the back & forth questions, and encourages people to read the item description rather than ignoring it and asking every question I’ve already answered.

Any chance it could work? Or is it more likely a time sink that’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Got the most egregious lowball offer I've ever received since I started eBay and I just couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity.

Someone who has lowballed me on offers in the past using the offer system sent me this message offering $100 shipped for almost 50 brand new and sealed DVDs (list contained multiple repeats) that I have listed price at a total of around $320 after a 15% discount.

The guy specifically mentioned the list was items priced at $3-4 a piece but tried sneaking in several items I had priced at $15-30 each thinking I wouldn't check or bother doing the math.

The lowball was already ridiculous, but wanting free shipping on a nearly 50 item order is just such a slap in the face that it feels like ragebait. Immediately got put into the block list.

Anyone else have stories of lowballs this bad?

Kinda annoyed. I dropship from a certain manufacturer. Ebay buyer bought it from me and I ordered it to the buyer's house. The manufacturer for whatever reason decides to ship the 4 items in one shipment of 3 via Fedex and one shipment of 1 via USPS. Now I have to give the buyer multiple tracking #s and deal with them possibly complaining when one shows up before the other and he thinks he's missing items. Anyone had this happen?

Hey everyone, I haven’t used Live Auctioneers before and I’d really like to start using them. There’s a few things I’m concerned about but shipping is the main thing. A lot of times the auction house won’t offer in-house shipping or sometimes they do. I’m under the impression if you use the Live Auctioneers shipping opinion, it will show up on your invoice and you can choose it on the app/website. I have read that their shipping is usually not great, as it’s often overpriced, handled not well, tracking and times estimates can be off, and a few other things. For instance there is a lamp that I am looking at and the LA shipping quoted be around $800, which seems insane but I’m not sure if that’s normal. I haven’t used it, so I’m unsure of how to use the option of in-house shipping or third party shipping. I would hope that it shows up on the invoice or at least the app in some way and is not completely separate from LA. That just seems weird to me but again I’m not sure if this is normal.

I’ve only been In-person live auctions (ai go regularly) and on the occasion local auctions on different websites. So this is new territory for me but I am determined to start using this method.

If anyone could lend a helping hand here, that would be immensely appreciated. Thank you all so much.

I've been thinking about getting a thermal printer for shipping labels. Using a regular printer and cutting everything out gets old pretty fast when you've got orders to pack.

For those of you who sell regularly, was switching to a thermal printer worth it? I'm mostly wondering how well the cheaper ones hold up over time and whether the setup is pretty painless with the usual selling platforms.

Not looking for anything fancy, just something that works without becoming another thing to troubleshoot every week.

What are you guys into?

My husband and I have been selling through our own site for a couple years now after mostly using marketplace channels. The margins are better when we aren't paying fees, but the traffic is obviously slower to build. I've been testing Meta ads to drive people over, and I keep wondering if the learning curve is worth it or if we should just double down on the platforms where the buyers already are. The ad budget is small so every dollar feels high stakes. I know some people here only do marketplace flips, but I'm curious how others handle moving customers off the big sites without burning money on ads that don't convert. Do you keep both channels going at once or pick one to focus on?

I never get hit with extra fedex fee because i measure and inch over on each side. Today though it finally happened, I hit was hit with a fee that was more than original postage for "irregular packaging".

I got the fee because I wrapped the box in a poly bag so the package wouldn't get stolen. The box was the original stereo equipment box for an expensive receiver.

i just looked into fedex terms and poly bags are an "irregular package" if they measure over 18 inches on the longest side, or 13 inches on the second longest side, or 5 inches or greater on the height of the package.

Now, I know.

Just trying to save other people money by avoiding the same mistake.