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Best Items To Flip On Ebay – Top Things To Sell on Ebay

So you’re looking for the best items to flip on eBay? I get it. It can be a super profitable and honestly a really fun job. If you are organized and put in the right amount of time and effort, your profit potential could be sky-high.

Best Items To Flip On Ebay – Top Things To Sell on Ebay

best items to flip

The top things to sell on eBay include a variety of items like outdated (but still working) electronics, hard-to-find antiques, and high-end clothing with tags still attached. Flipping items on eBay isn’t easy, but you can earn money doing it if you want.

What are the best items to flip?

When you start flipping items start with what you have at home. The best items to flip on eBay are those products that you can get for free.

What items do you have that you don’t use that are of good quality? What is hanging around your house collecting dust that other people might want? Along with making some extra money you might be able to clean up your space too! Look for vintage housewares or tools, turntables and VCR’s, and designer clothing and accessories. 

Once you have explored everything in your home, you can find the top things to sell on eBay all around you. There are several schools of thought.

The first thought is to look for small items that are easy to ship. Things like remote controls, small antiques, or vintage baseball cards all work well. Small items might have small rewards though.

The other school of thought is to choose big items like furniture and electronics that can be bought very cheaply (or gotten for free), and can be flipped for a very nice profit. Larger things might not be able to be shipped so consider if you want to deal with local delivery. These items may be harder to ship but can come with a bigger reward.

A good rule of thought is that the best items to sell on eBay are the ones you’d want to buy yourself!

reselling for a profit

What To Resell For Profit – Best Items To Flip On eBay

  • Remote controls
  • Small antiques
  • Collectibles like vintage baseball cards
  • Furniture
  • Electronics
  • Lps
  • Brand named clothing
  • Lawn tools
  • PC parts
  • Sterling Silver
  • Old clothing that no longer fits
  • Toys that your children no longer use
  • Vintage video games
  • Shoes
  • Literally anything in your basement
  • Books

Related: eBay And Amazon FBA Are Truly Paying Off: My Results

where can i find items to sell on ebay

Where can I buy items to flip on eBay?

The good thing to know is that you can buy the best items to flip on eBay virtually everywhere. The best place to start is to get items for free that you can sell for a profit.

In addition to looking through your own stuff, go ahead and go through other people’s stuff. No don’t steal it!  I mean the stuff they give away for free on neighborhood websites, CraigsList, Nextdoor, Facebook marketplace, and even those things left by the side of the road.

Related: eBay Partner Network – My First Month Of Earnings

Often times these items just need a little bit of TLC and if you are willing to do the work, they can sell for a tidy sum. My town has a local dump and I cannot tell you how much money my friends have made by walking through and picking out high-ticket items that people no longer need or want. A friend of mine actually found a carousel horse! Why a) would someone even have one of those and b) throw it away!?

Best items to resell for profit

Your profit margins do go up when you start with a free item. However, please, please be careful when meeting a stranger. Always be careful.

Related: How To Sell On Facebook Marketplace – 9 Important Tips

If you are picking up items from someone’s house, bring a friend with you. Also, try to go during the day. Do your best to not make it look like you are stealing something off someone’s porch too. Just be conscious of your surroundings. 

After you run out of options for free stuff, try secondhand stores like Goodwill. Also check out smaller resale or consignment shops in your city, particularly those associated with churches or charities. Often really great items are donated to them because of their good works and sold for a fraction of their worth. Plus, then you get to feel good about supporting the mission of that charity too!

flipping for a profit

Some of my favorite stores to visit:

  • Plato’s Closet
  • Savers (check for specific days where the entire store is discounted + always bring something to donate to receive a coupon)
  • MyUnique Thrift (bring a senior with you to get deeper discounts)
  • Local Thrift Shops that aren’t nationwide
  • Church Sales
yardsale app

If you plan on taking eBay seriously, you need to start going to yard sales. This will give you the highest return PERIOD. It’s almost better to drive to affluent towns because they will sell you Ralph Lauren swim trunks for $2… ask me how I know.

If your town doesn’t have enough, move on! I would spend every weekend creating routes using the Yard Sale App and it changed EVERYTHING. Made it VERY easy to manage.

You can get a sense of what everyone is selling before you commit to attending, map out an order of attack, and decide who is a MUST visit – all while having your morning coffee. Did I mention I used to make a few thousand dollars a month on eBay?

Best things to flip on eBay

What can I buy cheap and sell for profit?

When you are looking for items to flip on eBay, look for those that you can clean up or fix to make the item worth more. Flipping items on eBay doesn’t have to be a crazy hard job.

A can of spray paint can transform a patio chaise. Some silver cleaner on a tarnished platter will make it look brand new. A little elbow grease and soap and water can take a dingy antique frame and turn it into a showpiece.

It could be something as easy as inserting batteries into a toy to make it work again! Depending on your expertise and the amount of work you want to put into each item, look for items like furniture, electronics, collectibles, and vintage or antique items that can be polished up to sell for a profit.

I even spent some time buying liquidated goods online and flipping them. I never really spoke about this because I didn’t really want to make it a big deal, but I used to make several thousand dollars a month flipping goods online. There are plenty of ways to find things to sell.

Can you make a living selling on eBay?

The short answer is yes, you can make a living selling on eBay. The more accurate answer is that most people do not make a living selling on eBay. However, the potential is there. It really depends on how much time, effort and money you want to put into it.

It truly boils down to how much time and effort you put into something. 2 hours a week will not provide you a full-time income. When I was really taking this seriously, it was practically my part-time job to hunt for the best items to flip.

As long as you understand that it takes time to find and/or buy quality products that can be turned into profit, you will be good to go. My advice is to start small and keep it to your level of expertise.

You don’t want to be stuck with a bunch of things that won’t sell. Once you start getting the hang of things you can ramp up, or not, depending on how much you want to make. Remember! What you think are the best items to flip.. might not be what the rest of the world does! Perhaps not everyone is into pig-shaped cookie jars like you are.

Related: How To Make Money Thanks To The Marie Kondo Tidying Up Book

Flipping items on eBay

Is it better to sell on eBay or Amazon? 

Is it better to sell on eBay or Amazon? The answer to this question is that it is a personal preference. I’ve done both in the past and was very successful on both platforms.

There is a huge difference with these platforms though. Amazon takes huge fees out but does all of the work. You can move BRAND NEW product on Amazon and at a much larger scale, but you have to give them over 30% of the profit.

In order to succeed on Amazon, you have to understand Retail Arbitrage – which is something I also used to do and LOVE. Are you someone who loves to find things on sale? The real BARGAINS? Well, with Amazon, you just send in those new products and then sell them at full price. It’s risky. You have to time everything perfectly. But the reward are really great.

There are plenty of programs to help you find the deals online. I used one called Tactical Arbitrage if you are curious. It really helped me find the best items to sell on eBay and Amazon!

I also made a killing selling used books on Amazon. So many different ways to make money. But Amazon is much riskier than eBay.

I always found eBay to be the safer bet and eventually stopped selling on Amazon because I felt that I wasn’t pushing enough volume to justify the expenses. If you have your own private label, then Amazon is the place where you should be, but I can’t help you with that initiative.

top things to sell on eBay

How much money can you make flipping on eBay?

The amount of money you can make flipping items on eBay depends on how much effort you put in it. I did this 20-30 hours a week for a few years and between Amazon and eBay made about $2000 a month if that gives you a broad gauge. This is not a guarantee though. Everyone’s profits vary.

It really depends on what you sell, how you market it, and your ability to find the treasure among so-called trash. 

Now, what are your best items to flip on eBay? Be sure to tell me what you are doing and how it’s going! Good luck!

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