High Margin Items to Flip

Reselling 101

By RC Staff

19 April 2023

There’s all kinds of items that resell. From cheap goods to stuff that retails for thousands, as long as you can flip it for more than you bought it, it should be on your radar. An important part of succeeding as a reseller is finding the items with the most bang for your buck. Today, we’ll be talking about high margin items, what they are, how to find them, and why they’re worth your time. While you can’t always rely on the most lucrative items to resell, getting your hands on one can be better than Christmas and your birthday rolled into one.

What is a high margin item?

Simply put, high margin means lots of profit relative to cost. Any item where the money made from reselling significantly outweighs what you put in. Your own personal definition for high margin can vary, but one way to think of it is anything where your profit is around half your cost or more. That is, if you bought it for $100 and resold for $150, that could be considered high margin.

There are all kinds of items with high margins, from low cost to very high. It’s also important to note the difference between high margin items and high profit items. Margin refers exclusively to the ratio between cost and profit, while high profit just means an item that scores you serious profit after selling it. These tend to be pretty expensive.

Some of the more common high margin items are actually cheap. An easy example would be sports cards. Just a couple bucks for a pack, and they can resell for tens of dollars to tens of thousands. Even a modest profit of $10-$20 per card would still qualify them as a high margin item.

Oftentimes, it’s necessary to stock up on a lot of high margin items to make major profits. Think of them like a magic wand that can turn $5 bills into $10 ones. Not glamorous, but you could make a hell of a lot of money that way. Sounds fun? Let’s look at some examples.

High margin items, and how to spot them

When hunting for high margin items, you’ll want to look for a confluence between limited supply and strong demand. This can be relatively common items that are still continually sold out, or underproduced items with cult followings.

One common example is cheap collectible items produced in limited numbers. Promotional products not necessarily intended to be profitable by the company making them. Instead, they serve to whip up hype either for a brand or a product, and generate buzz.

Here are some recent examples:

• The Midsommar Bear in a Cage. Limited production collectible produced by A24 for the film Midsommar. The Bears were a simple wooden toy in a cage, and sold for $30-$40, with just 150 total made. Resellers picked these up and flipped them for 10x what they paid, making for very sold margins.
• Pet Simulator X Hippomelon Plushies. 75 total were sold at $250. By the end of the week, they were reselling on eBay for $2,000.
• Arby’s Dice. A strange combination of fast food and nerd culture, this set of 7 dice was first released in 2020 for just $12. They since resold for $500 at their peak. These just restocked, so we may see a bit of fluctuation in the price.
• Panda Express Mini Wok. A promotional piece of cookware released at limited locations on particular days. The branded woks were given out with the purchase of a $6 meal, but could be flipped for $100-$200, representing a profit margin of around 2,000%

In these cases, the items sold at retail relatively cheaply (the wok being essentially free). They would go on to resell for serious profit. This is because they were rare, unique, underproduced, and very desirable. Fans would fight each other for them, with resellers coming out ahead. Manufacturers create these conditions for products to resell by limiting production; they’re not trying to make tons of money, they just want their products to sell out and get hyped.

Dropshipping products with high profit margins

There are also retail products with a potential for high margins. Dropshipping is a tactic where customers buy directly from, but your supplier ships the product to the customer. This saves you cost and time, and allows you to make money on high margin items.

Shopify has published their data on dropshipping through their platform, and selected a few product categories that stand out over the rest. Shopify finds the highest margin items to dropship include candles, children’s products, and specialty items like clothing accessories, decorations, and bath products.

High profit items to flip

Alternatively, there are items that are highly profitable to resell because they are expensive to begin with. They may not have the margins as cheaper options, but the overall profit makes up for that. One example we’ve been seeing lately are cars.

Certain types of cars, limited editions or launch models may become extremely popular and resell.

In the last few year years we’ve seen this with the EV Hummer, Lamborghini Ducati Bike, and Dodge Demon. In these cases, buyers pick up vehicles from the dealer for MSRP, and flip them for around 120%-150% of what they paid, give or take. That ends up being $20,000-$50,000, depending on what they got and how well they got along with the dealership.

Obviously, items like these require significant upfront investment, but represent an incredible opportunity, especially considering that they’re only a single transaction.

Other high profit items from the past include the various Tesla branded merchandise, including the surfboard and Not-a-Flamethrower. These weren’t cheap, but they now resell for incredible prices; the Tesla surfboard is worth $10,000 now.

Tips for reselling items for maximum profit

One thing to consider about high margin items is that they’re not always easy to get. Actually, they’re usually pretty hard. At least for the limited edition stuff. Additionally, most high margin items take time to appreciate in value.

Everyone likes to talk about flipping $5 items for $500, but its tricky to know when the right time to sell is. A major part of flipping for profit is learning how to hold items, and for how long. Holding means keeping your hands on an item to resell and waiting for it go up in value. That also means turning down offers on it that don’t meet your ideal price.

The MetaZoo 1st Edition Kickstarter box is a great example of how to hold a product. Members of the RC Elite community were tipped off about this opportunity, and bought in at $99 per box. Within a few weeks, prices had risen to around $500. Sounds great right? Well, some members chose to keep holding. They sensed that they had something special. Before then end of 2021, prices for a sealed MetaZoo Kickstarter box had risen to nearly $10,000.

Holding an item until it reaches its maximum potential is how you take advantage of high margin items. Of course, that also means taking on risk. Just like holding opens the door to making incredible money, it’s also possible to lose money doing it.

Earlier this year, we saw a restock for the very limited Outer Wilds vinyl. Previously, only a thousand or so copies of these records had been in circulation after the initial 2020 pressing. When the restock happened, resellers snatched up a significant number of records, and brought the price tumbling down. Only a week before the restock was announced, there was a sale of the Outer Wilds vinyl for $600. Now, they typically resell for around $100. If you had been holding a copy of the vinyl to resell, the March restock was a swift kick below the belt.

As you can see, predicting the future can be tricky. A rule of thumb to stick by is that you should never risk money on a hold that you can’t afford to throw away. At the end of the day, gambling is gambling.

High margin items – part of a complete breakfast

Don’t get tunnel vision when it comes to finding high margin items. As a reseller, your goal is to make profit wherever you can by flipping goods wherever you can find them. Of course, high margin items are attractive, but they’re by no means a requirement.

There’s nothing wrong with making money with simple flips. They may not be glamorous, but it beats almost any other form of making money. Keeping a lookout for high margin items as they crop up is ideal, but shouldn’t be your main focus. That said, if you’re tired of missing out on crazy profits and hot items to resell, it may be time to join the RC Elite community.

RC Elite is where all of the best items to flip are posted, with every detail you need to make serious profits. From cards and cars, to Barbies and boxes of crackers, you wouldn’t believe what people are willing to pay for random items. In fact, RC actually pays its members to submit information through the bounty program, with nearly a half million paid out so far. No matter what you want to resell, RC Elite covers it, and more. 2023 is the perfect time to start taking steps towards financial independence, and RC Elite has everything you need to get there.

As always, have fun, stay safe, and make money!