Flipping toy soldiers on ebay--a good haul

Today people buy and then resell houses, cars, and other items, a process commonly called flipping.  Some of us "flip" toys, including my former student and master flipper Will.  He hits garage sales and estate sales and sells his finds on his own website.   I just cruise ebay while watching tv.  I just had a great flip of toys I found on ebay.  I will pay homage to the master toy-flipper with this post.
Two weeks ago I found a bunch of toy soldiers and vehicles for 18.88 including shipping.  It was described by the seller as "Large Lot of Old Junk Military Men Landscape & Vehicle Toys Small and Bigger sizes" and the photograph shows a bunch of soldiers of different sizes, globs of plastic, and pile of plastic pieces.  

Like a prospector in the Klondike, I saw gold in that pile.   I was happy it was Buy it Now on ebay so I didn't have to bid against other prospectors.  I've sold some of it in separate lots.   Let's see what sold.
In the sixties and seventies, little boys who were chronically incompetent in sports had to create their own worlds of play.  There were no video or computer games then, so they went one of two routes:  complete fantasy of comic books and super hero toys, or semi-historical with planes or soldiers.  As a fan of history as a kid, I went historical, with assorted toy soldiers of different sizes, either GI JOEs (for great information about GI JOEs and other 60s toys, try this link) or, for me, little plastic soldiers by Airfix.  I've described day trading toy soldiers before in this post, so I'll just show the pile of mostly German and US Airfix soldiers that sold for 9 dollars plus shipping.

Soldiers I played with were modeled after World War II, the first mechanized war, so I also had lots of miniature tanks as a kid.  The most popular brand was Roco Minitanks, manufactured in Austria.  They had nice details and were almost the right size for my Airfix soldiers.  Many epic battles were fought on the living room floor of the house I grew up in, with skirmishes on the stairs and bloody assaults underneath the coffee table.  Tanks safe from German fire were sometimes attacked by the cat in a last ditch attack.  Over the years, I've bought and sold some on ebay, as most of my collection melted in a fire after I was an adult (well, chronologically an adult).  Anyway, a major part of the pile bought off ebay were disassembled Minitanks which I assembled and put on sale for $20 plus shipping.  Most are not made anymore, so there is a market for these old toys.  Some were broken, some were missing parts, but there was still a bidding war and they sold for $47 plus shipping.

Companies in the US are very strict with copyright and patents today.  Tech companies patent moving a finger across a screen and sue South Korean companies for millions of dollars for slight similarities.  US companies weren't as a picky in the 60s as many just made direct copies of foreign toys and sold them here with no royalties.  Aurora was one company that did so copying both Airfix toy soldiers and Roco Minitanks and selling them together in model kits.  Two kits by Aurora were very popular in the sixties:  the Rat Patrol kit based on the Rat Patrol tv series in turn based upon British raiding groups in the North African desert, and the Anzio Beach kit based upon all the American war movies of the late 50s and early 60s of amphibious attacks during the war.  The kits had little tank and jeep models based on Roco Minitanks, little bits of plastic scenery (trees, sand dunes, shell holes, even an oasis with palm trees), and toy soldiers based on either Airfix or Roco minitanks figures. 


In the pile of toys were assorted soldiers, tanks, and scenery from the Aurora kits.  I kept a couple pieces for my own collection, which I'll put up here some other time when it is complete (in other words, the camera battery is dead and I can't find the charger). I've seen bidding wars going up to $20 for one of the boxes, no toys, just the BOX. Complete sets in good condition go for $75 to $100.  I put up the pieces I didn't keep for $10.   I know the picture isn't great, but if you look closely, the green soldiers below are copies of the green soldiers in the top picture and the grey soldiers below are copies of the blue soldiers above.  Also the tanks are copies of the tanks above.  The lot went for $21.

There was more in the pile of toys. The toys described were not very expensive, a box of four dozen Airfix soldiers typically sold for about 75 cents (maybe $7 today) and a Roco minitank for about the same.  There were cheaper toy solders available sometimes now called Army Men.  Extremely mass produced overseas, they reflect no one period of history, sometimes a mix of Vietnam War era and World War II.  There was also a pile of these army men and cheap vehicles in the pile.  Unfortunately they are so common that they don't sell easily, so they haven't sold yet, on sale essentially for shipping costs/(please get them out of my basement).


They are for sale if you want them!
I've support my hobby of collecting these Airfix and Minitanks and building models of ships and some vehicles of the time by this buying and reselling.  The costs for this go round weren't bad:  purchase cost not quite $19; shipping total so far a little under $10; ebay and paypal fees about $9.  Gross about $87, netting not quite $60.  Over the last couple years, I've found a couple bonanzas sold by unsuspecting folk selling stuff from a basement or estate sale that I've flipped for several times the purchase price.  Piles of toy soldiers and tanks like above, old model kits (sometimes called glue bombs because of the overabundance of adhesive put on by little kids) that I've mostly resold with the proper nomenclature for afficianados (ok, I kept some pieces and reconditioned them for nostalgia).  And as long as I break even and keep the things I buy small and in the basement, marital bliss continues unabated.
UPDATE:  The last batch sold, for a mere $7. I wanted to get them out of the basement.  So the gross is about $95, netting about $60 altogether after shipping and assorted paypal and ebay fees.  Now, what am I going to buy?
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