Flip Breakdowns
Flip Breakdown: Under Armour Notre Dame Polo, $5 to $20
Thrift store flipping with real numbers: an Under Armour Notre Dame polo bought for $5 and sold for $20 on eBay, and the $12.30 left after fees.
Fee estimated at 13.5 percent; eBay had not yet returned the exact figure.
Most people walk past the rack this shirt came off of. It is a plain gray polo on a hanger, no graphic, no logo you can read from six feet away. A $5.00 buy, a $20.00 sale on eBay, and $12.30 left after fees. Every photo here is straight from the listing, and every figure is the real one.
The item
Under Armour HeatGear polo, size Large, gray, with a small embroidered Notre Dame Fighting Irish monogram on the chest. Used, excellent condition. That is the entire item. There is nothing rare about it and nothing about it that would make a picker stop.
What makes it work is the overlap of two things buyers search for on purpose. The first is the brand and the fabric line. People shop Under Armour HeatGear by name because they know how it fits and how it wicks. The second is the school. Notre Dame has a national alumni base and a fan base far larger than the campus, and those people buy licensed apparel year round, not just in football season.
Neither of those alone is worth much. A plain gray Under Armour polo is a common item. A generic Notre Dame shirt is a common item. The one that is both is the one a specific person is typing into the search bar.
The numbers
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Sold | $20.00 |
| Source cost | $5.00 |
| eBay fee (estimated 13.5 percent) | $2.70 |
| Profit | $12.30 |
The eBay fee here is estimated at 13.5 percent, because the platform had not returned the exact figure for this sale when the numbers were pulled. Reported straight, not rounded in my favor. Every other line is a real, recorded figure: a $5.00 buy, a $20.00 sale that closed on June 25, and $12.30 left over.
Twelve dollars and thirty cents is not a story anyone posts about. It is also a four times return on the buy, on an item that fits in a poly mailer and costs almost nothing to ship. That is the actual shape of this business. The trophy flips pay for a good week. Flips like this one pay the bills, because there are hundreds of them on the rack and you can buy them every single time you go out.
Why college apparel is a repeatable category
Team apparel is one of the few thrift categories where supply and demand are both reliable.
Supply is everywhere. Every thrift store within driving distance of a college town is full of that school's gear, priced like a plain used shirt because that is what it looks like to the person pricing it. Racks get restocked constantly.
Demand does not sit still either. The buyer is not a collector waiting for the right piece. It is an alum who wants a polo for the office, a parent buying for a student, a fan who wants something with the logo that is not a novelty t-shirt. They search for the school and the item type, they find one in their size, they buy it.
The catch is that this only pays if you are buying at thrift prices and selling at brand prices. That gap is the whole flip. A $5.00 buy leaves room for the fee, the shipping, and a real profit. A $12.00 buy on the same shirt turns $12.30 into pocket change.
What actually made the sale
Three things, none of them complicated.
The title carried the search. Brand, fabric line, school, item type, size, color. Under Armour, HeatGear, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Polo, Large, Gray. Every one of those is a word a buyer types. A title that just said "Notre Dame polo" would have been invisible to most of the people who would have bought it.
The photos showed the shirt, not the room. Flat lay, even light, the front, the logo, the tag, the back. A buyer deciding on a used shirt wants to see the condition and confirm the size. Give them that and there is nothing left to ask.
The size was in the listing, not just in a photo. Apparel does not sell without it. Most buyers filter by size before they ever look at a photo, so a listing missing that field never reaches them.
The takeaway
Boring items with two searchable attributes are the most repeatable money in reselling. A brand people shop by name plus a team people are loyal to, bought at thrift price, listed with the words those buyers actually type. It is $12.30 at a time, and it is available every week.
Track what you paid, expect the fee to take its slice, and count only what is left.
