Flip Breakdowns
Tipsy Elves Windbreaker Resale Value: A $5 Flag Jacket That Sold for $35 in Seven Days
Tipsy Elves windbreaker resale value from a real eBay flip. A $5 USA flag jacket listed at $39.99 sold for $35 in seven days and cleared $25.27.
Fee estimated at 13.5 percent; eBay had not yet returned the exact figure.
Almost everyone walks past the novelty rack. A stars and stripes windbreaker with an eagle patch on the chest reads as a costume rather than as inventory, and costumes have a reputation for sitting in a tote until next year.
This one was listed on a Thursday evening and was gone the following Friday morning.
What was on the floor
A full zip hooded windbreaker done as an American flag. Navy star field across the shoulders and the hood, red and white stripes running down the body and both sleeves, blue elastic at the cuffs and hem.
The right chest carries a round embroidered patch, a bald eagle over a flag with a gold star above it. The back has USA in a gold glitter applique outlined in red and blue, set on the white band just under the stars.
Turn it inside out and there is a grey mesh lining with a navy woven tag reading tipsyelves and a small red tab stamped XL. Blue zip hand pockets, white main zipper, drawcord through the hood. Pre owned, print still bright, no holes, no stains, zipper working.
The label is a joke, the company is not
Novelty apparel gets treated as one undifferentiated pile of party clothes, which is where the money gets left on the table. Some of it is unbranded seasonal filler. Some of it is a real company with real search volume behind the name.
Tipsy Elves is the second kind. Evan Mendelsohn and Nick Morton started it in 2011 selling ugly Christmas sweaters, pitched it on Shark Tank in December 2013, and took $100,000 from Robert Herjavec for a 10 percent stake. Herjavec has since called it his most successful investment from the show, with the company past $100 million in lifetime retail sales, as he told CNBC.
None of that makes the jacket a designer piece. What it does is make the brand a search term. A hundred million dollars of retail sales means a large number of people have bought one, worn one, or shopped the site, and some fraction of them go looking for the item secondhand by name. That is all a resale floor ever is.
The numbers
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Source cost | $5.00 |
| Listed at | $39.99 |
| Sold for | $35.00 |
| eBay fee (estimated 13.5 percent) | $4.73 |
| Profit | $25.27 |
Two footnotes belong under that table.
The five dollars is a policy, not a receipt. Thrifted clothing is booked at five here as a worst case, and the actual spend on a given piece was often lower. Nothing in the category gets bought above it.
The fee is a stand in. eBay had not reported the exact take on this order when the row was logged, so the standard 13.5 percent holds the spot until the real number lands. Shipping is not in the table either. The listing offered free shipping, so the label for a lightweight jacket in a poly mailer comes out of the $25.27 rather than out of the buyer's pocket.
Seven days, in what should have been the wrong month
The listing went up the evening of August 20 and the sale closed the morning of August 28. Seven days.
That is the part worth sitting with, because the Fourth of July was seven weeks gone. If you sort your sourcing by holiday, a flag jacket in late August is dead stock you hold for ten months.
The sale says otherwise, and the reason is worth reasoning through rather than guessing at. A flag windbreaker is not a July 4 item. It is an occasion item, and the occasions are stacked through the fall: tailgates as college football opens, USA themed parties, group costumes, and the general run of red white and blue events that never really stop. Late August is not the off season for this piece. It is the front edge of a different season.
The wider point is that seasonal is a lazy label. Ask what the item is actually for, not which holiday its colors belong to, and a lot of the calendar opens back up.
The ask, and the $4.99 that closed it
It listed at $39.99 with Best Offer turned on, and it sold at $35.00. Just under five dollars separated the two.
On a $5 cost that trade is not close. Holding the last $4.99 costs you the buyer who is in front of you right now and buys you an unknown wait for the next one. On a piece with a thin, occasion driven audience, the offer in hand is worth considerably more than the ask on the screen.
Best Offer earns its keep here for the same reason. It gives a hesitant buyer a way to act instead of a way to close the tab.
How to read the novelty rack
Four checks, in this order.
Read the collar tag before the print. A named novelty brand with real sales history behind it prices differently than an unbranded party store jacket in the same colors. Tipsy Elves, Shinesty, Opposuits are labels people type into a search bar.
Then ask what occasion it serves and how many times a year that occasion comes around. A single date is a narrow window. A recurring reason to dress up is a wide one.
Then check the size. Novelty outerwear skews toward men's large and up, because it is bought to be worn over a shirt at an event. The extra large moves.
Then look at the condition of the print, not the fabric. On this category the graphic is the product. A cracked applique or a faded panel takes the item out of contention no matter how sound the shell is.
The takeaway
Twenty five dollars is not a headline. It is a seven day turn on a five dollar piece that most people at that rack did not stop for, which is the kind of trade you want to be able to make on purpose rather than by accident.
The habit underneath it is small. Turn the thing inside out and read the tag before you decide what it is. The rest of the sourcing and pricing system, including how to check whether a name actually has sold comps behind it, is what gets taught in the videos.
