Thrift Flipping for Profit: How Much 5 Real Resellers Make

Flipping items for profit is one of the oldest side hustles, and one of the easiest to test with a small budget. Here's what five real resellers bought, what they sold it for, and what it added up to.

Thrift flipping clothes: $1 shirts to $10,300 a month

Sophie Riegel started reselling from her college dorm room in 2020, first selling things from her childhood bedroom and then thrifted clothes. She bought T-shirts for about $1 and resold them for up to $10. Her sales reached nearly $123,800 in one year — over $10,300 a month — and more than $300,000 in total since 2020.

eBay flips: 90 items, $62,000 in profit

Rob and Melissa Stephenson source from flea markets, yard sales, and thrift stores and resell on eBay. In 2019 they sold 90 items for $79,000, netting about $62,075 after costs. A prosthetic leg bought for $30 sold for $999, and 60 mattresses bought at $60 each returned $25,680 in profit.

Furniture and sneakers

Tyler and Lindsey Dobson started in 2020 by refinishing furniture they found on the curb, flipping one or two pieces a week for about $500 a month in profit. Adding home renovation flips, they've since grossed over $1.1 million. JV Ortiz started with thrift-store flips worth about $10 each; one pair of sneakers bought for $900 and sold for $1,200 days later pushed him into Yeezys earning around $500 profit a pair. Two years in, he reached $10,000 a month.

Vintage purses: a reselling side hustle that replaced a job

Nica Yusay spent $15,000 on vintage designer bags in January 2021 to resell on Poshmark and Depop. A TikTok about negotiating prices went viral, and by the end of the year she'd made $300,000 — enough to quit her $82,000-a-year job.

Most resellers start the way these did: small, cheap items and thin margins, then move up to higher-value categories as they learn what sells. These are standout results, and sales aren't profit — but the numbers show where the ceiling can be.