How She Turned $1 Pallets of Books Into $5K on eBay — Ep. 27
Low Bar Podcast
Where GovDeals Inventory Comes From
Mindi explains GovDeals sources—schools, police, fire, public works—and why districts auction items legally.
Reselling books, liquidation pallets, eBay flipping, and live selling on Whatnot. These online business models turn cheap inventory into real profit when you understand the arbitrage.
Mindi Reinke (https://x.com/hey_mindi) is an eBay book reseller and Whatnot fashion live seller who teaches new entrepreneurs how to start a reselling business. Her reselling journey started with two $1 pallets of school curriculum books from GovDeals. She scanned one book on eBay, saw it listed for $400, and four days later sold it for $375. Those first two pallets turned into $5,000 in about 60 days.
Today she runs a book reselling operation on eBay while building a live selling business on Whatnot. She explains how she evaluates liquidation pallets using ChatGPT, how the Whatnot algorithm rewards chat engagement over sales, and why live selling is still early.
They also get into Goodwill bins (the Hunger Games of reselling), a Costco cold plunge that arrived missing its $3,000 pump, and a personal story about her husband's first responder PTSD and the unexpected path that helped him recover. Find more about that here, https://www.yourguideinside.org/.
Business is simple. People are lazy.
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Timestamps:
00:33 — Buying a pallet of books for $1
03:39 — Finding and navigating auction sites
10:33 — Strategies for profitable curriculum books
20:52 — "Live selling" on the Whatnot platform
28:17 — Generating discovery and engagement on Whatnot
32:40 — Top tips getting started and making sales
43:20 — Building a business as a stay-at-home parent
52:55 — Exploring the "Hunger Games" environment of Goodwill bins
56:05 — Seasonal arbitrage failures and lessons learned
59:30 — Using plant medicine to help treat first responder PTSD
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Topics: reselling business, flipping books on eBay, Whatnot live selling, liquidation pallets, GovDeals auctions, online arbitrage, resale business models
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