He turned a side hustle into a video game resale business that's brought in $4 million this year

Caleb Ashton's travel into the resale business was, for illustration galore who commencement retired successful that industry, humble.

Ashton began flipping items — textbooks, action figures, play clubs, sneakers, and much — while surviving pinch his woman successful a one-bedroom flat successful 2019. He was eager to create an extra root of income while his woman attended rule school.

In existent millennial fashion, he learned really to buy and resell items from YouTube videos.

"I started pinch a fund of 500 bucks that I had cobbled together from day and Christmas money. That was my startup seed money," Ashton, 31, told Business Insider."I initially focused connected really inexpensive items for illustration books aliases things that I could get for $5 astatine gait sales."

Ashton kept up the side hustle for astir six months, but it turned into a full-time occupation aft he was fired from a friend's collectible coin business.

By that point, Ashton had learned that immoderate items could lead to quick, reliable money. Specifically, beingness video games.

Things grew quickly.

In 2024, he created QuickFlips, an online resale level wherever group tin waste their video crippled collections, consoles, and Pokémon trading cards. He besides built the platform's buyback package system.

On QuickFlips, users participate their point into the hunt barroom to get an instant connection price. Once the QuickFlips squad has inspected the incoming items, users vessel them to the institution and person a payout wrong 24 hours. QuickFlips past resells the refurbished items connected Amazon, eBay, and TCGPlayer to make a profit.

As of 2025, they're besides sold successful Ashton's brick-and-mortar store.

Ashton opened the storefront past September in Lexington, Kentucky. The wide business made astir $4 cardinal successful gross successful 2026 and has paid complete $5 cardinal to customers since its inception.

Necessity becomes invention

Ashton's determination to unfastened a storefront came retired of necessity. For a time, he operated QuickFlips from his spare bedroom. Then, his basement.

"My first prosecute was my friend Spencer, who came to thief battalion worldly up and database inventory," Ashton said. "We ended up having astir 10 labor successful that basement."

QuickFlips began purchasing dozens of video crippled collections each week. That meant storing the galore collections, assessing the products, listing them for waste connected sites for illustration Amazon, and preparing them for shipping, each from the basement. At 1 point, location was truthful overmuch inventory successful the basement that Ashton struggled to find abstraction for caller hires.

"It was measurement excessively tight. My neighbors hated me, truthful I knew I had to get an existent agency space. We landed connected a unit complex," Ashton said.

Now, QuickFlips has 33 labor crossed its online level and unit space. Strategy-wide, Ashton said QuickFlip's attack to payouts is what differentiates it from different sellers successful the marketplace. They person a elemental motto: "Pay well, Sell fast."

"We connection a transparent connection upfront. We don't say, 'Hey, travel to our store, and we'll make you an connection aft we look astatine everything,'" Ashton said. "We say, 'As agelong arsenic this is successful bully condition, we will springiness you this overmuch for it.'"

Ashton said his business is focused connected moving volume.

"We're not needfully focused connected getting each penny for each item," Ashton said. "We would for illustration to get immoderate of the money each the time, alternatively than each the money immoderate of the time."

Going analog

Selling beingness video games and consoles whitethorn sound for illustration a dormant extremity successful the AI age, but Ashton has learned otherwise. Nostalgia is simply a tried-and-true driver of sales.

"A large logic that group collect, successful general, is to spell backmost to a simpler time. There's important worth for a batch of folks," Ashton said. "Another point is that a batch of folks we've recovered are getting fed up pinch integer media."

The influx of integer media and products these days has led immoderate consumers to activity retired physical alternatives. Manufacturers and thrift shop owners person told Business Insider they've noticed items for illustration the Nintendo DS go celebrated pinch younger generations.

In the gaming community, Sony inadvertently sparked calls for much beingness games erstwhile it announced that accumulation of PlayStation discs for caller games would extremity successful 2028.

"Every day, servers are getting unopen down. Games are becoming inaccessible. People are realizing that we don't really ain these integer games," Ashton said. "Sometimes group will travel successful to waste and acquisition their PS5 that has 50 games connected it, and beryllium crushed erstwhile they recognize that doesn't really springiness the console immoderate much worth because we're going to person to reset it."

Living successful a world pinch societal media does person immoderate perks, though. QuickFlips has amassed complete 661,000 subscribers crossed its accounts, which besides gain advertisement revenue.

"There are very fewer group successful the abstraction that person our societal media following," Ashton said. "There are hundreds of thousands of collectors and video crippled resellers that cognize who we are because of really overmuch we put into our YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook content."

Ashton chronicles QuickFlips maturation and his acquisition arsenic an entrepreneur connected his YouTube page, Phoenix Resale.

It's our extremity to supply a batch of worth to group upfront connected some the acquisition and intermezo side," Ashton said. "That's a large portion of why they take to do business pinch us."