When people ask me where I find stuff to flip, they usually expect a secret. There isn't one. What there is, is a handful of sources that most people ignore because they're less convenient than opening one app and scrolling until their thumb hurts. The convenient source is also the most picked-over. The good flips live where fewer people are looking.
The online marketplaces (yes, still)
Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, Craigslist, and the like are the bread and butter, and they work. The trick isn't whether you use them, it's how. The deals get scooped in minutes, so refreshing once an hour means you're always late. What actually wins is catching a mispriced listing in the first few minutes it's up, which is a speed game humans lose.
Estate sales and moving sales
This is where volume lives. Somebody's clearing out a whole house or leaving the state fast, and they've priced everything to be gone by Sunday. Tools, appliances, furniture, random valuable stuff mixed in with junk. Show up early on day one for the best picks, or late on the last day for the "fill a box for $5" desperation pricing.
Curb alerts and free piles
"Free" on the curb is the highest-margin sourcing there is, because your cost is a drive. People put out solid-wood furniture, working appliances, and tools all the time because hauling it away is more annoying to them than the money. Free-category searches surface these, and if the item's genuinely good, it's pure profit minus cleanup.
Mispriced listings from people who don't know what they have
A grandkid selling grandpa's tools has no idea an old Milwaukee kit with two good batteries is worth $180. A family clearing a garage lists a Vitamix as "old blender, $20." These are the best flips, and they hide in vague titles and bad photos, which is exactly why they slip past everyone speed-scrolling for keywords.
Thrift stores and clearance
Hit or miss, but the misses are cheap. Some thrifts price name-brand items for nothing; retail clearance racks occasionally have stuff worth more used than the sticker. Low hit rate, but low cost per look, so it's fine as a while-you're-there source, not a plan.
The real problem: you can't watch everything
All of these come down to being in the right place at the right minute, and there's only one of you. You can't refresh six marketplaces every few minutes all day and still have a life. That's the exact gap Worth Radar fills: you tell it what you're hunting for, it watches your local marketplaces around the clock, reads each new listing's condition and photos, checks it against real sold comps, and pings you only when something's actually worth chasing — with the profit-per-hour and the most you should pay already worked out. It turns "be everywhere at once" into a saved search.