DROPFORECAST · dropforecast.com
FLIP SCORE ENGINE
verified Jul 7, 2026
A home-grown algorithm for the hunt

Score every drop before
you spend a dollar. Cop the ceilings,
skip the shelf-sitters.

DropForecast reads upcoming toy & sneaker drops, scores each on its odds of doing a hard multiple over retail, and cross-references live store stock so you know what to grab and where it's sitting — before the crowd.

47%
of sneaker drops beat retail in 2026 — down from 58% in 2020 (StockX via WWD/Footwear News). A sniper's game, not a shotgun's.
≥2×
the bar. Flip Score = calibrated probability a pick clears 2× retail net of fees — not gross, not asking price.
5
signal families feed the score: scarcity, demand-heat, intrinsics, market structure, catalysts.
2×
velocity beats margin: $5k turned twice a month at 30% = $3k, off the same capital. The engine finds the turns.

Live — Your Board

Real portfolio P&L + today's drops · nightly refresh

📊

Loading live data…

Today's Drops

Today's Board

Your two live finds carry real sold comps; the pattern cards show the COP / HUNT / PASS logic.

54FLIP
🦇 TOY · McFARLANE
Batman (Golden Age) — Red Platinum
GameStop chase · your find · retail $26.99
HUNT
Sold avg$49.47
Range$36–60
Sales24
vs retail1.83×
📊 actionfigure411 · real eBay sold auctions · Jun 2–13, 2026
HOLDflip-now nets ~$33 after fees+ship — the license-death cap is the reason to keep
+McFarlane loses DC license end-2026 → line capped forever, no reprints (confirmed, Todd McFarlane on record)
+Batman #1 / Golden Age = evergreen flagship demand
–Red-Platinum program is high-volume in 2026 → chase dilution
🎯 GameStop exclusive · keep sealed + protector for the graded moonshot tail
51FLIP
🎩 TOY · BTAS BAF
Jervis Tetch / Mad Hatter
Clock King build piece · your find · retail $34.99
HUNT
Sold avg$54.21
Range$22–65
Sales19
vs retail1.55×
📉 Cooling — latest sale Jun 26 = $34.95 (back at retail); $54.21 avg is trailing
HOLDsupply catching up now — the play is the post-2026 BAF bottleneck, not a flip today
+Build-A-Figure completer — supplies Clock King's head + hands
+Line death + BTAS nostalgia clock (adult collectors aging in)
–Cooling: recent sales hit $22–35, at/below the $34.99 MSRP
🎯 Target exclusive · in 6–12mo, is he the hardest Wave 7 fig to find? That's the tell
88FLIP
👟 SNEAKER · PATTERN
Raffle-only god-tier collab
AJ1 High OG · SNKRS DAN · numbered run
COP
3–9×the archetype that actually pays
+Proof: Travis × Fragment AJ1 Low — 4.4M raffle entries vs ~40k pairs → 11–16×
+Pre-release top bid already ≥1.5× retail, tight spread
+Celebrity-collab coefficient +2.22 (Duke hedonic model)
👟 SNKRS raffle · enter clean, never bot (account ban)
69FLIP
🃏 TOY · PATTERN
Short-ship chase, A-list character
1:6+ chase ratio · at/near retail · pre-hype
HUNT
2–15×wide band — the real moonshot tail lives here
+Proof: Catwoman "Knightfall" Platinum $19.99 → $215 avg, high ~$300 (11–15×)
+A-list demand × chase scarcity, grabbed near retail
–Fat-tail is unforecastable — size it as a lottery slice
🎯 Grade the winner only after it proves scarce
74FLIP
🧱 TOY · PATTERN
Exclusive LEGO, retiring soon
licensed theme · MISB · known retirement date
COP
~11%/yrthe patient sleeve — compounds, low risk
+Peer-reviewed: LEGO returns ~11%/yr (8% real), 2,322 sets — HSE Moscow study
+Retirement is the lever; sealed MISB + evergreen theme stack on top
–Capital locked years — sleeve it, don't over-weight
🧱 Buy at retail before retirement, sealed only
22FLIP
👟 SNEAKER · PATTERN
General-Release "iconic colorway"
broad stock · every mall · restock likely
PASS
0.9×net loss after tax + fees + shipping
–Proof: AJ1 "Chicago Lost & Found" $180 → ~$500 (2023) → break-even by 2026
–Colorway prestige ≠ scarcity; restock = silent killer
–Break-even on a $215 pair is ~$265 after fees
🚫 The death channel — if it's everywhere, it sits

The margin — what you actually pocket

Real 2026 USPS + marketplace numbers. On a $50 sale of a ~2 lb boxed figure, free-shipping model.

VenueAll-in feeNet @ $50Net @ $55
Mercari cheapest10.0%$35.00$39.50
Whatnot11.5%$34.25$38.70
eBay deepest pool14.4%$32.80$37.12

The razor

  • Ship USPS Ground Advantage via Pirate Ship (free, no markup) — ~$8–13 for 2 lb, $100 insurance included. Never the Post Office counter (~30% more).
  • Not Priority flat-rate — 25–40% pricier for a light box, and flat-rate boxes can't even ride Ground Advantage.
  • eBay nets least but sells fastest in the deepest McFarlane pool. Mercari nets ~$2 more per sale but moves slower. List eBay for velocity; crosslist to Mercari.
⚖️ The swing variable is your cost basis. At today's ~$49–54 sold comps, net-in-hand is ~$33–39. If you grabbed these off the salvage peg cheap → clean profit. If you'd pay the $50 secondary premium → you're break-even flipping now, which is exactly why the call is HOLD for the license-death cap. Tell me what you paid + the weights and I'll print exact net.

How the score is built

Gradient-boosted trees on fundamental data, calibrated so 80 literally means ~80% odds.

Flip Score = calibrate( GBM(
  Scarcity · Demand-Heat · Intrinsics
  · Market Structure · Catalysts
) ) × 100
A LightGBM classifier predicts P(net ≥ 2× within 6–12 mo), passed through isotonic calibration so the 0–100 is a real probability. A quantile regressor prints the P10 / P50 / P90 band. Brand-new drops with no price history get a k-NN cold-start prior from comparable past drops. Anchored to the Duke hedonic study — R² ≈ 0.65 on 349,556 StockX transactions.

Scarcity & Supply heaviest

Exclusivity tier, edition size / chase ratio, retirement & discontinuation. Restock −0.95 is the single biggest premium-killer in the hedonic data (verified, Duke Table 2).

Demand & Heat

Depreciating "hype stock" (δ ≈ 5%/day), bid/ask depth imbalance, watcher & #bids velocity, Google-Trends momentum, rolling franchise-heat index.

Intrinsics & Hedonic

Celebrity collab +2.22, brand collab +1.54, but athlete signature −0.87 (annual re-release dilutes). Low retail multiplies easier — a $12 → $200 is 16×.

Market Structure

Sell-through rate (liquidity — good) separated from raw volume (abundance — bad). Price-trajectory slope, realized volatility, pre-release spread width.

Catalysts

Vault / retirement proximity, franchise events (film, show, album, license death), celebrity-wear moments — the time-varying triggers that re-score instantly.

The model

A place that just exists, that you can pull up and breathe. Free for everyone, ad-free for a buck, loaded for the pros.

💡

The hook nobody else has: Net-in-hand for this exact item, in your size, ranked across every venue's real fees — plus forward-looking restock risk (odds the maker re-drops and tanks your inventory). StockX/eBay will never show it; it cuts against them. Pure compute over free comps — that's the paid magnet.

Free
$0
reach + SEO funnel
  • ✓ Today's public board — every drop scored
  • ✓ Verdict + multiple on any item
  • ✓ Clean retail ads (AdSense → Mediavine at scale)
Pro
$0.99 /mo
the wedge — "all the intel for a buck"
  • ✦ Zero ads
  • ✦ Full Flip Score breakdown (sub-scores, not a black box)
  • ✦ Net-in-hand-per-venue calculator
  • ✦ Unlimited watchlist
Trader
$6.99 /mo
where the real money is — 7× ARPU
  • ✦ Phone drop + restock alerts near you
  • ✦ Portfolio P&L + restock-risk radar
  • ✦ Size-arbitrage + sell-timing signal
  • ✦ AI "why it'll multiply" briefs + CSV export
.99 charm lifts demand ~24% — keep it as the wedge Founder lock $0.99 lifetime, first 1,000 signups Annual = 2 months free (also dodges the $0.30 fee that eats 33% of a monthly buck)

The build — on your fleet

Same muscle as BuildForecast + bb-watch. Scrape-disciplined, CLI-first, phone-alerted.

PHASE 0 ✓ SHIPPED

Pipeline proven

Trained on 99,956 free StockX sales. Walk-forward, no leakage. Duke collab sign reproduced (+0.63). Precision 73% @ COP, +107pt edge vs baseline. Live tonight.

$0 · dropcast score — running on your Mac
PHASE 1

Free drop-calendar ingest

Fleet scrapes free RSS (Toyark, McFarlane, JustFreshKicks, Sneaker News) + eBay Browse API (free 5k/day) + actionfigure411 + 130point sold comps. Zero paid APIs.

Tailscale wolfpack · /api-guard throttle
PHASE 2

Flip Score model

DuckDB feature store → LightGBM + isotonic calibration → quantile band → cold-start prior. Ships as dropcast score <sku>.

Python · thin CLI wrapper, no MCP
PHASE 3

Free photos + physical cross-ref

Target RedSky (free) returns per-store stock by DPCI. Photos: Wikimedia → /kie renders (owned, no logos). lilbro enriches every item on-device at $0.

"COP-scored & pegged at YOUR store"
PHASE 4

Phone alerts + $0.99 gate

bb-watch's ntfy pattern fires a push on a Flip Score ≥ 70 near you. Stripe subscription flips the ad-free flag for Pro.

ntfy · Stripe · Cloudflare Pages
PHASE 5

The cockpit, live

This board on dropforecast.com — today's ranked drops, your portfolio, velocity, and the aging buckets that keep capital turning.

you're looking at the mockup
$0 to gather — free comps + on-device AI + Cloudflare free tier Data: eBay Browse (free 5k/day) + actionfigure411 + RSS + StockX '19 Photos: Wikimedia + /kie · Brain: lilbro $0/item
📈

The math (COGS ≈ $0, so it's all traffic): at 250K monthly pageviews / ~40K active → ads ~$1.2k + payers ~$3.5k ≈ $4.3k/mo. At 1M PV / 150K active → $17–26k/mo (~$200–310k/yr). Payments are ~90% margin — every bit of SEO traffic drops near-straight to the bottom line. That's the family money.