Sample report 02: Ecommerce store selling restored retro handheld consoles

Public-data due diligence on a confidential Flippa listing, reviewed Oct 31, 2026. Sources: the public listing page, the US Code and Code of Federal Regulations, and Stripe’s published restricted-business list. No seller data, no NDA material. The seller and the business are not named. Not advice to buy or not to buy, and not legal advice.

Verdict in one line

The numbers on the page agree with each other and Flippa has verified revenue through a Shopify connection, but the asking price is about half of one year’s stated profit (0.54x, if the stated $220,595 is a 12-month figure), and the question a buyer most needs answered is legal: the product is used PlayStation handhelds sold with custom firmware, and US anti-circumvention law has no published exemption that plainly covers selling modified consoles. Get the exact software load and a lawyer’s view before bidding.

What the seller claims (public page, Oct 31 2026)

  • Title: “A 19-month-old ecommerce retro gaming console brand with $601,915 revenue | $220,595 net profit”
  • Asking price: USD $120,000. Confidential listing (“Sign NDA to view”), listed through a partner broker
  • Monthly profit: USD $18,383. Profit margin: 37%
  • Profit multiple 0.5x, revenue multiple 0.2x
  • Business location: NY, United States. Site age: 1 year. “This business was founded in March 2025”
  • Product: “professionally restored and pre-configured consoles that are seamless and ready to play”, “classic PlayStation handheld consoles”, “enhanced with custom firmware”
  • 106 SKUs; “an average delivery window of 1-2 weeks”; average order value $258
  • Owner works “around 28 hours per week” on “content creation, backend management, and market research”; virtual assistants handle customer service and fulfillment, “about an hour daily”
  • Marketing: “social media followers and viral nostalgic content”; growth ideas include “scaling paid advertising”
  • Sale includes “digital assets, operational infrastructure, intellectual property, and post-sale support”
  • Vetted + Data Verified Listing: “Our vetting team has reviewed this listing and verified:” revenue, primary expenses and traffic. Shopify is connected
  • Flippa’s own buyer note on the same page: “Financials are seller-provided inputs. Always ask for verified financials.”

The listing says the consoles are “enhanced with custom firmware” and “pre-configured” to be “ready to play”. It does not say what software, games or system files are on a unit when it ships.

  • 17 U.S.C. §1201(a)(1)(A) says: “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” Section 1201(a)(2) adds: “No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof” that meets any one of three tests. The first is that it “is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure”; the second is that it “has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure”; the third covers products marketed for circumvention. Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201
  • Section 1201(a)(1)(E) says the exemptions the Copyright Office grants cannot be used “as a defense in any action” to enforce any provision other than the ban on circumvention itself. So no exemption covers the trafficking ban in §1201(a)(2), which is the one that applies to selling devices.
  • The current exemptions (37 CFR 201.40, as amended Oct 28, 2024) mention video game consoles in four places, and none covers modifying a console’s firmware for sale. The repair exemption says: “For video game consoles, ‘repair’ is limited to repair or replacement of a console’s optical drive and requires restoring any technological protection measures that were circumvented or disabled.” A second covers games whose authentication servers have shut down, for “personal, local gameplay on a personal computer or video game console”. A third covers console software only so eligible libraries, archives and museums can preserve games, and the related game preservation exemption requires activity “without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage”. The fourth, for open-source license investigations, excludes consoles. Source: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-37/chapter-II/subchapter-A/part-201/section-201.40
  • 17 U.S.C. §1203 lets “Any person injured by a violation of section 1201 or 1202” sue, with statutory damages “not less than $200 or more than $2,500 per act of circumvention, device, product, component, offer, or performance of service”. Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1203
  • 17 U.S.C. §1204 adds criminal penalties for anyone who violates §1201 “willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain”: a fine of up to $500,000, up to 5 years in prison, or both, for a first offense. Whether any conduct here is willful is a question for a lawyer, not a finding of this report. Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1204
  • Payment processors set their own rules. Stripe’s restricted-business list (last updated 2026-09-22) bars “Sales or distribution of music, movies, software, or any other licensed materials without appropriate authorization”. Source: https://stripe.com/legal/restricted-businesses. The listing does not say which processor the store uses.

Whether installing this firmware counts as circumvention, and whether selling the result counts as trafficking, are questions for a lawyer. This report does not answer them. A separate question is whether any games, BIOS files or emulator packs ship on the device. That is a copyright question, not an anti-circumvention one.

Why it matters: the firmware is the product’s main selling point, so there is no version of the business without it. A rights-holder complaint, a payment processor review or an ad-platform decision could stop sales, and a buyer could inherit past exposure depending on how the deal is structured.

Ask the seller:

  1. The exact software on a unit as shipped: firmware name and version, every preinstalled app, and whether any game, BIOS or system file is included. Ask for a unit, or a full file listing, to check.
  2. Any notice, takedown, chargeback reason code, processor review, or Shopify, Meta or TikTok warning tied to firmware, games or the PlayStation name. Which payment processor runs the checkout.
  3. Any written legal advice the business has received on §1201 and copyright, and how product pages describe the software.
  4. Whether the sale is an asset purchase, and what representations, warranties and indemnity the seller will give on intellectual property.

Risk 2: the price is a signal, so find out why it is so low

At 0.54x stated annual profit, the buyer earns the price back in about 6.5 months, if the stated $18,383 monthly profit holds. A price that far below one year of profit is unusual, so the reason matters. The title figures can be read two ways, and the listing does not say which is right.

Reading Monthly profit Annual profit Multiple at $120,000 Payback
A: $220,595 is trailing 12 months (matches $18,383 x 12) $18,383 $220,596 0.54x 6.5 months
B: $220,595 is all 19 months since launch $11,610 $139,323 0.86x 10.3 months

The owner works about 28 hours a week. If a buyer must pay someone to do that work, profit falls:

Owner time replaced at Cost per year Reading A multiple Reading B multiple
$25 an hour $36,400 0.65x 1.17x
$40 an hour $58,240 0.74x 1.48x
$60 an hour $87,360 0.90x 2.31x

Seller-favorable case: Reading A with owner time at $25 an hour gives 0.65x. The least favorable case here is 2.31x, which still prices the store at less than two and a half years of profit. So on the stated numbers the price looks low in every case, which puts the weight on Risk 1, on recent trend, and on Risk 3.

If profit fell from the Reading A level of $18,383 a month, months to earn back the price: 8.7 months at 25% lower, 13.1 at 50% lower, 26.1 at 75% lower.

Ask the seller:

  1. Why the asking price is below one year of profit.
  2. Monthly revenue, orders and profit for every month since March 2025, from the Shopify export Flippa verified.

Assumptions: margin stays at the stated 37%; owner hours stay at 28 a week; no inventory is included in the price (the listing does not mention inventory).

Risk 3: supply, restoration work and who does it

“Professionally restored” consoles are used hardware, so stock depends on buying used units and repairing them. The listing names the owner’s work (content, backend, research) and the assistants’ work (customer service, fulfillment). It does not say who restores the consoles, how long one takes, or what parts cost.

Why it matters: 106 SKUs with a 1-2 week delivery window points to build-to-order work. If restoration is done by one person or one outside shop, that person is a single point of failure, and the buyer would need to replace them.

Ask the seller:

  1. Where units and parts come from, unit cost by model, and how many are in stock or on order.
  2. Who restores and configures each unit, at what cost per unit, and under what agreement.
  3. Return, warranty and defect rates for the last 12 months.

Risk 4: demand comes from the owner’s social content

The listing credits “social media followers and viral nostalgic content” for customer acquisition, and the owner spends most of 28 weekly hours on content. Paid ads are listed as a future opportunity, which suggests little paid acquisition today.

Why it matters: if sales depend on the owner’s posts going viral, sales may drop when the owner leaves. The social accounts must transfer, and the new owner must keep posting at the same quality. Replacing viral reach with paid ads has a hard ceiling: at the stated 37% margin and $258 average order, each order earns about $95 profit, so paid ads that cost $95 or more per order wipe out the profit on that order. This assumes the 37% margin includes no ad spend today.

Ask the seller:

  1. Sales by traffic source for the last 12 months, and which accounts and platforms are included in the sale.
  2. The posting schedule and whether a contractor can produce the content today.
  3. Ad spend by month and platform since launch, the cost per order it produced, and whether that spend sits inside the 37% margin.
  4. Whether any social platform has removed posts or limited accounts over firmware, games or the PlayStation name.

Questions on the numbers

  • “19-month-old” in the title vs “Site age 1 year” in the metrics. March 2025 to Oct 2026 is 19 months, so the metric looks rounded. Ask whether the revenue and profit figures are trailing 12 months or lifetime (see Risk 2).
  • Revenue of $601,915 at a $258 average order is about 2,333 orders. That is about 194 orders a month under Reading A or about 123 a month under Reading B. Ask for order counts by month.
  • Margin of 37% on restored electronics: ask whether it includes unit cost, parts, restoration labor, shipping both ways, returns and payment fees.

What checks out

  • The page’s numbers agree with each other: $220,595 / $601,915 is 36.6% (listed 37%); $120,000 / $220,595 is 0.54x (listed 0.5x); $120,000 / $601,915 is 0.199x (listed 0.2x); $18,383 x 12 is $220,596.
  • Flippa or the broker vetted revenue, primary expenses and traffic, with Shopify connected.
  • The seller states owner hours and the split of work, which lets a buyer price the owner’s role.

What read-only access would add

With the access the seller grants: the Shopify order export by month and by product, refund and warranty history, a file-level audit of one shipped unit, the supplier and restoration arrangements, social account analytics, processor and platform correspondence, and a list of questions for the buyer’s lawyer on §1201 and copyright.

Sources (retrieved Oct 31, 2026)