- This topic has 8 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 5 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
With my two big boxes full of library sale inventory dropped off at the UPS store, I spent my last night in Chicago soaking in the trip. This was the first vacation I ever went on where I wasn’t worried about money the whole time. Plus I planned it so that it was exactly the kind of trip I like. My hotel was in the West Loop and it was a great spot to explore from. It was a two minute walk to two different El stops, and an easy walk to many different areas of the city. I took a ton of pictures standing near bridges, looking out at the majestic skyline. I saw live music in a few different spots. I ate some great food and a few regional delicacies. Isn’t this what vacations are supposed to be? What a city. What a time.
I had a 6:00 PM train to catch and thought I’d make one last stop at the library before I went to the train station. The book sale was over, but on the last day, one of the volunteers who had been constantly restocking the music section throughout the sale mentioned the library bookshop to me. Then she saw how much I was buying and did something smart. She went into the bookshop (closed during the sale) and took pictures of some of their inventory. There were more massive CD box sets and she didn’t know anything about them, but I had a good inkling there was more quality stuff there. I couldn’t remember the specifics since I only glanced at the pictures in between all the book sale chaos. I should have taken pictures of the pictures! But I was basically out of spending money anyway. I figured I would take the walk over there, see what was available, and go home happy. Maybe I could work out a deal where they could ship stuff to me, or maybe if they had hundreds more box sets in the basement, I would come back and pick everything up if the value was there. I really felt like I did the work on this trip. I feel like that so rarely.
I went to the bookshop and spoke to a very helpful college-aged woman who had heard stories from other library workers about a few book sale customers who spent a ton of money — one of whom was me. So I got to feel like a mini-celebrity again, a big baller, a shot caller. The other place I get to feel like that is at my post office. I like that feeling. Because I was a VIBB (very important book buyer), she offered to put me in touch with the manager of the bookshop, and said they would probably give me a deal for buying so much and ship everything to my house. I snapped pictures of everything that looked promising so I could do my research on the train, and told her to let her manager know I’d be in touch in the next few days. The trip was ending even better than I could have hoped. When I had counted my resale sheep the night before, my imagination didn’t come up with something as good as how this day actually went.
On the way back to my hotel to get my luggage and make my way to Union Station, I stopped at the beach. Did you know Chicago has a bunch of beaches? I didn’t. But the city’s right on Lake Michigan, so I shouldn’t have been too surprised when I stumbled upon signs for a beach and thought, this is the way to finish the trip. I sat on a bench near the edge of the beach for over an hour, looking out at the water and people watching, occasionally looking at photos of CD box sets or thinking about my two UPS boxes which were getting shoved around in some regional hub somewhere. When I was in college, I worked for UPS unloading trucks for about six months. It was tough work and my boss yelled a lot. I had a lot of jobs like that over the years. I don’t miss them.
One mostly uneventful train ride later (with a long enough layover in DC to check out the Botanic Garden) and I was back in Philadelphia, then home in New Jersey. The first of my two UPS boxes showed up the next day, a little beat up, but probably due to my haphazard packaging more than anything else. The second box took an extra day but showed less visible damage inside and out, which was about what I expected since I thought I had packed that box better. But nothing was destroyed. Nothing was lost. Everything made it home from Chicago.
Everything made it home from Chicago! I did it. I did it!
I knew I could make this all work, but didn’t really know that it would work until the Saturday when box #2 finally showed up on my doorstep. I celebrated with a quick phone call to the library bookshop and spoke to the manager, who was chatty and hard to follow and basically told me to send her an email with what I was interested in and we’d go from there. I would take care of that on Monday, and now all that was left was to get 150+ pounds of box sets and weird books photographed and listed. Easier said than done!
Maybe that’s an understatement. Sorting items in this quantity would be an impossible task for a lot of people, or something they don’t want to deal with. But I’ve been selling online long enough to realize that I can sell anything as long as I get my basic processes figured out. I’m still working out of a two bedroom apartment, so I’m space limited, but I did all the hard work to get stuff home, so everything else was almost easy by comparison. I got all the box sets sorted in one night, took photographs the next day (long day, 4 or 5 hours of straight photography) and then the grunt work was truly done. I created a bunch of listings that weekend and most of the rest over the next week. Once you’ve got your pictures and research done, one listing only takes a few minutes at most. Don’t overthink it.
Since I had been so productive (much more productive than usual really), I decided to add to my piles by selecting about $500 worth of items from the pictures of items I took at the bookshop, including a few 100+ CD box sets. Unfortunately, this went from fun bonus to complete shitshow almost immediately. No reply to emails. No call back when I left a message. Manager off today. Manager out sick. No, there’s no one else you can speak to, sir. It was very frustrating and discouraging and made me question all my life’s decisions.
After a week and a half, I finally received an email from the manager with a price for everything, no discount, with a note that a few of “my” items (which had been on hold while I was waiting for a total and for someone to process my card) had been sold to someone else. She explained in half a sentence of the email how it happened, but her explanation made no sense. No apology. No “let me fix this by doing x.” Not even an acknowledgement that this was not normal procedure, and my polite but frustrated email back went unanswered. It took another week before I thought to call the library itself and speak with some library bigwig. I only got an answering machine, but that did the trick. I received an email from manager@shittybookshop.org the next day and was finally able to place my order over a phone call which, of course, was completely bizarre. How bizarre? Well, it started with the manager answering the phone with, Helloooooo, I was waiting for you to call.
Now, I had given her my number in the very first email I sent, so maybe she had caller ID. Also, I had emailed earlier that day saying I was going to call during this hour window. Still, I was waiting for you is never not creepy. I guess I should just be glad she knew how to run my credit card. Then, of course, things got weirder.
I asked for a confirmation email for my order and was promised one. I asked for a tracking number for the package and she said that wasn’t something they normally provided, but she could try and find out what it was from their shipping person. Never heard from her again. I emailed the next day, nothing.
To my complete surprise, a box of stuff showed up on my doorstep the day after that with a mailing address from a Chicago university. So most likely the library bookshop doesn’t even handle their own shipping or inventory. Seems like a weird system but I don’t make those decisions. The packaging wasn’t the best, but nothing was destroyed. I got that box of stuff photographed and listed within a day. I was hungry, I had been waiting long enough. That was about four weeks ago, which was also four weeks after I got home from my trip. So it’s been a few months now, and this weekend I’ll take a look at the numbers and see how we did.
-
-
Absolutely, even through the frustration, I felt grateful (lucky really) that they managed to get the sale done and ship another box of stuff to me. Nothing seriously damaged. Nothing missing. I’m sure it would have been a cluster if anything like that happened. Made me appreciate how easy it is to buy on eBay!
I’d love to know what happened to the two box sets that were “accidentally put out to the sales floor” though. I figured that the bookshop manager (or someone else) snuck the stuff out the back door or purchased it with an employee discount and sold it themselves. Maybe that is just my own paranoia. Nothing on eBay or their website (which is terrible) though.
-
These are the kind of adventures we love. Scavenging while traveling is the best. We now often travel with a small label printer so we can ship from anywhere.
I know about reluctant sellers who seem to change their mind in the middle of a deal. Back in 2015, I found a big load of old heart wood pine flooring on Craigslist. It was a photo of a big pile for $300. It was in North Carolina which is a six hour drive. I took a chance and told the guy I’d take it.
When I arrived, all the flooring was in a back shed that he wanted to clean out. I gave him $300 and we started loading my truck. As my truck was filling up, he started having second thoughts as he saw how much he had. Amazing quality old flooring from old growth pine.
I saw him wavering and kept asking him to tell me about what he planned to do with all the extra space he’ll have. Keep him talking. I didn’t stop and kept loading. Once we were done, he said “Gosh thats a lot of wood.” and I said thanks and drove away.
-
I kind of remember that story from the podcast but I love hearing all the details. Amazing how much you can remember all these years later. Smart move to keep him talking about his benefit from the deal. Did that flooring end up in one of your Airbnbs?
I made a long post with all the numbers from my trip, but I think the post was too long and it got caught in the spam queue. I could try and repost it, or maybe you or Ryanne are able to get it unstuck for me? Not sure how the forum elves work…
-
-
Yeah, we put scavenged wood in several of our early properties (including out home). Its not easy to find old wood these days because other people found out the worth. Scavenging is always a moving target.
Sorry about that post disappearing. This forum is held together with ductape and glue so its sometimes also a mystery to us how it works.
-
-
-
I’ve gotten in the habit of highlighting my entire post with “CTRL A” and then “CTRL C” before hitting the post button.
I also do my Numbers post first thing Monday morning in a word file and then hold onto it until jay posts the numbers.
-
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.