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I try to buy my beer at Tesco’s on markdown- last buy was 30 cans of Doom Bar amber ale at about 70 cents a can. Most times it’s damaged packaging that prompts a markdown. It depends on the manager. The other advantage is that I shop in majority Muslim areas, and the Hindus seem to prefer the spirit section.
Sometimes investing in the proper tool or shipping box type can really level up your business
Yeah, for some reason eBay “forced” me to use UPS to post a fishing reel to Reno. I now have two boxes of several thousand packing list envelopes, one box with “documents enclosed”, one without, just to attach the three copies of the packing list and an extra mailing label.
Saved a pound compared to Royal Mail prices, had to drive half an hour to a dropoff that wasn’t “ghetto”.
Antique full-size violin and bow in an unusual wooden case for £5. Presumably hasn’t been played for many a year, as the woodworm holes look pretty old. No label inside or name on the bow, unfortunately. A couple of years back I was at an auction where a bow got knocked down for a thousand pounds, so I’m a sucker for a cheap old violin, even if it is a wreck. Just in case…
Don’t know if it’s also happened with business accounts on US eBay, but the UK version has replaced an easy-to-use drop-down menu for postage rates with some incomprehensible rate-table thing. Apparently you get a 10% discount on fees if you manage to set one up. Don’t forget to check the box for the Isle of Man! The private seller accounts don’t have this nonsense.
@christiner Thinking about it, it seems that if the signature’s in the white border it’s a print. Watercolourists tend to get paint on the paper outside the edges of the image, so the painting either gets trimmed or mounted under card so that the edges are hidden.
Some years back I bought a large signed print of a bird. It was created by an artist who had a reputation for producing slightly-odd portraits of wild British birds; his website listed the signed prints for sale at around 300 dollars.
I think I paid a couple of British pounds for it- can’t remember if it was framed or not, but I decided to have it reframed. That cost in the region of a hundred dollars.
Sent it to an auction house in Nottingham- no bids. Sent it to an auction house in Lichfield, where it sold for five pounds. Didn’t get any money, but at least they sent me a statement through the post, and not a request for payment of fees!
So I learnt a couple of things. Never take an artist at their own estimation. Never get anything reframed.
@craig-rex I had a vague idea eBay UK doesn’t permit the selling of car parts without the seller having an environment permit number, Turns out that only applies to used car parts; new or NOS parts are okay.
The Environmental Permitting Regulations stop businesses turning the land they occupy into a toxic dump.
I found a car. Off eBay. Tried some other sites (Gumtree, CarGuru, AutoTrader) and they didn’t match up to using eBay as regards making offers and communicating with the seller.
So, back to some mobile scavenging.
Picked up a copy of “Quaero” by ‘Bacillus’, who was a C19 Professor of Gynaecology at Sheffield University. A British professor is the head of a department. Anyway, it’s his musings on “Some questions in matter, energy, intelligence and evolution”, and has some weird diagrams, such as “Conception of Supreme or Universal Noumenon’”, which shows a black-and-red-striped amoebic blob being struck by rays from the Supreme Noumenon.
Anyway, it cost £5, is unreadable, has never been read, I’m not reading it, print-on-demand copies are available on Amazon for £25 so some poor schlub must’ve scanned it in at some point, and I only bought it because of the weird diagrams. Darn.
Last time I came across a gynaecologist, he was sitting in the front row of an Otis Lee Crenshaw concert. Otis improvised a song about him.
I know, I checked all the fuses. And I cleaned them with a little fibreglass brush.
That ability to fix stuff (or “fix”, sometimes it takes like thirty seconds because the original seller wasn’t handy)
I just now hit my Durashift semi-automatic gearbox’s something-or-other electric motor with a hammer, wiggled some wires, and now the car’s running.
So… ‘it it with an ‘ammer!
Hmm… R J Lea. “Probably the makers of the first well-known tobacco mixture, under the name of “Boardman’s,” which is still sold wherever English is spoken.” (Grace’s Guide 1935) That’s a really oddball selection of pottery. I guess it’s designed to appeal to children.
It’s funny how tobacco smoking has really died out. Must be almost a decade since I last saw someone searching the pavement for dog-ends.
Didn’t find nothing this week- my car’s Ford Durashift semi-auto gearbox, circa 2003, did what all Ford Durashifts do- die in traffic. When it dies, it also prevents the driver from re-starting the engine. Basically a manual gearbox in which the linkage is replaced by an electric motor, two worm drives in plastic tubes and some kind of computer chip which can only be reset by the Ford mainframe.
So this week’s scavenging target is another car- I gather that’s the cheapest option!
I bought a framed WW1 German recruitment poster in rough condition for £35 from an antique centre. Only I failed to read the dealer’s sticker, and I’m now the owner of a 1969 Imperial War Museum reproduction. Very high quality lithograph, not photogravure. Win some, lose some, spend some time kicking oneself!
Maybe something like it does appear in the film.
@christiner Was going to suggest it’s a rank badge, for the bureaucracy, but I just found out there were no dragons in the officials’ menagerie. The number of claws is supposed to be significant.
I picked up a (presumed) 17th century blanket box for £10 from a charity shop yesterday. Old oak panels, held together with pegs, and with the original wrought-iron hinges. Judging from some auction results I found last night, and the fact that someone cut a round hole in the base and a square hole in the back, it should fetch £5. Not much demand for 300-year-old furniture in these parts!
