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Certain handmade German swirl marbles and marbles with little chalkware-type figures in them (called “sulfides”) were desirable the last time I checked, but — looking at your first picture — the ones with rainbow iridescence and the pitted marbles with the red or green in the dimples don’t look very old to me at all — they seem newer than any marble I played with in the 1970’s.
If anyone has time to spare, I’d also love some help with an item I just found… it’s the Don Shepherd/Blenko glass “Holy Family” sculpture.
Here are some solds:
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/blenko-glass-holy-family-paperweight-13707320
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-blenko-art-glass-holy-family-1724118413
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/blenko-holy-family-art-glass-jesus-48470238
Thanks so much in advance.
Hahahaha! I deleted that part of my message because I thought I sounded a bit precious and entitled. But, I agree — your strengths are my weaknesses for sure. I’ll go restore it for the sake of honesty. 😉
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but, for me, the 4th quarter isn’t usually the best quarter. In 2016 and 2017, in fact, it was my worst quarter. In 2015, it actually was my best for the year, but was outstripped by the first quarter of 2016. Actually, first quarter has been my best quarter for the last three years (including this one — so far, anyway), and although they’re essentially equal to each other (no growth year over year), that means that going back to work 30 hours per week didn’t have a negative effect on my ability to make a solid part-time income on eBay.
I’ll have to go back and see what my number of sales was, to see if I’m getting more efficient and increasing my ASP. I hover at around 200 items in my store.
Edited to delete, and then edited again to replace: I’m terrible at the business/numbers side of this whole process. Bring me your unreadable signatures, your mystery pottery, your unidentified artists, and I’m your (wo)man. Start talking STR and ASP… and talking about business policies and SEO… not so much.
Edited to add: I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I had a terrific performance review at work. They’d like to bring me on full-time (if there’s room in the town budget, which is always a question.) Full-time would be just a handful more hours per week, but would include health insurance. I had a great, meaningful year and really have my fingers crossed about this. I’d stay on eBay to be sure.
I don’t really want to talk much about last week, but it was the first time in a very long time I’ve had ZERO sales. I think I went 8 or 9 days without a single sale. With the end of school and beginning of summer, it wasn’t the worst week for my store to go dark, but it was a little discomfiting. Then, yesterday, I had about $300 in sales. With the summer off, I’ll have more time to list and, with luck, can turn things around for myself.
I also just went back and looked at the numbers for the school year. Without doing heavy crunching, it looks like my sales were basically the same, down only slightly, this school year vs. the same time last year (when I wasn’t working outside of eBay.) I’ll get to some better number crunching later on.
Way back in the mists of time, before the forum existed in this format, Jay ‘moderated’ me for, essentially, live-posting my way through a bad transaction I was having. I was venting, flailing, and complaining… gnashing my teeth and wailing… but not — at that particular moment — bringing anything constructive to any conversation, asking any specific questions, or doing anything other than spraying my negativity around due to my own anxiety.
When Jay. politely and directly, ‘moderated’ me, I was chagrined and a little hurt. But, upon reflection, I realized that Jay was protecting the space he and Ryanne have created, and that there were better ways for me to handle that anxiety both generally in my eBay life and within the specific confines of the community. So, was I embarrassed at being called out? Sure. But Jay and Ryanne put a lot of time and energy into creating a place with a specific tone, flavor, and worldview. Random hysteria doesn’t have a place here. Random links without explanation, same. Jay said there’s a history of conversations with the original poster, so I don’t think his message above came out of nowhere.
Sorry for the late response. Just to clarify, when I say “print,” I mean an artist-printed woodblock print, with multiple layers of color each laid with a separate block, and then hand-signed by the artist. This artist was a German, working in Germany at the turn of the 20th century. I have no idea how the piece ended up here, but it’s on its way back to Germany as we speak.
One of the buyers who contacted me about the Elvis scrapbook (they only wanted a piece of it; I wanted at that point to sell the whole thing together) said it well — scrapbooks and collections are meaningful to the person who assembled them, because each piece represents an event, or a destination visited, or a particular birthday, or serves as a remembrance of the giver… but (important collections of rare objects aside), the collection isn’t inherently more interesting or valuable to anyone else, simply by being a collection.
Sure, stuff is just stuff… but I’d argue that a collection isn’t meaningless unless you’re assuming that the collector was attempting solely and unsuccessfully to maximize financial value or put together something permanent of interest to others. If we look at a collection as an attempt to surround ourselves with things that give us joy, it’s totally fine that the pieces get scattered to the wind like dandelion seeds, to bloom elsewhere, when we’re gone. I say this as a non-collector.
Can you look up the UPC elsewhere and see if the date/edition of the cards can be extrapolated?
ChristineK,
Honestly, it sounds to me like you’ve found a fantastic archive of super-fandom, not a stalker’s hoard. I don’t think there’s any negative karma associated with selling these items. I don’t think this person’s taste, or their actions, are somehow accruing to you. These are not KKK items. They’re not car-crash photographs. They’re not stolen underpants or telephoto shots through bedroom windows. I don’t think you’re endorsing any kind of criminal or even psychologically questionable behavior by selling them.
As for whether or not it should be split up or sold all together — I’m personally inclined to keep lots together, but you’d probably make more money over the long term selling the pieces individually. I had an Elvis scrapbook I tried to sell whole, but I eventually ended up breaking it apart (and earning more) after nobody wanted the whole thing.
Kate
After that whole slightly pretentious screed, I’d better share my numbers:
06/10/18 – 06/16/18
Total Items In Store: +/- 190
Items Sold: 5
Total Sales: $697.00
Cost of Items Sold: $25
Highest Price Sold: $500 woodblock print
Average Price Sold: $139.40
Returns/Refunds: 1 cancellation (not included in the totals above.)I got super-lucky this week and found/sold an interesting German woodblock print in under 24 hours. Without that sale, it would have been a pretty minimal week.
Happy birthday, Ryanne! You’re not old.
To me, the whole idea of business success = business growth is just flawed. I think expecting/demanding continual growth is unsustainable, whether you’re talking about an eBay ‘hustler’ or a gigantic corporation (remember Borders?) — and I think this expectation of constant growth, constant increase, is ultimately harmful, not only on an individual basis but on a macro basis, to people and the planet (remember The Lorax.)
What I’m always searching for is the “sweet spot” — the golden ratio between time/money/attention/interest invested and education/pleasure/income generated. I’m not here to sell the most pieces of plastic produced by child labor overseas. I’m not about the widgets. Not to be precious about it, but it matters to me if I’m selling a billion units of some crappy piece of junk that comes with huge external costs, or building my own sweatshop of thousands of pieces of $7 profit second-hand clothing… or if I’m selling something cool and rare, or handmade and interesting, or simply valuable that I’ve plucked out of the waste stream. I’m not about hustling my way to the “top” of whatever heap this is supposed to be. I’m about maximizing my income and pleasure (and working within the limits of my attentional/organizational issues) within the time I have to devote to panning for gold in the waste stream.
That said, I’m still only doing this in a very small shop on a very part-time basis. When I read what I’ve written, it sounds a little bit precious and privileged, and I apologize for that. But I do think the idea that “success” means that every year must mark an increase over the previous year is fundamentally flawed. Finding and holding your sweet spot, owning your time, and having “enough” are all part of success in my book.
