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12/04/2019 at 8:44 am in reply to: Should I or Shouldn’t I – Less IS Data with a Little More in Description #71344
Thanks Sharyn: Appreciate the link. Looks like I will give it a try and will explore thier store for the large 1/2″ bubble wrap also. Anything is better than the junk I have gotten the last couple of times.
mike at MDCG
12/04/2019 at 8:18 am in reply to: Should I or Shouldn’t I – Less IS Data with a Little More in Description #71340Yep. Agree we just don’t know. The same old question is less more or more better? Only way to know is run a Test but none of us have that kind of spare time to do a full test properly.
Susan has her follow up appt. Friday to see have she is doing after her second surgery two weeks ago. Then this doctor says 6 to 8 weeks recovery before any more radiation can be done. But the big question Friday will be are they then going to go ahead and proceed with the second rounds of 3 months of Chemo during this 2 month recovery period? We’ll see Friday.
She is doing some admin. stuff on a hospital roll up bed tray we have. Making Inventory tags, which we put on each item as we acquire it. But no climbing up the stairs to the office to do photography or office work. She is so drained from the side effects of the treatments that she stays in bed mostly. Just no energy, always feeling fatigued and of course the nausea part. But she has a ton of meds to supposedly minimize the effects.
I’ll tell her you asked about her.
Quick / short Bubble wrap question. We have a cheap source for both large and small bubble wrap but sometimes cheap price isn’t always the best product. Ours is very static prone, and blocks together and drags other objects it touches AND the perfs are not cut all the way through, so it won’t tear off very well and we have to scissor cut. Ours I suspect is factory rejected material which the guys buys and resells. Only $17.50 for 12″x250’x3/16 [small bubble] but is just crap to work with.
Do you now have a specific source where you get yours or anybody else? That tears off clean and is not stiff and sticks together [non-static type I guess]? Home Depot and Staples is twice if not more than the cost. I think $30 for only 125 lin. feet.
Thanks…
Mike at MDCGHey Sonia: Thanks for the reply. I understand what you are saying, try to match what we have with where someone else has put there’s. But can we just “stop” halfway through the category selection and not go any further down the sub-category list and just leave it at that?
Home & Garden, Home Decor, Wall Art and just stop even though there are several more arrows [sub tiers] to that category. Will Ebay put it there and if a customer is searching by category find the item at that level of search.
The item is a brass-metal stamped, round plate like wall hanging of fruit. We have all seen those type of wall decor in kitchens. Well the next sub-category is “signs” and so forth. We have many art items like this that Ebay just doesn’t get to the “final” correct category at the end, so can we just stop mid-stride and leave it there, and then fill in what Item Specific are presented to us as “required” or “recommended” at this level?
As for going with what others select, there are so many mis-categorized listings due to so many people not even knowing what they have, I think many just guess, so why should we follow suit.
Using other people’s choices that are over 30 to 45 days old, were selected PRIOR to the recent and continued changes by Ebay. Just in the last week Ebay has altered Home & Garden Categories and added more Item Specifics than ever before. So many of those other sellers selected categories, some are not even correct any longer.
This just made me think of something. Ebay used to make a stink about Sellers putting things in the wrong category, so what about now that they have dropped some categories, added new ones and combined some? Will they penalize Sellers for still having a listing in a now defunct category, when it now being MIS-Categorized is Ebay’s fault? Maybe Ebay is moving everybody’s newly mis-categorized listings due to their re-organizing and taking the liberty of moving Sellers listings into what Ebay thinks should be the correct category? Who knows? Ebay is up to about 5 major categories is has been messing with making changes and who knows how many more categories they are going to mess with on their “Structured Data” quest?
mike at MDC Galleries
12/03/2019 at 7:36 pm in reply to: Should I or Shouldn’t I – Less IS Data with a Little More in Description #71327One.. Absolutely. Mid-aged, been with us for 3 or 4 years,beens with us to estate sales, auctions and garage sales. She even does some buying with us at times. Also she is very good at using WorthPoint, TerraPeak, Marmalead and E-Rank. Watches many videos I feed to her, she has read our Kovels books on American Pottery, Roseville, Hull, etc. Knows most trade marks, can spot Art Glass with Pontil Marks, and knows about as many brands as we do and can price just good as us from her research as well as my custom made pricing grid. She is also good on using Marmelead for keyword ranking and creating fairly good 2 and 3 word long tail tags for Etsy [which will be helpful on all the social media]. BTW.. IS data fields will not be of much use on any social media but the “descriptive narrative approach” can be either a cut and past or a direct link to the information. Also will help populate the Shopify store.
Now on the art stuff, she leaves a lot for me to review. I have created various folders in SixBit whereby they can put listing on hold in their “Ready for Review” folders of which I look over these drafts before I publish them live.
In the one older helper, I usually don’t change much of or add anything except ocassionally I will tighten up on the SEO a bit. Those first 125 characters are critical in both the title and description.
Now the newer one, no she is learning. That is what brought up the questions today after she had done her homework assignment I gave her to research about the Google BERT Update. She is learning though. But as you are hinting at, doing good, accurate short narrative descriptions takes experience.
But if i can quote you from a few years back… Photograph like there are no descriptions, BUT Describe as if there are no Photos. So I will have to train her to use her eyes and fingers to explore and item.
It is either get the new one to a higher level or do it all myself. And with Susan still sick and going through a second operation and even more cancer treatments, I don’t see her helping me much for the coming year.
So probably using the draft folder and me reviewing the new helper will what I stick with for the time being. But if she doesn’t know how to recognize what “Moriage” is on an Asian piece, then she can’t fill it into Item Specifics either nor will she describe it in the “Description Area”. She leaves all items out for me to be able to lay my eye balls on it and feel the surface before she stores them away.
You are right, it is going to be a challange but time provides some knowledge.
In depth art descriptions will probably always be left for me.
If I loose both of them and with susan out then I will be stuck and will just have to go very slow and do what I can when I can. But I do still put in well over 40 hours, close to 50 to 60 hours still even at 70+ years old.
But who knows if I can’t get the new helper accurate, fast and trained, I will have to cut bait and go back and trim out and make things simple again.
mike at MDCGFA
Same for us. Feedback is auto sent by Ebay. If you have a store check your preferences. You can create 5 or 6 with various messages so Ebay can rotate them and you won’t be sending the same message out each and every time.
But since we no longer can offer any type of negative comments about buyers 4 or 5 nice ones like, Thank You and Please Shop with Us Again. Thanks for your Patronage. We are always adding new items. Come again soon, Thank you and please bookmark our store and check back often.
Then select auto feedback and let Ebay handle the rest.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine art in Atlanta
To any members that have YouTube Videos and that have and sell any toy items in there stores. We don’t but thought this may be of interest since it is going into effect in Jan.
I know that Jay and Ryanne have some and also host Steven Shultz that has some and don’t know if hosting someone else on YouTube that has toys and items for under 13 years old may get dragged into the cross hairs.
This video by Professor auction seems to cover it in about 10 minutes so no use me trying to summarize.
Just thought some on here at SL might want to know about this.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
11/23/2019 at 11:54 am in reply to: What Weight to Enter in the Weight Field for Oversize DIM Weight boxes #70959Thanks Temudgin for the input. Yeah after this mornings round table discussion we all decided for several reasons to stick with putting the item+box & packing weight into the weight field and as you said, let each site deal with the publication / calculation of DIM weights on their own. Buyers could request either USPS or FedEx and yes, those will be different cost tiers for DIM weight.
We only have a few to go back and change.
Mike at MDCGFA
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This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Jumping in: Most items we sell are breakables, over 2 lbs usually and larger than a show box, so no way am i going to spend any time 6 layer wrapping, boxing and shipping something for $3.00 even if it was free. I have a value I place on my time also that I can be selling to other companies that I do a little work for at $25 per hour.
I opted a plan many years ago when Jay, others and I were talking about lowering our purchase price while at the same time trying to increase the selling prices of items.
So for years we have slowly worked on this. But we try not to buy anything at any price unless free that sells for under $19.95 without shipping. We still have cheaper items left over from our antique mall booths but slowly going away.
Out of 1,200 listings only 14 are now under $10 and 338 are over $40 and 77 are over $75 dollars. Still leaves the in between bread and butter stuff between $20 to $40 at about 596
It took us about 3 years to weed out most of the under $10 items left over from those 6 booths of left over stuff. We took hundreds of items to one of our favorite big auction houses locally and auction about 200 items off that were too large for our Ebay ventures.
Back to WBird question and we would suggest rather than spending time on any dealings with moving out $1-$3 items, we would donate them and take a bigger price on them than that. If you don’t need the tax deductions yourself, then donate them to a place that resells the items and the money they will get will go to there cause.
We have a newer thrift store just about 2 miles up the road and we have started just dropping off items left over from 4-7 years old that are in the lower price range. After all costs involved we are only making such a small amount it is just not worth it to us. Our local favorite thirft shop is a ministry and helps younger children in poor families.
It will do your soul good to help others, help yourself to de-clutter, get more space in your inventory, and not burn up your very valuable time. 20 items at $2 each [even $10 each] is just not worth it to us in our opinion. That as you all know along with $1.00 will get you half a cup of coffee around here.
Mike at MDC Galleries and fine Art in Atlanta
Ok Jay.. Let me get this straight … In summary “we are born, grind out 60 hour a week jobs for 35 years, retire with whatever, start buying and selling used “stuff” online somewhere along the line, die and that is it!” and then nothing ….Ohhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. for eternity.
Jay, boy you do have a way to just cut to the meat of the matter.
Mike in Atl. 🙂
@RTWV: Could it possibly be the Item.
I had Ebay pull a 1950’s boxed set of steak knives and turns out knives of any sort were not allowed into that country. Maybe it was the item not the listing.
We laughed at what to call steak knives. Meat cutting utensils, food slicing manual cutters, etc., etc.
mike at MDCGFA
Yep.. Florence Henderson the mom on the Brady Bunch TV Show. she was a singer back in the day.
@ Jay: The best and thickest blown in or batt fiberglass insulation is only 34% “Efficient”. It is very porus [try blowing baby powder through it with a hair dryer. Spray Foam is 92% “efficient”. 300% more efficient than any blown wool or fiberglass product.
Duct tape a 12′ x 12″ x 12″ cube out of fiberglass, pour in a cup of baby powder, reach in with your hand and a hair drywer, turn it on high and blow inside for a few minutes and watch the powder come billowing out. There is a ton of porosity to the blown and batts.
Now take any styro-foam cooler you can buy at any beer, convienance store or walmart. [non-pastic coated of coarse], and do the same test. Viola’… Nothing comes out through the sides, because it is mostly non-porous.. Thus 34% at holding heat in, vs. 92% ability at holding heat in.
Foam will keep your attic within 10-12 degrees of the temperature of your house. With wood, if you load the furnance up at night, you may not even need to burn any more wood until the next day late or maybe even for a 24 hour period.
Easy math…3 times more effective at holding heat inside. I had my house so warm at nights at times, I had to open the windows and let some of the captured heat out.
I will run the thought of bartering out some BandB time for him and his family in the Spring and see what his reaction is. Makes the price, extremely budget friendly for both of you guys. I will PM ou guys after I talk with him and let you know what he thinks.
mike at MDCGFA
@Jay: Maybe you remember I owned a spray foam business called SprayFoam & More for a number of years.
Couple of inches of “closed cell” foam does wonders under the floor when the house is on a crawl space. Now research this, but if you have an attic, when you get the cash, have the attic sprayed with “Open Cell Foam”. The softer foam. It expands to 5″ in about 2-3 seconds. 75% of your heat is lost up and out of your attic as compared to only about 17% lost through walls and windows and even less from the floor.
You will save a whole lot more over just having the floor done. My former Supervisor has taken over my old business. Bet I could maybe I could sell him on the idea of coming up with the truck-rig-trailer with a few sets [drums] of open cell and spray your attic in return for maybe a stay in one of your BandB houses. Him and his family might like touring the caverns and the Shennendoah Valley and maybe going into Washington DC. You guys bartering out [swap] the BandB time in return for a sprayed attic or maybe even some areas in your new storage building. Closed cell works great on metal walls or roofs.
Just a thought.
PM me if you are interested and would like for me to feel George out about his interest.
mike at MDC Galleries
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Yep Old Dad: think it was you and I who maybe spoke about the older letter presses before. As I mentioned further down here, that we moved on to screen printing industrial labels, dials and face plates, then die cut them out, same you you, then shipped to our customers.
We did car dashboards, radio and clock face plates and dials, rulers, printed circuits, micro wave and over fronts, flexible touch membrane multi layered switches, electrolumnescent panels and safety signs, decals for many mfg. industrial machines all using screen printing [silk screen is the older term], used the Thompsons and Kluges to not only die cut, but as you to emboss and also do consecutive numbering.
Later on we as we automated most operations we started doing displays and larger format. Did display for Stanley hardware, Michelin Tire, Walmart, Home depot, Delco Batteries, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell [think of all those dangling mobiles and static clean window decals that you can look through from the inside], of course Coca-Cola, Marlboro signs and tons of Gas pump toppers. A whole industry out there that offset litho couldn’t do because they couldn’t run rigig plastic sheets through presses that required flexible sheets to bend around rollers and of course our fine art limited edition prints in our Atelier Div for regional and NY artists.
But als a thing of the past. Now like everyone else here, I sit behind a computer all day selling old, used, discarded items from others junk and reselling it online.
As the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz said…. “What a world, what a world. I am melting, melting”.
mike at MDCGFA
You are welcome. Had a few minutes to do a brain dump before starting next project. Prepping tax info for year end.
As far as the T-Shirts go, you could shrink the image down a bit. About 12″ x 17″ is a preferred size on T-shirts to keep the image from wrapping under the arm pits or from tucking under the belted waste line [if tucked] if not then longer is OK. But you could do a step and repeat design and do an over-all pattern.
As far as ink drying no problem. A small can of “etching ink” can be gotten from Dick Blick Art Supply. You can also get a small tube of “extender”.
You will also need a rubber roller called a brayer. Get a sheet of glass or plexiglass about 12×12. Open the ink, use a 2″ wide putty knife and scoop out about a table spoon of ink and scrape onto the palette [glass]. Then also squirt out some of the clear extender. This will “loosen up” the ink as will as act as a retarder. better still buy some retarder also.
Now take the putty knife and “work” that ink. Mash it down, scrape up, flop it over, still smashing it out. Work that ink up vigorously for about 5 minutes to mix the retarder-extender into it and also and heat from the mashing process. That friction heat “loosen” the ink.
Now take a brayer [rubber roller] with a handle and start rolling that ink up onto that roller, add ink as needed, until you can hear a “tack-tacky-sticky sound] It is sort of an acquired touch or feel. In any case then apply the ink to the plates high areas only by carefully rolling the ink across all those letters and design.
Next place you sheet [I suggest only using a thick sheet like poster boards], thin sheets will crushed and crease down around the letters. Once your board material is placed over the plate, then gently rubber all over the back of the sheet with a old, waded up rag, use a clean brayer or a kitchen rolling pin. Anything to apply even pressure across the back. Then lift up the poster board and place face up to dry. But as soon as you lift up the sheet and place somewhere, do start to ink the plate again. If the ink start to feel like it is drying, keep adding a little more ink, extender and retarder and keep a nice, gooey, sticky paste on your palette and roller and ink the plate as quickly as you can. Rinse and repeat for 125 impressions, dry, sign and you have a limited edition print.
Wash up with mineral spirits and oil the plate. OH BTW. You will need to clean that plate BEFORE you ever start to use it. Sort of restore it. Use fine steel wool and Liquid Wrench Oil to cut all the rust. You have to sort of de-rust it and also get out all the pitting. try not to grind any low spots into the wide flat areas or it won’t ink correctly and will then leave white void areas in your printed image.
Look up how to print wood cuts or linoleum block prints. Same technique.
BTW, Once you get a good clean, black on white image, you can take that to a T-Shirt print shop, have them reduce the image and get you a film positive which they in turn can burn you a silk screen stencil on a frame and either make T-shirts for you or give you the frame and you can buy the squeegee and ink and supplied and do it for your self. I did it for 35 years ++ and built a whole business with 30+ employees in the Screen Printing Business. Only we stopped doing shirts the first year or two and began to specialize in very fine line, tight tolerance industrial work, printed circuits, pressure sensitive decals and industrial face plates to the tune of several million dollars a year in early 1990’s.
Just a thought. You might like printing as a side jig or hobby and you can make your own products or have your images printed on demand by several companies who do that for sellers. Etsy is full of print on demand products all from home grown artists who have their designs, slogans or saying printed on everything they can get their hands on.
Again…Have fun
Mike at MDCGFA
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This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by
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