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Yep agree but there is a regulation that you need to pay attention to.
As long as the envelope does not protrude more than 1/4″ thick. It has to be able to slide through a feeler gauge they use to kick out envelope that are too thick AND the internal item has to be flexible enough to allow the envelope to bend as it goes through the high speed sorters. The sorters will take the envelope around several roller like pins and they bend / flex around those rollers at high speeds as the zip code readers scan them and then send them down the correct shute.
Watch this video of actual USPS machines and employees operating the machines and at work. Amazing that we don’t pay a whole lot more for what all goes into delivering our “stuff”.
Watch this YouTube video of a Pitney and Bowes high speed sorter for like kind mailing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbYypf0gPkEVery fascinating. and the flexibility that is needed is toward the end when they run a sorter with it open and you can see inside. This picture is worth a thousand words on how a “Flat envelope” needs to be in order to be handled. If not it gets kicked out [not shown in this video] but then goes to hand sorting, which slows down the process or gets returned to the sender because if over 1/4″ thick it should have been shipped and paid as a First Class Package.
These videos are amazing and shows what, in my opinion, is a great job the USPS does in handling all of our stuff at what I think is a very good price. Kudos to them.
But unfortunately all of our customers are not aware or don’t understand Logistics and what is involved and what goes into getting their purchases to them. $12.00 to ship a 2 to 3 lb. package 3,000 miles in 2 days and going door to door from Atlanta to Los Angeles.
Just my opinion.
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
SmartParts Small Equipment PartsSharyn: Off Topic but your link and source for both the thin and large bubble wrap is great. Got a sample roll of the thin today and it is soft, non-static prone and tears off perfectly.
4 large rolls to come in a few days.
Thanks very much.
Mike at MDCGFASharyn: Got my first thin bubble wrap from your source and link you provided.
Bingo! It is the soft feel, non-static cling type and the perfs are all the way across the roll and tears off just fine. This is like what we used to get but that vendor disappeared.
Now the 4 rolls of the large 1/2″ bubble is due in a few days and if it is like this 3/16″ small bubble it will also be perfect and at a very good price.
Again, thanks so much for the tip and source.
Mike at MDC Galleries.
Try Asking Ryanne if she will change your “showing Name” if you really want too.
3 or 4 years ago, maybe more, when I first signed up on SL I used an old handle name “HUNCRELAN”. Ryanne made fun of me by trying to pronounce it. It was Hun-cree-lan. She asked where it came from and I replied it was the first 3 letters of a street we used to live on. Hunter Creek Lane.
So I asked and somehow she changed it for me to our business name, MDC Galleries. I think she said that the original name had to stick on my account profile but she could changed what was showing to whatever I want.
If you will look all the way down at the bottom of SL to the members signed it, it always shows Huncrelan but under my Logo Icon, she got it to show our business name and as you know I also always sign my posts with my first name and our business name.
Maybe Ryanne can do it for you if she isn’t too busy with her Shampoo and Booze podcast work.
Mike [Huncrelan-LOL :-)] at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Yes magic erasers, but wet the sponge-eraser with a little bit of Fantastic or water. It releases the dry bleach built into the sponge.
Also you can try Lighter Fluid [but this works better on non-porus surfaces] but still helps some and lastly if the shoes have roughed up bottoms-soles, then sand paper works great.
Also while you are out, get yourself some “Shoe Black” sole-edge dressing [this is not black liquid shoe polish]. This is very opaque and professional shoe repairmen use it to finish off the sole edges. The highly opaque nature it will cover almost anything on the bottom.
Run it around the edge of the sole and it puts a brand new like appearance to the sole edge. Almost like the armour all liquid that is put on your tires at the car wash. And lastly, we have actually covered [painted], the bottom sole completely black before. It hides any markings and gives the shoe bottom a whole new look.
mike at MDC Galleries
TMC: As long as the request to cancel and the buyers reason is in writing, we just cancel right away, issue the refund, block that buyer from our store preferences and then refresh the listing and get on with selling it again and get on with our lives.
We have let the Unpaid Item Assistant do a couple but the item just sits and sits as Ebay keeps sending the Buyer Notices and hoping they will change their minds. We had 2 items in the past sit in Unpaid Items for months before Ebay finally giving up. Way too long.
We now get get rid of them and dispense with the situation as quickly as we can and get on with our business. Don’t let bad buyers change your SOP [standard operating procedure] and disrupt your routine. End it, get it back on the market as if this person never showed up, and move on.
But as always, just my opinion and it along with another $1.50 will get you half a cup of coffee.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Here you go. $20 back in 2011. Jay states that prices from this far back is not a representative marker for current times.
Those with Premium stores get a subscription to TerraPeak for free. Used to cost over $20 per month. TerraPeak gives 1 years worth of data. Same info. that is given to WorthPoint except doesn’t go back 10 years.Well nothing is found on TerraPeak for this type of model ship, unless I missed using correct keywords. So WorthPoint did provide a price, but also a very good description and history of the model. So WorthPoint can provide valuable data even if very old. Just think, what if this item had a very high value back then. Could be worth more now [maybe] and a good description is given and the category it was listed in.
Just my opinion along with $1.00 will get you half a cup of coffee. 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Full Description:
25 Civil War card models, ships, ironclad, cannon on CD
Pricing & HistorySold for $20.00
Sold Date Apr 18, 2011
Source eBay
Worthpoint Category Toys, Dolls, Games & Puzzles
Original Category Toys & Hobbies : Models & Kits : Military : SeaHere is a chance to get 25 card models of Civil War ships and cannon for one great low price. Price includes shipping in the US. For y’all living out side the US, I will gladly e-mail the PDFs to you, but you will need to burn the disc yourselves. Much is owed to researcher John Wallis for helping me bring these models to market. Many of the test builds were completed and photographed by “Knife” over at . Most of these models are in in 1/250 scale, waterline model and come with a simulated water bases for display. Some are full hull models and a few are in 1/72 scale.You will get,CSS Wilmington, ironclad in 1/250 scale. CSS Fredricksburg, ironclad in 1/250 scale.CSS Virginia II, ironclad, in 1/250 scaleCSS Virginia II, ironclad in 1/250 scale, in a rust & battle damaged color scheme.USS Chillicothe, Union River ironclad in 1/250 scale.William Norris gunboat proposal of 1861 in 1/250 scale, full hulled model.CSS Palmetto State in 1/250 scaleCSS Missouri, Paddle wheeled ironclad, 1/250 scaleCSS Huntsvill, small river ironcladCSS Tuscaloosa, small river ironcladCSS Charleston, Confederate flagship, ironclad in 1/250 scaleCSS Raleigh, night fighter, ironclad in 1/250 scaleCSS Tennessee, battle of Mobile fame, ironclad, 1/250 scaleCSS Georgia, classic casemate style, full hull, 1/250 scaleCSS Georgia, barge hull style, full hull, read more
That is exactly what I am asking. Because of Ebay’s tinkering with all these categories, in some cases from the mid-point forward, the drop downs presented start to not fit the item we are listing.
In my example with the round, raised relief, stamped image of fruit that hangs on a kitchen wall, the category for wall decor then jumps to signs and plaques. Nothing about what we have. Something more useful than “signs” which isn’t even close would be something like wall decor, or wall sculpture, metal something but certainly not “signs”.
We have stopped mid-stride on some over the course of the past week and so far they have listed. I’ll have to see where these mid-stride ones are going. guess I should have checked that right away. Duh.. I am going to re-name “Multi-Tasking to Multi-Distracted”. 🙂
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
Yep. 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
One.. 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
Thanks 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
