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That is a plate for a flatbed printing press. Search for Vandercook Presses. Been around since 1903, I think. There were competitors later which your Google research will show.
That plate is one of the larger ones I have seen but think the larger Vandercook would handle it.The plate was laid face up, flat down on the press bed and “locked into place” maybe even inside of a chase, but this is so large don’t if a chase could be used. Once locked into place a few press proofs would be run to get the exact positioning on the printing substrate [material].
The plate is inked by a series of several rollers that got inked on one far end of the press by spinning up against an ink pan. Then the rollers would traverse all the way across the plate and back to the top. This action deposited ink onto the high part of the plate. Called relief inking, not intaglio inking. Different method used for engraving and etchings.The material, usually large poster board or cardboard sheets would be laid on the press “in register”, by butting up against 3 guides. Two on the sides and one at the short top end. These guides assured that each sheet that was hand feed onto the press, directly on top of the plate was all in the exact position on each sheet.
Next the press would cycle, and several non-inked rollers would pass over the back side of the sheet to be printing and “press” that sheet down with a pre-tested set pressure and return to their starting position. The operator then lifted by hand the sheet up and off the plate / press bed and when flipped over there would be a “correct reading” impression of the plate. That sheet was placed on what is called the “rack” a rolling series of stacked up wire shelves. Starting at the bottom with all racks flipped up, the first sheet was laid face up on that first bottom rack and the next rack lowered down. Most racks i ever worked with decades ago were either 50 or 100 racks per rolling unit. Get too high and you can’t reach the top racks [shelves] with a small ladder. Short operators or helpers had a tough time and usually stopped as far as they could reach up.
Now the operator starts the whole process over again, by engaging the press [long ago by hand pulling the rollers] and in later years by stepping on a foot pedal to activate another cycle. Inking rollers make a pass over the raised area to ink the plate, a sheet is placed in register over the plate, the pressure rollers make a pass, the operator lifts and places on the drying rack and then repeats this cycle.
Sheets this large were mostly hand fed due to lack of auto sheet feeding on the early, giant models.
The operator could usually do about 75 to 125 impressions per hour depending on the material and difficulty in handling.
At the end of the run, the press rollers and plate would be cleaned up with mineral spirits and dried down good, covered with a cardboard sheet with a slight layer of oil to prevent rusting and stored for a future reprint.
The cut-out corners were done later after possibly this client [the insurance company] no longer was a customer or were finished with that product. The print shop, then possibly needed some wood pieces that exact height that this “old-no defunct plate” was and cut two sections out of it to use to build up and fill spaces inside of the chase for a job that required a smaller plate or advertising cut as this type of plate is called.
The cut out pieces were used as “furniture” which is what the fill in wood pieces inside of a chase is called and the centering of the new smaller late for a new customer or job and filling in the blank spaces within the chase is called “locking up”. Little small wedges called “quoins’ pronounced “coins” were used along with a “T” handle key to twist and apply pressure to hold the place inside of the chase in position throughout the press run. Same technique is used for die cutting on a Thompson or kluge Press.
The plate is deep etched as a wrong reading image so when it is transferred [Offset Printing] in modern terms, comes out “correct reading” on the finished piece.
What was printed may have been trade show signs, large lobby posters or advertising pieces. As an insurance company I wouldn’t think they were printing any type of boxes or packaging materials.
So, I know there are a few older printers here on SL from some of my past discussions, so maybe some of them can correct me or add to the knowledge.
BTW look at the side edge of the plate. Do you see two [2] layers? If so that would be a metal plate maybe about an 1/8″ to 1/4″ thick [depending on the depth of the etched letter] and then mounted onto a wood [usually maple] base to make one, the whole thing lighter and easier to handle and get into and out of the press and also to bring the whole thickness up to what is printers standard type high requirement [a universal standard] of approx. .923″ to .937″ high.
The Vandercook presses are really a mechanized version of the Gutenberg Press which was the first press ever built and used to print the first Bibles ever printed.All this info. can be Goggled and most found on Wiki.
Many people collect old “advertising cuts”, which we have talked about before here on SL and you can search Scavengerlife for those. Many people collect old press parts and many old presses like the Kluge and Thompson are still in use. I have printed millions of sheets through both.
A plate that size would certainly be a nice piece to mount on the lobby wall of an older printing company still in business, a museum of printing items and history, or even a newer digital age printing or publishing company just showing history on its walls.So, the price you select would probably depend on if a collector wanted it bad enough, or an old employee of that insurance company and what they had in mind to do with it, if decor or what. In a lobby it would probably get framed up which would add to the buyer’s final cost.
Maybe even research and see if that insurance company or a newer, modern subsidiary or offshoot still existed and contact them, or the Chamber of Commerce of the town the Insurance was started in and see if they may be interested. Who knows?
We used to pay to have cutting dies with blades inserted at about $.93 per square inch. Now this is a printing plate that is etched, not a ruled die cutting plate. But based on just buying that in its day would be over a thousand dollars. It is approx. 1,728 square inches. but damaged.
Maybe work out a price from there, go high and take a few offers [if any] and adjust from there. Then the buyer or you guys figure out how you want to handle shipping, Free or Calculated which you can figure out with Flippertools.com by ScavengerLife member Josh.
Good luck with your venture and don’t rush and have some fun learning about the history of printing prior to the digital age.
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta-
This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
11/06/2019 at 4:38 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 435: List and Forget, Still Works For Us #70205The content from Mr. Auction Professor is the reason why we are moving to diversify to other platforms and cross listing as quickly as we can and also re-set up our Shopify store.
The base premise is only his “opinion” based on Ebay’s 3rd quarter numbers and his own thoughts, he parallels my thinking fairly closely. I had already arrived at about his same point and with a 3rd party app like SixBit and a little manipulation of embedding a platform code into our SKU numbering system, we can maybe list on 5 or 6 platforms and still track it fairly easy and handle it.
This link goes to a recent YouTube he made and is only about a 13 to 14 minute listen.
Now staying focused just on the online reselling unique, one of a king items online, process, are any other SL members diversifying, within the e-commerce reselling platforms and if so what and how.
I don’t mean taking profits from selling online and then going and buying real estate, store fronts, Pizza franchises 🙂 LOL or the such. I mean what are you doing within the stay online and market items in online stores or your own domain to continue to be able to claim a full time income from online selling. Do know of and use SEO a lot, ads, have multiple cross listed platforms, know lot about tags and key words.
What is your plan to grow your online business, scale it up? Directly to Jay… if you and Ryanne did not know anything about video conferencing and did not do that at all for extra income and had never invested in your airBandB business model and you only had your 9,000 item inventory and your Ebay store, what would your game plan be to handle and over come the scenario
of only being on Ebay as your only income stream.Is your inventory producing the same income given than small as it may be, the consumer price index and cost of goods we all live on still go up a few percentage points each year, Ebay and PayPal are taking more. Would you just sit back and still feed the 9,000 item beast with new purchases, list them, sell what you can just from Ebay, ship them and then as you say “rinse and repeat”?
I am not bashing Ebay, but after listening the Professor Auction, and several others on the same topic, my confidence in Ebay to be my only main income source is waining. It still is #2 right behind Amazon, but shouldn’t sellers move into a more and newer world to expand and branch out into the more diverse and younger e-commerce world. In other words are we just “marking time and aging in place” when it comes to selling online?
I am 71 years old. Have thousands of items in inventory. In 15 years from now at 86 years old, am I going to be found dead one day, laying in the garage, on the floor with a “numbered Bin” and a “pile of broken Limoge dinner plates” on top of me because I had to climb a ladder to pull some old used ceramic plates off the top shelf?? 🙂 LMAO Or will I have built up a substantial online e-commerce business, have a few helpers and sell on 5 or 6 platforms and have a buzzing business which I can over see and direct.
So where do we all go next to expand and move forward.. maybe into “The twilight Zone”.
Boy that was a rabbit hole, but may be a few hidden topics for an up coming podcast hidden in there. 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries
11/06/2019 at 3:38 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 435: List and Forget, Still Works For Us #70201Hey troy. been thinking of you guys. Hope all is well with you and Veronica. Susan not doing too well but Friday is her last radiation treatment then that 2nd operation and then last 13 weeks of final chemo rounds. Keep praying for her.
I thought that is what you were doing with the platforms that SixBit doesn’t handle automatically. Just adding a code onto the end of your SKU. I was trying to think it all through.
Yes SB handles Ebay, Etsy and Shopify. The Shopify is going to cost extra on top of the Duo. They used to call it the “Enterprise” level. And goes from $99.99 to $139 per month. BUT they have recently changed their terminology and where as the former Duo handles 2 platforms, now the wording says for the $139 level it handles quote “UNLIMITED” sites and handles a bunch of platforms. A little confusing, but wonder if they can handle 4 or 5 platforms or do they just mean multiple accounts on 4 platforms. They are now handling Ebay, Etsy, Shopify and Amazon.
I am going to call them tomorrow and see if I can get it straight what they do and do not cover and if they have any suggestions on the others.
BTW you are correct, Etsy is doing better now. About $5,776 Yr to date on Etsy on 95 items sold = $43.73 per sale and 216% up over last year [YoY] as compared to $12,395 in Ebay Sales with about $4k of some other stuff thrown in from a couple small side design-art work jigs. So Etsy is sneaking up to about half of what I sell on Ebay and only 650 listing instead of the 1,200 I have on Ebay. I wonder, when I get all items cross lsited, will that other 600 listings actually allow me to outsell my Ebay store over on Etsy? Hhhmm…
But Ebay and PayPal fees [including promoted listings have moved up to about 24% of our Ebay sales at $2,952. [no shipping-just fees and some ads]. So much for Jay’s 15% to 17% from days gone by. Then throw in Federal Taxes taxes on top of that [if you don’t expense it down to zero like we do] and like we have always said, if you want to make $50k in this business you probably need to sell closer to about $100k to end up at about $50k annually.
That is why I cringe when I read about newer people quitting their jobs so early in the start up of the reselling business. Jay tries to warn them all the time. Do this until you can generate enough NET after Taxes and Fees and Supplies to provide enough income to live off of.
This is the biggest reason I want to re-establish and re-vitalize our Shopify store, even though a slow grow, atleast we can keep so much more of our sales dollars.
What do you think about using the custom fields and create one titled “Auxillary Platforms” and just enter the -pm -me -rl in that one field. Then could filter on that one field for the correct code it sold on and do the rest that you do manually from there. That way it would keep the code out of the SKU field. Or do you think it is better in the SKU field and then do an “Advanced Search” for the SKU number and use the “contains” qualifier and enter -pm to get all the Posh Mark listings? Just wondering how to work it all out.
The Ebay Item Specific glitch has hit hard goods now in the Home Decor category. On relists or even batch changes from SB many bounce back with an error message that I can’t revise due to missing IS. We have all those IS but most are in our custom Item Specific fields. it is just the new fields Ebay is creating it has not been populated over and wonder if it even will. so far have 69 bounced listings that I tried to do a revision on. Just wanted to remove “best Offer” and nope, can’t until I enter all the IS in their “new” fields.
Between all of Ebay and Etsy both making a bunch of 4th quarter changes and failing to get it right from the get go, I am just getting tired of it.
Catch you later…
mike at MDC Galleries
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
11/06/2019 at 3:12 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 435: List and Forget, Still Works For Us #70198Thanks.. That’s about $200 per month on average. That is OK. You won’t retire off of it but covers the the little time spent.
Still pondering.. but since they will import everything in [no work on my end], and if i code in SixBit like Troy I can track it with not much effort may be worth it just to have a 3rd and 4th back-up to Ebay.
mike at MDC Concepts, Inc. – MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
11/06/2019 at 10:21 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 435: List and Forget, Still Works For Us #70173Mark: kind of why I asked. i used to have everything listed on Truegether and also Bonanza. That was back when I was using WonderLister. Bonanza kept getting things way out of Synch with Ebay and not delteing solds and that in turn was throwing WL off base. I finally just got rid of Bonanza and went ahead and dumped TrueGather for no other reasons than no sales would come all year and also seemed like JandR and others here abandoned TrueGether themselves so ditched both.
Now with SixBit and the fact that it handles our Ebay, Etsy and soon to be revitalized Shopify store, I didn’t know if maybe just having all our items out on Bonanza and truegether would indeed provide just some more Google exposure to help with organic Google rankings for our domain name which is included in all of our item descriptions. Also all of our photos are named.
With all the issues Ebay is having and every guru out there talking about Ebay’s 3rd quarter results and on top of all of that all the Ebay glitches, everybody is saying it is prudent to be diversified, be on as many various platforms as you can handle, stay spread out and promote and social media along with internal proper SEO use for everything.
This is easily done for Ebay, Etsy and Shopify through SixBit. I just didn’t want our inventory to start to get all messed up and have things still listed on other platforms. If I accidentally sell something on Bonanza that is out of stock I don’t care, but don’t want that to happen on my main 3 platforms.
Our main three plus thinking about adding Mercari, Sattchi Art and maybe RubyLane then would Bonanza and TrueGether help or hurt in the Google organic traffic game.
I can handle the 3 main within SixBit and do like Troy and handle the Mercari like he does with poshmark by manually altering our sku code to include codes for it. Unsure about the Sattchi Art or RubyLane though.
So was just wondering if anybody still fooled with Bonanza and trueGether at all for any reasons, especially since so few Sales came from them.
mike at MDC Galleries
11/05/2019 at 6:13 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 435: List and Forget, Still Works For Us #70105How many members here at SL still list on Bonanza and trueGether?
Just doing a little quick poll-survey.
mike at MDCGFA
11/03/2019 at 12:35 pm in reply to: USPS Doing a Study on the Cost Effectiveness of Continuing to Provide Free Boxes #69963I agree Julie: We use a lot of the Priority Mail boxes. Only used a Flat Rate a few times in years. With our discount regular Priority is always less costly so we keep a supply of about 12 various sizes in stock.
We have a one page shipping supply inventory sheet and have a minimum / maximum level set and when we get to the min. level then order more by either the 10 or 25 pack.
I also have not seen any where that Pirateship saves me anything either. PirateShip is only USPS and do not offer any FedEx services. So PS is good for us on items under 5 or 6 lbs, which is about half to 2/3rds of our shipments.
At about 6 lbs. FedEx is less costly and we have a full service FedEx office just a few miles up the road. We have a whole column of built in shipping prices into our SixBit program and have a custom field for cubic inches. When we hit 6 lbs. we drop in the FedEx prices. But guess what???? We pack in USPS boxes because FedEx takes packages in USPS boxes with thier label on it. Maybe because of the “last leg” arrangement FedEx has with the USPS. Maybe Lazybeatnik knows for sure.
Also by using flipper tools Dimensional weight calculator we have all of the fedEx and USPS oversize shipping rates built into SixBit and as soon as that cubic in. goes over 1,728 cubic inches, we apply the Surcharge rates. His calculator tells us which pound level to use to charge for the wieght and oversize package. But again the USPS boxes can be used.
So in short, the USPS boxes can be used for both USPS and FedEx, so yes we will use the boxes as long as they are available.
And yes, we also cut down the USPS reg. priority boxes to shave a little weight off the box but in most cases we do it to try to keep the size under the 1,728 cu. inches. Then when we have to go oversize, we also splice together two reg. priority boxes and create a larger size box. Again, any size, smaller or larger, will go by either USPS or FedEx and USPS boxes in any cut down or spliced together size will go via. both. And all of this seems fine by both companies.
So yes, we are hopeing that the USPS sticks with it’s program of free boxes for the priority program and for use with FedEx as long as they still have their partnership together.
As for the “3 to 4 month study”, well I think I can say, yes it is a cost to the USPS, but are they recouping the costs via any added shipping upgrade purchases by shippers, is what I guess they have to figure out. Bottom line is if they are bleeding money in that program, and adding to what they already may be loosing to competition they may have to stop offering the free boxes.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
See if this link gives you any data that you can dig out.
https://www.worthpoint.com/inventory/search?query=pangborn+designs+tie&category=
WP shows a few sold listings by this designer. Maybe some of the descriptions will provide a few clues plus since subscribe the prices should be showing up for you also.
mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art in AtlantaThat’s me Jay. We have business cards. I just say I am a full time reseller and give them our business card. even if they don’t ask, after I pay for our haul, I give them a card then do like Steven S. does. I ask do they have anything else inside and I mention several items that they don’t have outside.
I ask them do they have any old odd china from the mom’s house, fishing tackle they don’t use anymore, etc. Many times we have been brought inside homes and shown a ton of stuff. Sometimes it is their collection. One house we went into after I asked about old depression glass, the lady yelled at her husband, “take these folks in and show them our Vaseline and Radiated glass collection. Yep we left with 3 pieces that were duplicates of theirs.
I also give them 2 or 3 cards and tell them to give them to any friends who might be interested in selling a few things and not wanting to have a full blown yard sales.
We do 500 business cards at a time with both my and susan name, cell phone number and our regular online private domain store name on it.
And yes, we have had calls before asking if we buy so and so. And we also get calls of people who also ask us if we will take something on consignment. We don’t get many calls any more because we stick more to estate sales and auctions. But every estate sale manager we give our card to and we get advance notices of upcoming sales and we even call a few of and ask if they have any upcoming sales that will have such and such in them. One or two are good friends and they will even call us and say, we are planning a sale that will be in about 2 or 3 weeks and we will have items we know Susan will really like. Hope ya’ll can come on by.
Google business card marketing plan and do some reading and you will see how bznz cards can be a very effective marketing tool.
We run a business. I am not afraid to to say so. What do you think, if you have 6 items on a table that you are getting ready to spend $45 bucks on and you say to a question you are a reseller that they will snatch the item out of your hands and say no way you are going to buy this! heck no, they want the cash.
Here a good one for you. I am also an artists and printmaker. What if you go to a Sale and it is full of nice beautiful lamps and depression glass pieces and you say, you are glad to find these, because when you smash them up into small pieces the pieces will look great in your new mosaic artwork you are working on.
If you are a real business person, then your business is your lively hood. And their is nothing to be ashamed of about your lively hood. And actually you need to advertise and market even more.
We are actually in the process or reworking our own web site and as collateral advertising I am designing a 3 page tri-fold brochure with photos of our old Antique booths and photos of past items we have carried and current ones.
One of the old school business models called the 10,000 business card marketing plan calls for you to leave 2 or 3 business cards every place to stop, lean, sit at. Leave them on counters, I leave some in every antique store or booth I go into, I leave some on restaurant tables, convienent store bullentin boards, I leave some on the pew at our church and inside of hymnals. I will leave or drop a business card anywhere I can.
A good friend of ours Fran, taught us this. She stopped going to Sales because she had so many people calling her to come buy her stuff. I have gone with her to places where we walked in and she had the pick of the whole place. All from the fact the seller had a business card of hers.
My $1.75 and half a cup of coffee opinion again. And this reminds me I also need to order us some more business cards because we are getting low.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Yeah I listen to him occasionally depending on the title-topic of his discussion.
I think his more current focus is more about establishing business relationships and buying wholesale items directly from the mfg. Then he is working on helpers to pull, pack and ship for him.
The buying wholesale creates an endless supply of the same items from fewer listings and less work. But as has been said he does change business models a lot. But haven’t heard much more about where he is at and the direction he is going personally.
10/22/2019 at 3:00 pm in reply to: Ebay / Xerox VeRO-d me and I need some insight and advice? HELP!!! #69453This is related but slightly off target but still may give you some insight or things to think about.
As Jay says, any corporation that has a brand and products they mfg. own all the rights in most ways to any words, phrases, images, slogans, mottos, even color combinations and partial pictures of their product. They have every right to go after whomever they think has infringed. And in todays world of e-commerce as Jay also says you are not an authorized reseller.
An Authorized Reseller can use, say and show parts of a product because they have a written contract and included in it is permission to promote the OEM product or company according to the way their contract says they can and also included in the contract is the rules is the things you can’t say or do.
You can go to any site, any place Craig’s list, Mercari, Bonanza, even a news paper ad locally and post your ad to resell and you are in violation of the laws that protect a larger company. Even if brand new in the package never opened. They want you to throw it away before they would see you resell it and make money from it.
Buying yours stops them from getting money from the buyer that would go to then. They get touchy, so any larger company that has the money to hire a staff or whole department, these days are searching, trolling and digging for those who try to resell.
We have had a few VERO’s before and certainly we have all talked about it here on SL. Even Jay and Ryanne had to change their name some years back because Ebay reached out to them and told them to take the word Ebay out of the Blog’s name. Jay can tell you more about that, but Scavengerlife was not what they started out with back when Mike and Wendy were around.
Our last episode was from a company that we used to use when I owned a spray foam insulation company. The spray gun had several parts and filters that wore out quickly and were very expensive to buy original replacement parts from the OEM company. So, I went to a machine shop, had a few parts reversed engineered and started making my own after-market parts.
We only said that our parts fit this company’s spray gun. It didn’t take long before we got a letter from their legal team to cease and desist. So, I went to our lawyer and said I have a right to sell a copy of their parts. He said I really didn’t but if I was going to persist then he gave us the following, which we have in our listings for about 24 parts to this day.
I also wrote to the OEM Mfg. a polite letter, told them my story and included the following. Got a reply with a very specific list of what they would not allow us to say in our ad and a reminder that if we try to make money from parts that mentions anything about them or their patented parts, we would be drug into court.
They said their research, their development, their costs to bring their gun and replacements parts and the ordering of replacement parts could not include anything about them and they frowned upon us doing this.
Well since we included this blurb, we haven’t heard anything from them again.* Brand names, Trademarks, Copy Rights and Patented Products: Any use of any Trade Marked names, brands, products or words that refer to those products and their respective companies are by reference only, and by reference does not imply that we are associated with them in any way or any of the items we list or mfg. are derivative of their mfg. or marketing processes. For any industrial parts we sell, they are aftermarket parts and are offered as an alternative to the OEM parts as a cost-effective alternative. Any and all words of trade marked products and uses of such, either alone or in combination, are intended only to refer to the original company and-or its products for comparison only and not intended to create an impression of our company being related to, our items created by or we being licensed by any such company or legal distributor of said products or manufacturers.
So, if you think once you own something and think it is yours, you have the right to resell it think again. You don’t own anything except the right to use the product yourself as it was originally intended by them and not sell any new unused product or any partially used and remaining product.
Think about it, legally we are not supposed to be re-selling anything, clothing brands, shoes, perfumes, camera’s, used cars, anything unless the company is out of business [old vintage like Jay says] or they don’t care. That is the big question. WHICH ONE’s of them CARE! Obviously, car mfg. do not [I guess] but they do have authorized or certified used car selling going on, but what about the person to person sales. Do your own brake job, the brakes fail, and it is proven, who gets drug into the claim, the car company along with the seller.
Finding out is by trial and error and thus how many of us has learned the hard way by and even gotten VERO’s and direct letters from companies.
There is a link on here [SL] that will take you to Ebay’s list of hundreds of companies that have registered with Ebay and I assume other platforms about their concerns and displeasure with sellers re-selling their products. Reselling anything by those companies is as stated by others above is taking a chance, which we here on SL and millions of other sellers do every day.
Who gets caught as Jay says is just the luck of the draw, just like getting a speeding ticket? Most do it but who and how many get caught is a random luck of the draw.It is a quandary and tough to decide what to do. Relist and include a disclaimer like we did, relist without a statement, ignore and proceed, or deal with any legal matters when you get caught just like paying your speeding ticket, even if it a second time getting caught speeding.
Good luck hope you figure it out.This as always is just my opinion and that and $1.75 will get you a half a cup of coffee these days 🙂
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Here’s something to think about and a system all of have used effectively at some point in our lives. Very simple on the surface but has very complex under structure to handle almost anything, anywhere and any type. Just substitute the word knowledge with object and a 3, 6 or 9 digit code will work.
That is the Dewey Decimal System. Ever gone to the library, walked up to a card catalog, opened the pull out drawer by an alphabetical listing and found a book you wanted, wrote that number down with the decimals and then proceeded to go and find a single volume of a book in a 200,000 sq. foot library, with hundreds of shelf racks, with thosands of shelves and maybe 100’s of thousands of single volume books.
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 12 digits will get you a single item out of every category of knowledge in the world. A single item about Magic Tricks, Magic erasers, Magic Markers, Markers by color, space exploration, philosophy, history, by civil war, north.south.generals., on and on.
So if you know the 9 beginning codes of the DDC ooo.xxx.xxx through 900.xxx.xxx you can create a system to find anything, anywhere, even in multiple locations.
Here is a link to the explanation of the system, which I assume most Librarians must know by heart. So if you have a basic understanding of the sorting and classification of categories I would think you could come up with a way to make a 6 digit system xxx.xxx work for you if you think like Mr. Dewey.
https://www.oclc.org/content/dam/oclc/dewey/versions/print/intro.pdf
I am sure Jay and Ryanne will figure it all out.
mike at MDC Galleries
Fun thoughts .. 🙂
And Jay.. Yes and as you stated, you did it “back ass backwards”, but friend, look at the success you still have had, using your and Ryanne’s memory. So kudo’s to you both. 🙂
But now is the point where you want someone else to pull and pack for you, so you are going to have to put in the time on the “back end to save time later on still the back end”. Some of us put in time on the “front end” when we were and or are still small sellers but we can scale with speed if we want or need to now on the back end.
Still while we were creating spread sheets and systems, you guys were creating money. Seems to have worked well for you from what I can see! 🙂
mike at MDCGFA
We have our SKU in 3 places.. In SixBit it is in the SKU field BUT that is autoloaded into the Ebay Custom Field. So yes, once into the custom field, then we also made a custom Item Specific Field, so our sku shows up as the last ine in the IS area and then in SixBit I dropped in a line of code in the description area and when we post to Ebay or Etsy the custom IS shows as the last line in the description area.
Now that you know our long code, go to our Ebay site and look at the last line of the IS and the description area and you can see it in the public view and of course the custom field is not published by Ebay.
That way if you guys are away and you sold a few things you wanted your helper to go pull, she would not need to go to your office and fireup a computer or hers. All she would have to do is go into your storage area and look at her phone and click on see the item specifics and she would see the SKU there and also in the See More area on the phone which is actually the description area.
I don’t even need SixBit open or available to be able to see where an item is, what we paid for it and when we bought it. Helps me take or reject offers out on the road in almost a few seconds. All of that is embedded into the long SKU number and scrambled with the extra “camouflage digits” we throw into the string of numbers.
Try it. Go to our store and sort by newly listed. Then look at the last line of Item Specifics and also the description. Then reference what I said above on how to read [interpret / decode] it you will see the item number, skip 2 spaces, what we paid, skip 2 spaces then comes the date we bought, then g and then the bin number. Everything you need to store, locate, pull, make a decision on taking an offer, give directions to someone when you are away or for them to see it for themselves.
Viola’ a complete “mini-listing inventory system within itself” all contained within one long sku number.
By the way if you ever want to go to a printed SKU tag and print your own bar codes on stickers or tags and have a helper use a bar code reader, by using the longer 23 character number string or 19 if you remove the 4 camouflage numbers it will work and if you use the CODE 128 UPC Coding you can have up to 128 characters, numbers and symbols all intermixed that will translate into a bar code.
But that is for larger companies that have to store and warehouse a ton of parts and pieces. We did so to fill the advertising “kits” we did for our larger customers I have mentioned before.
But on a small scale, still have your brain “think” like that. Numerically, chronologically, alphabetically and most of all systematically.
Thinking ahead now will save you from having to “RE_DO” your system later for some reason. I re-worked our system a couple of times way back when we first started the antique booths and eventually derived a system that I knew would work years down the road later when we would finally go online.
Good luck guys, this can really get your head spinning and you better make sure that InkFrog is going to be your 3rd party listing and Inventory Control Program. I went from an Excel spread sheet, to Easy Auction Tracker, then to WonderLister then Finally to SixBit. And i discovered as I scaled and expanded each time, there was something my current system was either lacking or was slow at. By going to more “robust” programs as we grew I wished I had gone ahead and went with the higher end, more complex system in the very beginning.
If you ever want to change from InkFrog to something else, make sure you will be able to Export into a .CSV file and re-import back into your newer program with ease.
SixBit had a heck of a time bringing in WonderLister and even when it was also posted on Ebay at the time. Still to this day I have 84 listings “floating” in our inventory system with odd sku numbers that scrambled. I just happen to know those and where they are by referencing my old spread sheet luckily.
Oh, that also brings up the point. Always back up your database and also export it periodically into an .CSV format and bring it into Excel or whatever work around the MacWorld people have to use. think it is “Polaris Office Suite”. But it is good to always have a fairly current version of your whole database, all fields, in a spread sheet format. If InkFrog goes out of business or you ever want to change, then importing in from that .CSV file will be better.
mike at MDC Galleries in Atl.
Yep we do just about the same. If I see an almost empty bin I pull it off the shelf and place it in our office-listing area. Then as we hptograph and create the listing in draft mode, after we inspect the item for flaws we place it in one of the sevral bins always laying around and place that bin number on it’s tag and in SixBit.
We used to take our laptop into the garage storage and as I placed items into the Bins that I found partially full I would just call out the BIN number to Susan and she would enter into the computer [back then it was the WonderLister App]. Now I found it easier to just pull and almost emty bin off the shelf and up to the office to “RE-LOAD” [so to speak], with new items. When full just take it down and place it back on the shelf.
Of course as I said we also always have 3 to 5 totally empty bins either with new numbers or ones we have emptied up or condensed. Only trouble is when we condense you do have to enter the new bin we placed a few in on the software. So rather than condensing, I just wait until the BINS are down to 1 or 2 items and pull it on up to the office to re-fill.
I can tell that Jay and Ryanne are on the right track. You can hear their brains churning as they are now thinking it through. From all these comments they can and will pull enough data to make sense for them and create a good system that will allow anybody to go and pull items for them
And yeah, we all have been waiting for them to jump on the band wagon.
If they do start cross posting, then having a dash -and an extra letter for the platform they post on will help. Troy aka “T-Satt” does this, M for Marcari, P for Poshmark “Et” for Etsy [I think]. But this way they will be able to hopefully use InkFrog [their 3rd party Listing App of choice] filter their complete inventory by date [for aging stuff], by shelf location and for things listed on various platforms.
Once a system is in place, then the “FILTER” functions opens up a whole world of different ways to look at and analyze your data.
mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
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