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07/08/2019 at 4:52 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 418: Brick & Mortar Store Is Not For Us #64682
Some time back I saw the phrase “Jay for President”. I am still waiting for his name to appear on the ballot.
I would love to be a fly on the wall with Jay sitting down with the Chairman of China and saying, “No, no more tin, metal fakes from you guys! I am going to make America Vintage again!”
And, “Hey Mr. China President, if I want to go all in, who do I talk to about buying a whole container load full of this China, vintage knock off stuff!” LOL đ
mc@mdcgfa
07/08/2019 at 3:15 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 418: Brick & Mortar Store Is Not For Us #64656Thanks Joe: Appreciate it. We are hoping for a full recovery.
They will do some tests and a Cat scan this week to establish some benchmarks to gauge her progress by. That way we can see how she is responding as she goes along. The original prognosis at the Stage I-B was in the 97% or higher. Now at the III-B stage it drops to the 70% range but these ranges are all fairly loose and open. It depends on how each patient responds to the treatments, thus the benchmark “markers”, cell counts and others have to be declining throughout treatments.
mc@mdcgfa
07/08/2019 at 3:07 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 418: Brick & Mortar Store Is Not For Us #64655Thanks. Ok will do RTWV. We are doing a bunch of research since we got the final reports last week. Anything that may help both physically and financially.
We have a list of resources the oncologist team gave us, where we can get gas cards for the trips back and forth, the chemo will be once weekly for 6 weeks, then radiation everyday for 6 weeks, then a second round of chemo weekly for the last 6 weeks so about 40 treatments in all. So the gas cards will help with the mileage plus we will track the medical mileage.
Another resource will pay one utility bill per month. Every little bit will help. The surgery rounded out at approx. $64k and each of the after treatments say about $12k to $15 x 3 = $45K +/-. While we have not gotten any actual invoices-statements yet, we are expecting in the range of $100k +/-. Then we will have to wait and see how much the insurance will cover. We both have a Medicare Advantage Plan through Aetna.
There seems to be some caps on the totals but not sure yet, how much and if they are per year or lifetime totals and what our co-pay share will be. Think it may be an 80/20 split but still $20k may be out of our pocket. Got to sell a boat load of “Vintage Stuff” to cover that! LOL đ
Then if the chemo is considered as a separate drug cost or included in the hospital bill. Just so much to be determined.
Susan’s advice is for all the ladies make sure you get your regular PAP Smears and Mamograms done by your GYN and guys do a colonoscopy and prostate exams.
But thanks and keep her in your prayers..
mike at MDCGFA
07/08/2019 at 2:12 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 418: Brick & Mortar Store Is Not For Us #64650To Reddit or Not to Reddit, that is the Question?
Yes, even if you can make the Reddit private, in my opinion, there will be a lot more outsiders or newer incomers than before. Not a bad thing but what is your ultimate goal? Grow the forum, monetize the forum, have it on robotic auto pilot and not have to monitor it, stop it or abandon it. What are your goals.
Well take the following from a good place, the heart and in stride as just a personal opinion and maybe from a little different perspective than just the navigation and organizational of reddit point of view.
I have participated here on SL through the years and provided and shared a lot of information that I have acquired through 6 years in art school, teaching a few years on the collegiate level and 32 years in the printing and publishing areas.
I donât mind dispensing this harder to come by information which cost me lots of sweat and money, but only to those I feel have contributed to my well being and success also. Here on this forum, with the current group of approx. 5,000, I feel Jay and Ryanne as well as many of those who have been around a while have helped Susan and I tremendously. And still to this day, while we have gotten down the basics, we are always learning from others who keep digging into the why things happen and how to avoid issues going forward, especially after Ebay does major updates.
I also feel that I owe something to J&R especially for creating and building this community into what it is today and instead of large cash donations to J&R, I dispense my âwalls of Textâ [detailed replies in other words], to those newer members here to help them succeed because that is my way of paying it forward for J&R and in turn in hopes that these newer members will âindulgeâ into the world of providing detailed replies to other newer members.BUT to jump formats and your own homestead place to a location with hundreds of thousands of subscribers having access to information that I post as a courtesy, I would just stop doing that because I have no idea how my information will be used and I surely know I will get no royalties on it.
About the only way I would post on a place with that much exposure, trolls and potential for argumentative, negative rebuttals would be to sell my information or market a book I would write about my experience with art, prints, fakes, forgeries, tips and techniques and only market to sell my information there. No way am I going to just throw all that hard-earned information out to hundreds of thousands of total strangers. Many of whom, would probably use it in their own efforts, via plagiarize and cut and paste techniques to make money for themselves.
I know people here on SL, so much so, we communicate directly even off the SL forum. We call or text each other at times. We have shared spread sheets with each other, tips and techniques because I feel there is a true and appreciative nature in the people I communicate here, and that number is a smaller, interactive group. Not that wouldnât be the case on Reddit, but as many have already expressed, they may cut bait and not be there anymore. That would leave us with our private communications and no more âpostingâ live any longer. In todayâs world it is hard to trust anybody or anyplace other than a place you feel secure and at home with. I feel that here at SL, not Reddit.
To also put the value of participating on SL into a mini time study format there is a âcostâ associated with being an active participating SL member.
Participating on SL costs a poster time which we all know is money. My SL profile metrics say I have created 34 topics, not too many but replied 1,396 times, and those who know me, understand many of my replies are longer and detailed which Jay calls âwalls of textâ, as such is this one. But I can say, that some members have thanked me for the details in many of my replies. But my main point is in creating 1,396 replies comes at a cost which I am willing to donate as a âpay backâ.
If my 1,396 replies have averaged 500 words per reply, or 698,000 words, at an avg. of 8 to 10 characters per word = 5,584,000 charters. Thatâs almost 6 million characters. I type slow and with 3 fingers, so letâs say 10 to 12 words per minute thatâs about 58,166 minutes or 969 hours and at 40 hours per week that is approx. 24 weeks or 6 monthsâ worth of time just typing on SL nonstop.
Now think about the time to read thousands and thousands of other peopleâs replies. Hard to multitask when reading.
Now to the cost of participating. At the 969 hours of replying and at a random choice of $20 an hour fee for posted information [if anyone is really interested in it] the information, comes to approx. $19,380 worth of time spent just in the replying on SL to try to help anyone that is asking for help or trying to shed more light on a topic, all the while not trying to be critical of any other member, nasty of hateful like some of the âAnonymousâ members used to get before Ryanne started screening more carefully and eliminated the anonymous sign ins.
In my opinion I just am not going to be willing spend that amount of valuable time to just throw my knowledge out into a more public domain and the online âjunk-o-sphereâ ď, than it already is. My knowledge and information, even though it may not be very good, or such âsecretâ information, out in that âjunkosphereâ I have even less control on how it will be used and it will be for anyone to grab, cut and paste, and maybe used for too many other purposes other than helpful information for my fellow SL comrades. Then add to that, to possibly read a bunch of arguments from people who donât appreciate the comments and understand the place in the heart they come from.
Jay and Ryanne, I understand if you two are getting over whelmed with your other diverse work, donât have the time for this more warm, cushy, cuddly âprivate placeâ you have created for those of us, who truly care for each other and wanting to help each other out, then I would rather see you abandon it all together and wish us all a good and safe journey for the rest of our lives rather than put the content and community into the hands of a quarter of a million of other people who I donât know from Adam. Personally I am not going to spend the time to get to know all those newer members the way I have the current SL members and even more time due to the influx of many more members with questions and arguments and spend time reading all of those. The SL Fire Hose serves me well enough daily. My time and knowledge to another batch of newcomers is not something I would look forward to.
And if so, then color me âouttaâ hereâ.
My time now is even more valuable because Susan pathology report came back and the hysterectomy did not get all the cancer and it has moved downward and is now classified as Stage III-B and she will have to do chemo and radiation treatments now for approx. 20 weeks.
So, between our Etsy and Ebay stores, building a few new homes to sell, our basement rental, some art creation and selling and then all of Susanâs medical trips, I personally just will cut bait as well on going over to Reddit and doing that whole gig.
That is just my humble opinion coming from A southern guy which that and $.75 will get you a third of a cup of coffee. ď
Did this come out as a ânew rantâ???? LOL ď
Ta Ta for Now!Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
We have had business policies set up for years. Only have 5 shipping policies and a couple of others. Makes it easy and quick to list. Set a standard business policy in our templates and only change it when something doesn’t fit the description.
Easy to just change the handling time at one procedure. If we are going on vacation for a week, we set it to 10 days [built in couple of buffer days]. Then change it to 5 days when in the middle once.
One tip. Some buyers do not “see the extended handling time” when buying, so we do as J&R do, when we make a Sale we send a short cut and paste email to the buyer reminding them we are on vacation and will be shipping later. Only 2 or 3 times have we ever had a customer ask to cancel because they needed the item quick for some special reason. Otherwise, we get a short message back, saying, sure thing, no worries.
Enjoy your vacation, but do try to watch your store for special message requests or to take offers that may come in.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
07/05/2019 at 8:38 am in reply to: Annual Rant About Ebay's Shipping Supplies-3rd Year in a row #64552The bigger the better in sizes for us. We focus on home decor and tall candle holders that are over 24″ tall will fit into an 18″ box if placed diagonally. The 10x10x10 cube and the 12x12x12 are god for glass tumblers, and on the rock glasses, dinner place settings. 6 layered plates stacked, then a separator then roll glasses. Also any cookie jar, soup toureen or canister sets go nicely in cubed boxes. Then we will just skip the lamps and shades because 18x14x12 and 24x18x18 we use and just re-size / cut down any of the height we don’t need.
Also I make some boxes myself. I know the pattern by heart now and will tea apart any box USPS, FedEx or plain, drop it to the size I need and if it’s a USPS Flat Rate box, I cover it in opaque plastic and throw on my labels. So we make do. All in all I wish we could get $50 credit on our invoice, $55 if we are top rated and $60 if Top Rated Plus or some type of “reward system”, for doing everything right, all the time [mostly :-)]
Well I will just let it go and move onward and upwards. Way to much to do than belly ache about Ebay not offering enough shipping supplies. Just feels good to every now and then, give them a punch on the shoulder LOL!
mdc @ MDCGFA
07/05/2019 at 7:14 am in reply to: Annual Rant About Ebay's Shipping Supplies-3rd Year in a row #64548That very well may be the case Sharyn, but the fact still remains that the total amount of products to choose from is very slim pickings. 7 box sizes, tape, some tissue paper and a some poly and bubble mailers.
One thought Susan mentioned was that maybe they are trying to just offer box sizes in between the USPS sizes. But the USPS boxes are all for Priority which is maybe where all the larger heavier sizes fall.
I just wish they would knock $50 bucks off my bill 4 times a year or $200 total and let me worry about my shipping supplies on my own.
AND while I am at it, how about adding another store level between Premium [1,000 listings] and Anchor [10,000 listings]. That would help the Sellers more than offering a few over priced boxes in return my store and fees they take.
But we all agree it is still a good selling platform and guess they try to help the sellers out. We surely don’t want to go down the “Online Community Rabbit Hole” of bad bashing Ebay.
Have a good week-end Sharyn…
mike @ MDCGFA
You bet buddy!
@HV: Strange that listing did not pop up in our Worthpoint. Also the home page of your listing looks different than ours. But when I paste your link into our WP it pops up. Did a new search and it popped up. We have had a subscription for years. Wonder why two different looking web home pages we see?
Any how: Here is the rest of the copy that is posted along with the item link.
Pricing & History
Sold for $29.95 Sold Date Jul 01, 2014
Worthpoint Category Transportation and Vehicles
Original Category Collectibles : Transportation : Railroadiana & Trains : Hardware : Lanterns & LampsThis is an antique miner’s lamp battery tester designed by Thomas Edison many years ago. It probably belongs in a mining museum, but I have no contact with any. I don’t know what it is worth, but the age should determine that. If you can document the value I will accept anything close to that. Please feel free to ask any questions or offer any advise. Buy it now and get free shipping, my choice of service.
Hope this helps a little bit more.
mc @ MDCGFA in Atl
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This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Yep Simon. That’s what I meant. Don’t use them either but was trying to recall their name off the top of my head.
Thanks
MC at MDCGFASame for me. No results if the word test, tester, testor is used. But without the KW “Test*.*” in any part and drop out Thomas, I see edison battery packs with small lamps all mostly under $75. So if the lamp and complete battery packs is under $75, then I would assume just a tester for the batteries would be much less.
mike at MDCGFA
Same here for us as all the members have stated above. For high end, almost new and not pre-bent we use a 8x6x4 box. We also use a plastic bag over our caps but we do this when we first store them. So we pull the item, sort of fold in the soft back faric a little and put in a box.
A few years back we all had a discussion about Scottie Mailers, which are made of lighter cardboard and just a bit smaller in size and that members were then sliding the scottie Mailer into a padded envelope and folding the envelope over and taping. This “package” made for lighter weight and less postage and I think the topic was mentioning that the Scottie Mailer was less costly that a regular fluted, 175 Test weight, brown box.
Speaking of the Scottie Mailer, Google that phrase and there are several YouTube videos on the Scottie Mailer, it’s size and costs and show how to ship caps. Also go ahead and check for videos hats, wide brim dress hats, Cowboy hats and the such. So many videos out now on how to do almost everything. Worth a look see.
mc at MDCGFA
P.S. Could you imagine Jay sitting in a committee room and saying “No way in hell are we going to spend 3 Trillion Dollars on that!. Aren’t there some used ones laying around somewhere?”.
And we would never see a newspaper headline that read “President Jay approves a $900 toilet seat for Air Force One!” đ đ đ
Yes but it is a bit clunky.
Of course first step is to type in your search term into either the SL “Search the Blog” [older data] or “Search the forums”. Then hit enter. Next the results are going to pop up. But as you said there are a long lists of SL posts that will contain the search term or single words.
I just typed in “How to ship a hat” into the SL search field and got 6,135 hits that contain the word “hat”
BUT..Here is the But.. IF YOU ARE ON A Windows operating system [desktop crig]. Next hold the “control key down and hit the “F” key. This will bring up the Microsoft mini search bar in the lower left corner. Now type in the main focus of the SL search term you already used, in my case I typed in “Hat”, then next to that search field Microsoft lets you select a few criteria, like highlight the search finds, Match the Case and Whole words. I click on “HighLight” and “whole Words. That then found 15 posts out of the 6,135 that SL found and presented to me that contained all the search words.
Now to navigate to those 15, use the down arrow key and the MS search will take you to each of those 15 results and the word “Hat” is solid highlighted. Makes it much easier to find. Just keep hitting the down arrow key, and you will jump to the next highlighted word “Hat”. rince and repeat.
This is a whole lot better than having to sift through 6,135 SL posts that comes up with just the SL results. And yes, the highlighted word will show you “TOPICS” that contain the word and you can read down from there.
It is not perfect, and you can play with searches within search results. But at least a help.
You can do the same for both the Blog and the Forum posts but the blog is even clunkier.
Try searching for your name and then use a topic you have talked about and see if it finds it.
Ryanne’s name popped up on 1,681 posts and Jay’s popped up 2.900 times. Go to the BLOG search and put in Jay and then use the Control F key for the MS search bar, type in President and you will see where a member was proposing Jay run for “President”. Ha-Ha LOL đHope this helps a little.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
I am in a hurry right now but to help you out do a search on both the “blog” and this Forum. Put in how to ship a hat.
We all have had that question asked dozens of times over the years and also dozens of members have responded with dozens and dozens of answers. Also search Scottie Mailers. These will pop up in the discussions.
Have to run out for a meeting.
Good luck.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
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This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by
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