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And at a longer look, yep Ryanne is more on point. If a golf spike wrench, it would have a different configuration to the nut end. Maybe this more like what Ryanne said just a “spike” remover for another type of athletic shoe, but who knows maybe Nike does have a golf spike that the hex socket fits over.
And the bag, holds the cleats. I know football shoes have different type of spikes for muddy fields vs. dry grass and artificial turf.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
That just may be a pastel drawing on felt. Most papers, even hand made European papers don’t have that much ‘fuzziness” to it. Velvet is not as coarse but hard to tell from not seeing it very close up and getting to run my hand over it.
If the back is the same texture, that moves it closer to felt. But if it has a backing that is different it may be a “flocked” material whereby one material is onlaid onto another. Sort of like “laminated” so to speak.
Also just because the image isn’t dusty or smears like chalk-pastel. There is a product called “Fixative”. It is used to spray over pastel, charcoal drawings to “Fix” the image to the substrate. It acts almost like “hair spray”. It is clear and with several light coats, pastel, chalk, charcoal will not smear.
If that is an original did get her or her family’s permission to “reprodcue” her image and place it on Imgur??? No, only kidding, 🙂 🙂 happens all the time, but still “technically” true.
I could be totally wrong on this account because there are some art papers that could come close to producing this effect-look. Would have to tear a very, tiny, sliver and then examine the torn edge under one of our more powerful microscopes. 100x or more to dechiper more.
Hopes this helps somewhat…
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
And the bag is called a “ditty Bag”. Used to hold a golfers watch, rings, bracelt, keys and or wallet. By using the ditty bag everything stays together and doesn’t get all loose and falling around inside your gold bag. Gold bags have deep pouches and hard to find small things are a big nusiance to find loose in the bottom so golfers use Ditty bags.
Most spike wrenches are doubly, chep, come in pleister packs usually along with a divot tool, cleat scraper blade to dig mug and packed on gras out of your cleats.
Even a Nike one isn’t too much but unless you are brand proud a Walmart one did great by me for many years.
07/01/2019 at 7:23 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 415: Importance Of Being Honest As A Business Owner #64315Yes, when you decide to cancel a listing yourself, then a quick message pops up and says that any allocation plans that were pre-set have been removed and will have to be set agagin upon relisting. That is with versions that have the allocation plan module. But in any case, if you manually end a listing(s), then you will have to do a manual relist yourself.
sixBit has no way of knowing why you “manually force end” a listing and won’t auto re-list it. What if you broke the item, lost the item, or sold it on another platform [if you don’t have the “Duo” version like Troy and I do, then it is up to the user to list, end, and re-list manually as those events occur.
mike at MDCGFA
One other quick note. It is procedural. Upon looking at your fiends listing, I see that he has not opted in for the Global Shipping Program and also has his preferences set for “Domestic Shipping Only”. The listing says the books are in Boston and that he only ships to the United States.
If he would opt into the GSP then it would be much cheaper for him to just ship everything to Erlanger, KY USA and then Pitney Bowes [Ebay’s International Contract Shipper], would handle the whole transaction.
accepting an International offer is going to mean the seller will have to handle all of the details that involve the custom forms, VAT value added taxes, import fees and dealing with any specific laws pertaining to the item being imported, books in this case. Not that is any big problem but still should be considered in advance.
When I looked at the listing, went to the shipping tab, it did not even allow me to select a country other than the United states so what is the buyer thinking that the shipping is going to cost him and how did he even see the listing in the first place?
Another issue will be both Buyer and Seller protections. With the GSP both would have some protections under that program.
And lastly, consider how you have your listing or store set up. Better insure this item and for $1,000 it will be a cost. Who will pay for return shipping if the buyer decides not to keep the books and what damage will be done to the books if they have to make a round trip to and from Hong Kong and they are not re-packed very well.
So, a lot to think about. Considering the listing states he only sells domestically in the USA I wonder how the item was seen in an International listing. I don’t think Hong Kong is considered “domestic”.
Good luck figuring it out.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
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This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
@ Rick.. Sure but if only done by the original artist of the first image and then the same artist doing the “over painting”. Doing a mixed media piece is fine if by the same artist. But doesn’t make sense if the under painting is totally covered and not seen, then what is the purpose of the time and cost of paint for the “under-bottom” image. Most mixed media works are done in such a way as to allow the viewer to experience the mixture or combination of multiple mediums used to create the final, viewable image.
If the original artists is printing off a whole bunch of his original works, then quickly doing a fast cover up of the bottom image just to show the detailed brush strokes and because of doing it this way he can hand reproduce a large quantity of “so called originals” just to sell on multiple patforms, then is it ethical? Debatable?
I see the same image on a good many sights and it is by the same artists and being described as an “original oil or acrylic painting”. If it is an original, there is only one not 10. But it could be only one and the artist has cross listed it on the other sights. When it sells, he kills the other listings. But in more than I would like to think, he does have 10 and they all look “original” and also done by hand. with very distinctive brush strokes.
In some cases when the artist places his order for the digital canvass prints of his work, he will have the print house gang up several images in different sizes on the print production roll. Then when he cuts them up and stretches them, he over paints all of them and he ends up with 5 or 6 in 4 different sizes.
The art market has gotten so messed up these days, especially with the introduction of digital presses that are 60″ x 100 feet or more and can print on almost any material up to an inch thick. You can get a lot of images on a 20 color Roland or HP wide format printer that can handle a 60″ x 100 ft. roll and print in such a manor using 3rd generation Piezo heads that it is damn near impossible these days to tell a reproduction image because a Giclee print does not print in 4-color CMYK and uses no halftone dots. About the only way will be extreme magnification, like a microscope which can detect the faint spray droplets that comes from a nozzle print head or a chemical test.
The art business can get really detailed if one wants to wade into the weeds.
Take care…
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
This is a topic that will require one of my “wall of texts” as Jay calls them, so I will reserve an answer to when I have more time and also do it on a separate thread.
But as a preview it will, revolve around modern day forgery methods as compared to former pre-digital methods of how to make forgeries, mass produced forgeries, copyright infringement, illegal practices and royalty evasion.
Also a little history on the evolution of the printed image as it transformed into the faking of brush strokes and the transition into over painted duplicate or fake original.
This activity though is OK if the original was done by the producer of the new series of “hand made over painted duplicates” though not really ethical if the original artist is selling his own, multiples and claiming as originals, but only if done by the original artist of the original work.
Where it becomes forgery and a crime is if there is a signature on that digital “under print image”. The knock off artist in China’s Art Alley take digital printed images of work by other artist, buy dozens of then step and repeated on a large roll of canvass, cut them out, stretch them and then do quick over paints of the image below and sell them as their own and even at times paint in a fake alias signature.
I may even include in that series a section on the Encho En Mexico families of artist who create original oil on canvass paintings that are done by teams of family members who pull out a 100 foot roll of canvass on long tables in old airplane hangers and factory buildings and go down the assembly line creating dozens of original paintings and signing all of them. Many of those end up in mall art galleries or in hotel art stores.
So I will leave it at that until I have the time to maybe do a “wall of text” the subject.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
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This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
06/25/2019 at 4:14 pm in reply to: Link within my listing was removed by eBay…anyone know why? #64109Sharyn has it. Years ago lots of links came from or went to “link Frams” in order to catch Googles eye and get ranked by Google. All those links caused Google to cause a bunch of trouble for Ebay, who was also using the tatic.
So as Sharyn says, Ebay started going to “structured data” i.e. the Item Specifics area and having sellers put pertinent information in those fields, which Google will safely search and no links can go into the IS fields. Then Sellers started to skinny down the description area as a result. Now a lot of sellers put very little in the description area. Much more than 250 characrters is not going to do you much good any way.
It is suggested you put only information that is specific to describing your item in more detail than is allowed in the title area and that is about it.
I have seen as few as 2 or 3 words now in the description area, including some of Jay and ryanne’s listings [guess Ryanne has trained their listing helpers to be short and specific also].
So if you are using the descriptioon area for a lot of Wikipedia background information in order to provide a historical perspective on your item, that is probably a waste of time and space anyway. But if you must, then do nothing more than name the location to send the viewer too, not type it as a URL address which will change to a link.
69% of our buyers are now buying from their cell phones. That 250 character limit is about all that they will see any way and most buyers now seem to just see the picture, look at the price and click to buy. But that is just my opinion.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
06/24/2019 at 6:07 pm in reply to: Answers on Finance, STR, and ROI to Mr Vintage Estate Liquidation from eBay #64060@ Jay: Good point. That’s what we have been doing up to this point. Maybe just let it ride and wait and see how it is during 4th quarter. It’s not so much the quantity is the waste of time to open, read and decline the very low ball ones. But that just a short minute or so. And belive me it’s not that many in this sales climate.
Cheers
mikeI would say probably not worth it. Our Ebay growth has really suffered. We wanted to be close to 2,500 listings in both stores now and we are only at 1,191 on Ebay and 551 on Etsy. Now we have grown some, but very little.
Add to your equation, how much more would we have been making if we had another 750 or more listings in each store. Especially since SixBit does the Etsy listing and auto removal after sales.
And the agrevation. Today is a good example. I arrive at nine, our sub punch guy arrives at 10:30. I texted several times no reply. He works for an hour, then has to go to Home Depot while I do the walk through. He never comes back. I finally reach him at 1:30, he’s eating will be here in a short while. 30 minutes later calles me and says he has an emergency call at another house. Boom, I was there doing what I could with my limited tools and equipment, for 2.5 hours and he tells me he will be back tomorrow. Well the buyer is going to the lawyers office at 10:30 then the closing is after lunch. Wonder if I will have it finihed.That’s why I said I am getting too old for this non-sense. Happens all the time, every trade.
So if I didn’t need some extra cash for Susan’s after surgery bills, no I wouldn’t say it is worth it doing one or two at a time. But we have 4 lots and built two. The remaining two are right across the street.
It is just as easy [almost] to do 4 at a time as to do 1 at a time and we would save a lot more by paying for 4 lots of building materials at one time.
The last two lots may be the last ones I do. Depends on how much the final medical bills are.
06/24/2019 at 5:52 pm in reply to: Answers on Finance, STR, and ROI to Mr Vintage Estate Liquidation from eBay #64055Well that makes sense now that you clarified that. I knew I had seen some low cost items with make an offer and then you said above somewhere most things get make an offer so I was confused against the “Old” let’s try not waste our time doing offers on low priced items.
You guys have #3.99 buttons, I see, now that I did a double check and would wonder why you would take an offer on that.
Have ever put any type of auto accept or auto decline on the ones you do have make an offer on.
So on any of the $29.99 items you certainly wouldn’t take a $1 offer and you certainly would take a $28.95 so where would you draw the line? I seem to spend a lot of time reading offers at 30% to 60% range and then counter offering on the lower ones. I think Troy [T-Satt] said he sets an auto decline at 61%. Don’t know if he still does but thinking about that myself. Maybe at 58%, just leave me alone and let me work on listings and reworking a ton of our older listings now that we have SixBit going fairly well and cross posting a lot. Our Etsy sales seem to be moving on along very well now that we started the cross listing and more frequent uploads.
Just a wondering.
mike at MDCGFA
06/24/2019 at 4:51 pm in reply to: Answers on Finance, STR, and ROI to Mr Vintage Estate Liquidation from eBay #64042@ Jay.. [side bar]. Haven’t looked at your store in a while but for verification. I thought you had siad last year sometime +/- that you guys adopted a posture of not wanting to place “make an Offer” on things under a certain amount. I thought it was $19.95, then you raised it to $29.99. Do you still cling to that or as you say above, now have make an offer on everything or most things regardless of price and or what you paid for especially?
mike at MDCGFA in Atl
@ Jay.. Isn’t this what I have been saying for years here. Pull your P&L statement from your accounting software once a month. Make sure you have the settings set to also show you the percentages each line item of your P&L has.That is the comparison we use. What percentage of each line item in our chat of accounts is as compared to our total sales. standard accounting practices.
With the percentages you can see what percent of your Sales your office supplies are, what percentage are your utilities that are allocated to the business, what perctage is shipping supplies.
In Quicken for Business then at a click chart those and show how this “Month” compares to last month or another click shows you Year to date by month.A year between P&L’s is too long, Quarterly is OK, but Monthly allows to see “cause and effect” with experiments and little changes. But weekly, creates to much uncertainty, over reacting, and over correction [knee jerk reaction].
That is why I have never posted weekly numbers. Don’t mean much to me now or when I ran an 15 million dollar company. Show me those percentages monthly as compared to revenue. That’s all you need, in my opinion.
Been working on the houses, so not much time to post these days. But the two story closes tomorrow at 4:30 pm. So we are doing punch out work since the walk through on Sat. The single story ranch closes on the 27th.
Then on to planning the next two, both will be two story with walk out basements.
How’s this for a cash flow scenario. Spend $140,000 over 16 weeks out of pocket and have to wait 4.5 months to close at $198,000. No profit at all until closing time. Talk about willing to kiss ass on these walk through’s and punch out lists. Do anything you have to to get the buyer to the closing table.
Talk about a balancing act. List two items this morning, pack and ship 2 items then run 40 miles and go tighten a loose sink drain, stick a magnetic fireplace cover back on and put a wall socket back in the painters left out.
I really am getting too old for this “stuff”. 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries.
Hey Julie: Does this seem to be a match up? I used the keywords portable lap desk and this popped up along with others that were not as close of a match.
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/writing-slope-antique-victorian-lap-1922405232
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
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