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Good morning:
Can’t make out the signature but do want to chime in before you expel a lot of time.I am assuming, after all we have talked about here on SL [which all is searchable], that you know you have an offset lithographic press printed reproduction and that the signature only exists on the original that was photographed and not on this “reproduction”. This signature is printed right along with the image.
If you use a magnifier of at least 10 power or higher and examine the print, you will see it was printed in the 4 color offset colors, most likely run on a 4 color, high speed printing press. You will most likely see that the only colors under magnification you will see will be yellow, red, blue and black. Then how are all the other colors appearing to you that you think you see. Well I have explained that whole process several times in the past about how the use of “halftone screens” [ben-day dots] break and image up into various size dots and varying closeness to each other to trick the mind and eye into seeing colors that are not there.
Then given these facts, being an offset repro, these presses run at about a minimum of 1,500 impressions per hours up to 7,000 plus sheets per hour. Given that most press set-up and breakdown take about two hours, most reproduction printers, after some market analysis will prefer to run a press for about 4 hours minimum. And if the print sells well, then they may do re-runs at later dates. So, there could easily be 20,000 plus repro’s of this out in the wild somewhere.
The paper that repros are usually done on are not archival quality, not even close. Most are commercial grade paper, and at 20,000 plus sheets per run, bought by the skid-pallet load. Most have a high acid content, are bleached white, have no- water mark and are around the 60 lb. sheet weight [about the thickness of 3 sheets of 20 lb. computer paper] and sometimes only 40 lbs. All have straight cut edges, which means it was cut using a guillotine paper cutter and many times cut two smaller sheets out of a larger sheet when originally bought for a better price. All the ink used in repros are non-archival and fade quickly, especially when exposed to direct sun with the red and yellow being the most susceptible.
If you have ever walked through antique malls or thrift store or even yard sales and seen framed prints that look mostly blueish / dark purplish in color? Well those are cheap repros, done in the 4-color offset process and the red and yellow has faded and left the blue [cyan] and black behind.
Now add to this the fact that the print does not have any pencil signed, titled or date information which would indicate a smaller print run and that the artist actually was present and at the least placed his pencil marks [his own name, a title for the work, and especially a date] with his own hand acknowledges his presence at the print shop for a part of the printing mfg. process.
I can tell repros usually from several feet away and with a loupe even more can be discovered.
Most [but not all] are not worth much more than the paper they are printed on. I very often will by framed prints, pull the backing off, pull out the print, throw it away and then use the frame for another work or one of my own works. I have a studio of about 50 or more frames right now that I have stripped out and dumped the cheap repro that was framed. The frame and glass can bring way more than the repro that is inside.
So, I am not trying to bash the print you have but want to help you start out with a proper approach to discovering what you have first before investing a lot of time research who the artist is. Even if it turns out to be a known artist, it is not an original of any kind and not a known fine art printing process that is recognized in fine art circles.
I am offering this just in case you start on doing a lot of research, to save you some time, I strongly suggest that you get a loupe, even a 6 power jewelers loupe or a 6 power linen tester, they can be found at Michaels, Dick Blick, or your local art supply store. Keep it with you and use it out in the field. Susan and I both carry ours with use all the time.
Good luck with finding who the artist is, but first I am suggesting you find out what you have and again no offense is intended or implied. Just trying to help.
Also, I suggest you search both the old SL Blog and the newer SL Forum using terms like reproductions, 4 color process art print, repro art prints, etc. and read up on a lot of information we have covered in the past.
Good luck and will watching to see what you find.
Kindest Regards,
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art06/18/2019 at 7:48 am in reply to: Victorian (1880's?) Antique Solid Brass Hand Holding Light Socket Sconce #63634Good morning Daisy:
Try this link and see if you can find a close match. If you find a match and want to know the price(s), let me know and since we have a subscription, I can give you the prices.
https://www.worthpoint.com/inventory/search?query=wall+sconces+hand+holding+torch&category=
Good luck..
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
06/17/2019 at 2:36 pm in reply to: False INAD and Item Has Been Altered (Unopened Baseball Card Packs) #63596@Sharyn: Howdy.. Senior moment here, but isn’t Ebay going to force Free returns as SOP sometimes this Summer for every seller or some variation of it or something like that?
mc
06/17/2019 at 2:34 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 415: Importance Of Being Honest As A Business Owner #63595Howdy: yeo you hit on the point that is was before Ebay did the rollover to everything being good until canceled. And if you listen to Craigslist Hunter he also was tracking where his items were showing up in the search results rankings. He was staying up on the first page back then also, but he was doing all of this manually by doing 7 day, then ending, then 10 day, then ending, then 30 day and then ending. He also points out that they tweaked the listings each time slightly, and did a major edit at the 30 to 60 day mark.
Also he points out that with more higly comepetive items it is more important to utilize this process.
Another intersting thing is CLHunter has a large following and access to several pals who run stores larger than Jay and Ryanne and they all reported a big drop in Sales and as a team, he seem to indicate they worked on this together and they saw Sales return to the pre-Ebay GTC implementation.
He states they tracked large percentage decreases in there stores right after the GTC rollover and all their ability to do the 7-10-30 day end and relist process was no longer and option. So now they just do the same as before, but have to catch it right at the end of what they have paid for [like the 28th day] BUT BEFORE Ebay does a rollover relist with the same ID number. A monthly auto rollover within EBAY’s GTC process will not create a new listing ID.
These guys were getting new ID every month, even 2 or 3 times a month and were selling a consistent amount. Then GTC kicks in and BAM, Sales tank and for numerous months in a row. Then they go to the let’s end these prior to Ebay rolling them over, get a new ID number and then Sales bounce backa dn continue for several months. Doing this makes Cassini see them as new.
The drop he states in the video was a 24% or more drop and a few even 50% drop in Sales. Then to implement this process and see that percenatge come back is pretty good.
All of this applies of course to the SL members who are reporting a drop in Sales over several months. And to implement this strategy each and every item has to be identified as to when it was created and then ended a day or two before Ebay does it. That would require a software program to do it for thousands of items. It will take one whole month just for the first cycle to complete itself. So many items ending each day, until you have gotten every item in your store ended and relisted with a new ID number. Then that would need to repaet itself for several months to see the results.
Luckily CraigsList Hunter did a lot of this but he doesn’t mention if he and his staff did it manually and continue to do it manually.
I am trying to get SixBit to do it automatically.
Troy [T-Sat already has SixBit doing this to some degree several months ago] but I see his allocation plan is slightly different than mine, so I am having the SB team work on it and I am also waiting on Troy to get back from Montana to work on this with him.
But to see sales drop 25% to 30% for several months in a row, then to implement a process and see those sales bounce back up as a result of that type of manuver and stay there. I am pretty impressed.
For a more definitive test, i would ask CL Hunter to stop the process for 3 or 4 months staright and see if sale plumment agagin and then re-apply the process and see if he can repaet the increase back up. That would be the final convincing test for me.
In other words, do the whole thing over a second time and see if the same pattern and results are replicated. Then I would be sold 100%. But if SB will do it automitcally, then why not, it will be all front end work for me.
Good side thread we got going. LOL š
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
06/17/2019 at 2:06 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 415: Importance Of Being Honest As A Business Owner #63592Same exact listing as you say but with the brand new ID number and that is the secret. Ebay doesn’t know it is the same listing. It comes in new, doesn’t match the old ID number so it gets picked up as new. Ebay doesn’t scan all of the title, description and IS and says, hold on this is the same content as last time. But only sees this as new.
And as a kicker, there is a way in SixBit to have SB actually make an automatic change to the description and title by placing an “Append” or a “PrePend” text in the place or apply a new wrapper to the description area. {It’s a SixBit thing not worth explaining].
Another way of explaining it is that it is like you end a listing completely and state as the reason the item is no longer available. Then come back and do a “Sell Similar”. Same text-content just a new ID number.
Another thing to think about would be the listings with multiple quantities and Variable style listings. Unsure how those would work. With a multi quantity a new ID number listing would not show that at one point you had 24 of something and had sold 20 of them with only 4 left to buy. With a new ID number that would be gone. But i wouldn’t care because we mostly sell 1 of a kind items. About 95% and higher are all “onsies”.
We used to do something similar in WonderLister within the batch edit function.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
06/17/2019 at 2:00 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 415: Importance Of Being Honest As A Business Owner #63590Think so.It goes back to our old conversations that when you end a listing completely, Ebay retires the old ID number it assigns completely. Then when you do a fresh relist, Ebay assigns a brand new ID number to that listing and as far as the search engines go, it is a brand new item as if you just bought it yesterday and listed it for the first time today. And Cassini sees it as a new listing, you get the added exposure of a newly listed item. Pretty much they way a few of us have been it explaining it here on SL but was always in the relm of an opinion because a few years back no one did the experiment or were tracking stats the way some SL members do now and as CraigsList Hunter seems to have done.
What i am communicating to SixBit is to set an allocation plan in place to end each listing at the 27th or 28th day mark. Beat Ebay to the punch so to speak. Then have SixBit end all listings 27 days from the date they were created. Then come back and automatically relist the listing or at least put them in a SB folder where I can see which ones SB ended that day and then highlight all of them and click re-list and let SixBit take back over.
I think this part is being worked out now. But since we also use SB to cross post on Etsy and Etsy uses a 90 listing time frame, we don’t want SB to keep ending the listings at the 27 day mark on Etsy also. That would mean we would incure “triple” listing fees. $.20 each month instead of the $.20 for 3 months.
It is doable manually. I have already worked that out, but was trying to get SB to do just the Ebay part automatically and I would take care of Etsy manually based on the ended listing that get dumped into an “Recently Ended” SB folder.
mc at mdcgfa in Atl.
06/17/2019 at 11:35 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 415: Importance Of Being Honest As A Business Owner #63578Just had a Whoa Nelly! Moment. For anyone that is doing a longer term āPromoted Listingsā campaign. I think you may want to check it out and see if you have this situation on your listings.
We usually run short Flash type sales and when we do promoted Listings we usually do it for a 1% over the trending average and run it for a month or so and then it ends, and we do it again.
Well we decided to do a longer time frame for Promoted Listings and do the same 1% over the trending average, but this time run it without and ending date by using the on āContinuousā until we would decide to stop it manually.
Well the thought just popped into my mind to go and check and I discovered something I had previously just assumed but was surprised that I was wrong.
For anyone here at SL that is running a long time period for Promoted Listings, go to the Active Listings on your seller dashboard. Then when they all pop up, usually about 200 per page [we have approx. 1,200 listings]. Then look at the column titled Promoted Listingsā and if you donāt see that column make sure you use the blue āCustomizeā link and click on āPromoted Listingsā to add that column to the page view.
Now as I looked at this column and scrolled down, I saw the following, which was not something I expected because of this assumption.I assumed when I started the Promotion about 3 or 4 months ago and selected that I wished to use the 1% over the trending rates that both numbers, the trending rate, as well as my 1% over that were both floating numbers. Meaning, If the rate went up, then so would my 1% above that trend go up accordingly. But I also assumed that if the rate went down, that my 1% above the trending rates would decline along with it. WELL, NOPE!!
Here are a few examples of what I am seeing.
Trending rate My Rate
6.3% 7.3% what I would expect [1% above the trending rate] BUT next the surprise,
5.7% 8.9% = 3.2% above the trending rate
6.2% 8.1% = 1.9% above the trending rate
9.8% 14% = 4.2% above the trending rate
6.7% 9.9% = 3.2% above, etc., etc.The first thing that pops into my mind is that while the trending rate will and does fluctuate up and down with the trends, that when I set the amount I wanted to pay for promoted listing [1% above the trending rate] locked in at that moments current trend rate and becomes a āfixedā percentage.
That means if the rates go up then I would guess as I originally presumed my rate would go up right along with it, BUT if the trending rate drops, then my 1% number sits as a āfixedā number and does not drop or lower as the trends go down. HuH!!
I would like to ask if any SL member is currently running a longer term āPromoted Listingsā campaign, that you check this out and see if you are having or seeing something similar. Have any of the trending rates gone down while your percentage, if it was ātiedā to the trend rate such as a 1% above trend, is āstuckā at the original percentage. If so, then I think we have an Ebay glitch that will need to be reported and fixed, unless I missed something or assumed the 1% above was a floating number tied to the floating up or down of the trend.
In the meantime, I am ending my Promoted Listing campaign and will start another later once we get some clarification on this.
Thanks,
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta06/17/2019 at 10:28 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 415: Importance Of Being Honest As A Business Owner #63563@ Troy:
Hey buddy good to hear that you are getting a handle on the ranch stuff for your mom.
Just FYI.. Based on the above video by CraigsList Hunter I came across a question for the SB Tech Team and have an open ticket / question to them on the needed allocation plan to accomplish the list / end / relist and how it impacts the 90 Etsy cycle.
I am waiting for the reply from either Steve or Dustin and will shoot that on along to you so you can see what they say.
Catch you later after you get your feet back on the ground
P.S. you running a computer that doesn’t have Windows 10 on it? Doesn’t that slow down SixBit for you also? Just curious.
mike at MDCGFA
06/17/2019 at 10:24 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 415: Importance Of Being Honest As A Business Owner #63562Played the pod-cast this morning and Susan was listening and she say’s thanks for the Shout Out and appreciates your thoughts. She even got up for a few minutes after the pod cast and asked what all was backed up in the office. Think you guys got her mind off the pain and thinking about something else.
On another note: Jay you talked about Sales being low and that it happens. Well if you remember you had a longer thread going last year about the 30 day / end the listing / and relist for another 30 days in order to have Ebay-Cassini see each relisting as a brand new listing to keep the stores fresh and not being seen as going stale or having stale listings with low views and no sales.
Well interesting that now that Ebay has converted over to all GTC and eliminated the short listing options, according to Craigslist Hunter, he says he and other larger stores have been talking about there Sales sliding drastically since this Ebay change.
Since you like data, experiments to prove the cause and effects and the results of those experiments, take a look at this. He did an experiment using his two stores and talks about the results. Then the other large stores did the same thing and got the same results and there sales have bounced back.
To also set the stage for this video he did, he talked about sales starting to slump a few videos earlier and said then that he would contact an experiment to find out what was happening after years of stable, consistent sales, why suddenly Sales tanked.He said earlier that it would take him a few months to run the experiment in both stores and gather the data then he would produce a follow up video.
Well this is the video of the results. It is about 10 minutes, but very interesting and seems, in my opinion, to support the list, end and relist process. I am not going to call this process a “theory” any longer after someone actually doing what you have always wanted someone to do to verify their actions. Well this convinces me.
The good thing is it can be done automatically within SixBit. I am currently working with SB tech support to see about what it means to keep ending Ebay listings and then auto creating a new listing and uploading and how that may interfere with Etsy which is on a $.20 fee for 90 day listing. Troy and i both use the SB Enterprise edition which we use to cross post to Etsy so that could be a problem by causing Etsy to end early and relisting and getting charged triple $.20 charges. But sure we will work that out.
BUT.. as to your questioning last year of the value to list / end / relist every 30 days, well these guys think that the Ebay GTC change is the culprit of causing older listings to be seen as stale and thus the work around to it is to use the 30 day list / end /relist to over come it and has seems to run enough of a test to seem to prove it.
Check it out and see if this could actually be some of the culprit to low sales on top of the seasonal slow down we all see. interested in what some of the follow up opinions are on the list / end / relist at 30 to 60 day cycles now.
TTFN ..
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
SmartParts Small Equipment PartsSusan says thanks for all the best wishes. She said she will try to be back in the office and working on listings in a week or so depending on the pain levels. But she seems to be doing very well and is getting up and moving around a little more each day.
@Troy.. So sorry to hear of the loss of your dad. As we aged we lost both Susan’s and my parents along the journey and it is not easy.I figured you were very involved when we were not hearing as much from you. God Bless you, your family and am sure your mom appreciates you and your brother giving the help to running the Ranch.
Take care and we all will catch back up after you are back home and back into business stuff.
Take Care..
Mike in AtlantaHi all:
Susan came out of surgery just fine Thursday. Doctor said it went smooth with no complications or any unexpected hurdles or results. Everything sent off to pathology labs and she will get the results at her next appointment June 27th.The Dr. said he was still in the 97 percent range of expecting that the surgery got everything in one fell swoop and that no chemo or radiation would be expected, but that still leaves a 3% window and we will see what the lab results are on that. If we get a bad report back then further treatment would be decided at that time.
Yesterday she was sitting up and fairly attentive. Today most of the internal IV pain killer meds have left the system and she is pretty sore and painful to move, but she has some pain meds. Thay gave her 5 Oxycodine to take every for hours [20 hours worth], she looked up at the doctor and said “Are you kidding me!”. We all burst into laughter. Dr. are too scared these days.
So she went home 3 hours after the surgery,[complete hysterectomy, fallopian tubes, ovaries and some local lymph nodes]. They said to get home, then get up and start walking and moving and call if any problems.
Guess this day and time it is, “Slam, bam, thank you ma’am and here’s your bill, how are you going to pay for this, now go home?” culture LOL š
They say 6 weeks recovery, but I think she will be back buying and picking with me by first of the month and back doing the store photography. Hope so.
Keep on truckin guys..
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
How is everyone wording the messages in the text box. Ebay allows 250 characters for the seller to say something to the “potential Buyer”.
We were curious to just what everyone here is saying in that message box area when they send out the offers.
Also interested in what the average amounts everyone is using in percentages. The offer amount is in dollars, so is everyone just taking a random percentage off of the listed price and entering that amount in the “Offer Amount” box?
I did one last night for an item that is listed at $398 [I think], calculated a 25% discount and sent the offer out at $298. But didn’t say much in the message box except we are offering a special discount to our watchers or something like that.
Any other thoughts of something enticing to say in that 250 character box or are you guys just shooting out a number without commenting.
Just curious..
Thanks,
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine ArtYeah.. I know Troy has mentioned it several times. He is ahead of me with the “hands on time” he has spent with SixBit. I dabbled with SixBit on and off over several years while I was still using WonderLister. Just didn’t want to loose the time it was going to take to make the transition. But I finally bit the bullitt, knowing full well it was going to take us a while to get our feet on solid footing, so it took six weeks.
Also during this time Susan got diagnosed with Endometrial Cancer of the Uterus. So, we have had some doctors visits and testing along with the time spent on the SixBit transition.
Her surgery is scheduled for this Thursday at 5:45 AM. She will be out by about 10am they say and will go home the same day. Then 6 weeks of recovery of which the first two weeks will be not doing much of anything except getting up and walking around and downing as much water as she can.
Over the next few days we have to sterilize the bedroom and bathroom completely. Everything in the rooms sterilized, linenes, furniture and then she has to body prep for the last day and a half.
I am going to have to do the cooking and shopping for the first few weeks, so good luck with that. LOL š Plus she will only be able to eat soft stuff.
Anyway.. a video would not be in the cards for the near future and troy is getting ready for his long hike and has been visiting family and friends out west. So maybe in the fall.
Also with SB now I am going back and re-doing so much and still trying to go forward with new listings, I get spread fairly thin. One reason I haven’t had the time to post much on SL. Plus Jay is not a big fan of my “Wall’s of Text”, Ha-Ha š
Also two of the houses we are building are about finished and hoping for a CO this week and closing in about two weeks on both of them. Then next my partner and I have to decide what we want to do with the other two lots we have. These will be both 2 story, walk out basements, so that will be a bunch of planning if we decide to move on them quickly.
Well that’s enough for this rambling for now..
Mike at MDCGFA in Atlanta
But I will keep plugging away.
Ryann:
If you jump back to the shipping forum and catch the last posts I did toward the bottom, I address the iisue of size agagin in cubic inch terms. You and Jay keep mentioning 12x12x12. Well that is just USPS way of saying, 1,728 cubic inches. You can use any box, any splice together process, make your own or buy a brown box and ship it USPS Priority as long as it is under 150 lbs. and doesn’t multiply out to over 1,728 cubic inches and is under 108″ long.Now I know your painting will be bigger than this, but 50″ long is not a problem if it would fit in a box 50″ x 8″ x 4″ [I know it won’t]. This equals 1,600 cubic inches.
I invite you to go to http://www.flippertools.com [developed by one of the Scavengerlife members] and scroll down to the shipping area. He has two shipping tools that are great. Just put in any 3 dimensions and the weight and Bingo, it will tell you how to ship it and how much it will cost. You can even change it to show retail over the counter costs or to show your Top Rated Seller rates with your discount applied.
It is just the easiest way to determine how to ship we have found. It also will compare USPS and FedEX so you can select which way you want to ship.
As I mentioned in the Shipping Post at the end, I have shipped several 96″ (8 ft.) long x 4″ x 4″ engineering tripods before and it only ran $17 to $19 dollars.
When u use the Flipper tool “Fitshipper” put in this zip code for guestimates on costs scenarios: 67547. That is the zip for Kinsley, KS. Wkipedia says that is the center of the US and good for estimating costs on a package.
One of the Flippertools also has an estimator that compares several zip codes with varying distances from your zip.
USPS Parcel will handle packages the same way, by cubic inches, BUT allow up to 175 LBS [I think] and up to 130: in length.
So I would drop the 12 x 12 x 12 part of the conversation and just say as long as the L x W x D is under 1,728 cubic inches you are good to go, and NO you don’t have to use a USPS box to ship Priority. Any brown box will do as long as you buy and pay for the Priority postage.
There are a few other details but they are minor.
Simply put LxWXD = 1,728 or less and you are good to go with any box you have in the whole universe!! LOL š
mike at MDCGFA
Good point Mark. And if we can think we are doing something pro-actively to help boost sales and don’t have to pay Ebay “extra” for it, that makes me feel even “‘mo better”. š
Our Sales are way down, but one reason could be the transition from WonderLister over to SixBit and it has taken awhile and we didn’t do much listing at all for 6 to 8 weeks. We were doing a lot of trial and error things within SixBit getting the hang of it, but we are on solid footing now.
But our monthly Sales avg. has dropped from $2,000 to $2,200 monthly down to $1,300 to $1,500. Overall about a $500 to $700 dollar decrease give or take.
So, now that I have some time on my hands, going to give the “Make an Offer” to as many as I can and see if Sales start to “pop Back” a little bit.
Also using SixBit to identify all the old listings that have gone very stale and ending those listings a few at a time and modernizing them to our newly created template, wrapper and allocation plan within SixBit and relisting them as new listings. That may help some. But I will try the offer’s first to see if any will sell so I won’t have to bother updating and modernizing those listings. For every one that sells, that is one less I will have to revise.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
We’ll see.
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