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So Call Joe: Thinking about what I said above, I really don’t want any more of the multi-colored, circus looking tape from Ebay. Do you use clear or tan tape on your packages? Do you use the thicker, more heavy duty type? Ryanne used to use the thicker “Duck Tape” brand but think she has gravitated to the Ebay “Circus” Tape. AND if you don’t mind would you share your source and cost for the tape you use? I know I can search it out but just wondering what you were using, paying and where sourcing.
If your tape source is a go to source, then maybe I will just get boxes this quarter with my coupon and skip the tape. I usually take the small boxes and cut them open into strips and roll it up in the direction of the grain. Then I use it to wrap around glasses, cups, and other objects.. This round cylinder then becomes the interior box for extra protection after I place the rolled glass or cup into the larger outside box.
The forum here has tape in the resource section and it is the “Duck Tape” brand which is good tape if the thicker tape. Ebay tape is the thinnest they can make. It is thinner than Scotch tape we use to wrap christmas presents and tears so easily. And we usually use two layers to assure a good high bursting strength on the heavier boxes.
So just thinking and asking….
Thanks,
Mike at MDCGFA in Atl.BTW Jay.. I said this a year ago or so, and I still see it as of now. The Ebay Shipping Supplies offering are getting less and less. Unless I am at the wrong site, there are only 20 items being offered. They used to have about 3 pages full of items they offered.
While I know Ryann has answered before that she uses a bunch of padded envelopes but ya’ll must have a lot of small, unbreakable items ya’ll sell a lot of. We only sell breakable items and many multiple piece tea sets, plates, dishes, bowls, vases, etc., etc. We need boxes. Yes we use USPS boxes but we like and use sizes they don’t have. yes, I resize larger boxes down all the time, but hard to make a box larger unless I splice them together.
Ebay only has 6 box sizes and 4 of those are fairly small and not one square box among them. Some post cards, 2 types of round stickers, 1 choice of paper and that is tissue, and the padded or un-padded envelopes, 1 choice of poly tape style and now a water tape. Pretty slim selection as to what used to be almost 70 items. They used to have more than 20 box sizes.
I also see that they have gone to plain brown boxes with just a black logo and the new wide water tape is also brown and black. What happened to their new marketing approach of “Add a Little Color to Your Life” campaign. Don’t see there TV advertising along those lines either. Now this offering of shipping supplies looks plain vanilla. Looks like they are still chasing Amazon.
I understand, I guess they cut out the things that were just not the popular items or profitable to them. But my point is that the $50 coupon is getting to have less and less value to me as a seller.
My $50 is going to buy 1 36 roll box of tape. That comes down to Ebay giving me a half a roll or tape per day for 90 days. At 75 yards per roll that equals about 37 yards of free tape per day and only of the multi color style at that. [This is the tape that makes our packages look like a Jack in the Box, Circus looking package when we use a lot on larger boxes] Very unprofessional in my opinion.
You know thinking about that, now that we are selling more and more on other platforms, I would just as soon that Ebay would allow me to apply that $50 to my store payment and let me skip the shipping supplies all together. I prefer plain brown boxes with either clear or tan tape. Very clean, stream lined and professional looking.
But alas no, so on to ordering my half a roll of “free” tape per day in return for my $250 per month Ebay invoice. I get a better return for my patronage at my local grocery store. LOL π
Ok, off the soap box for the day…
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Atlanta, GA.FYI… Uline has stopped local pick-up here at there Atlanta DC Cneter about 2 or 3 years ago. I called their corp. office and they said that the traffic from cars coming into their pick-up bay was creating a hazard to the truckers. And they also implemented a rule if you wish to do a pick-up they would but it would be a flat $30 pick-up fee.
So if I wanted to place a $30 order for let’s say bubble wrap or some boxes, it was going to be double the cost at $60. Someone said that they wanted to end the small local buyers crowding into there pick up bays and focus on larger orders.
I call them about once a year to see if they still have that minimum rule and flat rate pick-up fee in place and they still do here in Atlanta.
So haven’t bought a thing from Uline in over 3 years.
04/01/2019 at 4:43 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Carhartt vest, Kaleidoscope paper, Twister game, JVC Speakers, Zenith record player #59539Thanks guys:
Steven, going to give that vacuum fix a try and keep my fingers crossed. Then follow your advice on joining a few of the selling groups.Also will try keeping the whole set together.
Will a buyer want me to have the whole thing wired back together and powered up and want to test each component? Re-connecting each unit to each other in the back is a pile of cords. Most of the cables are for the master synch whereby all units are controlled from the one Master Hand Remote Control.Theres 3 or 4 cables that plug into the back starting at the top and then cascade down like short umbellical cords. It would take me a while to figure it all out even with me having all of the original manuals that came with it.
Thanks for the details.
mike at MDCGFA
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
03/31/2019 at 6:20 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Carhartt vest, Kaleidoscope paper, Twister game, JVC Speakers, Zenith record player #59445Steven..Very interesting on the JVC set of speakers. I have not only a pair just like them I also have the whole JVC stereo rig and the cabinet for them. You and I talked about a year ago, but don’t know if you remember. You has given me some ball parks on the numbers for each componenet and you mentioned to sell each separately [I think]. Any way I just left everything in the storage area because of the size and I just didn’t want to deal with Craigslist. But now that u mention FaceBook Market place I think, since it is spring and we need the space in the storage area, it may be time to move the whole thing out.
I have the AMP, receiver, equalizer, radio tuner, dual cassette player- dubbing recorder, 6 disc stack player and turn table. I have the original manuals to each component, remote control and a pile of “gold tipped” connection cables. All of these are inside a wooden cabinet with glass front and the two speakers on each side.
At the time I thought you mention being they were JVC not to expect much more than $30 to $40 for each component and i guess you have set the bar at about the $80 to $100 mark on the pair of speakers. Are you still thinking numbers in about the same range as you posted last year?
Is there anything special about getting set up to sell locally on the FB Market Place? I already have a business account but really have never posted much of anything. It has just set for years.
Oh and if you may recal, one of the speakers had a small dent in the larger woofer in the smaller center rounded cap, where my daughter poked her finger into it back in the 80’s. I am the original owner of the unit which was about $600-$700 back then. You told me to try to use a vacuum cleaner nozzle over the dent to see if I could “suck” it out. Do you think that would still work and is there a possibility of bursting the small cone by too much suction?
FB MarketPlace may be the place to unload all the large items we have accumulated that we will never ship and would get too little at a yard sale. Pluse we don’t like siiting all day in the hot summer for such little results.
We have a tall, upright clothes steamer, a movie projector screen just like the one you also sold some time back [but u shipped yours if I remember], two managuins on a stand [male & female], several tubs full of artificial flowers, couple old computers, an antique fire screen with a needlepoint design, several large framed paintings about 2′ x 3′ in size and about 30 or 40 66qt. clear plastic storage containers with locking lids [we are transiting over to tubs half this size so we can get more items on our shelves and reduce the weight of those larger containers].
So I think this should be enough to drum up some interest on FBMP don’t you think. Interested in any comments from anyone on if this old, oversized death pile may get a draw and sales so I can reclaim the storage space. And your thoughts again Steve on that JVC stereo system
Hope eveyone has a great week and things pick up. We had the best 60 days in Feb. and March ever at a little over $4,000 gross total.
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine ArtYep.. Remember the gas lines well. Lines around several blocks, hours and hours waiting to get to a pump and then a small dollar limit on how much you could buy. No fill ups and certainly no extra gas cans. They had people guarding the pumps or should I say monitoring.
Interest rates sky high and inflated prices. Friends bought an older 15 yrs ++, smaller ranch, about 1,100 sf for $185,000 end of 1979 to 1980 and bragged about getting it at 18% interest.
Luckily I had a steady job back then. Just starting in the printing business which lasted almost 25 years with the same employer.
@Troy.. Amen. Back-up in as many areas as you can. We have a running inventory of all supplied and keep a min-max. level which we re-order when we hit the min. levels. Two printers all on the wireless network, two computers [a desktop and also a laptop for your same reasons]. Datafiles in WonderLister and also now in SixBit, [yeah I am finally making the switch-what a pain but think SixBit will provide better control on both Ebay and Etsy and Shopify is going to be added in the future so SB will handle all 3], 3 weight scales, back ups to a 4 terrabyte external, the desktop [of course] and to One Drive in the cloud. Photos in 2 spots, an an office supply cabinet of small tools and supplies all with multiple items.
Believe it or not a few weeks back [unsure if I posted about it], but both printers went out at the same time. But it was a network, firmware and connection issue. Took almost 2 days, but work through it all.
So, operationally, I got ‘cha.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Yes as Sharyn says, jewelry pricing is tricky just like pricing art. If you ask others, because of the time it takes away from their business efforts they most likely will charge. Same for most items, clocks, old radios, etc., etc. You are asking so you can get a base line as to where your profit is. You are asking for their “valuation” by utilizing their years of experience, educational training, schooling and years of their own trial an error. Just like when you go to a doctor or lawyer for advice. You plan on gaining a profit from using their knowledge to form your base line and pricing / reselling strategy, so yes, expect to pay for their advice.
About reflections, their are many YouTube videos on “how to photograph” framed art work. I suggest you take a look at several of those. Some will focus on light placement others on certain techniques.
Here are a few we have used through the years.
We have a thin sheet of frosted plastic that we lean up on the piece and shoot through that. The frosted surface kills the glare. We also have a larger piece of real non-glare glass and photograph through that. We place it about half way between the camera and the artwork and have a helper hold the piece upright and we then just shoot through it. On smaller pieces I have also taped off the edge of the frame, then used a very light spray of a water based spray to actually place a light matte transparent coating on the glass, take the shots, then clean the glass off.Using angle placement and light placement can work as well as using a polarizing filter and or transparent matte gel over your camera lens.
But again I strongly suggest searching Google and YouTube videos using proper keyword searches and watching as many as you can. This advise also applies to how to properly ship framed art prints and shipping original bare surface paintings.
Good luck…
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Another thought is to treat it like a small art sculpture, and make a small wooden crate. 1″x2″ framed cube with thin plywood or masonite sides . Glue and screw it all togther. Many YouTube videos on how to make mini crates and ship small sculptures. Bundle the books into several small groups and wrap with plastic, then stack on the base of the crate, bind the bundles with more wrap, use a small felt furniture pad taped around the whole batch, then screw on the sides. Then that whole small mini crate depending on the total weight and size may go FedEx to the Global Shipping Center in KY. Thee is also some of the ship and mail centers that will crate up an item.
May also have the buyer arrange for his own shipping by private shipper after you have it crated. As a local pick up all you have to do is have the carrier who picks up sign a receipt you create and the buyer and his private shipper handles it from their. I think DHL handles something like this. As a buyer he needs to find a world wide shipper to handle it for him.
Just trying to think outside of the box. But I have been successful several times on crating small sculptures we have sold.
Good luck….
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Forgot to mention as to what Jay says. On the other side of the coin, yep, I would like for us Sellers to have a shorter reply time option so that the buyer, who is low balling, trying for a deep discount or trying to get enough off to cover their shipping costs have to respond quickly. Makes me feel better that if you are going to deep low ball and get a good price and I accept, you at least have to respond and take the offer quicker than an automatic 48 hours.
I also wish that if the buyer is deep diving us on getting a low ball figure then Ebay would still make them pay fast. We have instant payment on. If they accept the as listed price, it is instantly paid. But as soon as it is an offer and we counter offer, they have 48 hours to accept, and on top of that [insult to injury], they then have 48 more hours to pay.
I would prefer if the buyer is getting a “great low priced deal”, then at least Ebay should automatically hit their PayPal account and give us the money in return or as a consolation for taking a lower price and giving in to the customer.
mike at MDCGFA
Interesting. One of the things we do is after our store hours, we close at 6 pm so to speak, we don’t engage a lot in back and forth until the next morning. The reason is we have our strore set up to ship same day OR Next Day. We discovered some time back that if we accept an offer or have countered on a late offer and that offer gets paid before Mid-night, Ebay counts taht as the first day and then we have to pull and pack from 6AM until about 10 or 11 am when our postal carrier comes.
Even if an offer is accepted and then paid at 11:45 pm at night, that remaining 15 Ebay considers your “Same Day” slot and then after mid-night that becomes your “next day” shipping slot.
So if we get an offer after our “mental closing time of 6pm, we don’t accept it until when we wake up the following morning. That way we have all of that day [any time after midnight] to satisfy the ship same day criteria and if we don’t, then the following day still satisfies the “next day” criteria.
So if we accept anything after 6pm then we will have to pull, pack and ship within 4 hours the next morning or we are seen as late shipping.
Ebay’s definition of same day is any time, even if just a few minutes before mid-night is considered same day. I wonder how those with only the same day shipping handles this? So we have our store set for same day / next day and make sure that any offers accpeted or counter offers , IF they come in after 6pm are not repsonded to until after midnight and very seldom are we up after midnight, so they roll until the next morning.
Now if we are available and willing, we can accept an offer and do at times, after 6pm in the evening, but we make sure it is something small and easily packed and we can either do it after dinner at night or early the next morning. But if we have a lot to pull and pack, it is a larg bulky item, nope we accept only after mid-night so we can have those 2 days for buffer.
We are still a Top Rated Seller Plus and a Power Seller and no dings, so guess Ebay is OK with it.
But may be a different story if offers start coming in with a short response time and it comes in late at night, then we will just have to accept and get up early and get it done.
Also to make the short times an issue is if the offer comes in at 11:45pm PST and it is 3 o’clock in the morning here.
So just an observation as to why we wait to accept on late coming offers.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
callou2131: That actually reminds me, we had a Jack Daniels “Belle of Liberty” collectors bottle with a metal neck band with some production data. It was opened but re-sealable. We checked with the local post master and discovered that transporting liquor which has a tax stamp associated with it across state lines, much less multiple state lines breaks several postal and federal rules, so we emptied the remaining contents and sold just the bottle.
But my point is I wonder if anything applies to medicine? Hhmm. I know the bubble gum in the baseball cards was probably not a “regulated substance”, but could be considered a food product I guess. So I wonder about the pills? Are they real medicine? They are not prescription, they were OTC so seems like the same as sending a bottle of contemporary aspirin I would assume. But your post made me remember the liquor laws and taxation topic the PM brought up.
Oh well, just thought I would mention it.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atla
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
I would follow what Jay says. Also we had a lot of unopened baseball in packs, wax packs and full boxes some years ago. Many of the Topps had very old bubble gum sticks in them. We made sure we stated that the “contents were not for consumption in any manner”.
That was years ago. Maybe do a search on old baseball cards with gum that are currently for sale and see what the trend is now for having gum inside and it may provide you with some insights or key words to use.
Good luck,
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine ArtLove it ! And I understood absolutely every bit of it. I have done numerous other online auctions but wanted to get the particulars of MaxSold so I was savy to how it ran.
I appreciate the outline of the process and the details. Perfect. That gives Susan and I a method to follow. And and stated above, on pick up day we can go very early, get in the basic location, then go to any estate sales that are running before MaxSold pick-up. Then after pick-up we can continue with any other estate sales that may be around or on our way back. Just make a whole day scavenging and picking out of it.
Walls of text don’t bother me. LOL I think Jay invented the term based on some of my replies. LOL HA π The devil is in the details so without wading into the weeds a well defined methology can’t be developed, which just leads to a whole string of follow up questions.
I have already mentioned this to Susan and we will take a look and see what’s around this area and give your process a try. Sounds fun, and much better than sitting 5 hours at a live auction and waiting for your item to come up on the block. This way, the kitchen and refrig. is at our finger tips and we can shop in our Jammies! π
Seriously, appreciate the reply and your time.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art.
Thanks for the overview. We will take another look and visit to the site and see what’s happening around here. Atlanta is large enough and the metro area so spread out that maybe it would provide another source. And as you said, on pick up day we can shop – pick the areas around the pick up point before and after the pick up.
Mike at MDCGFA
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by
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