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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
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 🙂 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! 🙂
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
JMiller and Sharyn:
Tell me more about MaxSold. I have been registered on there site and verified as a bidder-buyer a good time ago but never participated. There seem to be a few auctions within a reasonable driving distance from us.
Would you guys mind filling us in on the pros and cons, what you like or dislike about MaxSold, merchandise, quality, pitfalls, etc., etc.
We have been hesitate due to not being able to preview and also if we bid on multiple items but end up with winning only one small, low cost item, then having to drive a long distance to pick it up. But intriguing.Thanks in advance for any info. on your experiences with them.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
JMiller:
Howdy.. We lived a ltttle west of Kennet Square in a small town called Chatham. Yep mushroom houses all over. Boy what a smell when they open them up and rotate that dirt. UUggh!We have 2 Kennett Square coffee mugs that we still drink out of a few times a week. I worked in New Castle, DE. It was about a 12 mile shot almost straight down from where we lived. I should have stayed up there at that job. A move to northern, KY turned out to be a bad decision.
Also Amish country up in Lancaster was always fun to visit.
Just thought I would say, Howdy.
Mike at MDCGFA in Atlanta
Yes Retro: Elmer’s is a poly vinyl and does bond well in certain cases. I use Elmer’s Professional Super Bond wood glue on all my stretcher bars I make for paintings [mitered corners] and for the outer frames as well. The thicker viscosity of the polyvinyl products does well to fill in the gaps and spaces on porus materials, like the end grain in wood. I use a cyanoacrylate based product [i.e. the thicker gel and thinner types on “super Glues”] on the more non-porus surfaces depending on if there are wide gaps or not.
Here is a rough guide to go by:
Super glue (cyanoacrylate) is very strong on surfaces whose chemistry and structure don’t lend themselves to other glues—plastics, glass and metals are frequently bonded by cyanoacrylate.White glue and wood glue aren’t inherently different: they are both polyvinyl-acetate. Some manufacturers tweak their PVA to have different traits—some dry faster or slower, are sandable, or have yellow dye. (The wood glue we use in the art studio is mostly the pro wood glue which has a little dye in it and is slightly yellow) (Note that Elmer’s School Glue is not a PVA based glue.)
I sort of think this way:
* If the product is wood, a glue labeled as being for wood will be strongest
* If the product is subject to peel or vibration/shock, cyanoacrylate is not the way to go unless it’s chemically toughened. The Super glues “cure” brittle. More crystalline and thus can break apart as they age. The PVA based stay more flexible [rubbery] and retain their bonding. So Yep, your school project’s ceramic pieces probably had some porosity at both ends and the PVA base glue did well to seep into those cracks and crevices and “ooze-bond” them together.
* If gluing plastic or metal, go with cyanoacrylate (or acrylic, or epoxy)
* If the gap is larger than 0.3mm, don’t use thin runny cyanoacrylate. PVA/epoxy/thickened cyanoacrylate [GEL Super Glue] would be better.
* For glass, don’t use cyanoacrylate unless it’s specifically formulated for glass. Silicone is best, but acrylic, epoxy, rubber cement, and construction adhesive will all bond. Rubber cement being my art school go to. Put t on one surface wet and it is peelable later. Put two coats [one on each surface] and blow dry, then when the two surfaces are put together they form a permanent bond. Holds much better. The old school technique used to install formica laminate counter tops.
The lacquer based rubber cement products though are strong but the fumes are pretty tough, they also make a water based product but not as good.Just some art school thoughts on the glues we use, why and when.
Glad your art project has survived this long. Cool.
Mike at MDCGFA
@speckled Goat:
That’s a nice Murano Tree art glass piece. Decal looks good. Many times they are not complete, torn in half or heavily scratched up. Good pricing on it.And good pricing. Without the small flaws you point out they show about $195 to $225. So at $169 and you can also take a reasonable offer and you are still in a good pricing range.But as we all know, the profit is in the buying.
BTW: We don’t have a lot of very expensive items listed. Our avg. selling range is like many SL members, in the $40 to $50 range mostly +/-. A $169 item is no small potatoes. That will be a good sale if the purchase price was right.
Glass pieces are slow to move, even if it is a Murano, Fenton, Royal Doulton, Waterford, etc. so just wait it out. But colored glass and embedded glass will move. Clear glass is the slowest. Not in fashion much any more. I told Susan she may be shot if she raises her hand at auction on anymore clear glass!!! even if she says “It’s Cute!” LOL 🙂
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art.
Ryanne what is on the back of those plates? Get a close up [detailed] if there is a chop mark and i will see what I can find out in the databases we use.
mike at MDCGFA
Hi again Sharyn:
Here is very good article about Roseville and some good color photos. Worth taking a look. It is short but still brings back some of the reasons we really like to look at Roseville. Just too bad the chinese have ruined almost every market for American – Made in America items.
Jay is not a big fan of, as he calls it “Chinese Crap” [CC] as he has mentioned numerous times before, Tin Junk, etc. LOL 🙂
We have more fun with Roseville than Fenton most of the time.
https://www.realorrepro.com/article/Many-Roseville-Patterns-Reproduced
mike at MDCGFA
Howdy Sharyn: Good try. As Willy Wonka said, “no, reverse that”. Going back a long way on my memeory and that research but “debossed” [pressed into it is the real 1930’s artisan Guild made Roseville pieces made at the original factory by at the time, the guild cratfsman working in the various studios from original moulds.
The thinking if I recall was this, in order to create a debossed image into the clay the mould had to have a “raised” [male] image and be created in a “reverse mirror image”, so that the final pice would come out of the mould correct reading. The raised image reproductions were created by actually debossed the MOULD, just like using a branding iron down into the mould and where the piece was poured the logo came out correct reading but raised. The process of creating the original logo was more time consuming and many of those moulds got destroyed through the years either by contract with the artisan or by trying to limit re-releasing a ceratin design. Also many of the Guild Artist reated their own glaze formulas and those colors and formulas either went with the cratfsman when they left or have been lost.
The raised letter ones were easier to create for reproduction purposes and you will find, wide swings in the colors of the glaze. Also raised letter ones may not be fake as much as reproductions or re-runs of original designs. Those wrong, reading raised letters down inside the moulds also were damaged or broke off eaisly and insome cases were re-worked by having the “negative space” [debossed letters in the bottom by inserting a thing layer of material into the bottom of the original mould to build it up some the new version of the wrong reading debossed logo could be inserted back into the bottom of the mould.
So another way to tell the original production runs from the later altered ones is in the height when you compare them.
But all of this is from reading research from long ago and not sure if I am spot on or not.
I think I brought this up in a SL Episode, maybe 105?? And it was a question to Jay about having two, supposedly identical Roseville vases but they varied drastically in color though of the same shape and design. I asked should I list as 2 available, or two separate listing at the same time.
Jays answer was list and sell one at a time. Wait until one sold, then re-do the listing and just insert the new photos of the darker off color one. He also said to make sure I mentioned they both were “reproductions” in the listing. But that goes back years ago. So all of this may be a little fuzzy.
The smaller Roseville, Hull, and McCoys don’t go for much anymore, but the larger 8 to 10″ and up do sell. Think we sold a large 12″ jardiniere a year or so ago for about $250 that we got for $40 [with a small chip on the bottom base rim]. But most sell for about $40 or so,
What we love about the Roseville colors [glazes] is there beautiful matte, satin finish. Smooth as a baby’s bottom but with a slight shine to it and all very muted tones. Unlike the Wedgwood pices of the totally dull, matte finish with an almost gritty, textured feel to the pice.
I would rather hunt art objects like these than blue jeans and clothes any day of the week. Clothes and Jeans you wear them to see them, or put them away in a closet or drawer. Art objects can be displayed like sculpture and seen everyday you walk past them in your room[s}. Visitors see them, they start conversations about them and how you got them. No blue jeans i ever wore got that type of notice.
Sorry clothes, sellers. No offense meant.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
