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Hey.. ATTENTION!! Ebay Servers are down in the Atlanta area. Can’t access the Sold Orders or Orders needing to ship areas or get shipping labels.
Ebay sends a pop up message “It’s not you..It’s Us”. Downdetector.com shows a yellow circle around Atlanta, which is not as severe as a large red circle.
Anyone else having trouble accessing some of Ebay’s areas or getting orders and shipping info.
Sure wish Ebay could get some new servers or rent space somewhere else. Such old stuff and coding. AND they are constantly messing with it.
Oh well, just a heads up.
mike – mdc concepts, Inc.
mdc galleries and fine art
Here ‘ya go.
Mike – MDCGFA
- Sold for $39.00
- Sold Date Apr 12, 2017
- Source eBay
- Worthpoint Category Toys, Dolls, Games & Puzzles
- Original Category Toys & Hobbies:Vintage & Antique Toys:Other Vintage & Antique Toys
Artop Specialties Rochester New York “Artascope” Toy Kaleidoscope Near Mint WBxThis is a vintage, Artiscope toy that is made of heavy metal and was made by the Artop Specialties Company of Rochester, New York. It is an optical instrument of high quality forming eight sided rosettes of any objects placed on the turntable. (Please see photo of side of box with instructions.) It is 9 1/4″ high and has a turntable that holds objects such as pieces of colored paper or cloth, jewellery, etc. When the turntable is turned, un-ending, beautiful views are created. This toy works perfectly and is in near mint condition with some light wear. The beautiful, colorful box is missing all flaps on both ends
Howdy Charles and Welcome.
A lot of us have been hanging around for years here. Best place to get sane, rational, calm information. I have been around since about the 3rd or 5th episode when Mikey and Wendy were on the podcasts and Jay and Ryanne were cutting their teeth.
As everybody said, just go slow. Get things listed and up. You can’t sell a thing if you don’t have it in front of anybody. You can grow, get things pretty, pretty as time goes by.
Take it from me, if you try to push to an extreme level right out of the gate, you will end up spending money you don’t have and it can get expensive fairly quickly.
We are located in Gwinnett County so you and Julie are a good ways around toward the West. Julie is almost heading upwards to the foothills of the Great Smokey Mountains and Northern Georgia, but you are not far from her.
@Julie ” I have zero luck on FB marketplace. Maybe I’m just a little too far north of Atlanta to have much of an audience for it.”.. Well ‘ya think? You are about 70 miles from Atlanta, a half way meet up point would be 35 miles for you and the customer, IF they were from the city proper. And from our neck of the woods, having to clear spaghetti Junction, swing the I-285 loop and then up I-75 to Kennesaw takes me about an hour and a half and to go further to Cartersville and then your way, about 2 hours barring any slow-downs. HUH! Slow downs, no such thing in Atlanta= NOT! 🙂If we want to be back in Dacula by 6 we need to be through spaghetti junction by 3 pm or bumper to bumper. Both of you guys know the drill.
So welcome Charles, happy hunting and good luck.
mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Collins Creek Collections
SmartParts Small Equipment Supplies
“Well, Alrighty Then!!!” Just got moved into “Managed Payments”. Now that we are baptized, we will see how it goes. We use Quicken for our accounting. Remains to be seen how that all is going to synch up.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Yes Jay, having a chili dog with extra onions will fix it every time! LOL 🙂
mike – MDC Galleries and Fine Art
That’s the logo for “The International Paper Company”. They also own several wood products companies and also make a series of plywood all stamped with this logo.
mike – mdcgfa
Interesting follow up notes:
I see that the color of the paper of the one you show just now is an “onion skin” texture and the original one on Worthpoint and also mentioned in the description was on yellow paper and it was even mentioned as being on a yellow paper.
Also the original signed one with the high price was the 24th print of only 30 in the edition. The one you have is numbered 30/100.
Do some deeper research. You may have a re-strike / re-run. Even if signed by the original artist then why two different runs. a 30 pc. run and a 100 piece run. OR is a re-run or a high rez copy and the number and signature is forged??? Next what is the newer ones substrate? What is that paper and is it a run of the mill commercial grade paper high in acid content.
Is it a full 4 sided “deckle edged paper” or a straight cut on a guillotine cutter or a factory-mill straight sided. To find this out take the frame apart if sectional or have a framer open it from the back. Hold the paper up to a lighted window and look for the watermark. That would tell you more of the puzzle.
At this point I now have questions I would want to find out before pricing and going to market with it. This print and the Worthpoint print are not part of the same run. So why and how did this piece get produced and by whom.
Sorry to jump in with late negative comments but I just now saw the actual images you posted of what you have.
Sleuthing time is in order.
Mike – MDCGFA
@ MyCottage and Blueridge1: I think the reference to the A/P [artist proof] was about the one in the museum.
This listing states in a couple of places that it is 24/25 [24th print out of an edition of 25].
As far as artist Proofs being more valuable. That depends. I am a Master Fine Arts Print Maker specializing in Serigraphy both Commercial and Fine Art. I have executed many limited editions for other artists without the printmaking skills to do the work and they hired me to do it for them, guiding them through the process, while still allowing them to create their own original images.
Where the value of the Artists Proof lies is in how many it takes to get the edition staged to the point of the artists acceptance and signing off of the edition by signing the Bon a’ Tirer [or what is called the Final Ready to go Proof.]
On small editions which all limited editions should be under 500 at the most, I have had to alter color, and make changes to the images for the artists dozens and dozens of times. It was not unusual for me to pull out and alter the ink color over and over again for artists being extremely picky.
So, in the case of a short run, say 75 or 100 prints and the artists keeps changing the image or color, we may pull 200 proofs, many of which get destroyed or thrown in the trash as we proceed through the changes. On a larger run if the we only had to create a few proofs with very few changes, then the ratio of prints to numbered final prints is much smaller. If any of those were saved, then yes they are rarer.
Here’s the catch on value, and usually only the printer in some cases would know this, how bad was the quality of those proofs that were nothing more than working trials as we marched through the creative process. We some my error in registration and alignment of color, were some pulled during a mechanical problem with my presses and equipment. Were they pulled on very cheap paper high in acid content and not the $3 to $5 per sheet acid free hand made and mold made paper we were saving for the original run.
Then we have the issue of signing. I only required the artist to sign off of proofs so I could keep track of there changes, especially color changes. Also I kept track of a picky artist who made dozens of changes that we did not quote them in the original pricing, thus we counted all those changes so we could bill them for excessive production and time costs. I have billed artists for excessive proofing as much as we charged them for the entire production run of the limited edition prints.
Lastly, in some cases I signed or initialed the prints. As the Master Printer I too can either initial a proof and I can also add my embossed “chop” mark to each print in the edition if I so negotiate that in the original contract. My contract many times would include a statement saying that all screens, mock-ups, proofs, ruby’s, stencils, plates would be destroyed at the end of the run. This aided in creating a clean paper trail, adding to the provenance and originality, and assuring future collectors that no re-strikes or re-runs of that edition could be done using the original materials, has does happen more than you would think. I know of two such companies who would by up old plates from estates and then re-ink them and re-create the original edition only with out the signature and sell them as unsigned, staged proofs.
So proof value would be a low quantity, signed or initialed by the artist or master printer, usually no title, sometimes a date or time to aid chronological tracking of the artist changes, done of the same paper as the edition was pulled on, chop marked if applicable.
But large amounts of proofs only marked artist proof or A/P and no qualifying chain of events, not worth anywhere near as much as an original print.
The Bon a’ Tirer is the “FINAL and Last Proof”. It is the one that the artist said by signing it, Is this is the one I am happy with, all changes have been made to my satisfaction and you are good to go.
Now my job and my assistants job is to then use that Bon a’ Tirer proof as the “Golden Standard” by which were are obligated to match on each and every print in the edition. We had to ink, apply pressure, watch humidity changes, wear on the equipment, alignment of colors expansion of the paper due to humidity, on every single print until we had completed the run.
It was a hell of a job on long runs which may have involved dozens of colors, and days and weeks and in some cases months, of going through the hand pulling of 500 “exact matching” prints to the Bon a Tirer. We had the artist come in periodically to check our progress and help supervise if they wanted too.
At the end of the run, we had a lounge area / signing room set up and we had the artist come in and do the signing. This is where we also used the proofs again as a quality check. The Bon a Tirer was set out in front of them and they had to inspect each print and compare to the BAT [we called for short]. If any of us found a bad print we pulled it from the run. We always printed more prints than the edition called for. If the edition was to be 500 we may have printed 10 to 15% overage. It was our job to keep that to a minimum. Overages came out of our profit.
We had long tables set up, the artist sat in the middle and we fed him the prints one at a time from the left and pulled and stacked them in order with acid free slip sheets in between on his right. At the end of the process, and we had accounted for and all prints had been signed we then proceeded to destroy all of the remaining proofs and print overages and complete all of the contract details and then did the final invoice for our services.
To this day I still have several leather portfolios of complimentary proofs, BAT’s and even signed prints that most artists gave me for me and my teams assistant on doing their art prints. Many of which we will soon be listing on our 3 selling platforms. I have had to wait to some of them died to be allowed to sell their work or get permission to sell from the artists themselves or some cases had to deal with their gallery agents and representatives, which a few actually bought all of my proofs for themselves.
So, now you have what Paul Harvey used to call “The Rest of The Story” and the story of why proofs are created, how they are created and why they may or may not have value. And lastly of course the reputation and market value of the artists themselves.
I hope this was informative and guess what, you didn’t have to sit through one of my Art Classes just read one of my, as Jay calls it, “Wall of Text”. He hates it when I do this. LOL J
MDC Concepts, Inc in Atlanta
the team Michael, Susan, Lisa, Christie, Kim, Karen
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Collins Creek Collections
SmartParts Small Equipment Supplies
Here you go. Actually I found two. The higher one, signed and framed sold for $1,400, May 27, 2017 and seems to be an original litho print and say only 25 made.
The other signed one is the poster with the event text at the bottom and sold $495 in Oct. 13th 2018. Seems like you may have a winner there!
The info. on the original print:
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<div class=”col-sm-12 description”>
<div class=”description-body”><span class=”first-half”>Title: Black Tie Date: 1980 Creation place: United States Medium: Lithograph, proof ***Artist Name: Francoise Gilot Mistress to Pablo Picasso and the mother of two of his children (As stated in post title ONLY 25 made and they are so very much wanted that museums seem to house most copies) For example one A/P is located in The San Diego Museum Of Art just google it and take a look on their website and of course it is not for SALE it’s a “MUSEUM NOT A GALLERY”.Black Tie Gourmet Gala is a sure EVENT that will always be etched into history and this LITHOGRAPHED A/P is for a very committed collector of ARTS. **The lithograph is framed and glass covered and the Overall Condition is GREAT with no apparent STAINS a Truly lovely piece.A PHOTO of Ms Gilot and her husband Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine is also included it depicts the two of them holding up a freshly printed Poster of the (Gala).This leads us to believe she allowed him to actually assist her with the production of at least the Posters it is an actual PHOTO.Extra Information on this Lithograph such as measurements are as follows 25” x 18″ 1/2 (Framed) This is a once of 25 chance of a lifetime to own this very piece “Bless You All And Thanks For Stopping By Good Luck Bidding”.. *** Note This Lithograph Is In Great Condition But In A Temporary Slider Frame Meaning </span> <span class=”second-half”>All Four Sides Slide Apart Like A Puzzle The Right Side Slider Is Missing But With No Damage To The Lithograph.*** But i’m sure the lucky buyer of this Piece will surely have it framed to their own custom liking…**I ALSO MUST INCLUDE THE FACT THAT THE COLOR OF THE PAPER IS ORIGINAL THIS LITHOGRAPH WAS PRINTED ON YELLOW PAPER** You can rest assured that with years of handling and shipping knowledge this PIECE will be padded and placed in the proper box for the safest shipment possible.We also honor the true meaning of speedy shipping so we will handle and ship with in one business day thanks for stopping by please check out other items in our store… “We may be new to Ebay but we have been collecting fine arts for 45 years plus and have much to offer”</span> hide</div>
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<div>The second one is the poster</div>
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<div><span class=”first-half”>Description: Françoise Gilot 2 color lithograph poster, title Black Tie (1980) and signed in the lower center (please see photo). Done for the March of Dimes Gourmet Gala. The piece comes from the estate of Jack White, a television personality that was part of the event. The piece is approximately 23 1/8 inches high by 17 1/2 inches wide, it is framed and with frame it is approximately 24 7/8 inches high by 18 7/8 inches wide. Françoise Gilot was a painter, critic and bestselling author. In 1973 Gilot was appointed the Art Director of the Virginia Woolf Quarterly. She was also the lover and muse of Pablo Picasso from 1944 to 1953, as well as the mother of his children, Claude and Paloma. She later married the American vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk. The print appears to be very good condition. The frame is metal over wood, it has multiple scraps, scratches and dents (please see photos). Please see all photos as they are a major part of this item’s conditional description.</span></div>
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<div>Mike – MDC Galleries and Fine Art</div>
I know what you mean. Having to file that report monthly and for just a couple of dollars was a PITA. So, now annually and for $30 to $50, it just keeps them off of my back.
Does FedEx measure every package?
Bear in mind that almost every UPS facility and many, if not most, FedEx facilities now use automated scanners to measure each and every package. When a box bulges, the measurement of the bulged side is increased or lengthened, and the automated scanner will read a longer dimension.
No, it is just a good dbl check to do periodically.
We use flippertools regularly because we use SixBit to list with on 3 and soon to be 4 platforms. When creating the one universal listing in SB we calculate what we wish to build into the Etsy Free Shipping fields and as such need to pre-calculate that dollar amount for oversize FedEx packages. At 4 lbs. FedEx beats USPS and certainly beats the heck out of oversized packages, hands down. So flippertools allows us to know what price tier to add onto our Etsy listings.
I was thinking the same thing as Ryanne. It may be the DIMM Weight was needed to be applied.
But here is a way for you to check:
Go to Flippertools.com [a member of this community developed this site primarily for sellers]
Then scroll down to his Dimensional Weight calculator. Click clear to take out default info. and input your weight and sizes [LxWxD] and the calculator will tell you what the surcharge for those cubic inches and weight will be. We use this tool constantly.
Anything over 1,728 Cubic inches will be subject to the DIMM Weight charge. All that means if you are “oversized” then all the carriers will charge for a higher rate. So it is very conceivable that an 8 lb. package could be charged at the 12 LB. rate on even more, just depending on the total cubic inches alone.
You can also use his other calculators to even calculate the dollar cost if you know the zip or zone it was shipping to. One of his tools even shows which service and which boxes are the cheapest methods of shipments.
All of us keep his tool open at all times on our second monitor in dro down mode and for every item we list we just click and add the numbers and then build in our prices for Etsy Free shipping. On Ebay and Shopify we use calculated shipping.
But check it out and see if it is only a matter that the package was a candidate for DIMM Weight increased Tier Pricing.
If you can give me the sizes [lxwxh] and using your 8 lbs. item weight, I can do it for you in about 15 seconds or less. His tools are great, all encompassing and saves us tons of time from having to go to other separate sites.
Jay or Ryanne may even remember the name of the SL member who developed Flippertools. Jay was following him and his development of that site for awhile. Years ago he used to post here on SL frequently.
Hope this helps a little.
mike – mdcgfa
Yes as Jay says. Have to list more. Way back, the number to start getting fairly consistent weekly Sales was 250+. But as things changed through the years that number, according to some of my spread sheets, showed more like 500 items in the $110-$15 to $25=$30 dollar range was needed.
But now that sales are on the upswing again that may be lower now. So still maybe 250 to 500 items needed for a good steady stream of sales. And your store may benefit from some juice such as Promoted listings, actively sending offers out, running Flash sales, and as jay states, good listings, photos, SEO your titles, descriptions, use all Item Specifics and good, bright, clear photos.
Good luck it takes a lot of hard work and consistent work. I have gotten about 45 drafts created today, but i have been sitting here since 6:00 AM with only 3 or 4 short breaks.
Hey Julie: How’s thing up in your neck of the woods. Since sue’s cancer diagnosis last year and now the Covid issue we haven’t been over your way in about a year and half. Don’t even know if some old haunting grounds are even still in business. We stay over here mostly around the western part of Gwinnett County.
As for the local state tax, I still do but not sure if required or if Ebay is doing it. If so and it is doubling up, no big deal. It is such a small amount for us. We do not do that many Sales in GA. maybe a dozen last year. Our biggest stateas Are Cal., Florida, Texas and New York-New Jersey.
For several years the Ga. dept of Tax revenue had me filing the form monthly but most months it was zero or a few dollars. After 3 years I was able to petition them and request to be changed to a yearly filer. So now all i do is take my whole gross Sales Number, then exempt all of the Sales I made in the other 49 states and subtract that number and the final result is the total amount of Sales I made in Ga. Then multiply that by the GA. Sales tax percentage and file and pay that amount online the first week in Jan. I think I paid less than $50 dollars for all Sales made in GA. for 2019.
So if Ebay had already paid that then it is small pocket change for me to just be safe rather than sorry. But oofically I don’t know what Ebay is actually doing for busineeses in their home state. And also there is a list i saw a year or so ago, where some states don’t require it or paticipate in the program and I think i remember GA being on the list with about a dozen or so other states. I do remember the reading was somewhat confusing.
My CPA says he is OK with it and was glad I got them to put me on an annual status.
mike – MDCGFA
