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05/24/2018 at 5:27 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Sound Shaper EQ, Round puzzle, Ray Ban Aviators, Deluxe Scrabble Board, Marilyn Monroe Calendar #40943
Hey SFF: A heads up. Wanted to take a look at your store and first thing I see is your header that says “Shipping will restart on May 20th”. Did you mean to remove that or did you mean to put 6/20th.
Just thought I would let you know.
Take care.
mike at MDC Galleries
05/24/2018 at 10:06 am in reply to: Victorian porcelain figurine – trying to figure out hallmark #40915It sold for $46.00, but that was in 2008. A fairly long time ago, unless there are more recent ones.
It had a wierd description… Here it is for the record.” STAND BACK BOYS ! THIS THING IS A MANS TOOL !!!
46″ LONG
WEIGHING IN AT 18 1/2 POUNDS
MANUFACTORED IN COCHRANVILLE PA.
DATED AUG 9 1892
HAND CARVED HANDLES.
HAND FORGED CAST IRON JAWS.
ORIGINAL BLADE.
FROM DOCTOR DOUREGHTY ESTATE HUNTING LODGE , WERE HANGING OVER FIREPLACE WITH 7′ PAIR OF BULL HORNS.
THESE ARE CUTTERS USED BY FARMERS TO KEEP THINGS SAFE FOR LIVESTOCK.
THESE ARE IN PERFECT OPERATING CONDITION. BOTH SIDE ARE MAKED IDENTICALLY.
NOTICE HANDLES HAVE DIFFERENT SHAPED KNOB ENDS , HAND CRAFTED.
GREAT RARE PAIR OF AMERICAN MADE CLIPPERS. BLADE IS STILL SHARP.
SURE DON’T MAKE THINGS LIKE THEY USED TO.
20 POUNDS HEAVY BRAWNY MAN TOOL !! “Oh speaking of the USPS Shoe Box. I do that all the time and even have the “half size” shoe box size included in our inventory. I usually order 25 or 50 USPS Regular Shoe boxes. I have a jig I made that allows me to convert the reg. box in half in just a few minutes.
I take about 10 USPS Shoe boxes, set them on my jig, Run a razor knife down the straight edge a few times and viola’ I have 20 half size bozes. Then I use my box resizer to score the flap sizes again useing the edge guide on my jig, then put those 20 smaller boxes into our inventory.
So long story short, I keep both sizes in stock at all times. always have about 25 of both sizes at all times. The conversion is very quick.
Another trick I do, is take the USPS Shoe box and tear open about a dozen of them and lay them out as flat sheets. Then I cut those in half and put into my inventory as “flat sheets”. I use these to “roll” up cups, glass cyclinders and the such. The Shoe Boxes are thinner than the other boxes USPS supplies and because of this, the narrow strips I cut them opened up boxes into, works as perfect material to roll up. Make sure that you roll with the FLUTES [grain structure]. Beats having to buy flat rollable cardboard from Uline. It works perfect for rolling up glasses like tumblers or bar glasses. Then set each rolled up glass in a larger box and ship.
I usually ship everything Priority, so using Priority boxes inside of Priority outter boxesa is OK with USPS because you are still paying the Priority rates. USPS is a great source for just flat cardboard sheets.
But that is just one man’s story and one man’s opinion combined with $.50 will get you half a cup of coffee. π
mdc at MDCG in Atl.
05/24/2018 at 8:50 am in reply to: Victorian porcelain figurine – trying to figure out hallmark #40907Sure thing.
I have had buyers email me after either they bought one of our items or we accepeted their offer and in both caes after they paid they then sent an email stating some type of “after sale condition”. The advice I got from Ebay after I called several times is that buyers can not attach-place after purchase demands or conditions onto a sale. In those cases Ebay told me to email them and tell them that and ask them if they want us to cancel the sale because we are not going to comply with the after sale requests or let the sale go. And tell them you are waiting for their reply-instructions. If by my regular shipping time, then ship it as normal.
I have used this response several times since then when buyers also want to change the address to ship to after the Sale is done. Nope, we only ship to confirmed PayPal or Ebay addresses and remind them it is against Ebay regulations to change the conditions of the sale after the fact. Either cancel the sale or ship as stated. If they want to cancel, then go change their address then come back and rebuy that will be fine.
I know some of the SL members will just ship to the new address as long as in writing, but we don’t.
Yeah .. that was also too low, based on all of the WorthPoint Sales I was seeing. Even if not a Dresden.
Then bring it some where for them!!! Sure, we will impose a $75 delivery charge, then I will deliver it for them. HaHaHa…
05/24/2018 at 7:35 am in reply to: Victorian porcelain figurine – trying to figure out hallmark #40894Sharyn:
Don’t know if this is any help or not.
I did some looking yesterday on just our “marks” reference guides. Even did a crown plus a letter breakdown and didn’t see anything close. But Habnab mentioned Dresden Lace and I did do some drilling on that. Yes found about 63 figurine sold posting on WorthPoint that look very similar in “style”. Even the base gold detailing is similar. But only one showed any type of marking and it had the Dresden mark which includes the word “Dresden”. But there are also some very close look alikes mixed in that group with other names one being Ardalt Japan. There is also an Enesco but very low price on most Enesco stuff.
Italy, France and germany were all mentioned in various titles. Even one with Capodimonte in one.
If I think of any other mark reference sources other than the ones you mention, which we also use, I will re-post. Hate these types of close but no cigar types of references. Do you have a $27 item or a $270 item. All references have some similar chareristics but none are a dead for sure match.
Repeating and older SL post.. Describe as if there are no photos, photograph as if there is no verbal description, price it high as a kite and then take offers and see what you get back. So, go fishing in other words.
Good luck…
JM – Let’s see what answers we can get. Your Fox collar and we have a full length white Azurine Mink Coat that I paid $3,750 for back in the 70’s. It was a used coat them so it was even older than that. Mind you this way back befoe real fur became the issue it is today, so pardon us, and I also know many on here would not buy, wear or sell such an item and I agree whole heartely. But the question is what about something already acquired, inherited, etc.
Any input on the reselling of “real” animal items barring the fact that acquisition was made way prior to today’s social stand on the issues of real animals being used in garment manufactured-garments? Just a question.
We have seen fur coats, stoles and wraps, fur hats and jackets still being put on mannequins and sold at some of the antique malls and being sold. Someone at our former mall location suggested putting them online and showing only to the foreign GSP countries where it is very cold. But I questioned whether import rules and regulations would prevent any sales or the VAT would be sky high.
So just curious..
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
05/23/2018 at 8:11 am in reply to: New Catalog Based Search & Ebay's Re-Structured Business Model Plans #40787Amen!! Thank you Jay and Ryanne.>> Now a question: “How Do You Ship a Cap?” … LOL π
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This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Yep saw that on one of our monitors a little while ago while Susan and I were listing. She said the same thing as you AdvE. She also said hopefully they may have some way to monitor the crazy things people also return for and catch them at that.
AYS: We’ll see.
mdc at MDCG
In WonderLister they haven’y gotten the Etsy interface reay to go live yet. Sometime toward August. But Shopify is working and it uses tags.
So what WL did was build a tags field and a vendor field into their main listing form. So as we go down the blank listing form and filling in fields just as everyone does on Ebay, when we come to the field that says tags we eneter them in there. When WL posts our listing to Shopify, it posts all the tags just as we have them on our listing form.
I have also spoken to the team at WL and I am assured by the team and also with my urgence, that same field will also put them into Etsy. But we will have to wait and see but all the tags are put into Shopify.
Also all of the item specifics and the condition field from Ebay is auto inserted into the description area of our Shopify listing.
Basically on our Shopify listing about everything is auto inserted. Shipping, weights, sizes, photos, etc. We only have to select a channel [a shopify thing] and double check it and then click publish.
I did 936 total listings from Ebay to Shopify in about 2 to 3 hours and everything that is on Ebay is on our Shopify listings.
We use the Shopify store as basically a place to have a complete backup of our Ebay store for the time being.
Mike at MDC Galleries
Take a look at the reports and Financial data they will give you. I could not see any type of robust reports from InkFrog whereby SixBit and WonderLister do have Finacial type of reports. Programs such as these are not just an alternative listing programs, they should be intergrated. enterprise type of programs.
Customer support functions, with buyer data capture, all sales can be filtered by georgraphical location, [this will be real important if Congress passes any type of tax reform or laws that require us to report income from each state, and a program such as this should be able to sort and filter your current inventory, past inventory, and sold inventory in a huge amount of various ways.There are some prgrams out there that are more listing type programs that were built by trying to emulate Turbo Lister and succedded and unlike Turbo Lister works, doesn’t glitch and is faster than the old Turbo Lister, but they are still a glorified listing APP.
Here is something to try with Ink Frog. Go to the WonderLister and SixBit web sites and print out a copy of what all these programs show in the table that shows what they offer and can do. Sort of a side by side comparison chart you make yourself. Then call InkFrog or type the list and send to them and ask them can they do everything on your list [in other words what SB & WL] can do. And if not then see how many other things it can do. If they provide atleast a comparable set of utlity tools for you as a seller then maybe you should look for a more robust program for about the same or less money.
I did this research for years and it was pretty hard to find anything in the price range T-Satt, Mark S. and I pay that will do all of what WL and SB does. There are several out there but not $20 or $30 per month but hundreds per month.
But that’s just an opinion of an old guy sitting at a computer in Atlanta! That and fifty cents will get you a half a cup of coffee. π
05/22/2018 at 2:16 pm in reply to: New Catalog Based Search & Ebay's Re-Structured Business Model Plans #40669Funny RTWV: One thing no body has mentioned is “Promoted Listings”. I use Promo. Listings on many of our items as well as run Sales every week or so.
With Promoted Listings you are basically giving Ebay a percentage of your Sales to get “Special Placements” in Promotions, offerings and the such. In a sense “paying” them for extra exposure. Bonanza does the same thing just called something else.
It is based on a sliding scale. When you sign up or create a promoted listing there is a chart that comes with the .CSV Excel file that shows you what the “average going rate that is being paid by other sellers” is offering. In most cases it is 5-6 1/2% in our categories. So I would think that clicking on 6% and higher and basically just paying Ebay for more advertising and exposure will get you seen more.
Maybe that is where they may also be headed. I bet if you clicked on 25% or 35% of the Sale price of an item, bet they would show you all over the place, above others, on special pages, etc., etc.
Nobody has seemed to mention that out of all this discussion.
mike at MDCG
05/22/2018 at 1:44 pm in reply to: New Catalog Based Search & Ebay's Re-Structured Business Model Plans #40659Aaaw gosh, shucks, by golly Jay and Ryanne Love Me! HaHaHa LOL π π
I have to hide my SL posts now because if Susan comes up to photograph and she sees me typing into the forum, she says not again, you need to be listing. Honey it is ABL not … ABP [Always be Posting] π
mike at MDCG
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This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
05/22/2018 at 1:33 pm in reply to: New Catalog Based Search & Ebay's Re-Structured Business Model Plans #40654I too agree with long run on ‘blocks”. Just one long paragraph is a problem for me also.
But, as far as 4 or 5 sentences, don’t do many of those. usually 4 or 5 paragraphs, and some longer as you well know. But if you think those of mine explaining things like the difference between reproductions and real prints, or color theory and how we see color in reproductions fall into your def. of “too long and should just self publish”, then I will try to just keep them short.
Now that you mention it maybe a blog connected onto our new Shopify store amy be just the thing. I can always just say here, for more info. go to… and put in a link.
Will have to give that some thought.
Mike at MDCG
I was trying to give a sugesstions to the previous poster on how he could use flat rate boxes through the system undetected. I have a huge inventory of boxes all computerized and placed on metal storage racks and use my box resizer several times a day.
The technique I outlined is usually for larger items or only occasionaly when I have something that is light and is going to go First Class and a FRB is a perfect size. it is more a matter of using a FRB for a class it doesn’t fit.
Out of 10 or 12 years, our discount is so good, that I hardly ever see where the FRB is less cost for the most items we ship.
So, think maybe you got me wrong. I have close to 300 shipping boxes on our Excel inventory sheet, both USPS and FedEx and can grab and go with close to a perfect fit most of the time and if not then down size one to fall under the wirgt mark to save a little if only a few ounces over.
The “let’s play..”Hide a FRB in Plastic” and ship it cheaper is only done once in a blue moon, blue the black plastic wrap is a way to hide that. That is all I was trying to say.
Mike at MDCG
I hear ‘ya. I had an interesting day yesterday with the WL team. Not until last night at 11:45 PM did i get it worked out with them and i had been up here working since 4:30 AM. Long ass day.
There was an error code popping up and freezing up WL and they kept saying it was because of the way Ebay was sending back data to their dBase. I said it was a glitch in WL that was because I was including some custom fields I had created in WL into a Search, then multiple sort and trying to view in a custom view.
Yep.. after 3 updates revisions to WL last night, it is fixed and guess what, not Ebay’s issue. Imagine that.Point being, that I was real close to downloading SixBit’s Free version and drawing down all my Ebay listings into SB. Based on the hours I spent with the WL guys.. UUggh last night I would have already had my complete Ebay store brought over into SB and who knows, maybe even gotten the Etsy cross list folders set-up.
Question…how is that SB Etsy interface working out in SB. Based on last niht and the July deadline of WL to have their Etsy interface built, I can just see a bunch of issues coming up down the line in the near future. i just don’t know if I want to go through this kind of stuff much more. Getting too old. I just want to get my items listed, cross psoted and have an APP handle it automatically.
Mike at MDCG
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This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by
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