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OK.. If that works, we will see. I just went out into the storage area and told all my inventory ” it is time to get the hell out”, “go find a new home”. “The bins are tired of enabling you and carrying you for all this time”. “Go forth and find your new home” “and be quick about it”.
So, we will see, Guess I better get ready for a thousand Sales over the next few days. Boy, I am sure glad you clued me in on this “new thechnique”. I had no idea what may be the reason for periodic slow sales, but no I am enlightened. It is just a matter of implementing “tough love” to our inventory. LOL.. needed some humor. In the m iddle of listing 38 new items and getting “punch listing drunk”.
I am right there with you T-Satt. Early bird for me. I try to be in the office between 5-6:30 am. I have an alarm set in case I over sleep, but usually been working for awhile in the office when it goes off.
Now, Susan and the cats. Three of a kind. By the time they drift into the office, I have worked for 4 to 5 hours, drank a whole pot of coffee, and am ready to go out to an early lunch. LOL
By 6 PM I am ready for an hour or so of rest and research [R&R], a few videos and then lights out around 9 PM. If I have a lot to do, I will wake up at 3-4 AM and hit the office. Seniors also need less sleep. 6 hours and I am good to go. 8 Hrs. great, more and I feel like I have wasted time and lost opportunities.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
I agree with AdvenE: No need to rush. Take your time. Research and check sources. If this guy was famous and did work for the stars, does he have an estate. Are any of his relatives maybe interested in it. Is Burt Reynolds or his heirs maybe interested. Maybe that tax number can be back tracted. Maybe there is a museum of this guys stuff.
Who knows, just throwing out ideas along the lines of following AdvenE line of thinking.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
From day one we started putting mney into the business. Just like a corp. start up loan, we started using anything we thought would help us succeed. We are too old to wait for years to figure things out. Don’t have that much time to spare. It’s kick start the business and have some fun doing it or not.
We have probably had Worthpoint for 5-6 years. Kovels about as long, only we used to buy the annual published book. Big oversized book about 2.5″ thick.
We also strated building our infrastructure rather quickly also. We bought storage cabinets, bins, shelving, printers, 2 computers, etsy store subscription, Shopify store subscription, have a full working art-painting studio combined with wood working and framing shop [600 sq. ft.], fully working separate admin. office/shipping area 320 SF], and if the house next door became available we would consider maybe grabbing that up.
We started out running 6 antique booths at the largest antique mall east of the Mississippi River in Monroe, GA. at $90 each per month. Within 3 years we knew that was a lousy business model. Only person making money at those places are the landlords.
I and wife Susan both fully retired over 2 years ago and then being an entreprenuer type I knew I would just prefer to work my own business and do something Susan and I could do together and do day or weekend trips. So we came out of the shoot running, growing and plow back investing in the company.
We had 3-4 thousand items in the booths but when we went to the online venues we begin to shed off all of the low end, non quality stuff. We used to have one and two dollar items in the booth. not any more. I have posted in the past how we went through tons of death piles after pulling everything out of the booths. we sent close to a 600-700 large, non-shippable furniture and table type items to a local auction house and moved the rest home. Then slowly sorted through them and donated what we didn’t want. we ended up with about a thousand items which we thought was worth time to list. Now for the past several years we have been listening here at SL, working our business, learning more all the time and if something is going to cost us a few dollars a month, we go for it. At almost 70 years old, I am not going to waste 3 or 4 more years trying to figure out if something will help. We do it, use it and if not a fit then we dump it.
So, we went into it knowing we would invest in our future years and we had several smaller sources of income that carried us. We of course have Susan’s and my retirement money monthly / Social Security [for what that is worth], we have a 1,200 sq. ft. full kitchen, 2 bedroom basement apt. we rent out, I sell some art locally and we now have the online venues.
And to date we owe nobody, but boy do we have some money tied up in Glass and Brass 🙂 we call it in inventory. But our unit Cost per item has come way down over the last few years and our avg. selling prices have gone up.
So there you have our crazy story in a nutshell. We aren’t scavenging to get to retirement, we are scavenging to STAY in retirement!!
mike at MDCG in Atl.
It might mean that Ebay is not the right platform. Maybe a auction house for higher end items. That $46,000 saddle probably was sold through Sotheby’s or another high end auction house. If u are close to one of them take it in or they also have web sites and for FREE you can send in photos and descriptions and they will let you know if it is something they would like to auction off for you. Saddle Maker to the Stars seems like a craftsman artist who may have some interest for them.
mike at MDCG
You are welcome AdvE:.. One of the other interestings things about both is that they both have a dictionary-glossary of makers marks and hallmark stampings. It helps to identify the marks on the bottom of certain pieces. We have thought we had Japanese pcs ins the past and upon further looking and using their marks guides we found out they were Veitnamese charcters.
The fake identification on Kovels helps. We found out the difference between raised “Roseville” letters [embossed], and recessed “Roseville” letters [de-bossed]. One is the real way Roseville marked their pottery and the ones made in fake molds. After learning that we can now identify the fakes from the reals at auctions within half a second.
Kovels also provides a lot of history on real old pices. When the factory came into being, who founded it, how long in business, when they went out of business or if they were bought up like Fenton and the new owners started re-making the Fenton pieces using the old molds. all very handy things to know if you start to move into the higher collectibles.
Case in point. I am researching a Moser piece we got Sunday. Look up Moser Decanters and see the price ranges. We got this piece for $30 bucks, so now my job is find out if we have the one worths thousands or hundreds but most are all over $450. Not bad for $30 bucks.But will definitely use both WorthPoint and Kovels along with some auction houses to Research.
Think you will find them a “professional tool”. I also said, professional tools for professional people being used in a professional manner. [another one of my sayings I like to quote to the employees, especially when they wanted me to buy them expensive equipment].
you know who, from you know where … 🙂
That is the beauty of WorthPoint. As long as you are not looking at something that sold 10 years ago. That is Jay’s peeve about WorthPoint. Prices that old are of no value except when dealing with real 100 year old antiques.
I find things on Ebay all the time that only show several in the 90 day sold. And at times those sellers had no idea what they had or just saw one at a low price and then matched theirs to that “low” price. That is what keeps the market prices on some things flat because as I call it, “it is a case on the blind leading the blind, down a dark alley on a moonless night”. I love that saying.
we take the highest price we can find, making sure if the highest was unopned, or still with it’s box, or something that makes it special, and we take those high prices and bump up to about 20% higher. We strive to sell ours at a price higher than the highest of WP. We will become the newest highest seller of solds on WP. We also feel we are doing our part in raising the price points of our items instead of contributing to drive the prices down to a flat point.
It doesn’t work in all cases because of a Sale we may run and then maybe taking an offer on top of that. But by pricing high, we have all the wiggle room in the world to run Sales and take offers and still end up around that WorthPoint High.
Jay has said before and it’s in several of the past audio posts to price high. Then I have asked numerous times on the forums, how high is high and no answers. That is why we came up with that crazy mark-up system we use.
If 90 day solds show 4 items sold all for $20 and I see 3 that sold for $75 on WorthPoint, then I price at about $85, will take offers and run a few sales, hoping to sell at the $65 to $75 range. Now for atleast the next 90 days ours will be the highest sold on Ebay and hopefully some of those people who do not do any research on anything but Ebay will see ours and then price their next item-find closer to the $75. Thus in turn helping to raise those prices instead of lowering them.
Before Jay jumps over onto my monitor, no reasearch on this, just our version of his position of pricing high. Love Jay always saying that. He says price high, so we do!! LOL 🙂 As high as we can if we can support it with not only WorthPoint, but also Kovels. Kovels is the bible of pricing for collectibles. Antique stores, dealers, always have this years Kovels Pricing Guide around. And it is full of photos of how to tell fakes from reals, and also tells if the market is increasing or decreasing. I have seen dealers with 25 years of back copies of Kovels books on their shelves.
we have an annual online subscription and get a lot of our glass, ceramic, and collectibles of interest from them. Much more so than WorthPoint.
Hope this sheds some light on your inquiry…
Mike at MDCG in Atl.
And if I am not mistaken, SmartPost uses the USPS for the “last leg” of the journey. FedEx flies your package to the closest town they package is going to. Then at that last juncture, they actually turn the package over to the USPS to do the actual ‘to the home delivery”. That being given, then the FedEx SmartPost system has to be proticular and keep within the guidelines of the USPS service also, on top of the Dim. weight issue. 1,728 cubic inches is USPS cutoff before dim. weight, I belive. LxHxW so a 12x12x12=1,728. Larger it will still gobut you may see that oversize bump.
That is why some on here are saying watch the dim weight. It is not just an easy peezt, thought process that SmartPost is always the cheapest.
But I stand for correction, but I am thinking this is maybe correct.
Mike at MDCG
So, if I am reading the scenario correctly, you have “Shipped” 20 items – not sold 20 items. If u have only been doing it for a week, I am assuming most of the items haven’t even arrived yet and if the buyers take there sweet time in “Approving-OKing” your shipments I am guessing you haven’t been paid anything yet? Is that correct? You pulled, packed, paid for shipping [I guess if you don’t get paid up front] and are waiting on your buyers “blessings” and hoping you will see some money??
These are just questions, but you can see how I am reading what was mentioned. As Ryanne said, sounds like a big “Nightmare”.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
I thought the same thing as soon as my eyes hit that phrase. I clicked delete this post and moved on. No way am I going to pull, pack, ship, wait for transit and a buyers approval before I get paid.
I think I would like to buy on there. Bet I can find fault with everything I buy. Sounds like a way for buyers to get free merchandise to me. Unless there is more to the story that maybe isn’t being told.
Mike at MDCG
Here is a cut and paste from a Reply I did further up on this link on 4/27/18. I included the Worthpoint link.
Go to this link also and one can see several jackets. The highes being about $1,100 the next $900 on down to about $450. The $1,100 one says it was custom made for Burt Reynolds. Bohlin made saddles for the stars in Hollywood, so I guess some clothing also.
So the high one was $1,100 and the lowest was $450. His saddles go for a lot and one he did for Burt Reynolds also went for $46,000. WOW..
Hey AdE.. The link provided in the first reply takes you to Worthpoint that has 3 of these lsited and sold. Check it out and maybe some of the data gleened from several of the sold listings will provide some of the data on your list, but probably not all of it.
here it is again…. https://www.worthpoint.com/inventory/search?query=bohlin+jacket&category=
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
And when others who don’t know the real value go looking for “SOLDS” so they can compare and use those numbers, they price low. That is why the Ebay 90 Solds list can be misleading also. Imagine if an unknowing saw several of these listed in the 90 day Solds, they might list at a BIN Fixed price of $25 dollars and think they are pricing real high.
This type of thing actually drags the market down I think just the way the competitive race to the bottom does. If more than one source is used other than Ebay 90 day Solds and a few current ones you may find that many had sold for hundreds and even thousands. That is where a subscription to WorthPoint or Kovels.com may come in handy. I look at these research databases as “tools”. And I used to say, “Professional tools, for professional people, being used in a professional manner”, to my employees numerous times. But to some, guessing is OK by them, fast, no time spent on research and no monthly fees for database subscriptions.
Next time you see them, snipe them up and then resell, if you can.
But T-Satt.. since you are using SixBit and guess you have automated the end at 30 days then automatically relist at 30 using SixbIt that to you it is the same as GTC. Auto. end and auto relist, over and over again for 60 months is the same as GTC only you get a new ID number every 30 days and Ebay thinks it is a new listing.
Unless I am missing the boat completely.
We don’t always run Sales. We have gone the past two weeks without one and things have been selling at full price with all of that built in. Don’t forget WonderLister handles all the Sales automatically for us. When we want a Sale pt on we click Run Sale and enter the percentage and tell it when to end and it does it for us.
As for Offers. We either get them or not and that has always been the case. Either you take them or you don’t so nothing new there.
This is not anything complicated or extra. It is using just one very high price at 10 to 12 times what we buy for. Then we may run a sale or not and we may take an offer or not either on or off sale. Same as usual.
We did about $500 last week on fewer items than when we do the Sales. During Sales periods or if we get offers on a lot of items we have to sell more to make the same.
When you price an item at what you want, then no Sales for you as you said, but then no free shipping either because you haven’t covered that expense and you can’t take an offer. You buy for $8 sell for 4 times the money $32, then take it or leave it.
My thinking is give the perception of value added, buyer getting discounts and if they don’t care or want it cheaper then they buy at set price. On these types of items unless the Buyer is going to TerraPeak, WorthPoint, shopping antique booths, then the “worth” of an item, is what they are willing to pay. If there are a bunch online already and we didn’t see that then our mistake. If there are a bunch and we see them, we usually don’t buy. We look for harder to find type of items, most of them time. But we do have some that are competitive and then we don’t do all of the extra built ins and just do 4 times the money and let it go at that.
Just our way of thinking. We saw way too many antique booth guys buy for $10, sell for $20, pay expenses and they were in the red.
