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Sure was. I read it. Here it is again for review.
almasty wrote:
I had one angry Rosicrucian take down like 20 Rosicrucian pamphlet lots of mine a few years ago. That still stings. I paid $100 for them and barely made my money back on them before that happened (I suspect that’s how I ended up getting them for so cheap in the first place!). I still don’t know what to do with the lots I have left, ugh.
It makes sense when it’s the literature of the organization, to an extent. I don’t understand how the patches can be considered in the same class of “belonging” to the organization as the “secret” literature could (it’s really sleep inducing stuff, and it has for the most part been reprinted repeatedly anyway).
If they do contact Ebay, you’ll probably just get an “ebay removed this item” letter from them, even if the vest has already been sold. I know it makes no sense, but I guess they just send out letters like that sometimes to protect themselves.
I bought a late 1800s/early 1900s Masonic robe several years ago off Ebay for really cheap with no problems. That one was issued by the Masonic Supply Company. I see they go for a LOT now! But anyway, they have no problem with their clothing items being resold on Ebay. This organization that tried to buy it back from you is probably just upset that they weren’t able to buy it back first. That’s why they are saying “oh, please return it to us as a gift.”
I find this sort of amusing because I’m listing through a large box of Masonic material right now. Lets see if the crazies come out for me (please don’t)!
Agree with Jay. We too have sold masonic and Fraternal club items. Copyrighted doesn’t mean you can’t sell it, it just means you can’t reproduce it and make more of them, i.e. copy and mfg. for resale.
Every visual artist, painter, sculptor, photographer, musician in the world has copy rights to their material / art object as soon as they create it and sign it. But onces someone buys it, they can resell it for whatever amount they want. They own the art object BUT you can’t have Giclee prints, photograph it or repaint a copy of it and then turn around and sell your copy.
As Jay would Say [hey that rhymnes], List it and Forget it. Resell it if you can.
Look up Robert Rauschenburg [visual artist] and find the story about where he sold one of his earlier works for $185. Then decades later he was at the Sotheby’s Park and Benet Auction house when it sold for Millions. A reporter asked him if he felt cheated that he had sold it for so little and now it went for so much more. He replied, I thought it was a good price at the time. He [the customer] bought it, he owns it and he can sell it for whatever he can get for it.
We will look for it online and good luck.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Arts in Atlanta
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This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
04/12/2018 at 11:55 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37559Thanks for that info. T-S. Which reminds me I asked one of our agents a few months back and she never got back to me. I will check with the other one. The first was an independent agent and the one I am going to call now is our auto-home insurance agent. Probably one I should have called first anyway.
mc at mdc in atl.04/12/2018 at 10:12 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37555Or sued for selling old planters, plates and wall decor! :-).
Now maybe a home owners rider for the destruction of your inventory by fire, water from a busted pipe since you are in a basement, or something like that, maybe.
We use MileIQ. Best out of several we used.
Auto mapping of every trip you take over 5 MPH. It records mileage as long as I have my phone with me. It will eventually learn certain address and auto classify them as personal and business. example your Doctors office vs. a thrift store or auction house. It shows every trip as a one line summary and you either swipe it left for personal and right for business. It also shows you 2 small postage size maps side by side. Your start from and go to. So if you don’t remember where you went, enlarge the map and it shows you that you went to the local Home Depot.
Also you don’t have to classify your trips at the exact minute you are done, it synchs with the cloud and you can sit down at your laptop or desktop and just do it every couple of weeks. The maps help us remember where we went. It also recognizes when you have stopped and not moved for a while. It records those as separate trips. example. Leave office and go to a yard sale=business then that swipes right for business, then crank up and go to lunch, so that is recorded as a trip, but you would swipe that left for personal, then crank up and go to an estate sale, then that would swipe right.
It has a dashboard that shows the numbers and shows what they add up to. How many personal and how many business miles per month. Also has a great, tidy IRS report of your cumulative mileage for year end. How many business miles vs. how many personal. And things like Doctors, dentist visits once categorized in the very beginning are reported because those trips are deductible also. It also constatnly shows you the IRS deductible amount you will receive. We have had several thousands of dollars of deductible trips the last few years, all tracked by MileIQ and all we do is include that printed hard copy of the report to our CPA.
Going to Staples for Office supplies, also a business trip. It does all this automatically and all u have to do is swipe the line alert left or right. Once it memorizes repeat addresses and you classify as a certain category, it remembers that and you will have to swipe it less and less.
It is a very valuable business tool and takes the pain of the effort of keeping a small written diary in the car and always having to write the start and end mileage down and the reason for the trip.
If you are a serious part time or full time business person this is a must. The fact that it goes with you on your phone and not attached or plugged in to the car, you never have to remember to go get it especially if you jump into another car as a passenger. It is on your phone and where ever you and your phone go it is automatically recording your trips.
Check out it’s web site to see screen shots of how it works and the various views and data it presents. You get 40 trips per month for free. If you go over it is like a buck or so for unlimited. I think we do $12 or so for a yearly subscription. Considering it tracked almost $3,000 worth of business deductions last year, it is well worth it.
Hope this helps…
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
I took a look for you… Even without a subscription you should be able to see the text-description just not the price. This verbiage is copy & paste from the highest sold for $150 on March 2011.
There was a higher price at $165 BUT it was for 3 different issues of which yours was one of the 3. So who knows how much only the #1 issue would be. But seems the larger size is the original.VERY VERY RARE LOWRIDER MAGAZINE ISSUE # 1 IN NEAR MINT CONDITION , THIS IS MY LAST # 1 I AM SELLING ,THIS IS OUT OF MY PERSONNAL COLLECTION ,THIS IS A GREAT COLLECTABLE AND THE ONLY 1 ON EBAY ,NO STAINS RIPS OR TEARS ,STAPLES ARE VERY TIGHT NO LOOSE PAGES ,SO GOOD LUCK , I ALSO HAVE A # 11 LOWRIDER MAGAZINE IN MY STORE , THANKS FOR LOOKING ,PLEASE SEE MY OTHER AUCTIONS FOR MORE RARE VINTAGE MAGAZINES Check out my other items !Be sure to add me to your favorites list ! SIZE IS 8-1/2 X 11 SO PLEASE DONT ASK ME IF IT IS A REPRINT IT IS AN ORIGINAL ISSUE FROM 1977 NOT THE REPRINT FROM 2000 THE SIZE OF THE MAGAZINE IS THE WAY YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE, THE REPRINT MEASURES 7-3/4 X 10-1/2 ,,,, I HAVE SOLD ORIGINAL ISSUES ON EBAY FOR 200.00 WITH FREE SHIPPING IN THE PAST SO DONT MISS THIS CHANCE TO OWN THIS CLASSIC ,AINT NO TELLIN WHEN ANOTHER ORIGINAL # 1 WILL COME UP FOR SALE ON EBAY.
Hope this helps,
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
04/09/2018 at 4:27 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37440Funny AdventureE: I see we were thinking the same thing at the same time and posted probably within seconds of each other.
We use Goggle drive, shoot photos with phone and send to our folders on Goggle drive. Folders are by the month and year but if we get faster and more items will just create folders every two weeks or weekly . Then using WonderLister [you know the drill], we click open one of the many templates we have, fill in the custom fields we have in that particular template, click on photos which opens automatically on the Google drive master folder, clcik on those photos and click submit and up it goes. By the time Anatarestar typed all the info for Suzanne Wells our listing would be up and listed.
Just don’t see any time saver there. Our assistant works directly from the object that is sitting in her work station after we photograph it. So other than assigning an inventory sku number when the item comes into our office, we only type information one time and that is into the listing form. we have 3 work stations, 3 scales, double screen on each computer. We tag, photo, fill out a form, attach photos and upload. Pretty easy and straight forward.Mike at MDC
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This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
04/09/2018 at 4:16 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37437Sounds like you have already done all the work for her. you have everything you need except attaching the photos. Seems like redundant work. by the time you type everything for her, you might as well have typed it into a template you have created and saved.
But no offense, and just my opinion of quickly thinking about what you said.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
04/09/2018 at 4:07 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37435BTW Julie: here is her web site… http://suzanneawells.com/
check it out
We have a close family friend that my wife used to work with who lives only 1/2 mile or less [two minutes], that lists for us on Fri. Sat and some sundays for 3 to 4 hours per day 10 to 12 hours per week. we do $10 per hour with her and she does about 6 to 8 or more +/- per hour, so it equals out to be about $1.50 per item. OK for our $30-$35 items and up.
She will be starting to help us with my art portfolios of prints next week. She already has done some foreign stamps for us and will also start on a whole lot of US Mint Stamps after the art prints.
04/09/2018 at 3:59 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37432Yeah I agree. If I remeber one of her blog post videos after she had been working with him for a while she started sounding very down about the whole things and was polite but said she wasn’t going to be able to fulfill his needs without coming right out and saying he was a big bunch of trouble, but I heard that was the case later on.
Suzzanne is here in Atlanta and it wouldn’t be that far of a ride south for you to maybe make an appointment with her and go see her. Worthpoint went public not too long ago so guess his company is doing OK but I too would love to get into some of his warehouses. I also saw a few photos Suzanne posted and it all seemed like a big mess of boxes just piled eveywhere. I think you hit on it when you said “hoarder”. Bet you he still has everything he had when Suzanne last tried to help him out.
04/09/2018 at 12:46 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37415There is an interesting thread that may even still be in Suzzanne Wells own blog about where she contracted to list all of the items for the owner and founder of Worthpoint.com. Turns out he is or was a big buyer and also had numerous [and probably still has] warehouses here in Atlanta full of his purchases / items from cars and boats down to small jewelry. His corporate headquarters is here in Atlanta and used to be on Piedmont Rd.
In any case Suzanne and her crew worked a contract with him to list his stuff on line. But she had to back out of the deal for several reasons which she explains over several episodes of her thread. Very interesting story about her crew, there time, how she hires others [sub-contracts] work out to them to do the work and the speed and accuracy they deliver. I think I recall she was going to take years to complete his listings and the amount of money that would have been spent was large also. I also think I recall the Worthpoint owner being problematic to work with.
Very interesting story to research and read about. I came across it while looking for our first assistant a few years back. Guess you can Google Suzzane H. Wells and Worthpoint together and come up with a link somehow.
No problem Mark. :
Short on time today but will try to answer / shed light on your questions:
What do you expect to do with Shopify? >> First to have a complete total back up of our Ebay store as it sits with item specifics, descriptions, prices along with photos as a secure back-up to the Ebay and Etsy stores. Also to have a store of our own, which we run, our way without any Ebay rules. Sell to, ship to, and ship how we wnat. In other words total control of our store and also once sales build, to be able to listless on other platforms so we save on selling fees and the like.
How are you going to market it? We are building a 4th site that will be more of an informational site about all of the art, prints, paintings, editions, antiques, fakes, reproductions, how made, etc., etc. that we will use as what is called a “funnel through” site. Anyone visiting that site using any of the thousands of key words on those several hundred pages will see tons of links back to our Shopify store for “buying opportunities”. This is a technique that has been used for some time by more successful online sellers. Also we will be montizing internally within that info. site.
I was under the impression that Shopify would not work well for the type of items most of us are doing on ebay. Well that could be true depending on what you sell. We have built up items more about home decor, Asian decor, art glass, colletor art prints and abstract original prints and paintings. Much of this is not actually on Ebay or Etsy. We have been saving for our own store but some are going into the Ebay-Etsy stores shortly.
What is your take on this and should I be going to Shopify? >>> If you don’t have a background in SEO, using Google Tools [several for keyword research, ad campaigns, etc.] then a Shopify Store will just sit there and not much traffic will come your way. That is why we are going to use a funnel through site and a ton of SEO tools we have been studying over the past 5 years to drive traffic along with an email mailing list of thousands of customers who have bought from us through the years. we will be direct marketing to them.
What would be the best type of items to cross list on Shopify? >> We are going to mostly place high end over $75 and up to $350 art work, paintings, glass sculture, known names of home decor and such. As I said earlier if all you do is copy items to Shopify they will just sit. You have to have a feel for online marketing, traffic building, strong SEO skills. We have been studying and building a web site of our own that is hosted by us and that will be going live by end of year. That site has a ton of online utilities that is included in the tool kit we have at our disposal.
Many of the artists we have followed for years got there start on Ebay or Etsy but as there customer, collector base grew they gravitated away from Ebay and Etsy 100% and support themselves and sell there art through their own sites. That is sort of a long term goal for us. But we may always keep the Etsy / Ebay store as a back up also.
We have a complete art making, sculpture creation, wood working shop in our basement and now that we are retired, we are going to be making more of our own art work, home decor mirrors, clocks, table sculpture as mini mfg. and be buying less, and less of mass. mfg. items from the wild. Unless higher end items.
Just any insights that you have on Shopify. >>> Shopify is not a market selling platform like Ebay and Etsy. It will just sit there. It is a shell. Shopify is just like Wix, Volusion, Magento and others. It is a store hosting site and we can have our own domain name, our own domain email addresses, and direct communications with customers directly.
Also about these venues, if “you build it, they WILL NOT come!”. You will have to build the traffic. Very unlike Ebay and Etsy that has already done the work to drive traffic, but it drives it to their categories, not neccassarily “your” site. So if you want Murano Italian Art Glass Sculpture, the searcher will see everyone that has a Murano piece. On hopify, if they clcick on a Google feed they will only come to our site. So going to Shopify is very much like opening up your own Brick and Mortar Store only online. You have to do the marketing and have a marketing plan all on your own. That is what our informational site and the tools that come with it that we subscribe to provide. This is more of what we have been concentrating on than building a mega store on Ebay.
But as Jay says, we always have to feed the beast, but in the Shopify case, the beast we will be feeding will be our own beast, of our own creation. But as a contemporary artist and print maker, I am more interested now that I am retired or creating my own art, and home decor items and feeding the online venues with my “self made inventory”.
I think it was Christine that mention here on SL one time, that if I ever got a site of my own she would be interested in following it because of all the details I usually post about art work, how to distinquish real prints from repro prints, color, art paper, etc. We have over 40 years of expertise in the fine art area and art related home decor niche, and that is what got us thinking a lot more about doing our own web site and blog in a more “niched market”, not a general store, used, vintage items like our current Ebay store.
Guess it is going to be an interesting journey for a 69 year old, retired artist. A journey of more of personal interest and creative expression as we begin to go toward that horizon in the sky. We don’t have many years left to pursue our passion and to try to make money within it to boot.Our company slogan is Live to Create and Celebrate and that is what we are going to try to do over our final years here.
Hope this helps fill in some of your questions about Shopify and similiar sites.
Kindest Regards,
MDC Concepts, Inc.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta-
This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Sure thing. have some updates.
My last feedback from the engineering team was Spring release for Shopify and Fall for Etsy.Well Shopify is about done. I got an app update about 3 weeks ago for testing. I started using and found some bugs. After a bunch of screen shots and about a week of communication and re-coding all of what I was seeing is now corrected. As of Monday of this week I can now highlight one line in WonderLister, right click for a drop down menu, click on send to Shopify and BINGO! everything moves to our Shopify Store dashboard as a draft. All Item specifics, all photos [has some real issues there-but all re-coded], the full desciption, condition, prices. Also WL now has a vendor and tags section and those get transferred also. Everything for a complete listing except for one or two fields specific to Shopify.
In order to test further for the WL team, I moved all 924 [st that time] listings over to Shopify and they all went just fine. Then deleted them and did them a second time. So, as of now, it is looking good. The support and engineering team are working internally on WL now, creating the Folders that will be needed to hold the “Listed on Shopify” items.
At this point I can go live with our Shopify store as far as WonderLister is concerned but I need to do some more design and organizational work myself inside of our Shopify dashboard. I can create my own WL folders for now manually. So maybe a few weeks +/- before a new update relaese that will go public, hopefully.etsy is coming along also, even though it is further behind than the Shopify module. In my version I am using, I see several commands that are showing functions for Etsy. There is a send to Etsy command button and a system folder that says “Send to Etsy” but as of yesterday, nothing is sent to Etsy. I have not been asked to do any Etsy testing yet so I would speculate still a few months out along with the fact that the Shopify module needs to get finished up first.
After I get our Shopify store online I will let you guys know and then you can cross reference our Ebay store to Shopify and see how things look. Would appreciate any comments on how things might be improved as far as the WL to Shopify transfer goes. Would be interested in feedback so I can pass along to the engineering team and help improve things for WonderLister.
WL as moving complete Ebay listings over to Shopify about every 10-15 seconds or so. So for 1,000 listings it would take about 2-1/2 hours or so. Also I could do them in smaller scheduled batches. Wonderlisters bulk editor is functional for changes on the listings within WL just as a normal function that we already have. It will just have to be submitted to Ebay as well as Shopify manually for now, but automatic submission to both channels is hopefully coming very shortly. I was asking for that just last week and they said it is coming.
Hope this info. helps somewhat.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Hey Mark.. Well if you lsiten to all of the Q&A things in that pod-cast, they cover most of this. And as i personally feel and said, I want total control of all of my items because we cross list. I have a lot of our items on Etsy, some on local channels and soon all of our inventory will be in our own store so I surely do not want our inventory to be any place other than at my finger tips [our storage facilties] so we can ship to anyone who buys from us on any platform.
And as you know, WonderLister is our main listing and command central dashboard. Their Shopify module is now going live and Etsy will soon follow. We will be able to sell on multi channel platforms, get all our financials in one spot and have our own centralized shipping point. So an Ebay program like they are exploring would have no interest to us. But sure makes me wonder what the underlying thought process is for ebay. To help provide a Seller service or do like Amazon and use it to clean house by implementing all the things you mention.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
I found it Jay. It is RockStarFlipper.com Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb2irbf4LBE
He shows a screen shot from Ebay sent out polling the issue of Ebay doing a fulfillment program. he is not saying it “is” going to be done, just that Ebay is poking around the edges for interest on a program like this. Of course he goes on the offer just his personal opinion on a program such as this as well as the scrolling screen on the right shows his audience responses to this. He goes on to compare a hypothetical Ebay type program to the Amazon model.
I was just asking if anybody else [SL member] had seen or heard anything about this anywhere else.
Note that at the 11:01 mark he starts the conversation and at 11:54 is where he shows a screen shot of the Ebay email sent out asking about a program of this sorts. The rest are just coversations and answering viewer questions, which again is just his personal opinion.
He brought up a comment on cross listing, which we do, and that would be problematic with Ebay holding our inventory and doing the shipping. We like to have complete control of our inventory and a program like this would take that control away. especially since we are real close now to opening our own Online Store which is where we will be selling directly to traffic coming directly from Google searches.
So just wondering what SL members might think about a topic such as this.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
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This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
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