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Congratulations .. as Ryanne said.. “INSANE”. Good job. 🙂
We sold an antique pickle jar [called a pickle castor] last week. Listed for $375 and it sold for $250. One just never knows.
mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Maybe overlooked one thing.
– Make what you sell. DIY creation of sewn items, wood crafts, jewelry, bird houses, candles, etc., etc. Upfront cost is more your time and less on the materials. Down side maybe no market for your items or you will have to create one. Probably pays very little for the time invested. But people on etsy do it and make a living I guess.mike in Atlanta
Jay.. Didn’t someone who went to the Vegas Conference give some numbers on that split? I think I recall reading in one of the SL posts from someone who went that the one of a kind, unique was something like only 17% or 27% of Ebay’s business. So round off and say about 2/3rds to 3/4ths are new items. And trying to remember further they posted that when asked about abandoning the unique, used sellers because they are such a lower percentage they were reassured the people asking the question that Ebay would not ever abandon those sellers / market? For some reason I thought I saw that here back in the summer.
But let’s hope they stick with us.
mike in Atlanta
Jay, yes they are very good knives. Maybe not equal to the heavy German brands we all know but in the same ballpark. They first came out way back you guys were kids and were offered on those TV infomercials when Popeal’s “Have a Maid” and “Pocket Fisherman” were being shown. They got sort of a bad rep for being on TV with with Ron Popel and his slicey, dicey things. They showed the knives cutting through cans and wood branches then slicing tomatoes paper thin.But my mom had a set in the sixties and they seemed to do the trick.
Maybe I can ask my daughter if her friend may want to give Christmas presents this year! LOL 🙂 If I can get a few sets maybe send a few to some of the SL members here. 🙂
Mike in Atlanta
Yes.. We got two John Deere leters about a year apart. One for saying John Deere even though it had a John deere logo on the cap and the second one for just showing the hat with the John Deere logo, which they said was a knock off hat because they had never used that color background on any of their embroidered logos.
But, coming in the next few weeks we will be listing 9 John Deere hats and I have them beat this time. They are brand new with tags and have the “Official” Authorized John Deere merchandise tags on them. Unfortunately they don’t go for very much, about $12 to $14 dollars each but we got all 9 for $5.00 at an auction. So they can lump it this time time. Ha..LOL 🙂
Our daughter has a friend who made a fortune and retired early with Cutco. He was an authorized Sales Rep and he went to all of the State and County Fairs and had an exhibition booth set up. He demonstarted the knives and talked with a head microphone [sure you have seen these type salesmen] showing what all they would cut and slice. He had about a 20 minute speal then sold sets to the audience that hung around and also took orders. He eventually then set up his own mini multi-tier marketing plan and he then bought volume and sold at a mark up to those he had recruited in his “down-line”. That is one reason Cutco doesn’t like side sales and online marketing by non “distributor” people because they may dump the products they can’t sell cheap and drag the price down and make it hard to sell them at these parties and events.
My daughter tells me her friend now owns 36 rental properties down in south Georgia somewhere and lives in a nice place somewhere around Atlanta. That’s a goal for Jay and Ryanne, 3 dozen AirBnB rentals.
Funny how some companies love for you to show the logo because it helps the brand, like Coca-Cola – Coke and Pepsi. They will take all the free advertising they can get, but someone like Velcro and they go ballistic just over mentioning the name.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
That’s a VERO Notification Letter. Welcome to the club. Most of us have gotten a few in our lives. Us for Velcro and John Deere. You just have to come up with a way to list it with out using the actual word Cutco. Velcro is “Hook and Loop” JD is “Farmer’s Tractor Hat”.
Maybe for Cutco… “Really nice, sharp knives”. Just not include the BRAND NAME “CUTCO”. That’s the infringement not re-selling really sharp, good kitchen knives.
What a world. LOL 🙂
mike in Atlanta
You guys get $75 dollars / $300 annual. Hard to forget that! 🙂
Interesting thought go from a basic store of $25 to a premium store and get $50. Double the basic. But go to an Anchor like you guys and you only get $25 more?? Wonder why they don’t at least double you up from the $50 Premium to $100 per quarter. And considering the Anchor is way more costly, then even give you more than that. But at least give you $100.
But take what we can these days. As my mother and law used to say, “Grab it and Growl”! LOL 🙂
mike in Atlanta
Yes the coupon is out on Oct. 1st. Already cashed ours in and received our $50 in FREE Boxes.
See if this link takes you to the coupon site. It should. If not there are several searches within the Seller Center that will get you there.
http://sd.ebay.com/subscriberdiscounts
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Local auction house for sure. This is not a Sotheby or high end NY art auction house piece but mabe a nicer. higher end antique auction house in a metro area around you. We have a couple of small ones around our area but not for fine art. If you can’t hunt with it, build with it or hook it to a tractor it won’t sell. LOL 🙂 [catch my drift]. Probably in trouble with that comment. But…
mike in Atlanta
Doesn’t seem to be any links attached or can’t see where to open or go to. If they are on Imgur you need to paste the URL link in the address bar into your post, I would think.
mike in Atlanta
First let me say.. Great job Sharyn in doing the investigative leg work on this “etching”. Yes it is an etching from what I see, inked intaglio. [Lot of hard hand work doing it this way].
You found some of the elements I was describing. Those add to the piece. Do not be in such a hurry to re-assemble the frame. There are buyers for etchings that want to see everything you just had to uncover to see for yourself. If I were a buyer I would want it unframed as you have it now. Then knowing what I know about conservation, I would have it framed myself or do it myself. i would “float” the whole page in a french cut double mat. I would let the whole page show so that the embossed plate edge is showing along with the left cut edge.
Other items to note. That light speckled look is “foxing”. Look it up on Wiki. The small round dark spots are most likely mold. The trick here is to discern if there is any real higher dollar value before proceeding. The foxing and mold can be removed or greatly diminished in a bath of chemicals but would need to be done by a conservator. Pricey for a none high dollar piece, which it may not be since it is indeed “cut” out of a book. But, who knows.
You are correct in the approach of a neutral Ph and acid free mat board, backer board and tape. The adhesive is highly acidic and also crystilizes with age and rubs off as dust as it crumbles. It also looses it holding power and as you mentioned prints will drop on one side or slide all the way down in a mat.
Yes the sun has done it’s damage on the other piece along with the high acid content that was probably in that cheap mat. Those bleached lines – marks from the mat are burned into the paper [so to speak] and/or interacted with the paper and mat chemicals and probably never come out.
Last note.. Ebay is not a very good market for works of art that are fine art or etchings. Most buyers are just unaware of the value of true art or the time it takes to create. Yes, digital Giclee prints are the norm and most folks call art now home decor or pretty pictures. But will leave that subject to another time.
Just my opinion, but if this was mine, I would take it to my auction house I visit fairly regularly, leave the print as is, type up what you know about it [provinance] also explaining the paper, plate inking, etc. talk with my auctioneer, determine a “reserve price” for it and let it go through the local auction process before I throw it up on Ebay. But just my thoughts.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
AND Retro WV depending on how your’re 401K is set up and type, there is usually a 10% early withdrawal penalty, then the lost percentage on that amount if remained in the fund.
Think OPM = Other People’s Money on large projects. When I owned the remodeling Comapny many years back, I had a $150,000 line of credit and several cards with $10,000 each on them. Those provided me with plenty of working capital to do most of the projects we were involved with. Not saying you have that available but a HELOC, or second mortg. or something other than tapping 401k. But others here are more financial savy than I. You could even form a small Private Investor Group, LLC and get 5 or 6 guys to invest and see if you could find a lawyer or financial guy that is interested in investing in the project. You provide the ground work sweat equity, they provide the backing and admin. work sweat equity.
But just talking out loud. Sounds interesting what all you guys are planning for the future.
mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Yep.. with you. And Free Shipping and Free Return Shipping we see as two separarte things. I could see us going to maybe Free Shipping because we weigh and measure everything when we enter into WonderLister and I assume maybe you do to for SixBit. I know there are fileds to enter that data in SB. So I can use the online calculator or Flipper Tools Fit Shipper and see what my cost would be to ship. Then I would just double that and mark that total up another 40% and build that cost into the cost of my item. Then if I have a 20% off sale and take an offer of 15% less than that I still cover the costs of shipping and even at that will also more likely than not still make a good profit on my shipping activities. I actually like this and may do it come first of next year.
People hate to do the math, cost of item plus add in their heads the cost of shipping. Also most buyers have no idea what shipping costs anyway so if they see an antiue ceramic Fenton, hobnail dish that is hard to find and it is $175 Total delivered, they have no idea if that price includes $17.50 in shipping, $32.50 in shipping or $50 in shipping charges built in. It is rare, they don’t have one, they want it and bingo they bought it.
We sold a hard to find Rose Sharon Depression glass Butter Dish this weekend for $200. We had it listed for $325 but on Sale at 15% off for $276.25 we took an offer of $200. We bought it for $12.50 but when researched we discovered what we had. It only took about $15 to ship it. If I had built $40 dollars into the listed price of $325 it would not have mattered one way of the other to us, but it may for a buyer to see “Free Shipping”.
This is entirely different than Free Return shipping in case they don’t like it for some reason. Again we will just wait and see how this all shakes out.
One side bar: We do a 7 layer “cocoon” process when we ship. Our feedback is full of kudos and comments on our shipping and packing. When it comes to returning these high priced, delicate glass items that we take extreme care packing with our specially designed packing process, we just don’t trust the buyer to be able to take the time or use the same technique to return the item back to us. Then we have paid for the shipping to return to us and we get it back damaged.
But just me thinking out loud.
Mike in Atlanta
T-Satt and Jay:
I am with both of you. Even though T-Satt and I have the tools to make wide sweeping changes very easily, we are going to sit this out also. With many of the unique, one of a kind, eclectic items we offer, a return would have to have a solid reason for a return. On more competitive, higher volume or consumed items I maybe could see the case. But a well written description on a Tinker Toy set from 1955 that states the piece count, describes any broken or missing pieces, condition of the container and lid, etc., etc. Then what would a reason that an end buyer would tell me that would want me to eat the shipping costs to return it to me.
So, we’ll just wait and see.
mike in Atlanta
Hello again: Did you get told that the “scene” is over 200 years old, or that the actual page-print is 200 years old. Paper that is that old will start to have some characteristics that could be noted if you can get to the whole print by disassembly of the frame and matting. Also there are test that a museum can run to tell certain things as well as age dating.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
