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The BBC version is aired several times a week in the U.S. (on PBS) and Canada (various channels) as “British Antiques Roadshow” as not to confuse it with local versions.
I’d put Fiona at the bottom of my list of British Smugness…when she presents “Fake or Fortune” she almost seems like a normal person compared to the characters on there. To me, the king and queen of British Smugness on TV programmes is Mark Francis Vandelli and Victoria Baker-Harber on MiC. Would assume if it was 100 years ago and Mark Francis was in the trenches of WWI, he wouldn’t last a second before his own took care of him…
I send 100’s of items to the U.S. every year from Canada, and none of my customers have been charged “tax” on the items. U.S. citizens can buy items from Canada with a value of US$800 duty free – if it was over $800, then duty would apply on the amount over that limit.
Some exceptions apply, like tobacco, alcohol, etc – but most of these items would not be sold on eBay.
For the reverse, when I buy from the U.S. and owe taxes (Canadians have a much lower threshold starting at C$50), I am charged on delivery by the carrier at the door, never by PayPal.
The community we are moving to doesn’t have curbside recycling collection – they have areas near parks and public buildings to bring your recyclables including boxes.
It is GREAT! I almost feel I don’t even need to store boxes – there is always hundreds to choose from. And one of the recycling points is only about 75 yards from my house in a park.
I read a lot about how recycling collection costs communities a lot of money and most of it gets put in the landfill as there is no market for most items – this system is great for people like me where I can take away someone else’s waste for my own use.
Always be open to everything in the world of Engineering. I’m in the camp that if someone local came calling me and offered me a good salary, I’d put my engineering skills back in the workplace for at least 8-12 months, even maybe a couple years.
I feel I can always handle the training/honeymoon period, and especially having eBay and other income to fall back on, I don’t have to work if I don’t like the place.
It’s nice to have options, and be able to make the choice to do things or not – it’s something many people will never have in their lives.
I always think it doesn’t hurt to keep you ears open to opportunities, and explore them – worst case you just go back to what you are doing today. Also, some cool experiences may open up – I know I would drop everything for a chance to work for a Formula 1 or Indycar racing team for a season; or work on a cool world-renowned project.
Choosing what to do with your time is the spoils of this lifestyle.
@CLTbay – I use the pen/paper/map method. I have old school fold-out maps of all the towns/cities near me, and I have every thrift store marked on the map.
Before going to the area scavenging, I create a list of all the “special” sales/auctions in the area that I can find that day. When I have a list, I use those skinny Post-It notes used for marking pages, right the address and type of sale on them, and put them on the map pointing to the location.
I find it very easy to work with the “old school” methods – however, it is hard to find maps these days for cities that are growing and the old maps are missing neighborhoods, highways, and exits.
People do look at us funny when we pull out an old fold-out map, but most think we are lost and offer help, which sometimes leads to a conversation about scavenging and we learn about new places to go.
We also have those old school Rand McNally road atlases for when we are out of our area to mark where stores are – and sadly, sometimes we stop at a phone booth (if you can find one today!), hope it has a phone book (which is even harder to find!), and look up local thrift stores. Old habits are hard to break…
I switch between the iOS and Android app on my various devices – it’s very strange how different the eBay apps are. Every other app I use looks identical on iOS or Android – the eBay app is completely different.
On Android, I can also see an “offer history”, but not full details – just what was declined by myself, not what was countered back.
I had a full size cargo van when I was a teenager in high school…
One day at lunch two guys in there 20’s started brake testing me, giving me rude hand gestures, and followed me into a local burger place. I’m not sure if I cut them off or something, but they were ready for a fight.
The got out of there car as I was parking, ready to fight me. Then out of the back of the van jumped at least a dozen other teen guys my age and they peeled out of the parking lot as fast as they could. I wish we had camera phones at the time as it would have made a great video – I still have their reactions etched in my mind – they went from ready to fight to flight in 0.001 seconds once the back door of the van opened.
I can’t believe a SL Podcast made me cry…it brought back a lot of bad memories as a kid and empathy for anyone going through speech issues.
I would be sent out of class to speech therapy from Grade 1 to Grade 8…absolute nightmare. I would get tormented by other kids, and yelled at by teachers in front of the class just because I couldn’t pronounce a “t” correctly – I would have to say words like Buttons and Bottles over and over and over…1000s of times…and it would always sound right to me, but the listener would hear “Buddons” or “Boddles”. I finally was diagnosed with a hearing disability when I was in my early teens. All that torture and tears was for nothing and minor surgery corrected most of my speech issues.
I’m crying and mad at the same time. If this was back in grade school, I was always the biggest kid so I could beat the **** out of someone bullying me. Wish I could do the same as an adult to trolls online.
Jay – I’ll put some numbers together next week to show what it really costs to get into a small item on Amazon – I’ve done a lot of research and will share it. $5000 investment will not get you far – you need at least $25,000 but I’ll break down the numbers…lots of “start-up” costs are hidden – getting UPCs/GTINs, graphics, printing for packaging, etc. all aren’t cheap – even from China.
I’ve gone deep in sourcing a few items – I’ll share the math on one item I have decided isn’t worthwhile.
I’ve spent time looking at items that will never be hot – slow and steady items only, with only a few competitors. Stuff that most people would pick up at a dollar store or 5 Below, but wouldn’t think twice about adding it to there Amazon cart if they needed one. I’m not interested in finding a hot item – just an existing item that is generally overlooked due to low sales, and it is a “boring” product. I haven’t pulled the trigger yet, as it is a large gamble…
There are some differences between Amazon and traditional retail – mostly it is the barriers to enter a traditional retailer. Most major retailers it is impossible for a small guy to get into the door to even make a sales pitch. If successful with the sales pitch, then the big retailers bully you – for example, all major department stores and drug stores in the U.S. have very hard terms on new businesses to get listed in their stores. You have to pay for shelf space in every store you get in, you have to meet sales targets, you have to provide the product for free – and they pay you 60-90 days after it sells. It’s very difficult to get into traditional retail at an big scale without deep pockets. And if your product doesn’t sell, they return it to you all at your cost. I’ve seen invoices where major pharmacy chains charge $10 an item to pull it off the shelf, and then charge you shipping to get it back to you.
With Amazon, you just create a product, ship it to a warehouse, and pay small fees. You can flood a category with different variations, brands, etc.
I just think with Amazon there is a huge opportunity to find an everyday item that is ignored, and take over the space. You’ll never create a big company with it, but it could provide someone entrepreneurial with some good income. You may not even need to advertise – just find something that everyone has in there house and replaces occasionally – toe nail clippers, toilet plungers, cheese graters, etc – and people will buy whatever brand when they need to replace them, and don’t think too much about it. I don’t think you even need to market or advertise the product – just slap it up and people will buy it when they need one as they have no idea of any brands in the space.
Is there any information on the private label part of the conference online? I’m really interested in this angle – creating my own unique products/brands on Amazon. As my career has been spent at manufacturers who do their own brands and private label brands for other brand owners, I find this area fascinating to explore. I’ve spent a lot of time the last few years outsourcing products, so I feel comfortable with the process of getting something made.
The challenge I always thought of with private labels is getting your foot in the door with a retailer – with Amazon, you can get in – the challenge is getting the word out on your product, and how much inventory you would have to carry.
The other challenge is to find a category – I feel there are categories like “energy drinks”, soap, cooking sauces, etc. that everyone would try to go for, but other categories of common items, like toe nail clippers, you may be able to build a brand around as there is no known category leader/brand.
I also wondered about flooding a category – for example with toe nail clippers, create 10 different brands – then your 10 brands may be a huge portion of the items on Amazon. They may look like different products, but the packaging is only different – but gets you more listings/views in total.
It’s an interesting challenge – find a product/category that is not well known, ignored by the companies that sell those products, and take it over.
I belong to several different forums on different topics (including on Reddit) and find this forum contains the most useful information per post.
One of the professional organizations has a very detailed/technical engineering forum, with an annual cost of $375 a year – still filled with spam, trolls, and advertising. Paid moderators even in an environment with a financial barrier of entry can’t keep up.
On Reddit, moderating a forum seems to be horrible – I have seen many moderators give up and the forum becomes garbage. Also, I cannot access Reddit at work or occasionally at some Wifi locations (hotels mostly) as the site is blocked due to the amount of illegal content on it (I see a lot of piracy on the sports forums I’m in for example).
I like the forum as is, but would move to a new location if it were to continue elsewhere…except Facebook.
Sadly, take a look at the ebayshippingsuppliescanada store…we’ve got it much worse! 5 boxes to choose from…
Didn’t even get a coupon yet for this quarter…not sure if I will.
If I am in a gambling mood, I buy off these sketchy sellers. 50% of the time nothing shows up, and if it does, it is of poor quality, counterfeit, or the wrong item.
They are a pain to get your money back from as well.
I’m in Canada, and they also pretend to be in Canada – they give you lots of excuses when you try and get tracking information, and get there story confused (for example, they always say something like they ship by USPS – which doesn’t operate in Canada; or they claim to have contacted your local post office and they are delivering it shortly). The tracking number never works also. They always give very long shipping times.
I usually know what I’m getting into – sometimes you get a good item or component very cheap from these guys – but I wonder how many first time buyers try and get something and it never arrives and never buy from eBay again.
Some of them are very sophisticated and fool even myself when I buy items. The listings look legit from a local seller, no grammatical/spelling errors, etc.
I always leave negative feedback – and encourage others to do the same when they buy from these people. eBay should really police these sellers better. I’ve seen some of these sellers get a lot of negatives, then pop up with a different user name, same photos, and lots of fake positive reviews that they must generate in feedback farms.
In the end, if it is too good to be true, it probably is. eBay and PayPal will have your back, but you may end up with junk or nothing at all and have your money tied up for a few months.
I just save my time – just ignore the low ballers, people who complain about shipping, or anyone else annoying. Blocking a buyer is a waste of 30-60 seconds of our time.
Sometimes I accept a low offer if I want to get rid of something – profit is profit no matter what the size – especially on an item that has been in my inventory for years.
