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If you love Office Space, then Idiocracy is required viewing as well.
02/20/2019 at 2:02 pm in reply to: Industrial Wood Foundry Pattern Mold: are you familiar with these? #57369They are one of a kind pieces that were used to form what is called the “cope” and Drag” of a sand casting mold.
That piece you see there would be placed in a flask and then sand would be poured on it and tamped down. You would have another pattern piece to make the other side and sometimes have a “core box” that could be used to form any internal features.We throw away tons of really old patterns every year. They wear out over time, and nowadays we make our patterns with 3D CAD software and print them directly into sand with a 3D printer.
In some industries now they are skipping the sand completely and printing parts directly to metal!The additive manufacturing field is exploding right now. Pretty amazing stuff.Anyways, back to your items. A lot of the very old 50’s/60’s patterns are made from nice hardwoods. One of my coworkers takes some scrapped patterns home to cut up to make stock to turn bowls and pens on his wood lathe.
Your pieces are aesthetically interesting, especially the bell shaped one. I’m sure someone will buy them to repurpose into something cool.As a pattern though, they are pretty much just scrap wood.
And I just realized I literally used the word “literally” in that post literally way too many times. Literally!
I think my kids are rubbing off on me. That is their favorite word.
I watched this the first time….while sitting IN an office space!
I was a co-op student at the Corps of Engineers. It was Christmas break from school and literally everyone on our floor was out on vacation Christmas week except for me and the other Co-op. Our supervisor literally told us we could bring in movies since we had no work to do that day.
So we watched Office Space while sitting in one of our cubicles. Lol!
That day has always stuck with me because it was also the first time I got Kidney stones. The pain was just starting while watching that movie. I was in the hospital later that night.
A while back I got motivated and listed my coat/jacket death pile. In the last 90 days I’ve sold $1000 in coats/jackets from that listing spree. That is a $1000 that I would not have had if I didn’t light that fire and “Just Do It”. It can be very therapeutic to list death piles once the sales start coming in.
Hopefully this spring I can light that fire once again and burn through some more long dormant death piles.
Items in Store 1064
Items Sold 9
Total Sales $258.00
COGS $26.00
Total Profit $232.00
Average profit $25.78
Average sales price $28.67
New Listings 0Sales did a nose dive!
I didn’t really care though – I had to rush my son to the hospital Wednesday night because he had a seizure. That is not a scenario I wish on anyone. He had two more in the hospital. My wife and I tag teams staying awake by his side 24/7 until we came home Saturday Evening. He appears fine now thankfully – they couldn’t figure out what was happening so we just have to hope it was an acute issue. Then Saturday night just as we settled into bed, the stomach bug started with my other children. First my youngest son all Night and most of Sunday morning, and now my 2 year old. Needless to say, I haven’t slept much in a week. Goooood times.
Also of note, while I was at the hospital I had a bunch of items go overdue on shipping. So now I’m over their “we’re gonna give you a talking to” limit. Is that why my sales tanked? Who knows. Ebay is not high on my list right now. I’ll get back into it later this week.
My local Gucci Goodwill has a E-commerce unit that supplies the stores with a list of items to not put out on the floor. Then they have a list of items to price at a higher”specialty” rate.
They had gotten pretty out of hand with with their specialty racks, but the last few weeks they’ve been dialing back and putting more Nike/Under Armour/ Ralph Lauren kind of stuff back in with the normal clothing.
One local Goodwill with specialty racks completely abandoned the specialty rack. They just send in the E-commerce requested items and put out the rest as general merch.
I think they finally realized they may have been pissing off the folks that donate the merch. Duh!!
When I list large items I list them local pickup and put in description that buyer can arrange their own shipping service if desired.
My philosophy is this – if the buyer can’t afford shipping costs then they can’t afford my item. The right buyer won’t bat an eye at shipping cost. Don’t sweat the cheap buyers – they ain’t worth your time.
02/13/2019 at 12:01 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56919Yes you can add whatever categories you want.
I track my COGS in a separate spreadsheet, as the actual COGS of the item will include other things such as sales tax, tape, boxes, packing materials, etc.
In Godaddy I created a category under Non Business Expenses called “Inventory Purchase”. All of my purchase transactions go here, which excludes them from the expenses report in Godaddy. I upload the actual receipt image and put the number of items I bought in the description.
So for tax purposes I report the actual COGS of my sales. If I ever get audited I have all of my purchase receipts permanently documented with the actual receipt in Godaddy to back up my COGS spreadsheet.
02/12/2019 at 2:30 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56865If so many folks on Poshmark are Hacking the system anyway and putting undesirable bars on the side of photo, why don’t they just do like ebay and automatically add the bars?
02/12/2019 at 2:23 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56864Seconded! I can listen to music all day long while working, but I cannot listen to a podcast of any kind. I will completely tune the podcast out and not hear a word being said.
02/12/2019 at 11:59 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56850If I had an app that could EASILY convert images to that solid border on my phone, I would do Posh as I listed.
02/12/2019 at 10:52 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56847So do you photograph everything in square format now?
I HATE that posh requires square photos. Clothing does not play well with square…I don’t understand it.02/12/2019 at 10:51 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56846This past summer was the first time I actively shopped clothing and shoes at yard sales. Previously it was electronics, toys, etc.
Man….I got a TON of awesome clothing and shoes. Buying in bulk always scored me great deals. There was one yardsale where I bought 3 giant garbage bags of like new mens clothes – Nike, Ralph Lauren, Chaps, etc. The highlight was 10 pair of bright plaid Izod golf pants that were like new. I sold them for $30 a pop…and only paid 25 cents a pair.
Most items I paid $1 or less for.
We yard sale as a family. This is when it is real nice to have a minivan with a dvd player in it. The kids watch a movie and occasionally come out when a yardsale with a lot of toys comes along. Then we let the kids pick our lunch stop as a reward for being patient.
02/12/2019 at 10:43 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56845Reading Doublythumbs post reminded me to post a development in my considerations of going full time.
About 2 years ago I encouraged a friend I worked closely with at my last job to start his own inspection/mechanical reliability business. I didn’t think he would, but after a few months at a new TERRIBLE job as a supervisor in a union aluminum plant, he cold turkey quit his job and started his own business. A year and a half later, he is doing exceedingly well – as in “I need more pockets to stuff all this cash” well. His business has zero overhead as it is just him doing all the work, but he is starting to cap out with how much he can take on.
We meet weekly because I hired him to provide training to some of my employees. He has floated hiring me as a contractor to do some engineering work for him, but I have declined because that doesn’t seem very ethical with our current relationship as him providing contract services to my current employer at my direction.
Well his time providing training will be wrapping up in April once my trainees are certified. After a rough couple weeks at work I’ve reconsidered his offer. I’ve asked him to present to me a proposal as to what his usage of me would entail if I quit my current job. I’ve told him I don’t want to be an employee, but would do contract work that takes up 2-3 days max from home a week, because I would also be doing ebay full time.
We’ll be meeting this Thursday to talk about it. I’ve been very on the fence about going ebay full time because it would be difficult to replace my entire income package from work. With full time ebay AND a consistent Engineering contract gig though, I could earn FAR more than I currently do.
We’ll see how this goes.
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