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There’s a couple things not quite right about it: the handle with a loop in it, the flat glass panes, the overall intentionally crude construction in a strange way. Antique lamps made glass were “hurricane” type that had a glass cylinder because the wind would blow through a lamp made like this. I think it’s a fantasy antique, a reproduction by the same China company that manufacturers this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/182914635542
Note some similar construction details. Your’s probably got a few years on it and sat in someone’s garage for a while to get a patina. The flat glass panes are a clue – you might be able to look at the edges and tell it’s modern.
Someone will still buy it.
3/7/21 – 3/13/21
Total Active Items (2 different IDs): 352
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: $181
Highest Price Sold: $ 29 – US consigned US Navy NAVSEA Commander Challenge Coin.
Returns: 0 COGS: $21 (including commissions but not including cost of any family castoffs sold) but also spent $30 in free shipping 🙁
New Listings: 9
$ Spent on New Inventory: $57All low dollar sales this week. Most of them were sealed DVDs from the 2000s from a small hoard that was left behind in the house we bought here so at least I had nothing in them. Mainly mainstream movies – nothing exciting – but selling well.
My wife and son were off visiting colleges in Texas all week during his spring break for his final decision while I held down the fort. (Looks like he’ll be a Longhorn and not an Aggie. So some of my wife’s family will be happy and some will be disappointed. 🙂 ) I took the no-distractions opportunity to put some solid work into household and yard maintenance that I have been neglecting. Neglecting your yard in FL is bad news unless you like the overgrown jungle look.
Thanks for the Maker’s Mark tip, Gargolfer. I joined the George Dickel Water Conservation Society many years ago but I don’t recall ever getting anything for it.
Went for $80 on August 25, 2016. Nice type of jacket – I’d surely hold out for the higher price.
Is it just one big compartment inside? Then toothpicks won’t work, and actually anything you try to put in it that extends out the top will not stand up. Maybe the fruit has something to do with it but some items are sliced and the grapes and cherries are loose. I’ve no clue at all.
I agree that the answer is no, but another reason besides defrauding the Canadian government is that if the item is lost or damaged in transit, you might be limited to the stated amount for insurance purposes.
You didn’t mention where you are in the transaction but if the item has been paid for, I would not give them the option of canceling because I have one day shipping and if they dawdle or there is some more back and forth I could end up with a late shipment. So out it goes with the correct value stated.
In a situation where I feel the buyer will be problematic then I will cancel the sale and choose “there’s a problem with buyer’s address”, block the buyer and relist the item.
Good stuff Steven and Sharyn. Sorry to hear it’s been slow for you. I’ve been busy lately, but low volume compared to you two, of course. My sales are always good in the first several months of the year, consistently.
Sharyn I’m still jealous of your whisky pitcher score 🙂 – it’s great to see them sell so well.
I’m slowly but surely making my way to the present with my what sold posts, with the following sales from late last fall.
I had a burst of activity with my postcards. Here’s an example of a good solid military type that sells well, a real photo postcard from about 1914 of the USS New Jersey BB-16. (It’s not the WWII battleship USS New Jersey BB-62 that that is a museum in Camden.) This is one of a series of the heavily armored so-called Great White Fleet ships (due to the white paint overall including the hull) that circumnavigated the globe in 1909, demonstrating American military power, despite the fact that the major ships were already technologically obsolete at the time. The commissioning of these ships at the turn of the century marked the US Navy’s long overdue transition from wooden-hulled sailing ships, quite a few years after early commercial steamships began revolutionizing world trade in the 1850s and the ironclad warships appeared during the Civil War. It’s a fascinating era – the US was being dragged kicking and screaming into being a world power. (OK, yes I’m a history nerd.) This card sold for $8.89 plus .55 for shipping and I had a dollar in it.
Here’s an example of the color “linen” postcards that came into broad usage in the 1930s, so named for the textured cross-hatching on the front. Linen cards are not as popular today as the black and white real photo postcards from the 1890-1915 period. This card dates from WWII and depicts a US bomber and transport aircraft (somewhat generically – possibly due to security considerations) and sold for $5.95 plus .55. It was pennies in a large lot.
I’ve also dabbled in stereoviews. I’m finding it to be a very slow category overall, but there are occasional gems that turn up such as this fascinating 1882 street view of downtown Des Moines, Iowa, by Charles Bierstadt. Though the card is undated, there were few enough major photographers of the day traveling the country creating stereoviews that the fact that Bierstadt was in Des Moines taking pictures in 1882 was a matter of interest in the local newspaper and so is known to this day. (No Hy-Vee in sight, Steven.) It sold quickly for $64 plus First Class Package shipping and was about a dollar in a lot of cards, the rest of which have not sold although listed at much lower prices. (Apparently there is little interest in the Russo Japanese War. Long tail!)
When the $1 Sacagawea coins came out in 2000, they were heavily marketed and hyped. There was a great deal of highly publicized drama involved in the design and production not to mention a handful of infamous error coins that made it out of the mint. But most people did not use them at all. Anyone who was interested went down the bank, got a couple rolls, and promptly put them away in a dresser drawer. That’s what my wife and I did and we still had them. They appeared to be worth more in a sealed roll so that’s the way I’ve been selling ours. This roll sold for $55 with free shipping.
I’m not sure where this plastic toy soldier tank came from but I’ve had it for a while and was probably out of a large auction lot or something. Due to my discovery of the value of the Airfix tanks and vehicles that I’ve previously discussed here, I put a lot of effort into identifying it. It turned out to be a K-R Payton tank that was used by Lionel trains in a military flat car set. It sold for $29 plus shipping.
This would be a somewhat typical Middle Eastern copper repousse tray except that the Crucifixion of Jesus is the subject matter. Of course there are Christians in the Middle East, but not many and they typically keep a low profile, depending on the country, in the interests of their personal safety and economic survival. It was $2 at a Goodwill and sold for $50 plus shipping.
Thanks for posting that Investopedia article on Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) because I had no clue. But I read it through and it’s gobbledygook. NFT is a gimmick. There is nothing about a NFT that makes it any better to do any of the things it allegedly does than a contract (which can be entirely electronic) and/or any number of different types of electronic files which can be encrypted and theoretically bought and sold to your heart’s content.
Just like Bitcoin. There’s nothing about Bitcoin that could not be done with real currency.
Wait a sec – I get $25 in shipping supplies in the Basic store. It’s the Starter store that doesn’t get a coupon. (Or is the Basic coupon going away?)
Speaking of the kinds of people who buy crypto one week and Gamestop the next, I saw this in the paper today about NBA Top Shot: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nba-top-shot-nft-crypto-digital-collectibles-11615266042?mod=trending_now_news_pos3
That’s just a whole ‘nother level.
@Lukastreasuretrove: I do the cut and paste from a Word doc to post but I’ve learned I cannot have ANY formatting, including paragraph breaks, tabs, or bullets; and certain punctuation like quotation marks or anything superscript also throws codes. So I draft one long paragraph missing much of the punctuation, paste it here, then clean it up before hitting the Submit button,
Congrats on the Rumsfeld coin find and sale! One of the hardest things about selling the coins is competing with the many sellers who sell them too cheap or put them up at auction with a low starting bid. Glad you held out for a good price.
2/28/21 – 3/06/21
Total Active Items (3 different IDs): 358
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales: $263.40
Highest Price Sold: $58 –Challenge Coin for the USS ELLIOTT destroyer.
Returns: 0
COGS: $36 (including commissions but not including cost of any family castoffs sold)
New Listings: 34
$ Spent on New Inventory: $0We held a big yard sale last weekend. We put out lots of low value household stuff and larger items not worth much (and some more valuable items that I couldn’t bring myself to pack and ship on eBay, like a couple chandeliers, for example). It was fun to see the different types of buyers who came by.
I have to thank Craig Rex for the very informative sports card background he provided this week. I was never into professional sports, either as a kid or now, so I don’t have the knowledge to sell them but the collector psychology in that area is interesting, and cards in general are enticing as easy to list, pack, and ship smalls. Of course the most important thing I learned is that my gut feeling that keeps me from buying the piles and piles of “junk wax” cards that I run across at yard sales and flea markets for cheap is well founded.
Yes, they did subpoena eBay. It says that “eventually” eBay provided the information. I would love to read the presentencing report on this guy when it’s done. I wish I could get it on PACER but the reports are only accessible by counsel on the case.
That’s a funny coincidence about Marion. I was born in Iowa City but my family moved to Philadelphia PA when I was 2.
Thanks for posting this. The judge’s opinion is very interesting. It did not say how long the seller was taking advantage of dropping his packages off late until a sharp-eyed USPS employee noticed something wrong in late 2015. The postal inspector got right on it, coming in after 8 pm to photograph the packages but then it took him a year and a half to get a search warrant at the guy’s house in 2017. I wonder if that was the inspector’s fault, or the US Attorney’s Office. I’ll bet it was the latter.
Then it took another four years to get this conviction. (The wheels of justice….)
It also looks like the USAO made a tactical error in the count for marking international shipments as gifts and not merchandise. All the elements were not met for an 18 USC 1001 conviction because whether a package is marked gift or merchandise is only material for foreign customs offices, not the USPS. The judge acquitted the guy on that.
