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I did not know about the identification service, thank you! I will send it in.
I did try Replacements thanks but the only pattern that was even close was the Vienna. I kept widening my search parameters until I was up to almost 100 pages so I thought I’d check here to see if anyone might know it or have a book reference where it might more easily be found. I’ll go back to Replacements if no luck here.
01/10/2020 at 12:18 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: 8 Track player, Napa Valley Box Co. Cassette rack #72757Great sales, Steve and Sharyn! I had one of those Realistic 8-track players on my stereo system when they were new. Boy I hated 8-tracks. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone wanting them now. Cute jerry can. I’ve never seen one that small. Too bad it didn’t have a 1939 – 1945 date on it. 🙂
My stores are still dead but it has helped me to get my listings up to about 300 total. Normally January – March are my best months so I’ve got my fingers crossed that this year will not be an exception.
This Navy cruise book was $5 at a used book sale. Even though it is ‘70s vintage and for a boring fleet auxiliary replenishment oiler, it still sold for $160 plus shipping. I say “boring” for collectors, but actually what oilers do at sea is pretty amazing and quite dangerous. Search “underway replenishment at sea” on Youtube if you’re interested in seeing it in action.
Challenge coins with a link to the NYPD are good sellers. This consignment sold for $70 plus shipping and is from the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, of which NYPD is a member.
Another consignment challenge coin, this one from a Japanese destroyer. It sold for $150 plus shipping. I expected it to go back to Japan at that price, but it sold to a US buyer who does not appear to be a forwarder.
This Harvard School of Public Health tankard sold for $50 plus shipping. It was $3 at an indy thrift.The number is just a stock or pick number by the exporter. Note the characteristic non-US style numbers.
It’s hard to be sure without seeing it in person but it appears to me to be a hand-knotted wool rug imported from Pakistan of the kind carried by big box furniture stores, Overstock.com, etc in the $1,000 – $1,300 range for that size, new.
They are nice rugs – the design has much finer lines than Chinese or machine made rugs and doesn’t look “fuzzy”. Also they have deep colors and when they’re new they have a color shift depending on which way you look at them. The fibers of the pile are very fine and directional. They also have relatively high knots per square inch counts.
The plastic sewn along one edge may have been done to hold the edge down. Rugs can end up with permanently curled edges which is considered a defect.
My experience recently is similar to Jay and Ryanne’s. Ebay does not seem to be the place to sell rugs. Due to the Iranian goods embargo, using the wrong words in a listing can trigger eBay to take it down. People still buy rugs though, I guess just not on eBay.
If you’re interested in learning about rugs them I recommend spending some time looking at them closely and feeling the materials – fronts, back, edges and fringe – at retailers. Look at machine-made ones at Lowe’s and department stores, mass-market handmade Chinese and Pakistani at the furniture stores, and nice handmade ones at the specialty rug stores. There are hundreds of different designs and styles from different parts of the world.
The USPS missing mail search is initiated online. See https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Missing-Mail-The-Basics
I have used Gixen for years and have always been very happy with it. I used the free version until two years ago when I finally upgraded for $11 a year because I felt guilty about getting such an incredibly useful service for so long for free. The disadvantage is that it is on its own website, not your browser.
While you may not have to refund a buyer for a “late” arriving package, it depends. EBay is set up to be an “FOB Destination” system for domestic sales. So ultimately the seller is responsible for getting the package delivered and thus refunding the buyer if it doesn’t arrive. If a seller doesn’t refund voluntarily if necessary to resolve an open case, eBay will refund the buyer under the Money Back Guarantee, pull the money from the seller’s Paypal account, and the seller will have a “case closed without seller resolution” defect that can impact their seller level.
The problem is, at what point does a late package become a lost package? If a package does not arrive within the time estimated by eBay (no delivery scan yet) and the buyer only messages me, I try to nicely get them to buy off on waiting for some additional reasonable amount of time. What is “reasonable” depends on the item, shipping method, distance in transit, what the tracking shows at the time, mood of buyer, etc.
If they open an “item not received” case then the refund timing is dictated by when I have to resolve the case which is 3 days. If they open a case it too early and tracking says it will arrive soon, then I may not have to refund in 3 days.
As for shipping books, I do the exact same thing as almasty.
Others may have a better answer but the way I have handled similar situations is to tell them in the note that goes with the counteroffer that I will combine shipping and refund to their Paypal account any excess after they have checked out, paid price plus shipping, and I have packed their items. So I do #3. (If I’ve agreed to free shipping, I refund all their shipping.) I generally do that as an incentive to make the sale even if they have not mentioned the shipping.
In your case it is possible that the buyer feels it is reasonable to pay $1.50 for each card, or possibly they have already figured that in when making their offer. Or they may not have thought it through. You might want to at least clarify with them what their expectations are on the shipping charges.
How do you contact them? You should be able to reply a second time to any message received.
How do you accept the offer without them being charged the original shipping? I don’t know of a way. Once there is an open offer or counteroffer, the shipping cannot be changed in the listing.
Note that if you do a Paypal refund you won’t get the Paypal transaction fee back, so take that into consideration. (You do get the eBay commission back because eBay will eventually recognize the Paypal refund on the transaction automatically.)
You fondly remember when you could give a buyer negative feedback and listings did not have photos. No photos was fine because all you had was an AOL account on excruciatingly slow dial-up internet anyway.
Research was pretty much unnecessary since you could start everything at 99 cent auctions and let the market set the price without a second thought so you also remember that the longest time spent on any listing on eBay was the time it took to receive a money order from the buyer.
My first reaction was that I’d never heard of “counterfeit” books but I just googled it and apparently it’s a big problem, especially with textbooks. Makes sense since textbooks can sell for so much. There are a number of websites – particularly textbook buyback sites – that discuss some ways to tell. But even if you come to believe it is definitely not counterfeit, I would not be optimistic that the author is even willing to discuss it.
And if it is counterfeit, I have never heard of a company withdrawing a VeRO complaint out of the goodness of their heart.
Whatever you do, don’t try and be cute and just relist it under a slightly different name or something because that is a good way to get definitely get suspended.
Depending on what you sell, you might want to review your inventory for any other possible red flags.
Great score! My personal minimum is generally about $20 to sell an item but goes up from there depending on how hard something is to ship and whether it’s in a high drama category like electronics. That’s in my main store, where I maintain TRS status with 2 day shipping, free returns, etc.
I do have a second store that will never be TRS due to long handling time, no real tracking for many items, and no returns, where I sell postcards, patches, stickers, lower value coins and pins, etc. that are very easy to list and ship and COGs in the pennies (usually) where my minimum is $2.99 plus shipping. Though I have fun with the second store, I probably would not bother with it if I was trying to do eBay for a living.
All the variables mentioned by everyone above come into play for your cans. Start with listing the best of them and work your way down. The point at which you get sick of them may determine where the individual sale price cutoff is. I would add that I have had success in the past with local sale on Craigslist after I’ve cherry picked the best of a lot of collectibles and I’m down to a large remaining quantity of individually low dollar items. That avoids the packing and shipping issues with a larger lot.
12/17/2019 at 5:27 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 441: How Do I Go From Rookie to Veteran Scavenger? #71822December 20th, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, so says the USPS website.
This article is really about the problem with selling items as “new” when they’re not. I won’t be popular saying this but I think that reselling platforms should only allow authorized resellers to sell something as “new”. Everyone else would be able to use the term “like new” if they’ve got an item that’s factory sealed or with tags or whatever but they’re not an authorized reseller. That’s a more accurate description.
I think if a buyer cares where the item came from that they’re entitled to be able to choose an authorized retailer without having to go through hundreds of “brand new” listings that might have come out of the trash. Whether something is “new” is important under the law. Trademark holders have much stronger law behind them if something is sold as “new”. It implies that a manufacturer’s warranty will apply and that the manufacturer controls the quality of their retailers who will back up the sale.
Amazon is wrestling with the issue by requiring purchase documentation though it’s unevenly enforced. Ebay used to care but they gave that up a long time ago. Maybe 20 years ago an item of mine was taken down on eBay because I had described it as “Like New” which at the time was a prohibited descriptive. Ebay was trying to enforce the distinction between an item new at retail and an item not new at retail. Obviously that has gone by the wayside.
The reason this matters to me is because of the negative perception of eBay as a flea market for those who feel that’s a pejorative. I personally don’t care if something comes out of the trash (and I’ve done my share of trash picking) but I know people who do and they will not buy anything on eBay, period (and they won’t buy from third party sellers on Amazon, either). I think it would benefit the platform if I could tell those folks that they could trust that something sold as “new” on eBay has a warranty and comes from an authorized retailer.
12/16/2019 at 8:28 pm in reply to: Buyer says “I need to return the air chamber. It was the wrong item.” #71758It’s good that you have evidence in the message that it was the buyer’s fault. But it’s a bad combination of clueless buyer and pricey item. You might regret trying to do them a favor to allow the return.
You do not initiate the process. The buyer has to initiate the return from their account and then you will receive notification. If they’re honest they’ll choose a reason for return for which they will have to pay for the return label. Then you can approve or deny the return UNLESS the buyer figures out to check the “item not as described” box in which case you have to accept it and you have to pay for return shipping or ebay will pull the money from you and you get a black mark on your seller account.
If they do the ebay return, you approve it, and they send it back, once you get the item back you refund their money and some of your fees will be returned but not your original shipping because you offer free shipping. The fact that you do not offer free returns limits your refund options. I don’t think you’ll have the option to send a partial refund, subtracting your shipping or whatever else you want.
So given their admission in the message, I would give a short, polite reply that your listing clearly states that you do not accept returns and that you’re unable to offer a return to them in this situation. Then give them the silent treatment and block them. If they figure out the process and attempt a return (which often never happens, as debitendcredits says above) you can take it from there depending on the reason they select.
There are other issues in the return process. I recommend you dig into the detailed ebay seller help pages that provide more detailed information. If it gets messy, call ebay customer service.
When I was little my mother made plum pudding in a mold like this. It was black as coal and had some scary ingredients but it was delicious drenched in hard sauce!
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