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03/02/2018 at 12:37 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Metal car banks, Cross stitch kit, Marantz parts, Easy Bake oven, Pocket Braille Writer #34246
Steve, I like the way you did that with the jpgs being hyperlinked. I tried to figure out how to do it but no luck. Nothing I use appears to have the capability of embedding the hyperlink. Is there anything you could tell us down at the internet-for-dummies level about how to do it? Thanks!
03/02/2018 at 12:25 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Metal car banks, Cross stitch kit, Marantz parts, Easy Bake oven, Pocket Braille Writer #34245It’s mighty quiet here in DC today with the government shut down over 35 mph winds and the threat of a dusting of snow. Sheesh. It would be funny if not for the waste of tax dollars.
This 1933 Chicago World’s Fair Art Deco belt buckle was out of my grandfather’s estate and has been rattling around my junk drawers for many years. World’s Fair stuff appears to be a slow category and this took a while but finally sold for $40 plus shipping.
https://goo.gl/troYLWThousands of these military Vietnam era TA-1 field telephones have been surplused out over the years so they can still be sourced on occasion for reasonable prices. I bought three of these at a junk shop for $14 each and they’ve each sold for $84 plus shipping. This is the last one I had. They use no batteries or electricity and can be tested for output with a multimeter, or output and input if you have two of them (or something to generate comparable DC voltage) and some wire. Besides the collectors and reenactors they are going to preppers now, too.
https://goo.gl/1JwTNJI used to love dealing in books but I have sworn off them in general. So many of them are worthless that I’m totally done with going through piles of them to look for the diamond in the rough. But certain niches will continue to be worth looking for, I guess. This was my daughter’s, a college textbook she got at a garage sale for what I’m sure was very little and she had dumped in our Goodwill box. It doesn’t look very fancy and with its liberal arts subject matter I didn’t think it was worth the trouble to check the value, but fortunately I did before it was donated. It sold quickly for $88, free shipping in a priority flat rate padded envelope.
https://goo.gl/29fKWtI know little about jewelry so it took me quite a while to find out anything about this Victorian Wax Seal Fob that cost me a buck or two in an auction box lot of random smalls. I didn’t want to spend too much time because it looked so cheaply made that I figured it was not worth much. Well maybe I did not spend enough time on this thing because I priced it at what I thought was high at $29 plus shipping and it sold in two hours.
https://goo.gl/cyHGXKI often wish that eBay would break off our weird vintage corner of eBay into a separate site rather than trying to repeatedly jam all of us round pegs into their square, Amazon-fighting holes designed for new merchandise. I know they won’t do it because it won’t make them money but I can dream.
I get so few returns and my ROI is pretty good so it shouldn’t hurt my bottom line to do free returns. But eBay annoys me by saying it’s the retail standard, because it ain’t. Years ago everyone jumped on the free shipping and free returns bandwagon but they’ve backed off on that. My family orders lots of things from Amazon and independent sites and they’re always returning stuff because they changed their mind or whatever. Since I’m the shipping nerd of the household, I get to make the returns happen and I always read the fine print before I ship. I want to do the math to see if it’s more cost effective for me to resell the item on eBay instead because there is more often than not they paid for shipping in the first place (unless Amazon Prime, which costs money) and there is a restocking fee, and/or a return shipping fee, and/or they won’t return original shipping paid.
My family is oblivious to these costs for returns. No site makes it as clear as eBay does right on the item listing page what the returns policy is for an item. I think the clarity alone should be a big competitive advantage but I don’t think eBay mentions it at all in its advertising.
The FAQs say that after May 1 no one is required to have a store and once signed up, it can be cancelled “without an early termination fee.” As I understand it, nothing changes until May 1 so whatever the present policy on cancellations would apply until then.
02/27/2018 at 1:13 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 349: Having A Huge Inventory Is Not The Goal, It’s The Strategy #33995Hey R&J, great podcast. You guys were on quite a roll Sunday. I still don’t use GSP and I can confirm that you won’t get a delivery scan with Priority Mail to all countries. I more often ship First Class Package International and tracking gets a little better all the time. It seems with more and more countries I’m getting a delivery scan or at least one or two steps into the destination country, like at customs clearance or “office of exchange” or nearest major city. I insure with Shipsaver if item plus shipping is over $50 so I don’t sweat it.
Never heard of Board of Canada before but am enjoying some right now. Nice. With a cat in my lap while I’m trying to listen and work. He can be a bit needy. At least he’s not sneaking up and grabbing my arm, which he likes to do occasionally if I’m not paying enough attention to him.
02/27/2018 at 12:27 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 349: Having A Huge Inventory Is Not The Goal, It’s The Strategy #33989If those lamps were on eBay, use Gixen, which is free. Not as much fun as manual sniping, but much more effective because it hits closer to the end than you can get manually (at least for me). Set it and forget it and you won’t miss another one.
02/27/2018 at 12:19 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 349: Having A Huge Inventory Is Not The Goal, It’s The Strategy #33987Good on ya, Steve. I love auctions in snowstorms! So long as they’ll still hold it. I have been to ones that were shut down after a couple lots because “ya’ll aren’t bidding high enough” according to the auctioneer. Grrrrrr.
02/22/2018 at 3:50 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 348: Acknowledge When Hard Work Pays Off #33701Yup, that’s it. Mental (and the Motrin) got me through but it was close on the body side.
As you say you feel it going higher, but at least you’re adding only 4,000 ft, which I think will help you a lot. We were living at sea level in Florida at the time and we did it just fine though I have to admit the night we spent at the highest point in our trek of only 8,900 I just wanted to be put out of my misery. I was fine by morning.
Interesting piece! Some of the big auction houses will do free auction estimates of pricier art items by email. I know at least Christie’s does. The houses typically reserve the right not to bother giving you a value if they don’t think it’s worth much. But even if their reply is “not of sufficient value to evaluate” or equivalent, sometimes in their answer they’ll give you more information than you previously had about the piece.
02/22/2018 at 2:42 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 348: Acknowledge When Hard Work Pays Off #33694Sounds like an awesome trip, and well thought out preps. I did one of the shorter (62-ish miles) treks at BSA’s Philmont Scout Ranch in the Sangre de Cristo range (northern NM) last July at age 60. I’m no novice under a rucksack but it’s been 30 years since I’ve been in terrain like that. We prepared well for it but the one surprise for me was the toll that keeping up with our crew of teenagers on one lengthy downhill day took on my knees. So I got up to 1600 mg of Motrin every 4 hours to get me through to the end of the trek but it took another 6 months to get back full range of movement in my knees. I did distance rucking (I only had access to flat terrain), treadmill interval training (doing this made the uphills easy), and stairways under full weight to prepare, but in retrospect I did not do near enough stairway work.
One or two bottles in a box can also be shipped FedEx Home or UPS Ground without any special package markings within the continental US.
02/11/2018 at 10:13 am in reply to: For Steven S and other Car Nuts: Alfa Romeo Resurrections #32698Sweet MGC! I would love to have a Midget (or Sprite) now. MG’s were great, my high school foreign car grease monkey gang did a few that I worked on, both an ‘A and a couple ‘B’s I think but I don’t think we ever had a ‘C or a Midget. Later when the Mustang II’s came out I was never a personal fan of them but I always had a grudging respect for their strong points and popularity. Brings back memories.
I love auctions – I’ve been going to them for upwards of 45 years in various parts of the country. Some good tips here. Geoff, your preparation is spot on. The smart way to do it. Another tip is to look for auctions held during the day on a weekday. Even auctions of big industrial equipment sometimes have good stuff that they’ll sell at the end if it’s a business clean-out.
My pet peeve is auctioneers that beg for bids. They start a lot high, then when there’s no response, start haranguing the bidders. They might wheedle and cajole or even flat out berate us for “not knowing what something is worth”. I’ve walked out in the middle of a few of those, making a big production of my departure if I can.
Be careful with storage locker auctions. You have to assume the stuff has been gone through and that the storage employees are working with bidders for a kickback to tip them off on what’s in the closed boxes. Not to mention the amateurs who’ve been watching too much Storage Wars – bidding up the units and hoping for a Picasso behind all the junk. I’m not saying money can’t be made but know what you’re dealing with. If volume trash disposal is a problem for you, don’t even go there.
Don’t bother with those auctions that attract the bingo crowd. Typically held Friday nights, in a rural area with few entertainment options, salted with a lot of new flea market merchandise and sometimes cheap China antique reproductions, usually feature a good sized food concession and/or bar, sometimes with reserved seating for the regulars with their names taped to the chairs (and the regulars are not dealers), and with no bargains to be had. That type of auction is only good for the entertainment value. (Which can be considerable, but it’s in the crowd, not the auction itself.) It sounds like ice_queen went to one of those.
It’s a guilty pleasure. Like Black Flag or Primus. Or Rock ‘n Rye flavor Faygo. Not something to admit in polite company.
I would watch Creature Feature old monster movies on UHF TV when I was little so the vibe resonates with me. The lyrics make me laugh out loud. Boogie Woogie Wu says it all….
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