Give the gift of Empowerment
by acdickson
Give your relative a smoked salmon for the holidays, they will eat for a day, but give them a DVD and booklet teaching them how to fish and they will eat for a lifetime. Fishing not their bag? Maybe they need to have their eyes opened to wonderful world of eBay selling. AC can help. For a limited time only, he's offering a special on the AC Dickson: eBay PowerSelling DVD and AC Dickson Guide to eBay PowerSelling Zine. Through this weekend, you can order BOTH with shipping for a mere $15.00. That's a savings of $7.50. 33% folks. That's roughly dinner for two at Subway.
Interested? Go to this link. Make a "best offer" of $11 (total will be $15 with shipping). Enter "Urban Honking" in the message and you'll get the zine as well. And be sure to let me know if you'd like me to write a message on the zine to that special someone in your life.
In other news, my protege Nate Preston has just reached 100 unique positive feedbacks and has maintained an outstanding 100% satisfaction rating. Welcome to the Hundie club as it's known in PowerSeller circles. Keep up the good work. Nate has, however, been encountering a reoccurring problem as of late. He gets paid. He ships the item sold off. A month later an email comes out of the blue, "hey man what's the deal? I never got the record. I want a refund." This has happened three times recently, twice with obscure punk rock vinyl. Protective of his reputation, Nate refunded the purchase price each time, putting him out a few hundred bucks. In Nate's own words "LAME!!!." Being the good protege, Nate has already put adequate measures into place. A new policy of no refunds without insurance and a policy of mandatory insurance on anything worth over $50. There have also been a couple deadbeats in Nate's life lately, winners who don't pay up.
As for the deadbeats, it happens. If there was more than one bidder, offering a second chance offer is the way to go. More often than not, the under bidder will take you up on the offer. If they don't you can always resell it. But the business of people not getting their items is suspect. As Nate observes, "I don't have much faith in our government, but the
USPS is probably the most reliable and trustworthy branch." Hear, hear. I've never, ever had anything lost in the mail domestically. Twice I've had very small items lost when shipping to Asia with economy (4-6 weeks delivery time on a boat). But that's it. And I've shipped more than 3,000 packages and envelopes over the last 6 years.
What Nate has on his hands, more than likely, is bad case of the dirty hipster. You know the type. "Hey, I can't come up with rent. Why don't I tell the guy who sold me the $80 record I had no business buying in the first place because I'm always broke that it never came." In reality the dirty hipster could pull this stunt quite a few times. And what's the worst that's going to happen? They might get their account pulled. The dirty hipster will always find a way to open up a new one. It's not like they had many good feedbacks to begin with anyway. The new refund and insurance policy should clear things up, Nate. You may even want to institute a mandatory insurance policy with anything the dirty hipster might want (records, belt buckles, guitar peddles, etc.)
Fortunately, AC deals mostly with collectibles favored by the over 40 crowd. That means no deadbeat buyers, no claims that something didn't come and only one bad check, ever. And the gentlemen promptly explained it was his bank's fault, paid me again and covered the fee my bank charged me. The only buyer who got under my skin was the "kid." I sold one of those "official" NBA jerseys (what makes them official other than the manufacturing company paying the NBA a lot of money I don't know). It was a Shaq jersey from his days on the Orlando Magic. I figured it would go for $15 to $25, but it must have been a slow week, cause I got $5. I sent the invoice off to the winner, who I noticed had zero feedback. Nothing. A week later I sent a follow up. I got a response that I really, really wish I had saved. It was written by an 8 year old, or someone with the mentality of an 8 year old. In a badly spelled diatribe it made fun of me. Yes, you read that right. This buyer made fun of me. Nothing personal, he didn't know me from Adam, but he mocked and taunted me, telling me I was stupid and that he would not pay for the jersey. I refrained from telling him it was a good deal, let it go, and went back to selling antique postcards from small town in New Hampshire.
Lastly, I got this handwritten note with a check recently.
"Dear Mr. Dickson, Here is a check to cover the apple wine label . The label is going into the archives of the National Apple Museum at Biglerville, Pennsylvania. This museum is an interesting place. Go on line with google and punch in National Apple Museum. Thanks."
That's what it's all about, folks. I've sold ephemera that has ended up in museums, photographed for coffee table books, and used as primary source material in PhD dissertations, history books, and documentary films. That's the power of eBay.
Posted on December 8, 2005 | Comments (1)
From the files of too much time on their hands
by acdickson
AC stumbled upon this bizarre auction this morning. I for one wish I had this much free time. I'm tempted to say that maybe there's a children's book author struggling to get out of this seller, but then again this is about a hot dog bun in league with Pamela Anderson. So maybe not. Here's hoping all this time and effort gets more than the $18 it was at when I last looked.
Posted on December 6, 2005 | Comments (1)
I have been Reborn
by acdickson
Before I explain my eBay resurrection, AC would like Portland readers to know that today, at this very moment there is a very cool sale happening at Rimsky's until 6pm. What's Rimsky's? The cool coffeehouse at 707 SE 12th Ave (the big house next to the Plaid Pantry). As you read this AC's wife Susan and many of her cronies are hosting their annual holiday sale. If you shop bricks and mortar this is THE sale to get handmade one of a kind gifts for the holidays. Choose from Susan's brand new skirt kit a Franz Kafka viewmaster set or a thuderbolt and rain cloud handbag. Oh, yes. All that and much more. So go stretch your legs. I know it's cold out there. But whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Now back to the being reborn thing. In case you're wondering, no, AC hasn't gotten religion. He's just gotten really into his eBay store. Hard to believe that a few months ago I thought of opening the store as an experiment. Hardly. The last few weeks have been insane. People are buying things from me nearly ever day! And the best part is my collectibles are selling for far more than they would at auction.
And what's really cool is that I can list something in my store for a mere 2 cents per month, no matter what the price I'm asking. With auctions I spend at least 35 cents an auction just to post them, regardless of whether they get a bid. And whereas my auctions are only up on eBay for a week, my auctions stay up for as long as I want. A whole month for 2 cents. The catch? eBay gets 9% instead of 5% of the sales price. I'll take that all year long. And here's why.
The stuff I sell is rare. It's unusual. Like a turn of the century postcard of the steam ship Tashmoo on the St. Claire river. It's not like there is only one of these in the world, but it's likely mine is the only one up on eBay at any given time. If I were to sell it at auction, I'm banking that at least 2 of the 50 or so people in the world that might want that postcard will happen to get on eBay and search for it during that short week long window. And let's remember that 25 of those people may not even know the postcard exists. They just collect things from the St. Claire River area or postcards of old steamers and might happen to snoop around and get a lucky match on my title keyword.
More often then not, the auction is found by only one bidder that week who nabs it for the minimum bid. Or worse yet, no bidders. Every now and then 2 or 3 bidders find it and we get a bidding war, but that was much more common 4 or 5 years ago. Back when there were a lot less sellers on eBay and collectors were only just filling their decades in the making wish lists with the amble bounty suddenly available with eBay. So the auction isn't working as well as it used to. At least for the rare quirky stuff I sell.
But with my store, I can list the card for the high end of what it might go for. And people are buying! About a third of a the inquiries I get offer to buy outright. Done deal. Another third or so of the time I get a reasonable offer (with the new "make an offer" option I'm very keen on) which I gladly take. Then of course now and then people low ball me, which I politely deny or ignore (see my last post for details). But all in all, I'm a very happy man. I make my $15.99 monthly store fee in a two or three days. The rest, as they say, is gravy.
Now keep in mind, before you open your own store, that it works if and only if you're selling rare unusual stuff. Because if you sell common things that other people are likely to auction off that very same week, people won't find your store listings. Store listings only show up in search results if there aren't any at auction. But if you're onto something unique, go for it. Because let me repeat the beauty of it, there's no money in the listing. I just listed 34 postcards for 60 days and paid $1.34. You can afford to sit around and wait for buyers to find you for years at those insertion fees. Just like you were running a 'real' antique store. Let's examine that for a moment. What's rent and bills on a storefront in a fairly busy neighborhood in a decent town. For the sake of argument, let's say $500. For that much money I can have 25,000 items up in my store. And I'll be relying on the 150 million eBay members to shop my stock rather than walk in traffic on main street. Plus I can go to work in my boxers. Which is very important in December California 70 degree weather.
Ladies and Gentleman of the jury, I rest my case.
Okay. As much as I'd like to go out on that note. I have one last issue. A challenge really. I need to let the people in my life who I love and who love me what I want for the holidays. Small things, inexpensive things, but thinks I'll treasure. You know the drill. "What do you want?" I say nothing. Well they don't get you nothing. So you're better off figuring out what you actually want so when you tear off that wrapping paper you're genuinely excited.
So I'll put it to you. AC is a man more accustomed to getting rid of stuff than hoarding it. But he's never been opposed to a good book, CD, or DVD. Any suggestions? And is there something a little more 'out of the box' that you're hoping St. Nick will bestow upon you that AC might enjoy too. Please comment with any suggestions. You might even leave your wish list here. Who knows what little birdie might tell what other little birdie what's on your list.
Posted on December 4, 2005 | Comments (0)