Awesome!

Great news, Glatt!
My second bell, the older one with the romantic inscription just sold for £73. I'm happy. I still think the other one had the really interesting feature of the original (AFAIK) clapper made with perishable materials, which would have appealed to a couple of collectors, or so I thought.
I'm mulling over what to sell next. We have a "table-top" sale (like an indoor car-boot sale) coming up here next weekend, so I don't want to EBay stuff that might go quicker/better here ...


Sent by thought transference

My new camera came today. Good thing too, because this seller required a signature and I was here to provide it.

It's the Panasonic DMC-FZ70.

I like it. It has a ridiculous zoom. Insane, really.

Both pictures are shot from the exact same spot on the couch.

Zoomed out.
Attachment 51828
Zoomed in.
Attachment 51829

I "cheated" a little by cropping the zoomed in picture a bit, but you if you can cheat, you may as well.

Just tell me you had pants on when you took that pic.


Also: The chair by the window? That chair looks comfy. As. A. Mother's. Womb.

Pants? Yes. Well, shorts anyway.

Chair by the window? Bought that 23 years ago. It was the first major purchase my wife and I made together, before we were married even. It's freaking awesome. One of those Scandinavian leather jobs. It was nice being DINKs while it lasted.

Yup. Sold to the lady with the pink hair - I'm moving in with you Glatt, pants or not.
Just tell your lovely wife I'm the new au pair.

So that nice Mamiya C220 I was selling sat there all week with absolutely no bids. There were like 20 people watching it, but no bids. I simply didn't get it. I know I priced it fairly.

Then 90 seconds before the auction was going to end, it got its first bid. Then another bid, then a final bid. Price was driven up by $5 over my starting price.

Don't people have better things to do in their lives than sit around watching auctions so they can try to snipe?

Similar thing with my Nikon. It went days before its first bid. Then it dicked around at $75-80 until a few minutes before the end when it shot up to $150.

People really like the auction experience.

But I've got 3 boxes packed and ready to go for shipment tomorrow. Signature required for delivery. Live and learn.

There are auto-sniper sites or software thingies nowadays that'll do the sniping for you. It's taken all the fun and sport out of watching my items sell, I tell you! :(


Sent by thought transference

Was it the hairy knees that got to you? ;)


Sent by thought transference

When I see something on eBay that I'd like for my own use, I know that I may be bidding against others who bid on it:

for their own use
to resell and make a profit
to bid it up for the seller
just to win the bid and default on the payment

Any or all of whom may try to nickel and dime me to death with minimum bid increases ad nauseam.

I decide how much I'm willing to pay, enter that as my maximum bid, and let the eBay system automatically increase my bid by minimum required increments up to my maximum. This addresses the first of the aforementioned categories of competition and can happen early or late in the bidding. It's an automated response that depends on when the others bid.

If I know that I can be online when bidding closes, I prepare my maximum bid a minute before closing and wait until the last 5 seconds to confirm my bid. That addresses the other three categories of competition. I don't give them time to try to nickel and dime me into going higher causing me to lose the item only to see it relisted by the same person; or, someone else who got it to resell it. Either they already have a higher maximum bid entered or they don't and they don't like to go that route.

I've gotten some great buys this way squeaking my bid in just past those of the scavengers who are only buying for resale. It also eliminates bidders working with a seller and internet deadbeats trolling for a win. I was once offered what eBay calls a "Second Chance." It's the seller offering you a chance to buy an item for your last bid after the winning bidder defaults on payment. You don't know if the deadbeat was independent or working with the seller to jack your bid up. I've eliminated that.

If it turns out that someone else had already entered a maximum bid higher than mine, it doesn't matter. I wasn't going to pay any more for the item anyway and it probably went to someone who just wanted it more than me for their own use.

♪ ♫This is how we do it.♪ ♫

That is exactly how Popdigr and I do it. Easy peasy.

These are my two latest listings.

Those cups are very cool. :thumb:

Are you charging enough postage for the cups?
They look like they'd be quite heavy.

They weigh 396g.


Sent by thought transference

I'm slowly working on selling an old German army helmet that my Grandfather let me have after I saw it hanging on a nail in his attic. I first saw it when I was maybe around 10 and I was enthralled with it. A real World War 2 German army helmet! I had asked him about it then, and he didn't know how it had gotten in his attic, or what the story was. That was maybe in 1977-78 or so. Then, in 1985, I was helping him clean junk out of his attic and I asked him about it again. He said I could have it, but didn't know why I would want such a ghoulish item.

So I took it and occasionally would wear it (in my room,) but it mostly stayed in my old trunk.

So recently I've been looking for stuff that is small and valuable and has no real sentimental value to sell on eBay. I remembered this helmet, and pulled it out of the trunk for the first time in about a decade or so.

The leather liner, which was brittle but complete in the 80's is now partially fallen apart, and about a third of it is missing. I must have thrown a piece away when I was wearing it one time. I started to try to research the helmet because I know nothing about them, and I discovered that lots of countries used this style of helmet, and they go for between $30 and $1000 on eBay. After a fair amount of internet reading, I have figured out that it isn't a WW2 helmet. It's a WWI helmet, and it looks like it's German, but it doesn't have a manufacturer's stamp. I'd say it's a size 66 M17 WWI German helmet.

And my mom is in town right now, so I was talking to her about it, and the timeline for it being a WWI helmet makes sense. My great grandfather hated the Germans. So much, that he didn't want my grandfather, who was of recent German descent, to marry his daughter. So they waited for the old guy to die before they got married. So this helmet was my great grandfather's trophy against the Germans he hated. It's a symbol of family dysfunction as well as being a ghoulish trophy taken off a dead soldier in some trench somewhere.

So it's got bad juju. And I think it's good for me to get it out of the house. So now I just want to try to figure out what it's worth so I can hold an appropriate auction. It's all completely original, so I think that works in my favor. It still has a fair amount of paint, with tiny rust specks poking through all over the place and a nice patina. It has the steel liner band and a partial leather liner, which is kinda amazing considering it's almost 100 years old. I wish I knew more about its wartime history, because that seems to jack the price up. But it was brought into the family shortly after WWI. In the 20's or 30's.

IMHO any story that engages with the buyer is a good one, even if you cannot trace it right back to a particular German bonce.


Sent by thought transference

Coulda been picked up off the ground...Just sayin'. Takes some of the 'ghoulish' off it.

Also, the word 'trophy' is often misused in circumstances like these . Some see a trophy as a celebratory item. To others the item is simply a reminder, a spur to memory. Not a souvenir, or keepsake, but a reminder of a significant event in one's life.

The helmet doesn't necessarily have to possess the negative connotations you've ascribed to it, is what I'm trying to say.

Fascinating ... can we see a pic?

Maybe there was a big explosion and a disembodied head with a nice looking helmet on it just plopped down into someone's lap. As long as they gave the head a decent burial, would it be so wrong to keep the helmet? The head didn't need it anymore.

Yeah, I don't know the war history and "ghoulish" is just all about the perspective.

Mostly, I'm thinking of it in these terms so that I realize I don't have any feeling of attachment to it. I loved my grandfather, and I have a lot of his old tools and THOSE really mean something to me. I'd never sell them. I think of him every time I use them. But this thing doesn't connect me to him at all. It's more about my great grandfather, and he didn't even fight in the war, so it's just some thing he collected after the fact. And since nobody alive today ever met him, I have no feelings for him. He sounds like a bit of a jerk though, if he didn't like my grandfather simply for having German parents.

Here are some pictures. The remaining leather liner is very brittle, so I didn't turn the helmet right side up for any of these, because the remaining liner would probably break off and fall out.

Here's the inside.
Attachment 51998
And this is a detail that shows the metal liner band, meaning it's at least a M17 date wise. And the chin strap hardware looks like hardware that I've only seen in pictures of German helmets. There should be a maker's stamp here, but I can't see one. Either it's really faint, or it's non-existent. If it's non-existant, I think that means it's an Austro-Hungarian helmet, but they have different chin strap hardware in every picture I've seen, so I think it's German.

Attachment 51999

This detail shot shows "66" stamped in the liner head band. That's the size in cm, and is a little on the large side, but was fairly common.
Attachment 52000
And here's a side shot. That "frankenstein" lug on the side only appeared on WWI helmets, so this is definitely a WWI M17 or later helmet. Probably German.
Attachment 52001
This one, on eBay, is almost identical. It just sold for $232 here in the US market. It has no trace of liner, and mine has a little bit of leather liner left. But mine is missing one liner pin, and the visor has a slight bend to it.

Thanks... pretty cool.

Here's a strange thing. The buyer of Bell 1 which sold second for the bigger sum said he wished he'd known about Bell 2 because he'd have bid on it. I did put mutual linkies up like Toad said, and he can't have just put in a maximum bid and then left it because it sat at £27 for the longest time and that wasn't his bid .... I wish he'd known about Bell 2, too. :/


Sent by thought transference

Maybe he's just a ding-a-ling.

But why should I buy your helmet for $99, when I can buy one just like it from that other guy for $898 + nine times the bragging rights at cocktail parties? :haha:

Ebay actually told me that I should offer it for $75. I know they know best, but I couldn't bring myself to go that low for a starting bid.

I gotta stop watching my auctions.

Zero bids on this, but 20 people watching it.

I expect nobody will bid until the final day and then it will shoot up rapidly. Should get around $215 or so for it.

29 people watching it, and I just got my opening bid this morning.

29 watchers! that's got to be good, right?

You're as bad as me, Glatt!


Sent by thought transference

I would think that's good

Well ??

Hole in the ground, about 50 ft. deep, you get water from it; but, that's not important now. Glatt's helmet has a bid of US $124.59 with a little over 16 hrs. to go.

$130.50. I thought it would get about $220. I probably timed it wrong with the holiday, or maybe I just don't understand the market or the desirability of my item as well as I thought I did.

Still, $130 is $130. Can't complain.

Recently my reading comprehension is all shot to shit.
Limey can attest - I read on a menu in Arran "a bucket of fries" as "a bucket of frogs".

So you can forgive me for thinking you wrote "or maybe I just don't understand the market or the disability of my item".

But as you say, $130 is $130. I wouldn't sneeze at it. Well done.

Ugh.

So I'm at work. And we have a case that I've been told I can "trash" all the old physical exhibits from. I have about a week to get rid of the materials before the space has to be emptied.

There are 70 large document boxes, and each box contains about 5 of these things. Of different types. It's the entire freaking collection.
Attachment 59345

So now I need to decide if I want to just trash this stuff as instructed, or if I want to try to get it all home somehow and sell it all off on E-Bay. I don't have room in my house to store 70 boxes easily. They take up a lot of space.

So the pros are that this item I have pictured above sells for around $30-$50 each on eBay. And there are a LOT of them. I could make maybe $3,000-$10,000 selling them all.

The cons are that I need a freaking truck to get them all home. And I would need a place to store them, and it would take, I dunno, an hour to sell each one, once I got a rhythm going. That includes posting the item on eBay, packing it up, shipping it, and then tracking it. So I'd be filling our house with tons of crap and it would take me hundreds and hundreds of hours of work to get rid of all of the stuff.

I'd probably make around $20-$30/hr doing all this.

Is it worth it?

How do you walk away from a potential $10,000? But it's a huge hassle and a ton of work.

Oh, and did I mention there are thousands of these little figurines in blister packs? They go for a buck or two on eBay.
Attachment 59347


Ugh!

So what I did was I pulled together a small collection for my son. I figure he would enjoy some.

Do you have to sell them individually?

What address shall I have the truck sent to?

donate them to a thrift store that knows what it's doing

Whose name and extension shall my driver ask for at the desk?

You didn't already throw them out, did you? Give 'em to UT, he's already got the eBay thing down solid.

this if he can get them. I'd offer to help move them but I can't right now

Rent a van. Rent a storage cube. Hire Tony. Profit.

Maybe a Uhaul 10 footer and pawn shop Steve, and probably pawn shop storage, but basically yeah. As I said to glatt in p.m., it's weird how there isn't a market for this, but it requires all that stuff to come together. You almost need a failing pawn shop to do it all.

A 10 footer is exactly the size you need.

Reminds me of that old Seinfeld episode where they "borrow" a mail truck to drive empties to Michigan to get the 10 cent deposit on them. They paid no deposit, so it was all profit! Hilarity ensued.

And you can't discount the labor involved in selling this stuff. It's not like it's a pile of cash sitting there. It's a big chore sitting there.

You probably can't sell this stuff in big lots because the people buying it don't want to spend that much in one purchase. I think you need bundle it to keep each auction under $60 or so.

I'm sure Steve would know how to handle it, if he wants to take this on.

True, but the Pawn shop has the mechanism in place.

You could prolly unload the whole lot at a fair-sized hobby shop.

I think UT and I have a plan.

It will happen and pics will prove it

It turns out those Nissan "sprinter van" style cargo vans can now be rented and I think that is very cool

Yeah, my buddy has a couple of those, he says they drive very nicely.

It's turning out that this could be a really huge benefit for pawn shop Steve. I think he's planning to no longer be at the shop and this could really help him out for a while.

Excellent.

Bad news this morning.

The attorney who told me to trash the stuff has gotten cold feet. The client had paid to buy all this stuff, so he is now going to write a letter to the client to ask what to do with it.

I had found a couple boxes of legal files in with the merchandise and had to relay that information to him, and that opened a can of worms.

Everything is now on hold and up in the air. :(

good job you didn't trash it already then.....