Yet another loose end.

It must be something in the postal waters.  As quickly as one is cleared up, another one takes it place.  A couple of posts ago I wrote about a postcard which was returned to me - the post office could not deliver it to the address given.  After multiple attempts to contact the buyer, with no response, we opened a case to cancel the transaction.  The buyer agreed.  Which meant that they logged on and responded to our case, but would not respond to our request to verify their address.  So we cancelled the transaction, refunded their money, put them on our blocked buyer list, relisted the item. 

So, what should happen a couple of days after this?  Another card return ANK - "attempted not known", this one from a buyer in North Dakota.  Same thing going on, he's not responding to our attempts to contact him. The address we mailed to is a confirmed address in PayPal.  This is a bit stranger though, he went ahead left positive feed back and good DSRs.  I know he exists, but other than that  I don't know what's going on.

In both cases the envelope did not appear to be opened, but the packaging did - the tape was torn, very neatly & I'm positive I didn't put it in that way.  But why go to the trouble to expertly open and reseal an envelope, then leave torn tape on the inside?  Am I freaking out? 

And we still have the buyer who bought and paid for a card then told us not to deliver it until he contacted us again.  That was over 2 weeks ago I think.  Haven't heard from him.

This is just plain odd.  I don't like it.

A Cabinet Photo of a Woman From Perry NY

This is a cabinet photo of a youngish woman who was probably from Perry NY, or a farm nearby. The photographer's name was Crocker, and based on graphics etc, we believe this dates to the 1880s-1890s.


The subject of this photo looks very human.  I think that is why I like it.

Click on the title to go to the listing, if you're interested.

Loose Ends

I dont like loose ends, and there are a couple I'm dealing with at the moment. 

The first is a buyer who bought and paid for a couple of postcards.  I got them in the mail that very day, but then a few days later it ended up right back in my mail box.  The post office returned them with a yellow sticker on the envelope saying they could not forward them to another address.

Weird.  So I've attempted to contact her to verify her address, and I've received no reply.  I can understand a person being hesitant to give out their address to someone, but I'm doing it all thru eBay (so I have an "official" eBay record of it), and I don't really know any better way to do it.  This has been going on since June 24th.  So I sent her another message today and told her I'd refund her money in a couple of days if I don't hear from her.  

My only other choice is to mail the card again, on the assumption the PO screwed up.   A couple of times the machines have read the return address & and an envelope has ended up back in my mailbox, but that wasn't the case this time.

The other loose end - recently someone bought a snapshot, paid for it, then told me not to send it for a week or so "until he knows where he's going to be".   Ok, he's moving or something, I can understand that.  But I really want to mail these things out.

The worst that could happen?  2 negatives, and low DSR ratings, potentially costing some money.  That probably won't happen.  We'll see. 

People are such untidy creatures.  Almost nothing is straight forward when you're dealing with people.

Early 20th Century German Postcard

This is an early 20th Century German postcard we have for sale - it is actually part of a lot of 2, combined with another similar (but not quite the same) postcard.

Actually I can't date this exactly, but it has the looks of an early 20th century card.  It also has the look of a hand tinted card.  There is a sheen around the edges that makes me think of a gelatin-silver photograph, but I don't know for sure.

It's a pretty card, with a little rhyme in German and I remember enough German to understand what it means.  It does not rhyme in English.

Click on the title to go to the listing if you're interested.

Hearts & Heads Early 20th Century Postcard

This is kind of a strange early 20th century postcard - not really sure how to list it, or what to call it, but I'm sure it must be appealing to someone out there.  It is embossed and gilded, and a little strange with a heart shaped back ground and people with heart shaped heads singing in what appears to be snow, but maybe not.  I mean who whould think of such a thing.

Anyway,  click on the title to go to the listing if you're interested.

Our eBay business doing good in June. Why?

By June 20th, maybe even earlier, we already had more sales than we had in the entire month of  May.  That translates to $$, of course.  But the question is, why?  Is it just a random fluctuation, or are we doing something to help things along?  Hard to say.

We are doing some things differently.  Until recently we started every new item off as an auction, with the vast majority being moved to the store as a "buy it now" (BIN) if it didn't sell.  We used auctions to drive traffic to our store.  In March eBay converted the store inventory item type to fixed price (a different item type), which - understatement coming - changed the game a bit.  Suddenly, there were millions upon millions of extra items as part of the core search.  All those store inventory items which were not part of the core search, suddenly were.  Some people, according to the forums, are finding their items are buried behind hundreds of other similar items, making it very unlikely that they'd be found buy a buyer searching for them.

Well that's interesting.  eBay's default search is something called "Best Match".  Although it's possible to guess some of the logic that goes into the algorithm to determine Best Match search position, for the most part it is a mystery.   It's possible to change the default search - I regularly change it to lowest price or ending soonest, depending, but most people, maybe as many as 80% or more, do not.  They may not realize they can, or even care.  Anyway, search position is very important.

So these are some of our ideas and some things we've been doing.   I don't know if they make a difference or not.  June's been good, but who knows about July?

1.  We don't sell anything sold by the "superstores".  We're just two people, we can't compete and don't want to compete with a big business.  If "Buy" ever gets in to postcards and antique photos, I guess we're screwed.

2.  We've been making our titles more relevant.  We can see reports and find out which keywords are used most often to access our listings, and we're making sure those keywords are there.

3.  The only sort order we can control is the "lowest price + shipping" one, so I make sure our items are competitive price wise, should someone else be selling the same thing.

4.  We've been updating our item specifics - making them as detailed as possible.  Supposedly this will help in search.

5.  We list all our fixed price items as "good to cancel" because it saves a lot of work.  But for the last few weeks we've been manually ending some older items which were about to roll over to the next month & relisting them (checking the title & item specifics of course).  This gives it a new item id, eBay sees it as a completely new item, and I think completely new items will do better in "Best Match" than an item that has been sitting around for a few months.

6.  More and more we're offering Free Shipping on individual postcards.   I don't know, maybe it's psychological.  A $2.99  postcard with free shipping costs more than a  $0.99 postcard with $1.25 shipping.  But it has been drilled into my head by eBay powers that be among others that buyers want free shipping.  So free shipping it is, when it is economically feasible, because I suspect they may know what they're talking about.  I am a little cynical about it though - eBay does not collect fees on shipping charges, so an increase in price and free shipping benefits them.

7.  Although we still start most of our listings off as auctions, we're listing more directly to fixed price.  I suspect this is what the corporation wants us to do.  

So, June is doing much better than May.  Our best month of 2010 to this point has been January, and it's quite possible June will be better - we'll have to see.  The big question is why.  Is it a random thing? Or is it because of some of the changes we're making?  I wish I knew.

CDV Photo - A Girl In White

I relisted this photo as an auction today.  It has been around for awhile, first as an auction, then store inventory, then fixed price (no more store inventory).  It was ending shortly, so I thought I'd try it as an auction again and give it some more life. 

I think it is an interesting expressive photo.  The girl, looks to be early teens, is in profile, looking slightly down.  Her arms are folded, and there is a ring on the 3rd finger of her left hand. 

There is no writing on the photo - no identification, no photographer information, nothing to tell you who this person was or where she came from.   Based on the way the physical cdv looks though, we think it is from the 1880s-90s era. 

It's one of those photos I look at and wonder about.

Click on the title to go to the listing in our eBay store.