Responding to Ross, I am forwarding a LONG e-mail from a person in Australia
who
sold her collection through eBay. I HOPE this is not a privacy issue, but
the communication went to the people who bought shells from her, so I don't
think she would mind.
-----Original Message-----Hi all of you,
It's good to hear that the shells are all arriving safely, and that
people like them! A number of you were interested in my final
statistics for the shell sale, so here goes.
Consumables used:
500 feet of bubble wrap (Total cost $50)
1000 sheets of acid-free tissue paper (cost $30)
6 rolls of high quality heavy duty packing tape ($4 each)
4 rolls of sticky tape (free from work!)
80 (approx.) new cardboard boxes, various sizes. (Approx $1 each)
Countless recycled boxes (free)
Recycled packing beans (free)
Hundreds of zip-lock bags of various sizes, so that I could label
specimens specifically. (Approx $30)
Total cost of supplies: $214
Items sold:
Shells sold on eBay: $2,738.59
Shells sold on Amazon: $22.10
Shells sold privately: $862.00 *
Total shells sold: $3,622.69
Total number of auctions: 373
Shipping:
Total shipping quoted in auctions: $1,927 (Excluding cowries
covered by the cowrie offer)
Total boxes sent under cowrie offer: 1 (actual shipping cost was
$8, for sale of $152 worth of shells.)
Total shipping actually paid: US$602
Total eBay fees paid: $199.00
The Bottom Line: (Sales - packing costs - eBay fees - loss on
shipping = 3622.69-214-199-2) $3,207.69
I think that's really good considering the collection I had - I
didn't have much in the way of really rare shells and my collection
wasn't very broad, focused as it was on just a few families. But
the odds and ends I'd accumulated over the years proved to be worth
quite a bit when I auctioned them - I was truly amazed at some of
the prices that got for some of my shells!
Oh, and having just moved all the emails I've received to a
separate archive directory: I received 415 emails about the shells,
and have replied to about 350 of them as well as sending out many
other emails without being replies - congratulations emails,
confirmations of payments received, shipping and these emails. I've
probably written about 500 emails on the subject.. no wonder I've
been having trouble keeping up with my emails! You all know how
wordy I am!
Lessons Learnt:
Don't combine shipping indefinitely! If I do a big lot again I'm
going to insist on monthly shipments or something. I ended up
packing about 80% of all the shells after the last auction ended,
which took me forever! There's still one box that I haven't
finished, and I haven't yet hassled people who won auctions and
never replied to me - I hvae several shells that are sold but have
no homes to go to.
Offer more reduced shipping costs. I think it worked well, and
carefully estimated it's pretty safe. Just need to watch out for
offering that and people who buy only cheap shells. A simple
"Shipping $6. If you buy multiple shells you will pay no more than
$10 in shipping." would do it nicely. Not on every single shell, of
course, but for most it would be fine and doing it I would have
been out by a hundred or so - I probably would have got more than
that with increased bidding on the shells.
Estimate the shipping costs better. A lot of the shells I estimated
at $10 actually came in at $6 - I'm sure the bidders would have bid
with the shipping cost in mind so I could have sold those shells
for more!
Don't sell shells outside the auctions! May sound silly, but I did
this for a few people, selling them at the price I would have used
for the opening bid - if they'd been auctioned they would have gone
higher. Only exception was a sale to an individual where we agreed
the price of a beach specimen, but when the shell arrived the buyer
informed me that he had paid for a worn beach specimen and he
thought the shell was a live collected one and therefore was going
to pay accordingly! He kept his word and paid me $50 for that shell
instead of the $15 we had agreed on, which was very sweet of him.
Contrary to that, identify those groups of shells where there is
only one person interested - all but one of my Thorny Oysters was
bought by the same person at the opening bid price, for example. I
would have done better to do a deal with that buyer privately.
Other bivalves did badly in auctions too and I eventually gave up
on listing them and persuaded one person to buy the lot for $20...
I was happy and I think he is very happy - he got quite a lot more
than he expected for his money! :+>
Keep slightly better records of who everyone is. I used account
names that were mostly drawn from eBay user IDs, and sometimes got
confused as to which real life name matched which eBay ID and which
email name... do you know that nearly half of you are using someone
else's email account and your name does not appear in the message
header? The emails from elfisher come from Chas R, and are signed
Penny... snail mail correspondence arrives from "Hall". Fortunately
I recognise the handwriting, and I know exactly who she is. Other
people I've had to figure out by looking to see who owes me that
amount of money. I did set up a list of who people were to handle
that, but I didn't maintain it - it seemed unneccessary. So, to
find email addresses I've been hunting through those
"Congratulations" emails.
Catalog the collection before starting, and set a schedule. I ended
up with a mad rush and I think I lost some people who had no
interest in cowries when I did only cowries for 2 weeks.
Oh and the last thing: start out by buying the Rice price list. One
of you was kind enough to send me a copy and it was invaluable!
This gave me a standard reference to set opening bids and saved me
hours of searching through different price lists to find a current
price for a specific shell.
And no doubt a million others!
Things I did right:
Rant of the day. Kept lots of people reading! :+>
Listing new auctions every day. One of you told me that he ate
dinner each evening over my auctions, watching them close and
seeing what new ones I was putting up.
Giving reasons for any delays.
The bottom line is that I got the money I wanted for the cameras,
and I have my wardrobe space back - the two reasons I sold all the
shells in the first place. And I had fun, and I made new friends,
who I hope will keep in touch!
Rant of the Day: I finally made it into a "Museum Workday" last
weekend! I was working on putting away some new material into the
Museum's collections, and since you are all doing that I thought
you might be amused to hear how a big museum does it. I was working
on material that I helped collect in 1991, dredged material. Since
1991 it has been sorted, sent to experts for expert identification,
identified, labelled and put into appropriately sized vials (all
the material is perserved in alcohol or formalin). The next step is
to record the specimens in the Museum data base and ledger, and in
the records for the actual collection project, record the reference
number on the specimen's label and then put the specimens away. So,
I started by opening the vials and removing the labels, while
someone else recorded the information in the project data sheets
and I checked the specimens, counted them, topped up the
preservative and made sure that the vial sealed properly and so
forth. After the labels dried, we attached them to the vial with a
rubber band and went to the next vial. In the process we discovered
that some labels were incorrect - the labels were marked scuba
collection when on that date at that particular location only
dredging was performed. So we also had to re-write a number of the
labels. After we'd completed this for about 50 vials it was time
for lunch! After lunch we moved to the computer and ledger. I wrote
the details (in my best hand-writing) into the beautiful
leather-bound ledger and my assistant typed all of the data into
the computer. I then wrote down the reference number on the label,
and after the ink dried another person put the label back in the
vial. The next step, which I shall do next month, is to actually
put the specimens away in the collection. This will entail looking
up where that type of specimen is located, (room and bay number)
then going and hunting through the rows of shelves and trays filled
with large jars filled with vials to find the correct jar, and then
hoping that I can make another vial fit in! If I can't I will have
to either find a small jar and move everything in it to a larger
jar, or start up a new jar. The Museum's collection fills a
basement underneath a building that covers an entire city block, so
as you can imagine it is *huge*! With common species the collection
will have several thousand specimens, which will probably be spread
over several large shelves all full of jars of vials. The jars may
be sorted in some way - by locality or date - or they may be
completely random.
I should make brief mention of archive quality labels.... the
Museum guideline is that the label must remain legible for at least
20 years in either alcohol or formalin, and anything that is used
must be tested first and proven. This means we can't use any of
those nice modern disposable pens... none of them have been out for
more than 20 years to prove their durability! We all use India Ink
which has proven archival qualities - labels over 100 years old
which have been constantly immersed are still clear and easy to
read (apart from the gorgeous script hand-writing, that is!).
Labels are always kept when a new one is written - mistakes happen
and data can be left out, so the original labels are always
retained, even if they get re-written along the way (usually
because of a name change of the species, or because of
deterioration of the original label). In modern times we try to use
a label size that matches the specimen size somewhat - a vial
stuffed with a 3" by 2" label and a 1/16" specimen is now
considered wasteful (you have to use a large vial just to fit the
label in!) so we now use very small labels. It is very challenging
to write the full Latin name, the locality name and latitude and
longitude, the substrate type, collection method, date of
collection, name of collector, name of expert who identified a
specimen, and the Museum reference number on a label 1" by 1"! It's
only possible with a special pen which can be filled with India Ink
and produces a very fine line... 0.25mm, which is about 1/100th of
an inch. Very scratchy and horrible to write with! And you have to
be sooo careful that it is completely dry... the labels take about
10 minutes to dry properly - if you get them wet before then they
smear and you have to write another one! (Oh, good old lead pencil
is pretty good in alcohol and formalin too... I've seen clearly
readable 100 year old labels written in pencil! And pencil doesn't
need to dry. But it's not officially suitable for long term use.)...Audrey
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