Tag Archives: Ebay

Back to Work

It’s been a funny start to the week. With Monday being a Bank Holiday, I had yesterday off and will be having tomorrow off as usual.

I really should work harder.

We had a lot of parcels, several vexatious enquiries and some things to put on eBay. We now have 1,200 items in our eBay shop, compared to around 600 a year ago so things are going well.

We also had some good sales today, including a sovereign before we were officially open. People seem to be buying sovereigns at the moment – it’s probably something to do with worries over the breakdown of society after we leave the EU.

I put some sweetheart brooches, some Masonic bits and a cap badge on this afternoon. It’s not as worthwhile as ending world hunger, but it pays a few bills.

Royal Engineers Sweetheart brooch - Great War

Royal Engineers Sweetheart brooch – Great War

Grenadier Guards Sweetheart Brooch WW2

Grenadier Guards Sweetheart Brooch WW2

A Very Short Post and a Very Long Day

There was only one parcel to pack this morning. It was one of the postcards I’d put up for sale yesterday. To be honest, it wasn’t our strongest retail performance.

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I then added a selection of boring coins to our eBay shop.

Around 11 am I finished my sandwiches.

Around 1 pm I lost the will to live.

Around 2 pm I woke up and realised I had fallen asleep whilst sitting up with my eyes open.

Some days seem longer than others…

An eBay story

We had someone write to us this morning asking if we knew where his coins were.

Ordered 1st April, enquired on 14th, so he was patient.

It took me fifteen minutes to cross-reference and check his order. According to the Royal Mail site we posted the package on the 2nd April and it was delivered on 3rd – signed for by someone called Cooper, which was not the customer’s name.

I told him that, provided him with the tracking code and twenty minutes later he was back on apologising – seems the parcel was taken in by the post room (he had it sent to work) and they hadn’t told him.

Job done, fifteen minutes wasted.

After that I did parcels, then put up some postcards for sale.

Not very exciting, but demanding enough to prevent me to thinking about more interesting things.

Picturegoer Postcards

Picturegoer Postcards

New, but Not Improved

Sorry about the lack of activity in the last few days. It seemed like I just went out like a light. I fell asleep in my chair on Friday night around 9 pm and didn’t waken until 3 am, despite the efforts of my family to wake me and make me go to bed. By that time I’d missed both my blogging deadline and my time for taking anticoagulants.

After that I developed a new snivelling cold, multiple aches in the joints and a need for more sleep. I managed to get to work on Saturday, including running the shop by myself on Saturday afternoon (as the other two sloped off for afternoon meeting of the Banknote Society) and slept all day Sunday.

I’m now re-launching the refreshed, but completely unimproved, new me.

It’s a modest relaunch because I’m also cooking roasted Mediterranean vegetables and, at 10.15, will be off to collect Number Two Son from work. This gives me twenty minutes to complete the cooking, serve it up, eat it (quickly) and get going.

It doesn’t give me much time for composing literary masterpieces.

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Nickalls the fencer in action – we just sold his medals (as seen in the featured image) to a collector in China. He was the first fencer to win two titles in one year with the Universities Athletic Union – Foil and Sabre in 1935.

 

 

 

A Day Passing in a Blur

Today passed in a blur. Perhaps you guessed that from the title.

First there was the blood test. In the absence of a panicky phone call I’m assuming I passed, though tomorrow’s post will bring the full details.

Things have changed over the last few weeks. When I had my blood test five weeks ago it was still almost dark when I left at around 7.15. Two weeks ago it was definitely verging on daylight. Today it was bright and springlike. Not only is it easier to see where I’m going but I’m feeling decidedly more cheerful.

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Irises in Spring

In the last month they have blood-tested 6,893 inpatients and 4,694 outpatients. The average wait is, they say, nine minutes. I’m dubious about the nine minutes but I’ll let it slide for now and start timing my wait from now on. I have a stopwatch on my phone and I’m obsessive enough to use it.

After that I took Julia to work and then went to work myself. On arrival I ate my sandwiches for breakfast because I hadn’t had time to eat anything this morning.

We had a dozen parcels, a couple of customers and put some stuff on eBay, but nothing particularly interesting.

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Crocuses

After that I drove to Newark, spent a few hours chatting, shopped, ate another sandwich and went home. Once home I read some blogs, answered some comments and started cooking in bulk for the coming week.

I’m now writing today’s post as tonight’s stew simmers.

Julia is out visiting a neighbour. She’s got the car keys so I expect she’s going to fill the car with junk and expect me to be happy about it.

It’s all part of life’s rich pageant for a married man…

 

More Medallions, Many More Medallions…

We lost a medallion today. We have boxes of them, so it wasn’t a surprise, as you always feel like you’re on the edge of disaster.

I looked for it twice, handling every plastic-cased medal we had in the shop.

Nothing.

Rather than writing to the customer to confess I’d lost it, I decided that I’d have another look through, and double check every medallion. I found it after twenty minutes. It was in a plastic case with a blue insert. I was looking for a red insert, which is what the computer told me I was looking for.

 

 

In the end the only discrepency I found between the eBay shop and reality, was one medallion. I solved that when I moved a notebook and found the missing medallion had slipped underneath.

It also gave me chance to sort out some new ones. We keep finding more…

 

 

Nothing Much to Report

We packed 19 parcels. We saw several customers. We had coffee and ate the custard creams that a customer left us on Saturday. I spoke to five telephone callers and shattered the dreams of three of them.

Then one of them rang back to confirm that I had quoted the correct price. Had I really said eight pence, or had it been eight pounds? It was pence. We pay eight pence each for two shilling pieces and old style (large) 10p pieces. According to the caller they are between eight and twelve pounds each on the internet.

I promised her that we wouldn’t be offended if she decided to sell them on the internet, and said if she ran out we could replenish her stocks by selling her 40 for £8.95 including postage..

This didn’t seem to be a comfort to her.

The man who rang up for a valuation on his Charles Dickens £2 wasn’t too surprised to hear we sold them for £5.

“I thought it was too good to be true,” he said.

They are available on eBay at a much less reasonable £5,000. Plus 65p postage and packing. There are two at that price, though the other will only cost you 58p for postage.

Greed?

Ignorance?

Postage & Packing?!

That  (?!) is an interrobang, a unit of punctuation I’ve never used before.

 

The Coming Week

We have a talk on framework knitters on Monday night. It’s not a very numismatic subject but it’s a piece of Nottingham history and a subject I should know more about.

I like to think I’d have been a Luddite, but really I know I’d just have stayed home and muttered. Same goes for being a Cromwellian or a Chartist. It’s all very well being part of history, but I like a soft warm bed and an absence of shooting.

If history had relied on people like me we’d still have despotic Kings, cheap stockings and no vote. I’m not sure this would be a bad thing. We’re still ruled by privilege, we wear cheap Chinese socks and look where voting has got us.

Before that, we have 19 parcels to pack on Monday morning, so it’s looking like a busy day.

It may have occurred to you that there’s a distinct lack of Sunday in this post. That’s because Julia had the day off so we got up late, had a leisurely day, caught up on some work and noticed it was getting dark.  That’s how Sunday goes sometimes.

There’s a lack of Tuesday too, because I’m having trouble thinking that far ahead.

No doubt parcels will play a large point in the week.

I suppose I should have picked a different title.

We put the Isaac Newton medal on eBay a week ago, and it’s one of the things that is waiting to be packed tomorrow. It’s nice when a plan works. We have some things that have been on for two years, so it doesn’t always work.

 

A Packed Monday

This morning I dragged myself from bed reluctantly and groaned as I felt the arthritis in my finger. I had, just days before, been wondering if I’d get to spring without more trouble. It seems not. I went down for my blood test. For the second time in three visits I had a learner. She was heavy-handed but accurate and relatively painless.

Because I was late Julia took the bus to work and left me to fill in an hour before going to work. A full breakfast at Sainsbury’s filled the gap.

I then started on parcels. There were fifteen, several of which we had packed on Saturday afternoon and two of which were for collection. Then we had two people in to sell things and things to put on the eBay shop. We also had a lost parcel to deal with. It had been posted by ordinary post and had disappeared. The way eBay works means we have to send the money back and pay 80 pence to PayPal. In the old days we’d have shown the reciept from the post office to prove we’d posted it and told the customer he should have paid the extra for insurance. Experience suggests we’ve been had over, but who can tell?

Finally the lady who wanted two coin sets came in. She was buying them for presents as they represent birth dates. Seeing that we had more, she bought three others and left the shop after we planted the idea of coin collecting in her head.

It was then time for sandwiches, packed by Number Two Son the night before, and a trip to Newark. I caught up with an old friend, which is always good, and treated myself to a Fry’s Peppermint Cream. It’s a long-established chocolate bar – I remember my great-grandmother eating Fry’s.

On the way back I saw a few good sunset pictures, but couldn’t find anywhere safe to park and photograph, so I’ve used adawn shot from last week for this post.

The rooks seem to be gathering at their nest sites, I’ve seen two largish gatherings this week. Looks like spring is coming, though all the weather reports are forecasting cold weather and snow this week.

We had stew for tea. I’d made it last night using up a lot of slightly wrinkled vegetables so we reheated it, Julia made dumplings and I managed to eat my five a day out of the same bowl.

Then Julia produced a bar of Thornton’s dark chocolate with chilli. She didn’t know I’d already had chocolate and I seem to have forgotten to tell her.

That’s about it. On balance it was a good day.

 

 

After the Lord Mayor’s Show…

…comes the dust cart. That is one of the versions, anyway. There are others.

I’ve been having a good time recently, with a good selection of medallions for eBay and some interesting history to learn.

It all came to an end today when we found several hundred coin sets shoved at the back of a cupboard. They are the sort that come in card inserts inside plastic cases. Over the years the cases have been damaged and the coins they contain don’t seem very popular. The answer is to take the coins out and put the empty cards on eBay.

They sell well.

In fact they sell so well that one of the cards I put on today has sold already.

That is some recompense for the boredom of the day, and for the coughing and sneezing as I sorted the dusty cases.

I would add some photos but I seem to have left my camera plugged into the computer at work.

You’ll have to have a few photos from Clumber Park instead.

Walking in Clumber Park

Walking in Clumber Park

 

And finally – more ducks.