Recovering eBay Addict

I discovered eBay back when you could have a three digit password. When giving a reason for why I went to the web site in the first place, I kind of point the finger at my grandmother, even though she was no longer with us. She had a modest collection of small coffee cups and saucers, espresso size, known as demitasse cups. I thought they were really cute and my three sisters, my step mother and I split up her collection and we each got a few.

It could be hereditary, but tiny things like that have attracted me ever since I was little. In kindergarten on the base in Japan, they had a little grocery line set up with small versions of canned soup, etc.. I went nuts when I saw the tiny Tabasco bottles in military MRE's one of my sons had, and yes, I have saved one.

I decided to see if I could find some pretty demitasses on eBay. You could spend years going to antique stores and never see anything but a couple of ugly ones. Big waste of time. EBay is a collector's dream. You want something obscure? They will have it, and perhaps thousands of different ones to choose from. This is how I became an expert on my chosen obsession, silly as it is. I'm not going to count them all, but I have well over 200.

Well you'd think that would be plenty, but there are always those that are gorgeous but that I know will be out of my price range when the bidding is over. Every now and then everyone who will bid a great item up to a couple of hundred dollars, will have overlooked it because of a mistake in the description or the seller won't know what the china mark means, or some other good luck for me. But as I said I don't need a bigger collection, and as soon as I get a camera that will work with my new computer, I'm going to try to sell off the ones that I'm no longer in love with.

I used to have my own store on eBay, Beautiful Mind Fine Art, selling stuff I wanted to get rid of, plus large prints of Savant's art work and the cookie jars I make [see november 2005 archives for some of Savant's older pieces, and march/april 2006 archives for some of my older cookie jars that aren't always used for cookies]. I may start that back up now that my co-dependent is off at college, taking a course load of one class. It may be a good time to sell more of his work called Chomsky.

One of the drawbacks on eBay is sellers who have a screw loose. I had one guy in England reply to my email, regarding shipping, with outrage that I was yelling at him! I had no idea that if you type using the caps lock, or if your font size is larger than this, some people think you are yelling at them. I was using a larger font in capitols because I just liked it. When the plate came, it was completely smashed to bits, in a box that didn't have a dent! You can sometimes spot the nut jobs before you get stuck in a transaction with them, by looking at their negative feedback.

I spotted something great with a tiny opening bid and was tempted until I checked the guy's feedback and decided there was no way I'd ever do business with him. I have copied some of his replies to complaints to give you an idea of why this seller rates as a nut job:

1. Complaint: NON-SELLING SELLER. Paid TWICE aggressive seller refused to complete sale BEWARE
Reply by seller: PROUD TO HAVE SOLD AT A £60 LOSS, YOU NEVER PAID SO STOP TELLING PORKIES

2. Complaint: Item was damaged prior to dispatch, ignored emails, not recommended as ebayer
Reply by seller: vindictive and malicious comments made me cry for days..pass me the tissues

3. Complaint: Seller threatens negative feedback when I complain about shipment problem
Reply by seller: Not that I use them, however I have a number for a 1st class shrink for you.

I'm starting to wonder if this is the same guy who sent the broken plate.

We sold our tractor and bush hog, and a vintage sports car on eBay with no problem. The people who bought the tractor and bush hog, drove down from Ohio and picked it up in a snow storm. The person who bought the MG, sent it to Europe where it was bought by someone in the Netherlands who emailed us that he was thrilled with the car and wanted to know if we would send him the Tennessee Vintage Car lisence plate it wore here. We sent him the lisence plate and he sent us a picture of the car!