Thingery Blog

For a little while Us Guys will have two sales running in September:

Labor Day Weekend, September 3-6, we will offer 20% off on items in the Thingery Store Retired eBay Things. That may be a good time to snag one of these relatively random Things because as we get just a snitch closer to the Hectic Holiday Chopping Season, they might be so retired after all.

From September 1-30, we will offer our regular monthly sale consisting of Longboxes at 25% off and probably hope to slide a few more listings into that category either just-in-time or as the sale is in progress.

Retired eBay Things is probably a bit of a misnomer- from time to time Us Guys will pull an item because we think it’s “too good” for eBay, and every once in a while eBay will tell US they don’t want something there. Some Things are seasonally cyclical and we might just want to store them someplace while continuing to offer them for sale.

Long boxes are relics of the past. When CD’s were first introduced they came in boxes about half the size of an LP cover, a practice which was discontinued after four or five years. It just so happened that at our store we kept them if we could, going to the point of asking customers for them. Unfortunately, at one point a number of them got taped or stapled to some wall, but even those were kept and moved by myself twice since the store closed. Highest prices seen for empty longboxes have been in the 80-90 range.

Those sell pretty well at eBay but we need to make room there for a new batch, and in the process we’re moving stuff to the Thingery.

Even though we’re still loading the store, we think we have some pretty good selection in these catetories, and if you’re shopping over Labor Day Weekend, thank you for thinking about us.

Are you a former Rainy Day Music faithful? (probably not-it has been, after all, more than eight years after the store closed)……

If you are, perhaps you have been wondering what happened to the records; I know I have. If I can just disregard all of the things that actually made me any money and just concentrate on things I thought were interesting, it would be the records.

No, not all records. But a lot of them.

As I’ve evolved or devolved, depending upon your perspective, up until now I just haven’t found a good way to present the records as I’d like to.

It looks as if I’ve found all the tweaks and switches and whatever to present them at the present-day shopping cart however, so Us Guys are now happy to announce we’re open for former business (with four listings at the time of this post) at this url:

Records

Of course, records were among my original business at eBay, and I’ve been there for 11 years now, so the selection is a little, um, picked over, but not-to-worry, I remember how I got ‘em (smile).

So we’ll begin with everything-in-the-world I’ve still got, complete with former store tags and whatnot and see how long it might take just to accomplish that.

Two things made this possible: a shopping cart that would calculate Media Mail or Priority for US destinations, and First Class or Priority for International destinations and do a halfway good job of adding up the weight of the box (I’m not quite done testing that yet), AND the absence of host site fees (like eBay’s) that inevitably add a dollar or more to every sale. If your original love is two-dollar cut-outs, that fee stuff is kind of a killer.

So, “as time permits”, let’s pretend it’s 1987 again, and we’ll start over.

Appearing soon at the Thingery: another High Times Magazine, too hot for eBay, just uncovered in overlooked stash. The catalog page will link to this topic for your invited discussion.

Appearing soon at the Thingery: another High Times Magazine, too hot for eBay, just uncovered in overlooked stash. The catalog page will link to this topic for your invited discussion.

Light discoloration top and left edges of front cover, exposure to elements of some kind, same kind of disturbance back cover right side.

106 pages,

Since firing up the Thingery shopping cart last winter, I found myself slightly behind the learning curve most of the way and still have a ways to go but happily it’s been ringing up sales since the git-go and there’s no better encouragement that that when it comes to getting me to stay up past everybody else’s bedtimes for a few months than that kind of ringing.

Having now mastered the Art Of The Perpetual Upgrade, and having presumably thwarted the hackers and having successfully placed all that ex-eBay stuff in the database one item at a time (remind me to learn about importing big globs of stuff all at once into my database), and having seen a few nights when the Thingery did more business than the other channels, I thought maybe I should take it for a little test drive the other night.

I discovered that even though it offered to sell me gift certificates I couldn’t get it to do that.

After a small amount of investigation I determine the reason: I haven’t created gift certificates yet. So I bungle through some attribute stuff I’ve been avoiding, learn that and set up the gift certificate:

Buy Gift Certificate page

Pretty nice, huh? Maybe it’s silly not to offer a million dollar one, so we may have some refining to do, but it functions.

It’s sort of interesting HOW it functions. You buy it (you should probably be a registered user to do this), and pay for it either electronically or by money order and I approve it at some point in time after that.

Then you can spend your own gift certificate, or you can parcel it out to friends through email. They get codes to redeem I presume, and should probably double-check that.

It’s sort of like I get to create my own currency. Especially if I just randomly decide to send you one of the certificates without ever paying myself to do that.

Who knows where this may lead?

The catalog page links to this topic; if you have discussion or comments about Thing gift certificates you can post them here.

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