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Showing posts from March, 2022

Where do I store the Artwork and Books?

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About half of the artwork and framed pieces are in climate controlled storage and half is hanging in my office and in spare bedroom. The other works in storage are bagged and sealed with silica gel packs. No real rhyme or reason what goes where and driven by what fits in a spot on the wall and my desire at any given time to hammer a nail. All signed books stay in the same two rooms but non-signed books (a few exceptions, mostly some leather books) stay in the attic right now; moisture and sunlight isn’t an issue but keeping an eye on them for a future move.    John

SecondMoonshot Active Growth Strategy and Side Hustles

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I am always looking for new opportunities for sourcing and revenue, here are my primary directions:  Present: eBay and Sourcing: Less known in-person auctions where the bidders don’t congregate in such huge masses and drive the prices up. I have found one in a small rural town outside Raleigh 30 minutes where people are nice, prices usually fair or better; I continue to seek out more. eBay and Sourcing: Estate sales are still a big staple but I am getting pickier on which ones I attend and continue to build relationships with a few key ones. They aren’t as fun as auctions, well…maybe a few, but finding in-person auctions fun….and at the end of the day, I am in this to do something I enjoy.  eBay and Sourcing: Thrift stores. Me and Z will still hit a thrift store if we pass one that we haven’t been to before. As our experience builds month over month we are able to find things we might not have picked up on in earlier days.  Consignments within my social network and customer requests. E

eBay Sales Cycles, Best Times of the Month and Week To Sell

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  Most of this is common sense but like everything else, may have variations depending on category. I have been looking over the sales trends for about a year since and now that I am setting most of my listings as Promoted Listings, it makes it easier to see monthly and weekly sales trends.  Observations: Common paycheck periods definitely have a major play with 1st and 15th of the month (starting a day before) being the biggest sales periods of the month, especially for higher priced listings. But I have found to take the best advantage of it, have your listings posted a week in advance if possible. I did a large number of listings 2 days before the end of the month and they seemed to have missed the wave. People have probably already made up their minds days in advance on bigger purchases. Government paychecks go every 2 weeks and can be found pretty easily with a Google Search . Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are generally the worst days of the week with it bottoming out on Tuesdays.

Moon Photos - Waning Gibbous 88% - March 21, 2022

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Some nice Waning Gibbous pics from Z. John

Blogger Spam in Comments - Go home and do real marketing research…not waste my time deleting your crap.

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Ok, admittedly I don’t get very many comments on the blog. But what gets me is this business of using blogger comments to put advertisements in them, what I am guessing to get the search bots to think they have more links that they really do in an attempt to get higher search rankings.  When I see them, I just delete them as I would rather have no comments then crappy comments. I suspect they are trying to trick the search engines to think they have links to all these sites and increase their search result ranking…go somewhere else please. Odds are if you have to resort to this type of gaming, you don’t have a quality product or service.  I now moderate all comments and will not approve any comments with URLs in them. Rant over. John 

Framing Project - 1988 Scenic Wonders, Myron Rosenberg, Matususka Valley, Alaska - Poster

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For Sale (listed on eBay in the SecondMoonshot store ) Found this poster at Rummage Warehouse in Wilson, NC and it had a little foxing but thought a nice mat cut would keep this relevant. New frame (Nielsen Brushed Copper Profile 11), new plexiglass, new mat board Crescent 9519 Curry with multiple cuts to hide foxing but also to emphasize text (my daughter said the gold really brings out her butt), and new black backing to hide white foam core cradle and I just find the black backing to add a touch of class - I had some existing foam core and built the cradle and glue gunned the backing board to the cradle for stability then placed the poster in it, so no glue on the poster portion. It was already mounted on foam core so had to build a foam core template cradle around it to handle the larger frame. It took me 2 tries to get it good enough with mat board. Picture is not particularly valuable although very nice piece of photography, but have about $115 in costs plus about 4 to 6 hours in

Every Picture Taken of Our Cat, Sydney, Vol. I

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What better to blog about when your bored. We’ll, maybe not every one, but a lot. Some gems with me pre-COVID and cars of course, and snake or two, puzzles, hampers, probably a duck or geese here and there (Click, Clack, and Buck). Hope to die before this cat does because don’t know if I can live without her. John