About SecondMoonshot


SecondMoonshot Logo v1.0, self designed!

Welcome!

SecondMoonshot is the result of my misery in the corporate real world. Don’t try to read anything on the name of the company. The driving force was no name similar and the domain name was available.

I had spent almost 30 years in the Healthcare IT arena culminating into a Director in software development (I was a developer early in my career before moving into management). I had been working from home for close to a year at that time due to COVID. The first 25 years or so were fine and I was reasonably successful, it got me through some rough spots, got me through my first divorce (and ironically my excessive work ethics was probably part of the cause), but the last 5 years were pure misery.  Looking over my finances, I could swing an early retirement (although not spend with reckless abandonment), so cut the cord and put my notice in in January of 2021. The first 2 weeks were great, played golf 2 times a week, slept a lot, putted around the house…my wife hated me. I realized I hated golf so put the clubs in the attic and much to my delight, I saw dollar signs on all my collectibles up there! I figured I would make a cool $20 grand selling those grape figurines, beans babies, and comics I acquired over the last 40 years.

Let’s just say it didn’t work out that way, but I did get hands on experience with eBay and knowing me and my wife enjoy estate sales, auctions and thrift stores….and the plethora of available time on my hands….and the fact I am not capable of not working, made a decision. In part based on my financial statement wasn’t so rosey that I could just spend money with abandonment. I also have 3 sports cars to think about that I really didn’t want sell (why 3? Because with 3, you have a “collection”), you can read about the cars here.

I am a very goal oriented individual and I have to have some target goal, so I put a loose (ok, very loose) business plan together to build this as a bonafide business. Got my business name registered in the state of North Carolina, bought the domain name (here, where you are at), got my tax use license for resale and off I went. Of course business cards were the top priority of the day…they tell others I am not unemployed, but in fact an innovator and entrepreneur.

We started off selling on eBay with books from thrift store, turns out there are a ton of signed books for a dollar or two out there so spent my days accumulating as many as I could find, looking for trends and eventually got 500 to 700 or so and growing (see how here). During this time my wife, Zabrina, felt the coffee mug market was ripe to supplement the book revenue. Once we got the basics operationally, the books started selling at a decent clip, mugs not so much (but at .50 cents a pop, I could live with that). Then we started hitting estate sales pretty heavy for a year and decided to not specialize in anything, but fundamentally just buy what we like with the idea that if we like it, others will…that actually turned out to be a good premise to build on. I still get books now and then and probably half my listings are books. This has also turned into consignments which accounts for over half of my new listing.

Enter Custom Picture Framing

I started doing some framing to repair or add as a way to better present the items I list on eBay. After getting Micheal’s to do one frame for me, it came out awful and figured I could do better (which I can!). In the end, I realized I enjoy the framing so much more than eBay. An opportunity came my way to make a major leap in equipment, an inventory of mat boards and moulding. But the biggest bonus was all the knowledge from Bill (whom I bought it from) and the purchasing / wholesaler relationships.

Oh, and I have a ball doing it and highly client-focused. I get to make all the decisions, treat customers the way they should be treated, ensure that every aspect is fun, maybe one day profitable, and allows me to enjoy the rest of my active years. Even the mistakes I make are fun…sorta, they don’t bother me anyway. 

My oldest daughter got into the mix as she is a UX designer/researcher/analyst with Adobe, she sharpened up my logo and we got some shirts, shipping tape, and stickers to share the word. She is the VP of Branding and Marketing. Zabrina is a natural picker and can find good quality items on instinct (where my method is by trial and error most times until I build up the experience)…so she is VP of Product Selection. Notice everyone associated with SecondMoonshot is a VP! Another key decision I made, treat those close to you well. They get no salary, but tons of my love and appreciation.

I have always enjoyed writing, so since I had the domain name, and no desire to build a web site from scratch, just created a Blogger account for the business. It’s mostly about what we are up to, our experience to pass on to other eBay sellers, or anything that comes to mind (I.e. Bad Verizon)

It’s not work because all this and the last couple of years is just too damn fun! I will not be miserable again.

If you still thirsty for more about our history, go here for another variation.

John & Zabrina

Comments

Post a Comment

No URLs, I delete comments which appear to be be advertising.

Popular posts from this blog

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

Image
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 
Read more

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

Image
  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 ...
Read more

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

Image
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...
Read more