SecondMoonshot

These will be the last pictures I do for the year, and what a year it has been. Excited going into 2024, feeling we have the right focus and strategy to grow this. Either way, my primary goal has been met every day which is just to enjoy whatever I do. Happy New Year everyone, and especially my 1 blog follower!  Thanks Ed! John

Exceed customer expectations in Quality, Design and Value. Treat every object being framed as if it were priceless and irreplaceable. Always do the right thing. Carrie asked me “What do you mean by ‘Always do the right thing’?”. I think I mean to make good decisions which always have the customers and employees (when I get one) best interest in mind. Don’t try to defend one’s self if a customer isn’t satisfied, but focus on making it right. Be accountable to your actions and words.

We were lucky enough to get COVID this week and lets just say it was not asymptomatic. Mostly all ok now, but just to be on the safe side, Sydney and I took a well needed cat nap after hitting a few estate sales. John

In 2021, it took me all year to get about 100 followers, I have hit 200 at middle of August 2022, so making progress. Its probably one of my more cherished metrics as it is probably one of the best indicators your doing something right (or wrong). I am a single person operation for the most part, so my growth is only going to go so far, but I am very comfortable with the feedback I have received and think I am promoting a better atmosphere for eBay selling (or anything else I am involved in). Honesty, fairness, empathy…even today are still great behaviors.  Boy, I printed the web page out, circled in marker, scanned it, cropped it, just for this blog post. There must be a better way! Update: I ended the year 2022 with 288 eBay followers and hit 4000 totally item sales. Good year. John

 I think I keep getting better looking every day! Thanks COVID. Well, wife wouldn’t agree.

13 years ago, I was going through a divorce. Any divorce is messy, especially for the kids and this one was no exception. Through the years we had jointly built up a significant amount of credit card debt and 95% of that ended up my responsibility as part of the settlement, meaning on top of a generous alimony, child support for the 2 children (normally a state calculation), along with the debt payments…lets just say, I was living well below the poverty line.  As I was moving into a new apartment, I needed to see if I could dig up a very cheap washer and dryer. I ended up finding one for $50 but it was in Charlotte, NC….that’s about 2 hours away. I had an aging Jeep Grand Cherokee at the time and fortunately had a trailer, so off I went to take possession. During the trip, somewhere around Winston-Salem, my car basically died. I ended up having to get it towed to a local dealership to receive the news that I would need a new engine (which I could hardly afford). I called Zabrina to...

I took the last 4 or 5 months of buyer feedback and plugged into a Word Cloud: Active listings: Sold listings (last 90 days ending 8/27/2021): Generated from:  https://worditout.com/word-cloud/create

I thought I would discuss a little about my brand philosophy and some product examples and rationale that support the brand. When I started this, and I mean really started it vs. just selling my comic collection and McD Happy Meal toys in the attic, I put some thought into what was important to me to make it worthwhile. It really wasn’t about the money, but not lying that it wasn’t a component, but the money without some other form of ‘do the right thing’ mentality puts me back into the same state which pushed me into this to begin with. So I felt there should be no (or little) compromises on a few key core value statements: * If I am not happy, I will stop this. Non-negotiable. * I don’t want someone to pay for something they don’t want.  Non-negotiable. If someone doesn’t want what I sold them, then either I missed the boat or they did, but either way the right thing will always be to take it back and refund their money (all of it, including shipping and return postage if I want...