SecondMoonshot

I have been working on a new frame product to offer in low runs and made-to-order. It is a frame to hold  a 12” LP record album (without the sleeve). I finished it up Friday and pleased with the outcome. This has been a project for a few months and slowly working on the mounting aspect and cost controls. I ame going to give Etsy a try with this and see where it goes, listed here . This is a made-to-order black contemporary square frame made to nicely present a 12” LP record album (not the sleeve, just the vinyl album). The overall dimensions are 15 1/8” high x 15 1/8” wide x 3/4” deep, the new mat board and glass interior size of the frame is 14” high x 14” wide. New quality molding with scratch free recovered glass. New Acrylic/Plexiglass is available upon request at no charge.  There is enough room behind the mat board to store the record sleeve and should you not desire to do so, will need to add a similarly sized spacer (a 12” x 12” cardboard sheet will do. The sleeve is h...

Our first T-shirt we got for SecondMoonshot was from Zazzle and ended up costing about $25 per shirt. That made it cost prohibitive for any quantity and I have been meaning to dabble into printing my own T-shirts. Originally I was going to go all-in and get my own heat press, but turns out my neighbor just bought one for similar reasons and he rarely uses it.  After digging around to find where I was going to get the transfers, I ended up with TransferExpress.com . I thought about getting one of those CriCut machines, but really not ready to jump into that boat as not really interested in doing much more nor making a business out of it. Their editing tools are excellent and support all the image types we needed. I opted to not mess with a proof and just ordered 25 gang sheets (sheets which you can cut into the individual components).  These are 12” x 15” sheets or thereabouts and I have 2 big logos with tag line for the back of T-Shirts and about 9 smaller logos and just the n...

When one of my daughters asks me for anything, they usually gets it, true for anything within reason any of our kids ask for. Throw in a “Daddy”, and I’m putty in their hands. Yeah, a bit spoiled, but there are worse things. This week was an ask to see if I can repair a torn leather strap on a what I suspect is a well like pair of sandals…maybe Birkenstocks or something, have no idea (and don’t really care). Her foster pit bull, Patsy Cline, must have thought it was a toy, one dog’s pleasure is another man’s opportunity to learn. Sure, I have some time on my hands, I can cobble and be an amateur cobbler. On a side note, Patsy was doing her second home visit yesterday by a prospective adoptive family and turns out she has allergens and the wife got hives or something….sweet….I like allergens (and Patsy). Sandals are a great sleeping aid. Returning from the adoption visit gone bad (or good from our perspective). I approached this as any first time cobbler would do, see if there is a leat...

When I initially started this business, I would do all my listing defaulting to USPS Priority Shipping for packages over 1lb and offer USPS Parcel Select Ground as an option at checkout. One of the main reasons was that the Priority mail was discounted and the discount would help offset the eBay fees. While it is a little faster, it often is maybe a day more typically, so the reality is the timing is not that important if you get it out the door in a timely manner. It is important to note that the Priority does come with $100 of included insurance, however, the claim process is so painful and it has never yielded a positive result and thus it has no value to me. So I don’t do claims and just refund and treat it as a cost of business. Now I list most everything as Parcel Select by default that would have been Priority. It allows my items to have a lower overall price and has helped increase sales, albeit not by that much. The downside is that it is not insured and that there is no eBay ...

Ok, I have been stockpiling albums for eventual moving into the vintage LP/Album eBay category for almost a year and working to build out an appropriate stereo system so I can test the records prior to sale. The system is made up of: Sony STR-DE197 A/V Receiver/Amplifier Marantz TT1060 Turntable (probably the stock stylus and cartridge, and will upgrade at a future date) ARTcessories DJPre II Preamp Bose 201 Series II Speakers Definitely not a high end system, but I acquired the components over the last 6 months in preparation. I paid $3 for the turntable, the receiver was gifted (by a competitor, but they probably wanted me to stop compete bidding on conflicting lots!….JK, nice piece, Bose 201 speakers I got at an estate sale for $20 and finally got the DJPre II preamp on Amazon for $65.99. I also purchased the Studebaker disk cleaner and 32oz of Spin-Clean cleaning solution, both of which ran about $80, and finally a 100 pack of BigFudge Vinyl record sleeves for $32 and some clear pl...

I know…sellers have thousands and more followers. I take what I can get. Year 1 yielded 100 followers and Year 2 yielded 200, Thats progress.  John

I was looking through my latest lot of LPs I purchased at auction and came across this gem! As a child, my parents loved watching the Carol Burnett and once I saw Helen, I was smitten. We had a close friend of Zabrina over at the house a few months back and we were reminiscing about her and started watching some of the clips from Carol’s show on YouTube, the flame was reignited.  Well, now that I have this album, I figured I would do something creative with it, I am going to frame it (ok, not terribly creative for me), no damage to the album, cover or anything and make a standard offering for framing your most cherished LP albums. I will go with a black standard wood frame, glass glazing of course and probably a mat boarder around it maybe 1.5” or so. I will post pictures back on this blog when the maiden frame is completed and estimated cost. I may have variations to do 2 albums together and 4 albums together in a grouping, but we’ll see about that later to see if I can make this ...

This week I received a new Rollo Wireless Thermal printer specifically for shipping labels. I decided a review was not necessary since there are enough good ones out there. What I will say is…they are all right! This thing is a game changer in speed, efficiency and quality. Once unboxed, I needed to see if it supported Wi-Fi Direct (it does not) and since my warehouse is really a storage unit with power, the first thing I needed to do was to setup a Wi-Fi network. A few months ago, I picked up an electronics lot at auction which had an Apple AirPort Extreme which turned out to be a recent model, but more importantly IT WORKED (more rare than you might think). I don’t have internet broadband and just use my cell phone for all work in that location, so had to tweak the IP configuration on my iPhone to use the new router but not for internet (this was done by just going to Settings and edit the Wi-Fi connection IP Config to a Manual configuration, leaving the Router field blank and copyin...