I have a new friend in town (we’re practically homies – he from Long Beach, and I from L.A.) who moved up about the same time I did. He’s interested in producing my short. Looks like I’ll finally get to use my Éclair NPR (top) on an actual project! He has a milling machine, and has made an adaptor that allows me to use the handgrip on the camera.
He has a friend who has a short script that we can shoot in a weekend with his JVC pro camera for about $100. We’re having a meeting tomorrow to discuss it, and other potential projects.
Back on topic (somewhat): The 2nd chance offer on the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier ended with no sale. I’ve relisted it.
Johnny, be sure to “pimp” your auction on the classified ad section of http://www.yojoe.com , which is the largest buying/selling/trading forum for G.I. Joe toy collectors. They have an entire forum just for auction-related announcements. You might get a few offers outright from people on there, or at the very least, you can drum up interest in your auction and get people watching it throughout the week. When I was selling off a huge G.I. Joe collection, I often made better deals with the Yojoe.com posters than I got from eBay!
As I said, a guy offered me $1,500 for my ‘James Bond’ Rolex Sub. I told him my reserve price, and told him I’d probably take $1,850 for it if it didn’t sell. (I paid $2,000 for it four years ago, plus tax.) Just got an e-mail from a guy in .de (Denmark? Deutschland?) who wanted to buy the watch outright. I told him that the reserve is $2,000 and that I have an offer from a local (Seattle) buyer already. He came back and offered me $2,400, which is more than I expected this watch to sell for. I told him I could not in good conscience end the auction early, since there are so many bids and about 50 watchers.
By the way, the camera I mentioned in the OP has one bid for $49.99 and 15 watchers.
Went to the post office, and stepped right into a Charlie-Foxtrot.
I sold some plans for 1/8 scale ducted-fan powered F-14 Tomcat to a guy in Australia. Monday or Tuesday I went to find out how much it would cost to send. $18.75. Got paid by PayPal. Went down yesterday to buy the postage. Id forgotten to fill out the Customs form, so I lost my place in line. There was a guy with some sort of problem with delivery, and he must have been at the window for 20 minutes. An old man was at the other window, and he spent about ten minutes (really!) deciding what stamps he wants to buy. No, they don’t have the Reagan stamps yet!. Dude. They’re friggin’ stamps! Just buy some and go away! My turn finally came Got the postage, but used the wrong Customs form. The woman at the P.O. sold me the postage and gave me the right form, then closed her window and left. I went to the remaining open window.
‘Did they measure this? There’s a 42-inch limit for the 18.75 postage. This will cost [50-something].’ :eek: Son of a whore! Not only that, but I was already late getting to Bellingham for a meeting to discuss some film ideas.
I e-mailed the buyer last night after I got home. I need to lose three inches from the mailing tube, and I might have to fold one edge of the plans. His e-mail this morning said that would be okay.
Then he sent me an additional $10 by PayPal! He said I could have asked him to just cough up some more money for (what I think is) the exhorbitant postage, and instead I came up with a solution to save him the extra dough. The extra $10 was for being considerate, and for the extra trips to the post office. I told him it wasn’t necessary, but he wants me to keep it.
I’ve actually run into similar trouble, actually selling a gigantic box of G.I. Joe vehicles to a guy in the Netherlands. The box was a few inches too big to ship the way we had agreed and he had paid for, but he was very patient as I sorted out the shipping issues, and extremely appreciative once they finally arrived. I’ve found that international bidders are usually a pleasure to deal with, possibly because a lot of U.S. sellers won’t even bother to deal with the issues of overseas shipping.
The G.I. Joe aircraft carrier was a bitch. There’s a 108" length-plus-girth limit for reasonable postage. I didn’t know this. I blithely packaged the deck pieces in a box I made from a couple of other boxes. Nope. Too big. I ended up cutting some cardboard so that it exactly fits the decks, and there is no way for it to be made smaller. 106 inches. The rest of the model is in a U-Haul X-Lg moving box that is 24"x24"x18". 108 inches. Whew! Now somebody just has to buy it.
