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Hi ebayers!
I am back on this weekend, don't faint. It is scary but I am going to try to bring you some cool stuff to buy.
God knows I have a ton of collectables getting dusty and ready to go to a new home so I can get some more of my own. I am particapating in club99 again. We had to change the search term to C99Sale due to Ebay's new whacky search fiasco. We want our 99 cent items found so this is our cure. So far it is working and people are bidding on them. It starts May 12 so search c99sale to find no reserve items starting at 99 cents of every kind. I got another fifteen minutes of fame from the Warner Brothers as they bought some lunchboxes for their new museum in Beverly Hills and a bunch of new customers ... here!. Never never never a dull moment around here. The Washington Post brought me a bunch of new customers with this fun article, too... here!. Just finished an article for COLLECTORS NEWS magazine, now changed to TREASURES magazine. It should be a fun piece on my lunchboxes and pencil cases with a back to school theme. The website is under construction due to the name change but I will put it here as soon as it is on there.
I always ship international but it is only with flat rate envelope or small boxes for books and smalls then regular priority boxes for everything else. I can ship lots of books in a flat rate large box if you want. Ah...things are back to normal and cleaned up. Keep checking daily as I forgot I had this stuff packed away. I went with ebay to Sacramento to protest the new internet sales tax rules. We actually won somewhat with a $500,000 cap before we have to pay on out of state sales. I what they are going to do next to perhaps find stuff easier and sell more items. World news picked me up for some reason... here!. I get discouraged when no one finds my stuff due to the new search. My stuff gets burried alive with in the BIN madness. I found a bunch of cool Star Wars stuff so I will be getting that on soon. I got a ton of stuff from the international archives that we moved out of the back room. It has to go so the prices will be good for collectors. Here is my ebay video, click here! Any press is good for the b & m store but won't fix the search problems. Even with the new rules, hundreds of like items in a row is just silly when you add stores into the search. People get annoyed and give up their search. If you are not finding stuff, please complain to ebay about it. I also got a visit in the museum from someone who found us on Roadside America. They planned their whole vacation using the site to visit whacky museums in California and Nevada. If you haven't seen the site, Click here! The museum has continued to be a delight. Visit California magazine here! Wisconsin station WLAP interviewed me on the radio. It just continues to fun and what I wanted to happen. Actually, I never know who is going to show up or who they really are, so it is always exciting around here. The sign is so cool, my husband made it look like a giant lunchbox and it features graphics similar to the the two girls on the kaboodle box. If you are a lunchbox collector, you will love it. I have had people from all over stopping in, even the UK this week. You have to drive by my place on highway 20 if you are going north on highway 5 or highway 101 to Washington, Oregon, Fort Bragg or Redding areas. It was the old firehouse so it is in the middle of town. I am on a scenic corridor so a lot of people also take this way to slow down and enjoy the wildlife and lakes in our area. We have been in 12 newspapers because the Sac Bee article got picked up by the UPI. The cool part is I can just take something off the shelf to list for you guys. I just keep finding cool stuff to sell!
Check the latest write up about my lunchbox museum at Lake County News on the net here! My rating is still 100% positives.
Don't forget to be specific as possible with best match search or you will not find auctions. If you want to see things ending soonest or the most reasonable, you need to change your search on the drop down menu as BM is the default. If you love a certain seller's items put them on your favorite seller list or keep their items in your favorites or bookmarks so you can find their cool collectables. :) Search is also changing spelling or your terms if they think you are wrong about what you want. For example vinyl ponytail became vinyl records with ponytail songs instead of my items that I collect pre Mattel era. First Let's Get Down to Business!
Even though I am getting bigger, it is still a one woman show aka store and I pride myself on good customer service. To be blunt, I am doing this all by myself, well my husband takes me to the post office once in awhile if I am lucky. :) I only list auctions that end on Saturday or Sunday but I have 5 or 7 day auctions sometime 3 dayers. I always combine for the best rate for multi orders. If you need it even faster let me know as I can do Express as well, no problem. Believe me I am not making money off shipping, hopefully the post office is. LOL! I send out all items with my mailing service, after receiving your Paypal on Monday thru Friday as our post office is closed weekends. if you have to transfer money and cannot pay right away can you at least let me know. The mail slot is not big enough to drop packages at my post office so I have to wait until Monday if you pay on the weekends. I live in a very tiny town so we are lucky to have a post office. We do not have a bank so I can never take checks but can take postal money orders that I cash Monday thru Friday, if you have to send one. Due to nonpaying bidder problems I block people without a paypal account. I have not had a nonpaying bidder since doing it. If you are a regular customer let me know and I can exempt you to send a mailed payment.
I post feedback after I send the item out. None of that wait until you leave it stuff here. :) That being said, contact me with any problems with the sale before leaving feedback so I can make it right. Please continue to read the entire description before placing a bid or leaving feedback. Tips for high DSR's:
1. Send an invoice immediately
2. Contact when you ship thru ebay my messages
3. Answer all questions/use my ebay FAQ for generic ones before and after the transaction
4. Every tenth package ship priority instead of media or first class rate for no extra charge
5. Pack well, use cardboard to sturdy up envelopes
6. Combine shipping and use calculated shipping for large packages over a pound
7. Offer different shipping choices
8. Be clear about flaws in an item, don't say it is new, even if it is new old stock
9. Leave feedback first
10. Print shipping labels rather than handwritten with tracking
Still have a question after reading my FAQ's in my auction email me here retrodeb  I will be checking email all day on my cool blackberry to solve any problem.
Check out my ponytail and lunchbox museum website at retrodeb.com here!
Take care, Retrodeb
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Here is just a bit of my 700 plus collection!
My Life in a Nutshell
We are living at the lake full time and I have retired. I miss the kids but not the politics and I am able to take care of my health issues better. We have everything on the shelves and inventoried in the museum/antique/collectable store. Duane and I have over 26 years of collections anywhere from advertising items of every kind, antique ashtrays, figural salt & pepper shakers, vintage toys to whacky retro collectables, not to mention the over 700 lunchboxes now on display plus another 200 for sale. Not only is it stocked with lunchboxes, there is a fantastic ponytail and knockoff vinyl collection in giant show cases. Come see us, we are now open at 3674 Hwy 20 East in Nice, California, right across from Clear Lake in Lake County. It is looking so cool inside.
I love to sell on EBAY. I am keeping my head up amid all the changes yet again with search that I hope will be good for both seller and buyer. I have been selling here since June 1999. Time flies by so quickly but it is still fun for me to sell and meet new people all over the world. I have met some fabulous customers! I will continue to sell collectibles for at least another 20 years as I have over 100,000 items from collecting all my life. I bought collectibles instead of stocks, thank god. My goal has been to make the payment for my firehouse every month from ebay sales. Now it is paid off!!! So I have surpassed this goal by becoming a POWERSELLER! Now I am retired and live off of ebay, too. It is not as much as I would like due to best match but it is enough for us to be comfortable. I continue to collect generic or real vinyl Ponytail items, lunch pails, metal thermos bottles, and retro fashion dolls as well as their cases. Please contact me about vinyl lunch boxes on ebay. I can't get enough of them. I am still looking for a nice Beatles, Tammy or Casper thermos bottle; a Skipper, and a Banana Splits box but I keep getting outbid by those pesky sniper programs. You know how excited I was about scoring a nice KISS box well, I finally got my Barbie dome!!! It is fabulous. Check it out below...I only got it because somebody else was a non-paying bidder. Heh, I usually don't like that but I got something out of it, this time when I got a second chance offer.
There are a few boxes below that I also acquired on ebay. I continue to find great boxes on the site. Last count, our total for boxes was over 700 and that is not counting the ones I got from the Lucas stash!!!! Things are falling into place and with me buying all of the Star Wars old new stock lunch boxes, we just can't go wrong. They are so nice and minty fresh. Some even have the promo snacks in them. Nothing like a ten year old oreo and pringles in a minty fresh New Hope lunchbox. Ha ha!
Things have been crazy with ebay. Not only was I featured at ebay live for my museum, I have been getting 15 minutes of fame every year with different articles written about the museum and filmographers coming in here and there. I won the Promote "it" contest 2007. I thought when clicking on make a promotion box in my store that I would never win but I did. Then supposedly, there was an article with crazy collectors like me in Country Living magazine. Of course I was on the back of select ebay catalogs for the it promotion, too! It came to buyer id's summer 2006. I was standing in my classroom with some lunchboxes. There were three covers and I am one of them. The others are either a woman who found a pair of wedding shoes or somebody who found a hybrid car. I of course found the lunchbox Tina Teen. :)
Now, I haven't heard anything about the ebay crazy collector video documentary contest that I am in but here is a recent write up on my collecting habits in About.com by Barbara Crews a collectable affectionado for the online auction collectable info magazine:Click here to read the article.
Check out the progress of the lunchbox museum and my ponytail vinyl collection below.
Click here for My Ponytail Vinyl and Lunch Box Site
You can watch the video ebay made for ebay live 2008 about my lunchbox museum by clicking on this picture!
Here is Laughing Sally AKA Dixie Ha Ha Below! Go ahead make her laugh!
Click to hear Dixie Ha Ha!
Here is my favorite vinyl box Twiggy:
Favorite Links
Cool John Williams Utube Star Wars Video!
Recycletown
Wikipedia: Star Wars Miniatures Battles!
Retrodeb's Reuse Recycle Musings!
Just a note on ebay's new feedback rules. Click here for the link. I am not really worried about the new rules for feedback. If you look at the feedback that I leave, it is always right after payment was made or not made. I try to leave little for the buyer to complain about but if there is something wrong please contact me first before leaving a negative or neutral or 1 or 2 DSR's so I can make you happy. If I am doing something wrong let me know. So far I am getting great feedback but there is always room for improvement. A seller like me can only receive one or two 1's or 2's before they cannot sell or are sanctioned in some way. I don't think that will happen to me but some sellers could have problems if they only sell ten items a month. One mark on them leaves a big dent. Also when you give sellers their DSR stars for shipping time and the item seemed to have taken a long time, go to the item details on your auction page to check the shipment date documented or the feedback that I left for you as I leave the time in it. It is frustrating to both the buyer and the seller but the confirmation number tells the truth in the end. Also remember the price of shipping depends on how far away you are from the seller. Let me tell you I know as a buyer, that there are times to leave negative feedback or low DSR's but just double check or contact me before you leave me a 1 or 2 mark on any of the four criteria.
I am proud of this 100% feedback!Monday, Jun 21, 1999
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Praise: Fast and smooth transaction. Will buy from seller again. Great condition. +++ |
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Praise: Excellent item, as described. Great seller to deal with. Will buy from again. A+ |
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Praise: Arrived Quickly, Safe and Sound! A+A+A+A+A+ |
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Praise: Love lulu and arrived safely. Thank you |
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Praise: thx alot let me know if I can help you any further A++ |
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Praise: THE BEST OF THE BEST ON EBAY!SUPERB GREAT PROFESSIONAL!FROM ITALY ROME THANKS!! |
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Praise: Great Item! Great Communication! A++ Seller! |
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Praise: Good Seller, Fast Shipping |
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To see all feedback for this member, go to the Member Profile page.
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Current Ebay Time May-24-12 00:06:53 PDT
Last update 11:31 pm eBay time, Friday, May 11, 2012
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