Tag: Seller

Angelic Buyers When Sales Go Awry on eBay

Angelic Buyers verses Nightmare Buyers

After writing about a nightmare experience selling online on eBay, I want to follow-up with a few stories of angelic Buyers who gave me the benefit of the doubt.

Nothing is straight forward when selling and shipping antiques online.

My workflow: I research the item in our library and on the Internet. I place a value on the item and write an ad for eBay or Etsy. I take phone photos and hubby takes studio photos if needed. When the item sells, he packs & mails. We work for perfection — but to error is human.

And when we make an error, things can go north or south.

Classic Angelic Buyers

Bar beads with curl icon

antique gig for spearing a frog or fish
Frog gig to spear a frog or a fish

EBayer buys one frog gig, but we mail six. 

Inadvertently, we had mailed every gig in our toolbox. The Buyer calls after being pleasantly surprised to order one and receive six.  In good spirits, he wraps and returns the extra gigs. We paid the return postage and said, Thanks – you are an angel!

Really, had the Buyer not alerted us to our error and mailed back the extra five gigs, we could have spent months wondering, “What happened to all of our frog gigs?”Bar beads with curl icon

Vintage 4-tine barn fork for hay
Vintage 4-tine barn fork for hay

We sold a pitchfork online to Australia. The Buyer did not pay immediately, and I was beginning to wonder when I would receive payment. The following week, I opened the mailbox to find a hand-addressed envelope filled with dollars and coins. The Buyer had mailed cash from Australia for his purchase. Lovely trust between Buyer and Seller – and the postal system. Continue reading Angelic Buyers When Sales Go Awry on eBay

Nightmare in eBay Town With Spooky Buyer

Antique art meets nightmare Buyer

We sold a dreamy framed print of Pharaoh’s Horses on eBay. My husband remembers seeing it on the wall in his grandparent’s parlor, and we were hoping to find someone who would treasure it, which we did … but first came a nightmare eBayer.

Packing with care Pharaoh's Horses with bubble wrap and customized foam cutout
Packing with care Pharaoh’s Horses

Hubby photographed the art for eBay and packed it for mailing: two of the five scary steps to selling on eBay:

  1. Photograph item,
  2. Write item description for listing,
  3. Package and weigh item for shipping,
  4. List item with proper information and photos,
  5. Ship sold item securely to Buyer.

Selling on eBay with fingers crossed

Even before my nightmare saga, we had misgivings concerning the pitfalls of selling online due to the drama of mailing fragile antiques.

The frame had a delicate gessoed border. The wood frame had a fragile veneer. And the rolled, antique glass was fragile. Hubby cut round foam spacers for the inset glass and customized the packing materials for travel into the great unknown, the postal system.

Pricing on eBay can be spooky

Continue reading Nightmare in eBay Town With Spooky Buyer