Mistakes to Avoid When Buying Postcards to Resell on eBay
Don’t you love it when something horrible happens to other people? In the best way possible, of course, because the weird and unfortunate things that happen in someone else’s eBay business almost invariably show up in “Don’t Let It Happen To You” articles to benefit other people.
Well I have two stories this week, they both lost me money, which is good, very good!
Well because both were the result of problems I should have anticipated but didn’t, problems that definitely won’t affect me again.
‘Problems are opportunities in work clothes,’ said noted industrialist and so-called ‘Father of Shipbuilding’ Henry Kaiser (1882 – 1967), and he was right because problems reveal a deficiency in his business that he can correct.
My problems, my ‘workwear opportunities’ this week:
PROBLEM NUMBER ONE
At a postcard auction last week, I made the highest bid on 19 lots, but when I got home I found I had twenty items. The confusion came about as a result of a new employee at the auction house not realizing that, in order to allow short notice lots to go into auction, many companies describe these new lots as ‘A’ lots, which means that they can be auctioned together with similar lots. batches without disturbing the original number sequence. For example, and in this particular case, item 31 was a pack of dog postcards, lot number 32 was artist postcards. Another pack of dog postcards went up for auction after lots were listed online and in print catalogs. Rather than listing the new lot at the end of the auction and missing out on people leaving in the middle of the auction to take long trips home, the auction house listed the new lot as 31A, posted the information on the auction door the auction room where it was easily seen and began accepting bids immediately that lot number 31 was finished. Two lots of dog postcards sold back to back. Good idea.
But the problem was that the new employee handed out all the ‘A’ lots to the winning bidders for the same number of lots without the suffix, so in my case I got lot number 31 which was mine as well as lot 31A which was not. it was mine.
I didn’t realize the mistake until I got home about two hours early, and while it wasn’t my mistake, I was honored to take almost four hours off work the next day to return the cards.
The bottom line is, don’t let the auction staff check your lots, but watch how the lots are presented and marked on your bid sheet, then you won’t come home with someone else’s stuff. Or even worse, you won’t come home without the things you were desperate for, which you paid for and probably signed for before leaving the auction. That signature means you may not get your stuff later unless the other buyer is honest and returns their lots, which my auction friend tells me is very rare!
PROBLEM NUMBER TWO
Same day, same auction as issue #1: Bid on a large album filled with postcards showing views of China, Japan, Vietnam, and other Asian and Far Eastern countries with potentially high bids. ‘Postcards’ I said, because they were in an old postcard album and they looked like postcards. But they weren’t postcards, they were photos cut to postcard size and inserted into the album almost a hundred years ago. It’s not a scam, it’s no one’s fault but me, although I think the auctioneer should have noticed and mentioned the problem in the catalogue. But he didn’t and I bid on what I thought was in the lot, rather than what I knew was in the lot. This particular auction is a rushed affair, with a lot going on for each event and not enough time to see everything properly. The moral might be: spend more time searching and checking or focus on a select few lots and inspect them very carefully.