Charm Chatter

The natural darkening of aged silver is referred to as patina, and is considered very desirable because it shows the detail of the workmanship in jewelry.  In charms,  for example, the low or engraved areas take on a darker patina and the surfaces are a bit more lustrous.  Most collectors of vintage silver jewelry prefer the patina that develops with age and wear, rather than the bright shine usually seen on new silver pieces.  Wearing your jewelry constantly while working, relaxing and bathing creates hundreds of tiny scratches on the surface that enhance the natural soft sheen of the silver, leaving the recessed areas dark. 

When cleaning silver, care should be taken not to damage the piece or take away the beautiful patina created from wear.  There are mild jewelry solutions available in stores and at jewelers that will soak off the dirt without damaging the patina. A very soft toothbrush can be used to get into crevices.  The silver should then be rinsed thoroughly & blown dry to to avoid spotting. 

Harsh dipping solutions should not be used under any circumstances, as they will damage the surface of fine old pieces. If silver polish is used, make sure it’s a gentle paste polish.  Wipe the polish on with a soft cloth, and try not to get the paste into grooves or crevices. You want to avoid removing the darker color from the low areas in order to retain the beautiful contrast and relief.

The old Bates & Klinke Company produced some of my favorite collectible travel charms.   Bates & Klinke, Inc. was founded in 1919 in Attleboro Massachusetts by Harold Bates & Oscar Klinke.  Attleboro was a major center for jewelry production in the early 20th century. Bates & Klinke are noted for making souvenir silver charms from tourist travel destinations, along with souvenir spoons, brass souvenir plates, medals, keychains, & military insignia.  Most of the travel charms were produced in the 1940s.  Today the company does business as B&J Manufacturing Corporation.   The older Bates & Klinke charms from travel destinations are in high demand with collectors today.  There are 4 shapes that are the most sought after: an Art Deco triangular shape, a round disc, a scalloped disc, and a ship’s wheel disc. 

I am always on the lookout for these high quality vintage charms and I know of several collectors that have made theme bracelets entirely of BK travel charms representing U.S. states, tourist destinations, and national parks.  I recommend to anyone that is interested in charm collecting to keep your eyes peeled for these as they are going up in value all the time.  It’s a great way to commemorate travel and fun to find these old treasures.

This afternoon I listened to a webinar called “Mindset Matters” given by Lisa Suttora, founder of WhatDoISell.com.   This came at a perfect time for me.  I have to admit that the past few weeks I’ve had days when I question my ability to do on-line sales.   Between the economy and the ebay foolishness my sales have slowed to a crawl.  I log onto the WhatDoISell website daily and visit the discussion forum for inspiration from folks that are still having success.  I’m hungry for stories to convince me that it can be done, and I look for hints on how to adjust to my strategies. 

In her webinar, Lisa talked about how she came to be an entrepreneur and described the day she left corporate America as the best day of her life.  Ok I can relate to that.  She then went on to describe the entrepreneurial mindset and how it affects everything that happens in our businesses.  Starting with the “Why” representing the reason we started our own businesses, Lisa had a list of key questions to ask when trying to solidify the mindset for success.  She calls it what’s going on between the ears.  During her presentation I determined that there are indeed several pieces of my business plan that I neglect on a daily basis for one reason or another - too tired, don’t feel like tackling that today, got distracted, etc.  Lisa has a knack for steering listeners to do soul searching and I had to be honest with myself and admit a big part of the responsibility for my downslide lies with me.  Nobody else.

So I’m excited to get back on track and resolve to tackle the tasks that I know will help me achieve my goals.  I’m writing down my “Why” on the whiteboard behind my computer and every time I look up I’ll be reminded of the reasons I need to do whatever it takes to achieve my goals. 

“He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how“ -

Friedrich Neitzche, German Philosopher

“The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels:  it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.“  ~Salvador Dalí

My own fault - sometimes I’m good on plan & bad on execution.  A month or so ago I uploaded my fixed price inventory from ebay over to Bonanzle when I started a Bonanzle Booth.  Unfortunately the template that I use on ebay transferred over a bunch of HTML in the text so all the descriptions needed editing in Bonanzle.  Another problem is that only one photo transferred for each item & it was cropped all squirrelly.  I went ahead & opened the booth & began the tedious process of editing a little at a time, as well as adding additional pictures so buyers can see all the different angles of my jewelry. 

Then yesterday, lo & behold I found a batch edit function & thought….AH HA! I can insert text into all of the listings at once.  So real quick I did just that.  Disaster.  Effectively I just added verbage to the listings instead of changing it, including the ones I had already edited.  No way to sort them out, they were all mixed up.  And I had 550 listings.   Rats rats rats! 

After a not so ”real quick this time” evaluation, my solution was to delete it all & start over from scratch.  The editing had evolved as I was working through the changes before and I didn’t actually like the earlier versions anyway.  I re-imported, batch edited in the new text at the end of all the listings, and am deleting the unwanted stuff one at a time.  Much easier.  This time I’m working it all out before I activate the items in my booth. 

Learned the hard way once again - story of my life.  It’s all good though, now I know how it all works & reminded myself not to do the “real quick” solution as it usually backfires.   Love this Bonanzle - I have a good feeling about it.

I’ve been doing some testing with the new Fixed Price 30 format and the free shipping that Ebay is offering now and have decided for my particular niche it isn’t really helping my business. There are a lot of variables involved and I haven’t officially calculated any profit or fee savings using high tech formulas or charts and graphs. And even though I’m an accountant I don’t like to spend too much time fooling around with what-ifs. I’d rather trust my instincts and spend my time selling. Besides as soon as I got it all figured out ebay would implement more changes anyway.

I sell small items, vintage jewelry and mostly old bracelet charms, which are fairly inexpensive to ship. I usually charge $2 which covers the cost of USPS First Class mail to the U.S. I self insure so I don’t pay the postal rates for that. I’ve found the postal service to be excellent at delivering my padded envelopes so I haven’t had to refund too much money in the form of postal losses. If I do pay for insurance - say it’s an expensive item & I’m not comfortable self insuring it - then I just pay the fees myself & consider it a cost of doing business & a service I provide for my customers.

Anyway it’s not a big deal for me to offer free shipping and I jumped right on the bandwagon when ebay offered their new seller incentives. It’s been almost a month and my testing so far shows that the shipping cost isn’t really a factor for my customers. My shipping is inexpensive to begin with and I always combine shipping for as many jewelry items as they purchase at once. For this reason I don’t think offering free shipping has helped my sales. Also my previous combined shipping for $2 feature seems to give buyers a good reason to buy several items at once. When they do it’s better for me because 1) I have more sales, 2) incrementally I pay very little more to ship the 2nd or 3rd item, and 3) I use less packing materials which saves me money.

The other new feature that ebay is offering is fixed price 30 day listings. Historically I’ve used an auction format for my items for 2 consecutive 7 day listing periods, and then if it doesn’t sell I’ll move it into my store. That supposedly gives me exposure in the searches while it’s at auction and then it’s up to me to drive traffic to the store listing after that. Works pretty well.

I’ve been using the fixed price/30 days method which has been in effect for a little over a month now and I’ve not had better sales than with my old method. This could be for a variety of reasons. Possibly there are just too many fixed price listings flooding the market for mine to get good visibility. Or perhaps it’s because of the many ebay finding glitches that have recentlty occurred.  It’s impossible to tell.

So my newly formulated stragegy - always subject to change as ebay rolls out their never ending surprises - is a combination of the old and the new. For now I’m listing at auction for the first couple of 7 day periods with free shipping. If at the end of that time the item hasn’t sold, I move it to my store at the old $2 shipping rate. Additionally I’m rotating certain items that have been in my store for a while into the fixed price 30 day format, with free shipping, to give them a bit of exposure they may not have enjoyed for a while. I hope this works. I’ll let ya know in a month or so.     

I prepared a couple of last minute 1040’s for friends and new clients today.  Procrastinators - not unlike myself sometimes.  I made the calls last week to enlighten the people I know that October 15th is the last day to file a 1040 tax return and qualify for the economic stimulus refund.  I’m telling my clients to please make sure they send the envelopes via USPS certified mail to document the postmark. I’ve only been doing taxes on my own for a couple of weeks now but my plan is to organize my routine and stay ahead of these deadlines.  I’ll be calling clients much earlier next year.  Shouldn’t be a problem now that I’m not spending 14 hours a day working on my former employer’s clients.

Today I decided to start conquering the madness in my back yard.  My former employer kept me busy working  55 - 70 hours a week for the last 4 months which is the height of growing season here in Central Florida.  Which means the weeds and not weeds out back have run amok.  Where to begin. 

See the monster plant with the yellow blooms?  Started as a cute little cutting from a friend’s plant.  She got it as a cute little cutting from Seaworld as she scurried through the gardens with scissors, a plastic bag, & wet paper towel.  Had no clue it would take over the whole side of the pool screen.   Note:  I’ll need to buy a tree saw to cut the branches underneath.  Will pass on that chore today. 

Now the area under the tree & behind the little iron fence over there is NOT supposed to have all that greenery underbrushy stuff.  That part I can tackle today.  By the way - see those pots with the tomato, peppers, lettuce, & collards?  We can grow tomato plants in the winter here because it doesn’t get cold - at least not usually.  I just planted that sweet little potted garden last week.  Oh and over by the shed in the smaller pots I have herbs and the start of a pineapple.  I can’t plant directly in the ground because I have 2 big ole hound dogs that either trample my garden or use it as their toilet.  Yuk.  And let me emphasize BIG ole hound dogs.  Right at 120 pounds, and 85 pounds.  They’re my babies now that my children are all grown up. 

Here’s a couple of shots of my shed.  Notice the striped door.  Honeybabysweetie built the shed from a kit.  He did a great job.  Until he ran out of stain & decided to stain alternate panels on the door to conserve until he could get more.  That was 2 years ago.  He hasn’t gone back to the store yet to buy additional stain. 

I had a great plan to make this area a xeriscape so it wouldn’t need so much water.  Gets dry sometimes around here in the summer & very hot.  Then I forgot my plan & put rose bushes right in front of the shed.  Anybody know how much water roses require?  Oh well, my intentions were good.   There are a lot of weeds in the area right now but those I can take care of a bit at a time. 

 Then finally there’s the planter area inside the screen.  Once again these bird of paradise monsters came as little plants in 1 gallon containers from Lowes.   Looked so pretty in the pots & the pictures of the unique white flowers on the tags struck my fancy.  Now it appears they are ready to pop the top of the screen so they can poke through, and I haven’t seen nary a flower.  I’ll be digging these out in the next few weeks & deciding what to plant instead. 

I’ll publish my progress as it evolves.  For now I’m off to the home improvement store for stain & a tree saw.  Stay tuned……

On Saturday I attended Blog Orlando with hopes of getting more insight on how WordPress functions.   The only insight I got was about how much I don’t know.  What was I thinking?  Ok back to square one.  I looked at the non-degree courses at Valencia Community College to see if I could come up with some sort of internet/graphics/web sort of classes.  I’m going to investigate this week and then plan a session or two after my employment ends.  I also could use a photography class.  I fear Web 2.0 escapes me.  I’m trying to spice up my blog, I just need a bit more savy.  Surely somewhere in Central Florida there is a basic WordPress class.  Anybody?