A Place for My Stuff

I Dream of Billion Dalek Babies. On the Rock.

Know any Doctor Who fans? Alice Cooper fans?

If so, go click on the eBay banner on the left, and give them that link.  I've got stuff for sale that needs to make its way into the right home.

Speaking of eBay, I managed to sell two other things, though outside of eBay.  One of these was a set of stuff from House on the Rock (2 VHS tapes, audio tape, and my DVD/CD copies of both).  eBay initially yanked the item because it included digital copies, which I think is ridiculous if you're going to be selling them with the original items.  Bastards.  Fortunately, I remembered a fellow House on the Rock fan who found me on YouTube, and I asked if she was interested.  She was, but only wanted to handle it off of eBay.  The price she offered was what she had in mind anyway.

  

The other item was "Controlling Your Dreams", an instructional tape on lucid dreaming by Stephen LaBerge.  I bought it 20 years ago from Pyramid Books in Salem.  Over those past 20 years, I've been studying lucid dreaming and recording my dreams here and there.  Lucid dreaming isn't bogus; it is an actual learnable skill, though it has limitations.  So I passed this on, along with a remastered version I made of the recording and burned to CD, to a LD enthusiast I know from a message board.

In other news, I went to half-day class on "Skills Assessments" today, provided for by my local Employment & Training Resources building.  And I've got a Myers-Briggs test at the same place this month too.  I'd like to say more about these sorts of things, but not now.  Maybe later.

Cassette stuff, part 2

And now, some more ramblings about audio cassettes.

Like VHS, audio cassette tapes are hard to get rid of.  You can't even find used CD stores who will take them these days.  They're scoffed at as being an unwanted medium.

It goes to ridiculous lengths, though.  I remember seeing the debut CD from Badlands on eBay.  For those who don't remember, they were a supergroup formed by former members of Black Sabbath (Ray Gillen, Eric Singer), and Ozzy Osbourne's former guitarist (Jake E. Lee).  Back in the day when this came out, tapes were reigning supreme, so not many bought the CD.  The CD went quickly out of print, so I saw it here in this auction going for over $100.  Meanwhile, the cassette probably wouldn't even sell for five bucks.  Yes, I know that people fear cassette tapes because unlike CDs, cassettes can get worn over the years, or get damage from magnets or the sun or something else.  But if you want the album so badly that you'd pay over $100 for it, can having the cassette be THAT bad of an alternative?

Fortunately, I've managed to get rid of a lot my tapes over the years, which would otherwise just be taking up room and collecting dust in cases on my living room floor.  A few years back I gave a couple dozen to a woman I was dating at the time.  She was divorced and lost most of her music collection to her ex-husband, but had a lounging room in her apartment with a cassette boom box.  So she was happy to accept some of the stuff I gave her.  And just about all of it, that 80s metal she and I unashamedly loved.

I've also sold a number of tapes on eBay by pairing them up with other things that people were more apt to buy.  For example, I sold 7 Anthrax tapes along with an Anthrax t-shirt.  Made more money than I thought I would make.

So here's my most recent trick.  I'm putting a set of 45 tapes on eBay, with an mp3 disc thrown in as a bonus.  I just took the mp3s that I ripped from the same albums I had on CD, and burned them to a DVD-R disc.  As far as I know, throwing in a bonus digital recording with the original recordings isn't against the rules.  Hopefully this all goes well.  I think I can throw the rest into another set, long with a bunch of cassette tray holders.

Casing and Cataloging

A few brief updates:

• My new set of 4-disc DVD cases arrived.  I moved about 75 discs into them.  Ugh.  Finally done!
• Meanwhile I dubbed a few more hidden VHS tapes I had lying about, over to DVD.  This time, some James Burke.  I can't get enough James Burke.  I got to meet him when he came to my college back in the day.  He autographed photo hangs on my wall.

• I also finished moving more photos into a new album.  Another long, tedious, pain-in-the-ass process.  But finally done.
• I tried looking through my huge box of "Items for Ebay" in my hallway, and writing a list with everything under some type of category.  Man, I have a lot of crap to sell.  It's not always as simple as just putting the auctions up.  I have to think of the best way to pair what item with what other items, what to use for a price on that, etc.  This could be a while.

Rare Doctor Who for sale. Know any fans?

Silly me.  I blogged about the Doctor Who lots I put on eBay, but didn't give the links.

To recap: I put two lots of rare, out-of-print Doctor Who episodes on eBay. Most of them are from the Tom Baker years. They're on VHS (NTSC) and have never been released on DVD (or I think in some cases, at least never released for region 1).

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190363358407
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190363360985

Now one thing I don't mention in the auctions, is that I successfully made some DVD-R transfer copies of some of these episodes. So if somebody here buys them or refers to somebody else who will buy them, let me know and I'll throw in some transferred DVD-R copies of the same titles too.  I'd like to see these make their way to the home of a fan!

"CDs! Get your CDs here!"

Before I get into my recent dejunking accomplishments, I'd like to say a couple of things about buying and selling CDs.  A lot of this applies to DVDs too.

• Good news: CDs are cheap!  I remember the days when CDs were pretty much a luxury item.  Those of you who've seen Wayne's World might remember the scene where Wayne puts a disc into his dashboard-mounted discman, and his girlfriend Cassandra excitedly asks, "When did you get the CD player?!?"  When the Wayne's World DVD finally came out, Director Penelope Spheris had to explain that scene in the audio commentary.  I remember my first discman that not only required four AAA batteries, but would skip if you practically just breathed on the thing.  These days you can walk into a drug store and buy not just a discman, but a device that additionally plays CD-Rs filled with mp3s.

CDs themselves are cheap and they've been cheap for a number of years now.  We're already WELL past the point where you'd get those AOL CD-ROM discs as junk mail.  I've never really bothered buying CD-RW discs instead of CD-R blank discs, because if I screw up when I'm burning something, who cares?  I just toss the disc and start with a new one.

Why are discs so cheap these days?  First of all, manufacturers have simply gotten better at making discs for less and less of a cost.  Second of all, CD burners and mp3 players have been common house-hold inventions for a long time now.  Many people have just ripped their CD collection to their hard drive (if not gotten their music illegally in the first place) and are getting rid of their original CDs.  With internet speeds always getting faster and hard drives always getting bigger (I've already seen the 2 TERAbyte hard drives in the stores), I imagine movies are going to go the same way.

Personally though I have no plans on selling my original CD collection even after I've ripped the files.  There's always the chance I'll want to rip them in a higher format, or want the whole CD for some other reason.  Never mind the fact that I'm a collector when it comes to my favorite bands. 

If you're looking to buy a CD or DVD, I recommend going to half.com.  They're owned by eBay, but they're not an auction site.  They're a site that lets you buy or sell directly to individuals, and they only carry CDs, movies, games, and books: the big 4 groups.  Since it's not an auction, you don't have to keep on checking in to see if you've been outbid and what not.  You can also look at the used stuff sold by individuals through Amazon.com.

• Bad news: CDs are cheap!  If you think you're going to get a good amount of money from selling your CDs, think again.  Certainly there are going to be those rare CDs which will get you more dollars than you thought, but these are far and few between.  Fortunately, it's not impossible to sell used CDs.

So, how can you get rid of unwanted CDs?  There are a few options, each with advantages and disadvantages.

• Used CD stores.  There are a number of used CD stores out there willing to pay you cash for your used CDs.  They'll ask for an ID, just in case they get a call from the police an hour later saying somebody's 500 CD collection was just stole.  Seems like a nice deal, but there are a few catches.  They won't take just any CD.  For example, if it's some promo CD you got at a club without a cover, or some local band's crappy demo CD, they probably won't take it.  They might also not take a title that they're overstocked in.  (True story: I bought the Led Zeppelin complete studio box set used for about $80, and the clerk said "Oh man, a guy came in here yesterday wanting to trade his in, and I said 'We already have two of them sitting there, and they've been sitting there unsold for over a year.  So I don't want to take on a third one.'  But you bought it!")  And more often than not, unauthorized bootlegs and home-burned CD-Rs are out of the question.

Another down side to selling your CDs to a used CD store is the same down side that comes with selling any sort of used items to a store: they won't give you much for it.  Yes, I know it's not fair that you're only getting $10 for a stack of a dozen CDs that you paid well more than $10 EACH for.  But that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Yesterday I brought about two dozen CDs to the store.  They only took half of them.  But they paid me $23 cash.  It was more than I expected, actually.  If your real main goal is to just get rid of the stuff, then the amount of money you get shouldn't bother you that much.  Think of it as a bonus.

• Selling on-line.  A nice advantage of this is that you have a better chance at reaching a person who really wants what you have to sell.  I'll never forget that moron I once saw posting to alt.music.black-sabbath (that's a newsgroup, for those of you who've never used the internet outside of a web browser before).  He said he had the debut solo CD of Black Sabbath singer Tony Martin, and tried selling it to some used CD store, and the clerk laughed at him.  So assuming the CD was worthless, the guy just "threw it away".  And I rightfully call this guy a "moron", because if he had done even a minimal amount of asking around on-line, he would have found out that the disc was fetching an average of $50 on eBay at that time.  Bye-bye, fifty bucks.  Schmuck.

So before you assume "Nobody wants a CD from [insert obscure band here]", try doing a little search on eBay or Half.com to see if it's in high demand.  It can't hurt.

Unfortunately, this is more of the exception than the rule.  Sometimes you'll bring a CD to one of these sites, only to find out that 20 other people are selling the same CD for a mere dollar or two.  Sometimes you'll even see "1-cent sales".  This is when somebody sells the CD for a penny, but charges a little extra for the shipping and handling, which is where they get the profit.  But for some CDs, it's the only way to make a profit, so if all else fails you could try that.

Another disadvantage of course is that unlike going to a store, you have to make the effort to package the item for mailing, mail it out, track feedback left on the site, etc.  If you're planning on doing a lot of on-line selling, I recommend buying a little weighing scale to help calculate prices.

Could I have perhaps gotten a little more money from my CDs if I sold them on-line instead of taking them to the store?  Maybe, maybe not.  But instead of keeping track of a bunch of different auction listings, some of which I might have had to pay money for even if the item didn't sell, I was happy to just make one trip to the store and get it over with.

• Give-it-away, Give-it-away, Give-it-away now!  Yes, you can give some of these discs away as gifts.  But don't just dump your CDs of unwanted music on some friend who doesn't like it either.  That just says "I'm a dink" and "I'm too cheap to buy you an actual birthday gift."  Unless maybe you give it to them as clearly a gag gift, in which case I think you should additionally give a serious gift too.  Instead, give the stuff to somebody who will actually appreciate it.  I had so many versions of Black Sabbath's Paranoid album on CD: the original release (distributed by Castle in Holland), the 1996 remaster, the box set version, the new 3-CD special edition, etc.  At some point I was playing with a band who was covering "Hand of Doom", and one of the band members didn't own a recording of it.  So I said "Hell, I'll just give you the CD."  Likewise, I've run across young music fans who are looking back and just discovering the classics.  Why not help them along?

• If all else fails, there's the thrift store.  This goes for practically ANY type of item in your home.  If you've tried everything else, you can always donate it to a thrift store.  You won't get money, but they will take anything, AND you can typically get a tax write-off.  They'll give you a slip of paper to fill out where you briefly mention what you gave them and the approximate worth.  This amount is usually left up to you to fill in, but be realistic.  Don't kid yourself into thinking you can tell the IRS you donated two pairs of jeans and five CDs worth $10,000!  Just hold on to your copy of the slip and get ready to dig it out come next April.  You'll need to include Schedule A of your 1040 form.

The Best of Craigslist

Craigslist.org, a great on-line want-ads site, certainly has its share of weird ads.  They've taken advantage of this to create a "Best of Craigslist" section.  Readers give the nominations.  Though the site warns that "postings may be explicitly sexual, scatalogical, offensive, graphic, tasteless, and/or not funny."

Here are a few samples that amused me.  And again, these are actual ads that people have posted.

Wanted: Taxidermist who watches a lot of Kung Fu.  I am looking to hire someone with the means to obtain and stuff animals in fashions I choose, which will be Kung Fu for now. When I was younger I convinced a friend of mines dad to create two squirrels Kung Fu fighting. I still think about it from time to time and have decided to get my own Kung Fu animals, I understand this is a bizarre request. Serious inquiries only, please E-Mail me the species of animals you commonly hunt or can obtain and your rate for taxidermy of each in various Kung Fu poses. Mounting preferred. Once again I feel I must state this is serious. If you can show any of your previous work it will probably give you an edge on the competition. Please respond via/e-mail. Thank you.

Cabana boy NEEDED - Start ASAP.  In general... on hot days like these we need some support while we relax out in the sun... Job Duties and Requirements:
-Must be able to operate a blender
-Must be experience with working iPod's
-Good with oil and sunscreen
-Must wear uniform
-Must enjoy sun and water
-Hand grape feedings necessary
-Be willing work at moments notice
This is an excellent position for anyone that needs to get a little Vitamin D and enjoy some sexy ladies' company. This is a non-paid internship, but the perks are excellent: drinks, company and laughs! Please send picture and measurements (don't be disgusting!). SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY.

Mow our lawn for a date! Hey boys. 'tis the season for lawn mowing and new love. These are the only two things missing in my life. First order of the business: the lawn. Our small front lawn, and largish back lawn have grown out of control after all the rain we have had as of late. It's about 1.5 feet tall, and growing taller by the second. We are four lovely ladies lacking a lawn mower. This is where you come in.
Second order of business: you and me. I'm a sexy young 20 something lady offering a date (my treat) in exchange for a mowed lawn. We will also offer homemade baked goods to sweeten the deal.
However this lawn may be more than you can handle alone. For this reason, my sultry single roommate has graciously agreed to offer the same deal for your friend who helps you out with the task. Let's go on a double date! You are also welcome to mow the lawn on your own, and pick a lucky friend to come on the date.
Who knows, maybe one date could turn into two (lawn mowing optional *wink wink*)
Serious inquiries only, we need this lawn mowed, BYOLawnMower!!!
No photos of your weedwhacker please.

Husband wants a rusty trombone for his birthday. My husband has asked for a rusty trombone for his birthday, which is Wednesday. I've scoured the pawn shops and music stores, and I haven't found one. I am guessing that rusty ones will be cheaper than new ones, and I don't know what the big deal is, but it's what he wants and he is very specific about it. I could have bought a dozen new ones at this point, but he says that a rusty trombone is nostalgic for him, so I suppose it will mean more. If you selling (or even giving away) a rusty trombone, please let me know what you have, how much it costs and how I can get it (will you deliver it, or will I have to go to you?). Also, suggestions on how to wrap such a thing? Please help, I am down to the wire on this thing and I don't like being this late with a gift!!!

Free Box of Magnum Condoms. I swear to whatever it is that i believe in, if i get any emails offering the use of this offered item with me..... i'll fill all 33 condoms up with yellow paint, and pelt every guy who looks like he might be the kind of douche bag who'd send such an email.
That said, it would be great if you were a chic or had a chic pick them up. I'm a girl. The box is a 36 pack with 3 missing and the rest are totally fine and untampered with, i just don't want a box of condoms too big for most guys sitting around reminding me of yet another failed relationship and my renewed sense of not getting laid. Not that I'd like to be, so don't offer.

Magic want to solve life's problems. If anyone has a magic wand that will solve all the problems in life, I'm interested in looking at it or buying it from you. 

1970's Avocado Green Toilet. This 1970's beauty will take you back.....sit on it while leafing through a Reader's Digest, smoking a cigarette, watching Chico and the Man, and dropping the kids off at the pool~ you'll think you are in a time warp! It works fine other than the 119 gallons it uses to flush, and there are no stains or streaks. Come'n get it! 

I'm sure I could sift deeper and find even better ones, but you get the idea.

eBay: A Double-Edged sword

One rationalization used for keeping so much stuff is of course the argument of valuability.  "What?  We can't just toss this in the trash.  This is a collector's item!  It must be worth a lot!"  It's true, you do have to sort through the stuff because it would be stupid to blindly throw away something that could be valuable.  And what could be better than getting money for dejunking your home?  This invariably leads to the question, "How much can I get for this on eBay?"

About a year ago I managed to get rid of a high volume of stuff on both eBay and Craigslist.  And now that I have the time, I'm going to be doing it again.  But here are some of the important thigns I learned last time:

• Most of the stuff I've saved that I thought would be valuable, was not.
• On the brighter side, some stuff that I thought might have been worthless, actually sold for a lot.
• Cassette tapes and VHS tapes were among the most difficult things to get rid of.  It doesn't matter how rare the recording is, or how insanely cheap you're giving them away for.  You mention either of these physical analog media, and people stare and laugh at you as if you showed up with an Edison wax cylinder.  For example, I have seen people pay literally hundreds of dollars for the debut CD from Badlands (a short-lived supergroup from the early 90s), yet nobody bids on the cassette version.  You would think that if people wanted the recording THAT badly, they'd buy the tape and just burn their own CD from the audio and put up with the potentially worse sound quality, but I guess not.
• Often you have to accept the fact that some things are only going to sell if you sell them for next to nothing, an embarrassing fraction of what you paid for them.  BUT, if your top goal is to get rid of volume in your home, not make money, then you should consider it a success.

And here's why I call eBay a double-edged sword:

• eBay is still one of the best places to sell stuff, because lots of people go there.
• The mere existence of eBay has lowered the value of many things.

Anton Szandor LaVey wrote a great essay called "Sleepers, Orphans, and Scarcity" that wound up in the posthumous compilation Satan Speaks!.  Yes, that same Anton LaVey who wrote The Satanic Bible some 40 years ago and also established the Church of Satan also wrote some great stuff on a variety of other topics including, well, STUFF.  Another similar essay from the same book was "Acquisition".  Both essays (and the whole book for that matter) are well worth reading.  But here's a quote from "Sleepers, Orphans, and Scarcity":

"Everyone saved National Geographic magzines, with Life a close second.  It has been said that the earth has been thrown a few degrees off its axis due to the weight of all the National Geographics that people saved. ... As might be expected, an old Look magazine is scarer and more valuable than Life.  The same goes for the Life imitators: Pic, Click, Vue, Parade, Peek, etc.  The reason: the imitators were not considered worth saving."

In other words, a lot of things marked as "collector's edition" or "limited edition" or similar do not in fact go up much in value.  Why?  Because lots of people buy them and stow them away, making sure they're in good condition.  Thus, they're not so rare!  Jane Doe might want $200 for her JFK memorial issue of Life magazine, but then somebody else digs out his own copy and offers to sell it for $100, while a third person digs out their copy and is willing to sell it to you for $50, and so on.

As if this weren't bad enough, the mere existence and popularity of eBay (and to a much lesser extent, other auction sites) have driven the value down even more.  Back in the early to mid 90s, people were paying hundreds to thousands of dollars for Star Wars figures, G.I. Joe vehicles, or vintage comic books (again, even if some of the imitators were worth more due to being much more scarce).  But now you can go to eBay and find dozens of original 1977 Darth Vader figures getting zero bids.  I tried selling a whole collection of miscellaneous Star Wars stuff I had saved, placing several ads in eBay and Craigslist.  No takers.  And I wasn't even asking $20 for it all. 

Likewise, I thought all of those rare Ozzy and Metallica singles and related doo-dads I had been saving would be bringing in the cash.  I certainly got some sales, but not for much.  I should have just sold it all back in the 90s for hundreds of dollars, when I could.

Surprisingly though, here's some stuff that DID sell well:

• Rock t-shirts.  Yes, ratty old faded rock band shirts from the 80s. Which brings another selling lesson to mind: some items might not sell on their own, but do sell when you package them with something else.  For example, when I would sell a t-shirt, I'd also throw in cassette tapes or flair buttons/pins from the same band.  More often than not, it worked!
• Legos.  I had tons of Lego sets when I was a kid, and for some reason my dad always saved the original boxes.  I made a point at saving the original instructions, so that I could build the original piece again if I decided to use the bricks to build my own thing.  I have to admit, these were hard for me to give up, because I have never met an engineer who didn't grow up playing with Legos and I felt they were a "part" of me in that sense.  It's hard to give something up from childhood when it gives you a warm smile and fond memories.  But was it worth keeping three enormous boxes stacked up in my living room?  Quite simply, no.  So I sold 99% of it, and made a killing.

What will this second round of eBay selling bring me?  We'll see.