A Morning At The Opera

Most mornings¹, the first thing I do after making my coffee, is to go to my computer and check on what’s sold during the night. I've written about my selling on eBay before on this blog. At first it started out as a means to rid myself of things I had accumulated over time: books, CDs, DVDs, posters, knickknacks and gewgaws.

When I was enrolled for a series of courses at a local college last summer, one of my classmates starting talking about selling on Amazon (she has sold on many sites and she highly recommends Craig’s List²). She told me how it was better to use these other sources, dependent on what you were selling—and she was right. I added one Amazon account, then another, and I find that I sell more books, CDs and DVDs on Amazon than eBay. I also find it faster and cheaper to post things. eBay is still good as an auction source where you pray bidding wars erupt over the item. eBay has posting fees and you set the postage rates. Amazon has no listing fees and they pay your postage (though as a set rate it can fall short at times.) Things were exiting the house. I was being productive and making money.

One evening this winter I was online talking to my friend Laura, and she starting asking me about my profits. I had, at that time, only generalized ideas about profit. I knew I was making money selling these things, but I hadn’t really focused myself on exact amounts. My chief concern was getting rid of things.³ For whatever reason, my friend’s boredom, or my curiosity, she asked if she could make up some spreadsheets that night so we could see what was going on. “I’m Queen of the spreadsheet,” she said, and she wasn’t kidding. Those spreadsheet serpents sank their dollar sign fangs into my consciousness. I realized how well I was doing, or how much better I could be doing, so now the selling has turned into a much more consistent, day to day part of my life. Spreadsheet sales in the sunset.⁴

Awww...Yer Mudder Reads Woodrow Wilson's Love Lettahs

Yesterday morning, like most mornings, I was sitting here sipping my coffee, pollen blowing in from the open window, and me blowing my nose. I should explain that when I sell something online, I always send out email following a sale, letting the buyer know their stuff is on the way, but also with a request “if they desire to leave feedback for me, it would be appreciated. " I opened an email from someone who had purchased a DVD of the opera Aida, and I started giggling. Keep in mind, this is how your brain works when you have one eye partially open and your mind is on low flame:

Dear Cube:

The DVD of AIDA (La Scala 2006) arrived this morning. Thank you.

It is a present for a friend so it will be a while before I get feedback on the quality but I am pleased with the ease and speed of this purchase and receipt of the DVD. So, thank you.

Roman Pumblechook⁵ , M.STAT




I thought, “What the….??? MISTER!!!" I sold you a new, sealed DVD. You received a new, sealed DVD…and quickly. What do I have to do with the quality of the DVD? I didn’t manufacture it. I didn’t record it. I didn’t star in it. At this point, I took my crumpled tissue and held it to my chin and threw my arm out in declamation warbling, “Ayeeeeeeda….and I threw in a “I Pagliacci,” for the heck of it. I was laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Right when all of this was going on, my friend Drew⁶ signed on, and I started telling him the story. He said, “Perhaps they mean that they didn’t know what damage was inside….of course they could mean vocal damage.” Then he said, “Boy…those Three Stooges could SURE sing an opera!” I answered, “Who knew Larry was such a tenor?” Drew shot back, “Curly, sure, but Larry? I didn’t see it coming." Drew added, “You could invite opera singers over for cocktails and have them all sing to perfect pitch to shatter the DVD jewel case sealed in it’s plastic. Moe was known to do that with his falsetto. (translation: I ripped it, posted it on the internet, and now I want my money back.)”

I invariably get good feedback on my accounts. I ship very quickly (“faster even than Amazon,”) and I wrap carefully. I put a personalized note in thanking them for buying from me, and I’ve even had them comment on my penmanship. I was laughing when I replied to Drew, “I applaud her use of bubble wrap and brown wrapping paper. I also noted she uses high end shipping tape.” ….and if that don’t seal the deal, nyuk,nyuk, nyuk…⁷

~~Pennies from heaven~~

¹Unfortunately, this goes on when I travel as well. I’ve shipped items to my vacation locale that I’m selling so that I can continue to mail them out as they sell. I’ve even gone to junk shops and yard sales when I travel and sold using my account. This past fall when I was on Cape Cod, one of my friends there said she had always wanted to learn eBay. She had some antique beaded handbags we used as learning tools on my account so I could show her how I photograph items and do my descriptive writing and layout. I know. What a way to spend vacation time.


²She was emptying out her house because she thought she would be moving (false alarm,) but a few weeks ago she told me she had done very well with her Craig’s List sales, but she stipulated to me, “When you use Craig’s List, make sure it is clear “cash only and no negotiations on the price.”’

³I’ve also followed the usual paths of disposing of items. Better items of clothing went to friends, some to consignment shops (although you never do very well with them as the profit percentage goes to the shop owner.) Boxes of books were shipped off to one friend who was then living in a small town in Western Massachusetts. She would speed read through them then donate the books to her local library. Greenfield Library should have a wing in my honor. Another friend received so many cookbooks she said “no more!” and meant it. There are times I want to cave and just hire a dumpster and do this the fast way, but the pragmatic me plugs along . I usually read library books now (and a lot of intralibrary loan,) and I’ve stuck to my rule of “If you do buy a book, one must leave.” There was a man in my neighborhood who was a known packrat. You could see things spilling out of his house. One day in the early evening I was driving somewhere and passed his house. There were police cars and dumpsters and people standing around on the sidewalk and into the street. The man stood there, (probably hyperventilating and feeling sick to his stomach, given his attachment to "stuff.") Some kindly neighbor had declared him a health hazard, and the authorities came in to empty his house. It took two days and seven dumpsters. Either that night, or the next, I drove by and saw that the man had put a ladder up against the side of one dumpster and was crawling down inside and hauling his things out again. I use him, (and others I’ve known like him,) as a cautionary reminder of that illness (and hoarding is an illness,) along with my own philosophy about materialism (which is: as each year passes: divest, divest, divest.) After that incident, the old man put up plastic siding on his side porch so no one could see in again. He died about two years ago, and his relatives did a hasty slapdash clean and repair to put the house on the market. It didn’t sell for the longest time and when it did, those owners didn’t stay long, then another set, then another set. I half wonder if the old man put his curse on the place.

⁴There’s a great You Tube recording of Al Bowlly singing “Red Sails in the Sunset,” and if you want to know more about Al Bowlly, well….there’s Wikipedia. I’m only a footnote, yanno?

⁵Not his real name, but close enough. The email and M STAT are his, so his name and title had me laughing, too.

⁶Drew has guest blogged on here before, including his infamous “boy lunch” with another friend Tony when they went to lunch and reported back from Hooters. I was talking to Drew while writing this, asking him what the sandwich is he always orders…Texas Steak or Pulled BBQ Pork. He said probably the BBQ, and I said, “You would order the pulled meat at Hooters.” He said, “Just like the restaurant, I don’t deserve my R Rating.” We did our homework. It was the Cuban sandwich.

⁷ While I was writing this, in my researches I learned that the first Stooge, Ted Healy, had been murdered in 1937, on the day his son was born.