Hi!

I can’t believe that the first month of 2013 has passed! Wow, did it go by fast! I am still buying, buying and buying. New fresh merchandise is what keeps the eBay store sales going.

Here is an awesome set of Royal Doulton dinnerware that I bought last weekend. I paid $500 for it at an estate sale. Yes, I said $500.

I listed most of it at auction and at pretty reasonable prices. There were some first quality and some second quality pieces in the set. It made it rather confusing to sort out the 137 pieces! That works out to only $3.64 per piece. Wow!

At auction prices (not everything is listed because of some duplicates), the first quality pieces added up to $3,414.58 and the second quality pieces added up to $488.85. There were 106 first quality and 31 second quality pieces. Grand total $3,903.43!!

I will be raising those prices to higher fixed prices in my eBay store. Here is a listing for you to check out.

Check this ebay auction here!

Dinnerware again! China is one of my BEST performing categories. If you don’t have my dinnerware eBook yet, you must consider investing in your business with this purchase.

We have some super exciting news to share with you! After a very difficult decision, Houston decided to transfer to the best academic school in the valley. It is called Xavier College Prep and is a Jesuit Catholic private school.

This school is beyond amazing. Indy, my mom and I attended their open house several weeks ago and we were blown away. The opportunities for the arts, education, religion and college placement were just too vast to pass up this time. I say this time, as Houston had been accepted for his freshman year, but for financial reasons it did not work out.

It took a village to make it happen this year, but we are thrilled that Houston started there on Monday. Here he is on his first day of school in his uniform. Oh no! Back to uniforms! At least he had 1 ½ years of free dress.

The school is also a perfect fit for Indy. There is a fantastic drama department, they have houses that compete much like in the Harry Potter book series, and the class sizes are small—4 to 25 kids per class. Indiana (being the perfectionist) she is has already completed her application for next year!

I hope that both my kids will be able to attend Xavier. It seems like just yesterday they were starting pre-school and now Indy will be a high school freshman this coming fall.

But back to pre-school, Indy attended her best friend Paige’s 14 birthday party over the weekend at Chuck E Cheese (too funny!). Indy and Paige met in pre-school and Indy decided then and there (at age 3) that she was going to make Paige her best friend. Paige didn’t like the idea whatsoever and it took Indy most of the year to make it happen. Determined child!

Pre-school

Pre-High School

Indy and I went out to garage sales together a few weekends ago. We had a lot of fun! At one of the sales, there was a lot of costume jewelry. Check out this photo of the 3 pieces I bought.

Did you catch the price on that one brooch? If not look at the photo again!

I was thinking, this lady is crazy to price this Christmas Tree brooch at $3,000. And she kept leaving it on the table unattended as she was setting up. All the other shoppers looking at this item were saying things under their breath, like what? Is this for real? I thought we may be on candid camera because it was just so bizarre!

After I bought Indy quite a few pieces of jewelry and we were leaving, I just had to ask the woman, “What makes this Christmas Tree Pin worth so much money?” She laughed and said “It is a mistake, my daughter noticed it and I thought it was so funny I put it out that way to see if anyone would comment! It is really only $3.00.”

Craziest story ever! I ended up buying the tree and two other pieces. It turns out the tree was broken off at the base but the story was priceless so I just had to buy it. It now has a permanent position in my museum of strange but true garage sale items, thrift store finds and eBay craziness!

Here is one frog brooch that I did get listed. How cute is it?

Check this ebay auction here!

For those of you who may not remember this crazy eBay story, I will repeat it again because it is definitely worth repeating. I sold a set of twin doll beds to a man in New York for $19.99 plus $6 shipping. He emailed me upon receipt to say that he wanted to return them because he thought he was buying full size twin beds. I was like “really for $26.00 delivered’? But I did take the return.

He emailed and said that his entire family makes fun of him for this mistaken purchase. The funniest part was that one of the Queen’s Court members emailed me during our monthly phone call to say, “That would have to be the longest shag rug in history for those twin beds to be real—it is about two feet high based on the scale of real beds”. Indy had taken the photo for the eBay listing on our home carpet which is not shag but a very low pile carpet.

Here is a photo of those “doll” beds still bubble wrapped from the return with a coffee mug to show scale. These beds have also garnered a permanent spot in my museum of eBay oddities.

OK, enough from my museum collection! We have jewelry on the brain thanks to the wonderful, fantastic, Jewelry Teleseminar #2 we did with Kathy Flood.

It was the Queen’s Court gift for January and took place on Wednesday night, January 16th. Don’t worry, if you weren’t a QC member, you can still purchase it here.

You may also want to purchase her first teleseminar that we did over 2 years ago here, Jewelry Teleseminar #1.

Kathy is the jewelry columnist for the Antique Trader and the author of several best selling books on jewelry for Warman's. She is incredible and we were so fortunate to have her share her expertise with us on call #2.

Teleseminar #2 was Pearls of Wisdom for Successful Jewelry Sales! Here are what my QCers said about Kathy coming back for Teleseminar #2:

These testimonials are amazing! If you were not a Queen's Court member, Click here to purchase now. Kathy also has a very special offer for any of you who purchase her teleseminar. Just email me at lynn@thequeenofauctions.com and I will email you the offer!

Because of Kathy and her amazing recent teleseminar, I was able to correctly identify this fur clip. All these years I had thought it was a dress clip. I immediately changed the listing and raised the price! Thanks Kathy!

Check this ebay auction here!

On the subject of rising prices, the USPS raised its rates on Sunday, January 28th. Domestic rates were not too bad, but International was OUT OF CONTROL! Huge changes. For example, a 1 pound package to Canada used to be $5.75 and now it is $10.55. Yikes!

Luckily, there is now a 10% discount for printing international first class online (instead of the former 5%) but only 3% for priority international online.

So, if you were smart and have been using my former international rate chart and quoted the prices with the additional handling, you are probably going to be just fine.

As an example, the $10.55 for 1 pound to Canada is now only $9.50 on auctane or online. My former price quote was $8.95 for a 1 pound package to Canada. Not too bad!

If you are a Queen’s Court member the USPS international rate cheat sheet was your gift for February. If you are not a Queen’s Court member, you may purchase the downloadable version here or the actual laminated two sided chart here.

Oh, let me add, if you took the time when listing to do calculated shipping instead of fixed, you will also be fine. However, I believe calculated is very limiting. It takes too long to do a lot of listings with the required dimensions etc. and there is no way to make any real profit.

Speaking of making a profit from your shipping center, it is very doable and makes shipping so much more enjoyable.

Check out this email I received from Tracee,

If you didn’t pre-purchase my awesome shipping video that Indy filmed and produced, you may still order it here. Even though the price has increased, it is still worth every penny and will show you how to make shipping profitable. Even one hour saved off of your shipping time a day would pay for this video within a few days.

Here are Mo, Indy and I after the video series. It was a lot of fun!

Because the “Shipping is as easy as ABC” video was extremely helpful to so many of you, Indy, Mo and I have started filming “What 2 Watch 4” the newest video in our training series.

It will walk you through what to be looking for at garage & estate sales and in thrift stores. It has been a blast to film and we already have two segments in the can!

It will cover these topics:

• What to AWLAYS buy
• What to NEVER buy
• Collections
• Maker’s Marks and Countries of Origin
• And finally, Gut Feeling Purchases

It will be very similar to the live boot camp section called “Why in the World did you buy that?” with Lynn & Mo. But this time, we have me, Mo and Indy.

Since we are not having any more live boot camps, it is my hope that these training videos will keep you all updated and knowledgeable.

You may pre-purchase the new “What 2 Look 4” video series at the low introductory price. It will be completed by the end of February and since two sections are already finished: Collections and Maker’s Marks and Countries of Origin, we may release these sooner.

In the video series we show many items that I have purchased. I LOVE to SHOP. Remember, new items are what drive all of your sales. Last Friday, I went to an estate sale and picked up two huge plastic bins for $147. Oh, I forgot to add, that I filled them with my hand picked items from the sale. They weren’t just empty plastic bins . You won’t believe the treasures inside. We will talk about some of them on the new video series.

Here are Mo and I doing the photo shoot for this coming video series.

And here are two plates that Mo has already got listed. They are so cute! The listing even has watchers.

Check this ebay auction here!

Thanks for reading my ezines! I appreciate it!
Happy eBaying!
Lynn

Lynn Dralle, 'The Queen of Auctions,'
Creator of the best-selling eBay Boot Camp in a Box.