Sales Continue / A Second Cel? / Geo Starter Shot Again
I continue to sell those DVD burners at a fairly nice clip. The place I'm getting them from to begin with has been delivering them to the shelves slower and slower, so I'm not getting the drives as fast as I'd like or as demand can sometimes require. But it's not all sweetness and cupcakes. I went through a dry spell earlier this week where I didn't sell a single drive in four days. That's disconcerting. I've got a bunch of other crap up for sale here and there and the market is really down for just about everything. This economy nonsense is really killing my bottom line!
This buying and selling stuff has kinda gone to my head. Having a little extra cash around, I've been watching for Tiny Toons collectables on eBay and I happened to discover one seller who was selling another of those giant sericels. A "sericel" is a character sheet that animation studios produce and sell as collectables to fans. In the case of Tiny Toons, the sericel they produced was five feet long and expensive. Last year (Also in mid-June, as irony would have it) I was lucky enough to snag one on eBay for only $50. Sadly, because it's freakin' huge, it's impossible to frame on the cheap. No one sells a frame that's five feet long. My options are to either have one custom built (Expensive) or build one (Untalented). So, for an entire year it has sat in it's tube... Waiting...
So why do I bring up the sericel and how I've let eBay buying and selling get to my head? It's all because I accidently won a second Tiny Toons sericel. But Adam, how can you accidently win something on eBay? Especially a collectable that was once $300? Easy- You bid with time to spare and then immediately realize you don't really want it but you win anyway because no one outbid with the time left. I had my eyes on this second sericel mostly because I had plans to turn around and resell it. The seller had titled the item as "Tiny Tunes" which meant that it wouldn't show up in searches for "Tiny Toons". Thanks to that improper advertising, the thing sold to me for only $25, half of what I paid for the first one last year. Plus, the guy is in Portland, so I was able to pick it up and skip shipping charges. Holy crap, right? This is awesome.
Then I got it home. I took one look at it and something seemed off. Colors and paint were missing from several of the characters, as if much of it had been left undone. I whipped out the first sericel to compare. The new one was indeed missing a whole lot. The Warner Brothers stamp was missing as well as certain colors from almost every character. Most prominent was the white ink and paint missing from the entire sheet. Here's a photo of both sericels side by side as a comparison. The official one is on top while the new one I bought is on the bottom.
Horrifying, isn't it? The paint is nearly completely missing from Li'l Sneezer. The black ink lines are thicker and the colors that are there seem to be off somehow. It's a fake!! It's either an unfinished production goof or a half-completed photocopied duplicate with a faked certificate of authenticity from some gallery in England. When I met the seller to pick it up, he was sad to see it go and believed it was truly worth far more than I paid. He really felt this was a great treasure. I've been going back and forth about sending him an email telling him what I've learned about the item, but I don't want to ruin the appreciation and sentimental value he must have held for this thing. Plus, I don't want to make it seem like I'm the ungrateful buyer who now wants to renege on a contract sale. I guess I'll just try to sell it as planned and see what happens.
In other news, my poor Geo is a paperweight again, but this time it won't be for long. The starter solenoid has gone bad again. If that sounds familiar, it's because the same exact thing happened once before in March of 2008. Back then, I replaced the $80 part and things were cool, but stupid me, I neglected to keep the purchase receipt and lifetime warranty information so I could get it exchanged now. It'd be really nice if I could walk into Schuck's Auto Parts and just somehow manage to talk my way into getting then to exchange it without a receipt. That would make my month.
This buying and selling stuff has kinda gone to my head. Having a little extra cash around, I've been watching for Tiny Toons collectables on eBay and I happened to discover one seller who was selling another of those giant sericels. A "sericel" is a character sheet that animation studios produce and sell as collectables to fans. In the case of Tiny Toons, the sericel they produced was five feet long and expensive. Last year (Also in mid-June, as irony would have it) I was lucky enough to snag one on eBay for only $50. Sadly, because it's freakin' huge, it's impossible to frame on the cheap. No one sells a frame that's five feet long. My options are to either have one custom built (Expensive) or build one (Untalented). So, for an entire year it has sat in it's tube... Waiting...
So why do I bring up the sericel and how I've let eBay buying and selling get to my head? It's all because I accidently won a second Tiny Toons sericel. But Adam, how can you accidently win something on eBay? Especially a collectable that was once $300? Easy- You bid with time to spare and then immediately realize you don't really want it but you win anyway because no one outbid with the time left. I had my eyes on this second sericel mostly because I had plans to turn around and resell it. The seller had titled the item as "Tiny Tunes" which meant that it wouldn't show up in searches for "Tiny Toons". Thanks to that improper advertising, the thing sold to me for only $25, half of what I paid for the first one last year. Plus, the guy is in Portland, so I was able to pick it up and skip shipping charges. Holy crap, right? This is awesome.
Then I got it home. I took one look at it and something seemed off. Colors and paint were missing from several of the characters, as if much of it had been left undone. I whipped out the first sericel to compare. The new one was indeed missing a whole lot. The Warner Brothers stamp was missing as well as certain colors from almost every character. Most prominent was the white ink and paint missing from the entire sheet. Here's a photo of both sericels side by side as a comparison. The official one is on top while the new one I bought is on the bottom.
Horrifying, isn't it? The paint is nearly completely missing from Li'l Sneezer. The black ink lines are thicker and the colors that are there seem to be off somehow. It's a fake!! It's either an unfinished production goof or a half-completed photocopied duplicate with a faked certificate of authenticity from some gallery in England. When I met the seller to pick it up, he was sad to see it go and believed it was truly worth far more than I paid. He really felt this was a great treasure. I've been going back and forth about sending him an email telling him what I've learned about the item, but I don't want to ruin the appreciation and sentimental value he must have held for this thing. Plus, I don't want to make it seem like I'm the ungrateful buyer who now wants to renege on a contract sale. I guess I'll just try to sell it as planned and see what happens.
In other news, my poor Geo is a paperweight again, but this time it won't be for long. The starter solenoid has gone bad again. If that sounds familiar, it's because the same exact thing happened once before in March of 2008. Back then, I replaced the $80 part and things were cool, but stupid me, I neglected to keep the purchase receipt and lifetime warranty information so I could get it exchanged now. It'd be really nice if I could walk into Schuck's Auto Parts and just somehow manage to talk my way into getting then to exchange it without a receipt. That would make my month.