MAY 2020 - Update !

Been slacking off on the blog, and for those of you who follow the blog, I do apologize. Making videos on youtube, or vlogs as they sometimes get called, has been front and center of my 'blogging' activities for the past several months. 

I have been creating weekly update videos, which you can access here. 

There are already over 70 update videos alone there. Most are well under 10 minutes, so you could binge watch them all and see my progress from moving from the old place, buying the new place, and doing renos, and moving in, and progress from there setting up. Still have lots to do, of course. Had to get a living space built from scratch, and technically it still isn't 100% complete, but I am living in the building now.

 Was hoping to monetize them eventually, but now youtube has announced changes that may make that a pipe dream. You used to have to have 1000 subscribers (which is daunting enough to get to), and a few thousand viewing hours on your channel in order to get access to the monetization point, where they put ads and such on your videos, and give you a cut. It is not big money by any stretch (not until you hit a million subscribers, really), but also by that level you do get some perks and features not otherwise available to you.   But, now, if you don;t hit that threshold by June 1st, you won't be grandfathered into the new levels, which apparently will be something like 4000 subscribers and many more viewing hours than before.  With my videos being so short, and with people's attention spans being even shorter, it would have been tough enough to get to the old levels, but now it seems even tougher, almost insurmountable.....Would pretty much need a video to go viral in order to accomplish what seems to be the impossible at this point. I have maybe 75 subscribers now, which has taken many months to get to, so to get another 925 before June 1st seems like an utter impossibility.  

It makes me now doubt the value of the YouTube platform. It is like the "AirMiles" program where they kept downgrading the value of the mileage points you have earned. Just when you think you could afford that toaster with your mileage points, suddenly they  downgraded the points/miles to a level that you could only afford to buy the ballpoint pen with your "miles". 

So, what I am doing may or may not change in the coming few months, as far as blogging and vlogging goes.  We shall see.

Another Update in the New Chapter of Life

So, much has gotten done since the last post. Not as much as I would like, mind you. The whole reno process is slow, with some of the tradespeople doing work, then coming back a week later to complete it. That has been frustrating, especially when one set of tradespeople need the work of another set of tradespeople to be done so they can continue their work....the days and weeks in between have been adding up fast.   

The carpenters have been moving the fastest, though with hunting season upon us, they had to take a week off to go hunting. Oh well, they have gotten the most done, really, and have earned their money.

You can keep abreast of the weekly changes by subscribing and watching the videos here. 

Things are slow as far as the shop storefront is going, as I can't do much until the floors are washed, and without running water I can't get that done. The electricians just got the power going to the pump, and now the pump doesn't seem to be pumping water...so, I still can't call the floor cleaner to come and do the front part of the shop floor.

I had hoped I'd at least be living in the living quarters by now, but these delays are not helping the situation.

Trying to have patience, but my anxiety has been rising with the delays, and watching the money go out far faster than it is coming in. I am not bring in to much as far as income goes, because most of my inventory is packed....and I can't unpack much inventory until the shop gets set up.

 Stuck between a rock and a hard place. But that is where I have to operate for now. Anyways, as I mentioned before, to keep up and current, just catch the videos as they are posted.

Happy pickin'!

Update on the New Chapter of Life

It is now October 17th, 2019. Things are slowly moving ahead. The plumber is here, and has jack-hammered out a section of the concrete floor to rough in the plumbing for my new washroom...at great expense. About $2300 of expense, actually. That is a chunk of my budget, but I guess it is a necessary chunk.

The carpenters, meanwhile, are at a stand still because they are at the point they need to do some more drywall. The electrician didn't finish up the electrical that is needed to be done, so the drywall can't be finished in the living space. A week later I finally had to call to see what the holdup was, and now the guy at their office is checking their schedule to get him back here to finish up. I was also told the worker came by on Friday (when there was storm warnings stating travel wasn't advised & I had a lawyer's appointment in a city nearby at 1:30) and on the morning of which I didn't even receive a call saying he was there needing access.  I guess I was supposed to somehow use my ESP to know he was going to be there....

Communication doesn't seem to be their strong suit.

Anyways, I am hoping/assuming their work is better than their communication skills. They were recently bought out by another firm, so perhaps it is growing pains?

All in all, the progress is slow, and my budget is being eaten away quickly....concerned I will still be left with renovation bills to pay and no money to pay them immediately.  As for sales, it is tough to sell stuff when it is all packed, and you can't open the doors to the public. Online sales via ETSY are slow, maybe 1 - 3 sales a week, and they are usually not significant dollar amounts.

Was really hoping to have some funds left to tide me over the winter, but it is definitely not looking that it will turn out that way. 

So, it is a matter of "sell, sell, sell" again...But, at least my expenses will be lower (assuming my heat bills are not outrageous and nothing pops up that I am not expecting), without a mortgage to pay, lower heat bills, and generally lower monthly expenses.

That's about it for today. As I mentioned before, you can follow the ups and downs of the daily progress by watching my videos on YouTube here. 

Safe picking!

A Fall Post

So, been a busy summer, but not much to blog about....well, actually, there has been lots going on. 

The biggest news is that the property has been sold, and I am no longer the owner of it as of September 30th. 

So, where am I now?

The new property is at 230 Cameron St (AKA North Railway St) in Oak Lake, MB. It is just 5 minutes east down the highway of where I was.  

The building is about 3500 square feet, and I am putting in a living quarters at the back of the building, taking up about 1/5th or so of the building. It is a tiny space, but it will do. As a result of my living quarters being so small, my display space is limited...as a result, I have to divest myself of some of my personal collections. So, that will mean some cool items being put into inventory in the shop!

I also had to let go/abandon approx. $200,000 retail worth of inventory at the property. That consisted all of the outdoor inventory, and a fair bit of what was in the basement; internet inventory, "future" stuff, lamp parts, a pinball machine, a 1890s counter top, a 1960s bar that had soda fountain stools on it (which I had planned to use as my kitchen eating area), among other things that I hated to let go, but really had no choice. The time frame for moving the entire 12 years worth of accumulation was 6 weeks, so I simply did not have the time. I technically didn't have 6 weeks to move stuff, as I had to pack, and find a place to re-establish.  I was lucky to acquire the building I did, despite the amount of reno I have to do to get it up to usable condition. 

If you wish to follow/see the progress from "start" to "now", check out the YouTube videos on my channel, under the heading "New Chapter In Life". You will want to start at Update 1, and go from there.  To keep abreast of new videos, click on the SUBSCRIBE button under teh bottom right corner of the videos.

The videos should update you on what has gone on over the past 7 weeks.....or longer, depending on when you are reading this.

Happy picking!

If a Picker Quit Pickin', What Would a Picker Do?

What to do.

That is a question that has been on my mind lately. 

Why?

Well, if I couldn't be in this business for some reason or other, what would I do?

How would I make a living?

I would definitely scale down my expenses, which I strive to do as it is. I have higher expenses simply because I am limited as to my selection on places to live, because I need to set up my business somewhere appropriate, somewhere with lots of traffic.

Setting up in some little town in the middle of no-where is not really conducive to long term success, in general.

After the property I am on now is sold, my next location will be visible from #1 highway, pure and simple. The Trans Canada is "the" highway, especially when it comes to the prairie provinces. Traffic going anywhere is likely going to be travelling down the #1.

Thousands of vehicles travel that route daily. It is the busiest thoroughfare in the prairie provinces.

So, establishing a store on #1 is the goal.

But, back to the question, if I couldn't be in this business, what would I do?

I have things I'd like to do.....but what would I do, in the way of making a living?

The scary thing is, I really don't know.

Could I make a living doing the other things I'd like to do?

Perhaps.

I am a writer, so if I had a writing gig of some sort that would actually pay real money, then that is a possibility.

I do have some ideas for screenplays, IE: cable-type shows.

Anyone know of a producer looking for some truly fresh ideas?

What is a picker to do?

Following Your Inner Child

Time to move on from those digital cats.

I am always looking at this business as what it is, a business. To me it is not a hobby, a flight of fancy, or a temporary situation. It has been 25 years, after all.

In that thinking, I tend to be attracted to other entrepreneurial thinking & musings of successful entrepreneurs. 

In that line of thinking, I came across a Ted Talk video the other day.

You probably will need to watch it to follow my line of thought and musings below. You might be able to follow without watching it, but, if you don't watch it and you are confused by my musings below, that will be why.

As a child, I loved the idea of being a treasure hunter.

Episodes of Jacques Cousteau's adventures that featured shipwrecks and other assorted treasure kept me fixated and after them my my imagination ran wild.  (It was on the 1 of 3 channels we did get on TV when I was a kid....Yes, I was so deprived!)

 What became of that kid?

Well, if you have ever read my blog from the beginning, you will already know that I basically ended up in the business by accident, after becoming unemployed (after almost 2 years before that employment paying for a computer education which was not what it was sold to us as, and which I did not use....)

Though, maybe my ending up in this business was simply fate.  

That first 25 cents forced into my hand as a child clicked a switch in my ultimate destiny.

So, I am a treasure hunter, but not in the fanciful way I initially pictured.

However, after seeing that video, I am inspired more to follow some other paths, or rather, another path more seriously, though carefully.

You see, I have accumulated leads which are to far more fantastical sorts of things, things that are off the track of what I normally pursue in my efforts to eke out a living. 

Maybe I need to pursue my true passion...true treasure hunting. 

What do I mean? What kinds of leads do I have? 

Well, they is fodder for my next blog postings.

Stay tuned!

Why I Do Not Sell On eBay - Part 2 -or- The Final Solution

So, now we come to the rest of the story....

Now, just to re-cap, I have established that eBay has/had a very serious software glitch that they were seemingly unaware of.

And that glitch affected my selling somewhat, but, as many things with eBay in the last 20 odd years, I worked around their glitch, as serious sellers have for quite some time.

However, this glitch came to a head.

Pushing a seller with over 10,000 transactions under his belt, off of ebay for good. Not that they cared, they have pushed sellers off the site that were doing 10,000 listings a month...heck, even a those with 10,000 a week, without remorse.

But I digress...

So, eventually, eBay suspended our selling privileges becasue of "non-payment" of this refund they gave our seller.

We sent them the proper amount, but apparently it disappeared in the ether.

So, they eventually suspended our buying privileges,also.

Interesting how they will let you still buy for awhile before suspending you completely, isn't it?

And, that is what they did, suspended us completely. No buying & no selling.

So, being fed-up, determined to get this dealt with, and still needing the income from sales on eBay,  I finally found a phone number that seemed to get through to real people.

Good thing I didn't have anything going on that afternoon!

I explained the whole story to the first person I got.

They put me on hold and forwarded me to someone else.

Again, I re-explained the whole thing.

Got referred to someone else.

Repeat process...

...through SEVEN different people....

over an HOUR AND A HALF of time!

The 8th person I was referred to I actually have respect for.

She was very sympathetic, and you could hear it in her voice when she (basically) said:

"Unfortunately they have forwarded you to the wrong department (again)..."

"But I will make sure and stay on the line with you until I get you to a senior tech."

And she did. Kudos to her.

A middle finger goes out to the other 7 previous eBay reps...all useless pieces of....well, you get the picture.

So, the tech I spoke to turned out to be a 15 year veteran with eBay. That puts him having started near the inception of the company. So, he actually knew his stuff.

However, I described what was happening, and, through the hour and a half we were on the phone trying things, he became more frustrated with the problem than I was.

I sent a small payment via the wife's PayPal account. Lo and behold, there was a balance that came through....but in a different amount than I sent!  And, because of privacy law, he could't tell me the amount, nor the DIFFERENT NAME THAT APPEARED ON THE ACCOUNT it went to!

SO, you could almost hear him pulling his hair out over that 1.5 HOUR conversation....about half way through it I was howling with laughter....it was all just SO ludicrous, and so much of a "perfect" ending to my eBay selling career.   He was SO apologetic (something that seems very rare amongst eBay reps) and was surprised at my taking the issue so lightly, with such humour.

But, I said, how else can I react, considering how absolutely ridiculous the situation was?

He was as understanding as anyone can be when they are absolutely stumped. The statements I heard the most from him were all to the effect of "This should not be happening."

But, it was happening.

Sadly, it was not happening not to a large corporation, however, but to a small seller in Manitoba, Canada...and one who was fed up with eBay and was not upset to not be able to sell there anymore.

More testing, and such went on over that hour, but it was clear that ebay was totally ****(insert appropriate set of expletives here)****.

He apologized profusely, and suggested I talk to PayPal...because, he said, eBay actually takes its orders from PayPal, not the other way around!

I said no, I am done, I have been on the phone for THREE HOURS, gone through and explained the entire story to each of NINE people, and I am not about to do that again, nor should I.

And I didn't.

Screw eBay.

And, I hope someone takes advantage of that glitch, and eBay gets sued into the stone-age for it...they deserve all the bad press, lawsuits, etc that they get...and then some.

I just hope those two eBay employees have gone on to greener pastures and are with companies that  appreciate them...I doubt eBay did.

Adventures on Etsy

So, I am finally getting lots of inventory listed on Etsy. (Click on that to see my shop.)

I find, though, that it is a very niche market when it comes to selling antiques & collectibles.  The type of merchandise that sells on ETSY is not generally the merchandise I want to spend the bulk of my time dealing with.

Maybe it is because I am a Taurus, and we tend to be stubborn, stuck in our ways,etc.....

Or, it is due to the fact is just that ETSY is more geared towards crafts, fashion and decor, and "vintage" just happens to cover a portion of that.

I do have inventory that is of an ETSY ilk, but sales are still slow.  I find that all the extra activity it takes to get eyes to your listings is extreme, and, frankly, harkens of a ton of extra work that was at one time unnecessary.

If I had someone else working for me, and they could strictly run and promote the ETSY store front, that would be fine, but the only people working for me at the moment are the 3 of us...

Me, myself, and I.

There is always eBay, right?

Wrong.

eBay has long been out of the picture for me....and I will tell you one of the many reasons in the next posting.

Treasure Hunters All - (Teremity Magazine Article)

This is a copy of an article I did for Teremity Magazine - published Feb - 2012

__ Treasure Hunters All__

Yes, I am a real picker.

I have been in the antiques biz, as my primary (and usually only) source of income, for half my life…20 years. Add to that the fact I have been “into” "treasure hunting" of one sort of another for as I can remember!

I briefly owned a metal detector, but it was pretty much the cheapest one on the market....I could see metal objects it had passed over, barely settled in the grass, which the unit could not seem to locate no matter how many times I carefully moved the head over the spot! 

Why did I buy such a crappy detector? Dreams of a kid, and one I wanted to fulfill as soon as was possible. My parents worked hard for every dollar, and had little to spare, aside from the 25 to 50 cents allowance I acquired every Saturday. Thus I worked hard for pretty much every cent I ever had, also.

That crappy metal detector was paid for with hard earned nickels and dimes. The dollars were painstakingly accumulated, 5 and 10 cents at a time. I searched for soda and beer bottles high and low on weekends, holidays, and after school. I dug them out of clumps of winter killed weeds on boulevards and rescued them from their precarious perches amongst thorn spiked hedge branches. On family camping trips I scavenged them from cigarette butt strewn campsites. I popped them up out of the sun baked mud of roadside ditches, snagged them from their hiding spots in waist high grass, all the while shivering, soaked to the skin, the result of early morning dew wicking off the switch grass into the denim of my jeans and shirt sleeves. I even tolerated the stench of the clumps of rotting cigarette butts, insects and mouse corpses, some of which stubbornly stuck to the insides of their glass walled coffins. I am all too familiar with the stench these mini-greenhouses can create out of the mish-mash of debris that may end up in them. The goo sometimes lost its battle with centrifugal force, mid-swing. I can vaguely recall moments when a piece of chunky slime would shoot out of the bottle neck, then, to my horror, took an unintended, but oddly graceful acrobatic arc, seemingly in slow motion! Sometimes I dodged the wad of rot, the ground being its final destination. Other times my shoes, jeans or shirt became the landing sites.

On my return home from such an outing, there may have been the disposal of a pair of favorite-one-sole worn-through-running-shoes. They were given a proper burial in the outside trash can. Sometimes a pair of knee patched jeans or shirt followed them.

If it was clothing I was fond of, or I knew I'd catch heck for throwing out, the article would become part of an existing laundry pile, usually in my bedroom closet. Sometimes they shared their odorous prize with the rest of the clothing until washday, on the occasions that I forgot to make mention of them to my mother.
(Sorry, Mom!)

I had found & cashed in literally hundreds of “deposit” bottles to pay for that detector.

I guess the word “found” is not actually correct. The term really should be "picked."

Hmmm, come to think of it,  I have been honing my "picker's eyes"  for a LONG time....since I was 6 years old!

That is the thing with picking, you rely on your eyes quite a bit.  However, a really good picker uses all his/her other senses, also. Yes, every sense we have, we use.

While walking on trash/debris strewn wooden floors of old buildings, I have learned to be highly aware of what is underfoot, not just being aware of things in my line of sight.  You never know, you could be
far closer to a real treasure than your eyes can see, or even your arms can reach. But, of course, safety is very important, too. I want to be able to go out picking for a long, long time.

I can be walking along, stepping gingerly, feeling the floor's boards give slightly, listening for the structure underneath the planks creak just a little more than in an average old building. I strain for that initial sharp splinter of wood fibers, groups of them simultaneously letting go of their 100+ year grip they had on their neighbors...sort of a timber's own  nearly-too-late-warning-scream of  "OH CRAP!"

Or, it could be the barely audible squish of waterlogged, sponge-like, rotten wood fiber, ready to imitate that trap door on a stage, and in a blink of an eye, recreating that classic magical illusion of "now you see him, now you don't!"

So, all the while I am walking, I listen carefully, feeling each step, making sure I am not about to fall through a floor to my demise, or in impale my foot on yet another rusty nail.  With the next step, the feel and sound of that footfall is noticeably different than the previous. The general "feel", combined with the tone, echo (etc) of the sound differed dramatically from my previous footfalls. It is likely not something anyone else who has tread on the same spot has taken any notice of in the room's 75 years of human traffic.

I realize there is metal beneath that foot's resting spot! No electronic metal detector required. Moving aside, still aware, but with some anticipation clouding my usual careful steps, I brush the debris aside.  What is revealed is a sheet of metal. Brushing away all the debris past the surface's edges reveals a streaked mix of smooth, streaked glassy, but grunge smeared surface. With a slight shift of my eyes, they follow the flashlight beam tracing the outer edge of the whitish smeared chunk of steel. Visible upon careful inspection, almost obscured by an oily floor wax/dirt residue, are holes at the corners and middle edges. Most people would not have even not noticed them, but the smears of green, indicative of verdigris growing on the brass grommets the holes sport, are obvious to me. 

The odds very high that it is an old enamel sign covering some hole! Maybe even a very VALUABLE sign!

Experienced 'digger's are familiar with these sorts of feelings, I am sure. The detector sounds, you bend or crouch down to the spot, and get out your equipment. With the first push of "whatever preferred excavation tool you use" into the ground, you hear/feel the pebbles, rocks, rotten wood, tree roots, and anything else it rubs against, or hits, including the target your detector sounded when it skimmed over the ground's surface.

Odds are you even have a pretty good idea of what it is, or at least it's composition. You may even know the object's shape and size, just from the feel of that little vibration.

These skills are the things we develop. We fine tune of our senses; hone them for, and by the pursuit of, our specific treasure hunting interests.  We really think little about them, until they are pointed out to us.  I am referring to observations by that friend/relative who tagged along with you. They come along with you on a hunt, maybe invited, sometimes out of curiosity, or maybe from pure avoidance of chores they needed to get done around the house.

Besides, it is a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Over the afternoon's hunt, you have calmly ignored their rolling eyes and their bored  yawns. It is mid-afternoon, and over the past 2 hours you have politely answered their moronic or/and annoying questions, which are getting close to being  akin to a five year old's whining queries of "why?"

As you bend down, and excavate the target your detector sounded on, you audibly mutter that you think the item is only a 1950s quarter.



After you excavate the prize, and show your companion for the afternoon, their eyes widen and with an amazed and almost incredulous tone say:

"How did you know it was going to be a quarter and not another bottle cap? And how the heck did you know it was from the 1950s????"

Yes, it is like that for me, as a long time picker, also.  I don't know how many times people have said things like:

"I can not believe I walked by that thing pretty much every day, for 40 years, and had no idea it was there!!!"

Diggers.

Pickers.

We are all part of a worldwide treasure hunting fraternity. The treasuring hunting experience is something that unites us in more ways than we realize.

*****************************************************

Link To Article On Temerity Magazine (online) - SEE PAGE 70.