Magic Ebay Sale

For those who are not interested in hearing about my Ebay exploits you can skip this post all together.

Another month, or rather another 2 months and another Ebay sale. Two months later on the same day of the month I made a sale on Ebay Yay! This time it was a lot of two Magic: The Gathering collectible card game cards. A Summon Mesa Pegasus and A Summon Pearled Unicorn both cards Unplayed and in excellent condition that I had gotten from the card collection of a friend's son. The pair sold for 5 bucks ($4.99) and shipped for an additional 5 bucks ($4.95 actual shipping) minus Ebay fees I brought in $8.49 minus the shipping I made $3.54. Not bad. My Ebay store now has 72 items in it.

Subject Unknown and some Reflections?

 So yeah I don't know what this post is going to be yet. It is that time of month again. I don't have any Ebay updates, I don't have any reviews ready yet. I haven't been reading much. In fact I haven't been doing much of anything exciting. Just going through the same old boring routine. Oh sure I read some interesting things on my Facebook feed which is about the extent of my social media. I also checked out pictures and posts on Instagram but that is just mindless internet surfing. I guess the most exciting stuff this month has been some of the odd YoutTube videos and the ancient alien conspiracy videos rabbit hole.

My lack of excitement lately had me briefly thinking about blogging in general and if it is time to hang it up or not. I go through this from time to time. The perfectionist in me refuses to allow me to NOT Blog my minimal 1 post per month. I can't stand seeing those gaps in my posting archives calendar. It has been I don't know how many months or years since I had one of those no posting gaps. I don't intend to start that, and don't want it to become my go-to habit.

Then that leads me to think about some of the things I think or do that I never mention here, either because they are way to private or are family related and I don't want to have too much of my dirty laundry spread over the Cyberverse that isn't already there. Of course there already is a ton of it out there. As soon as you log onto the internet for the very first time personal data gets sent to thousands of data storage lockers.

A good thing is several of my go-to television shows have started their new fall seasons and the reboot continuation of "Quantum Leap" started. I am hooked just as I was with the original. Season 2 of CSI: Las Vegas might take a nosedive as Grissim & Sarah maybe leaving again. OH well whatever.

Update: Added To Ebay

 On the weekend of 06 Aug I did some listing for my Ebay. I added some comic book super heroes trading cards at fixed prices, and a bunch of Magic: The Gathering cards auctions, singles and 2 card lots (plus one 4 card lot) with 99¢ opening bids. My number of items before my listing spree were at 36 I added 13 over the weekend bringing my total listed items to 49. Then I scheduled auctions (which adds a 10¢ fee) 5 per day to start at Midnight Monday morning until Midnight Friday morning. My item total is now 75. The auctions I have recycled for a second run and then I will change them to fixed price listings at slightly higher prices. I don't have any exceptionally rare ones so my prices will be higher than what they are actually worth. Heck the 99¢ opening bids are more than what most of them are worth. Definitely long term suckers.

The number of items listed doesn't really matter but the ore that is listed the better your chances of actually selling something. Thinking about it doesn't move things.

I don't know if I've said it here or not, but at times I think listing stuff at Ebay is fun. What isn't fun is when you have to make some sort of complicated correction or addition that Ebay requires that doesn't even relate to what is being sold or is some unneeded minute detail.

I did do a new "Up On Ebay" video for my YouTube, but haven't uploaded it yet.I don't have many followers there because I rarely do videos so it won't get much traffic. UPDATE: I uploaded Episode 3 of Up On Ebay! after I had already scheduled this update post to be published. So I did a little editing on this post.

WoooWhooo! I sold one of the auctions on the second round. A1997 Topps Basketball Kevin Garnett Graded RC card #148 graded by FGS Gem Mint 10 at the opening 99¢ bid plus $5.00 shipping and some sales tax. My store now has 74 items.

I also sold a book Roger Zelazny "Trumps of Doom" for $8.99 plus $5.00 shipping actual shipping was $5.50 total income to bank account after Ebay fees and tax was $10 and some change. Now have 73 items in store.

Name Game: Kent Clark Kent

 It happened again. I think this name variant has happened before, but I'm not sure. I thought I had enunciated my name properly, then again I was wearing one of those COVID KN-95 masks and had my glasses on. So I was sort of incognito. 

Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent in "Superman"

Yep this time the cashier thought I had said my name was CLARK. I had to listen for this vastly different name to be called to pickup my order. Usually with the other names they are similar enough to mine that I can sort of tune out the difference in pronunciation. I could sort of do that with this too, but I always have to check to see what the ticket spells out and listen for that name. It is tempting sometime to give a wildly fictitious name. The problem though it can't be too crazy because then the person who has to call out the names wouldn't be able to pronounce it correctly. I would also have to remember whatever name I gave. I have toyed with giving "Captain Kirk" as my name, which isn't too far off from the truth. I would just have to worry about getting caught impersonating an officer or accused of stolen valor.

Random Stuff Episode 1: DVD Update & Ebay

Random Stuff Episode 1:

Updates: DVD & Ebay

For quite a while now my regular DVD player attached to the TV in my living room I have not used because it gradually stopped recognizing DVDs. It accepts audio CDs but sadly the laser that reads DVD video information has been broken for something like 2 or 3 years. It has been even longer since I watched DVDs on a regular basis. When this problem started back whenever at first it was just an occasional DVD disc. Then it became every DVD disc I would put in a disc and it would give me a "no disc" error. I noticed I could put an audio CD in and it recognized that and played the audio from them, but didn't recognized DVDs. I had purchased a cleaning disc that is supposed to help, but it didn't. However  I have still been buying occasional DVDs via Ebay and elsewhere, but mostly from EBay.

I have a CD/DVD ROM player on my ancient Windows XP laptop but ages ago whenever I would view videos the computer would overheat and crash. I also have an external DVD ROM Drive but that is a pain to have to plug in all the time plus I had the overheating problem with that laptop so I got out of the practice of DVD viewing.

This lack of a DVD player problem was on the back burner for a long time. I finally got a really cheap DVD player from Best Buy ($37 and some change including sales tax). I was going to get one at Target for about twice as much, but my Target no longer carries DVD players or DVDs and I don't like buying electronics online or trust getting electronic equipment shipped. Ironically that is how I got my Chromebook. My biggest concern with that isn't with the risk of damage during shipping but rather the porch pirates when it gets delivered. Anyway now I have a basic DVD player again. I hooked it up and the first disc I watched was a Doctor Who episode on DVD. Felt good. 

Also related to the DVD issue and my past computer problems, which my Chromebook has helped recover from somethings. My lack of activity for my DVDProfiler cataloging. I need to get things updated and try to see if I can transfer the base program from my ancient XP to my Chromebook. I don't want to have to download the program and learn that I have to pay for it. I think I paid for the software ages ago to have an account tracking more than 50 DVDS. I have way way more than that in TV series alone. A few years back they added an Android app. Not sure if you can add stuff on it, but I can at least see my online collection on it. 

 

I sold another card on Ebay on 29 June for $6 ($2 plus $4 shipping I don't use the Ebay Standard Envelope or PWEs when selling) the last sale was on May 3rd for $7 total.

Changes at Goodreads

 

Over at Goodreads they have decided to make some changes including getting rid of the "creative writing" section/ ability. A few years back when I used it frequently, well some-what frequently this would have annoyed me. Also if I had forgotten they were going to do it and didn't save any of my work in that section I would have been ticked. However I don't use it that often and all the writing I had over there I saved onto the cloud in my private Google Docs.

For lack of anything else here is a sample of one of the only 9 writings I had over at Goodreads. It was mostly gibberish and nonsense and a Stream of Consciousness exercise: 

I Say What?

OK it’s been a while since I've done any kind of writing here. I guess this will be more of a journal type thing than a regular attempt at something to be read. 

As I enter the stream, the stream of consciousness I attempt to write whatever pops into my mind. I will try not to edit it as it comes to me. Except to attempt to correct spelling errors when prompted that an error was made

So here we go again and again and again to write each and every word that comes to mind as it comes without thinking of how it sounds or if it makes any sense whatsoever. and we begin the begin benign. ACK that took some thinking of how to spell it, and the eventual having to use Google to spell it correctly. There is a sign of the times using a search engine, actually the website that is a search engine to find the proper spelling of a word rather than looking it up elsewhere. Well right now I don't have a dictionary handy so OK Google it is for spell checking. Blah, blah blah de blah blah. BLAH! So there!

Sigh heavy breath release. Back to the matter at hand or rather at mind. Getting a few distractions not sure if I can continue this exercise. Yeah No guess that is it for now. Big disappointment. Barely got anywhere. Heavy Sigh. 

Originally Drafted/ Updated 02 Aug 2019

Some Stuff This That The Other Maybe

 As usual I'm not sure what this post will be about yet. Might just be a mishmash of stuff.

I did have an Ebay sale. A football relic card one of those "Rookie Letterman" cards of an autographed manufactured letter "A". I originally had it listed for much more but had lowered the price a few times. It was at $7 I got a couple of watchers on it and sent out an offer of I think 25% so around $5. The buyer counter offered with $3 and I accepted the counter-offer, so that is the price it sold at plus $4 shipping. It sold on Tue 3 May and was shipped out Wed 4 May (I had the day off for a doctor's appointment). An odd message exchange occurred long story short apparently the buyer had a problem with another seller that was being extremely rude, but they messaged and went off on me instead. They apologized for the mishap. After the card was marked as being delivered on Saturday 7 May I got a positive "Perfect" feedback from the buyer.

I've been on Ebay a long time and for the most part I like it but there are some decisions they have made over the years I don't agree with or don't like. I haven't liked any of their TV commercials much. For the most part because in their ads they give a false impression that everything is brand new and that all the sellers are professional. Anyway moving on.

I don't do music streaming. I will occasionally listen to music on YouTube and watch the accompanying video images if they have any, but I don't stream via sites like Spotify. Apparently I had signed up for Spotify via my Facebook account and was charged $10 for their premium service on one of my credit cards. Well I put a stop to that by asking for my forgotten password to create a new password and then close the account. So maybe I'll get charged again next month if any time passed from the billing date to my cancelling the account. I don't know if I fat fingered something on my Droid, or my tablet when it was functional. At any rate any signing up was not intentional.

That seems to be it for now at least for what I want to disclose at this time.

Nantucket Nectars: Bottle Cap Facts

So what is "under the hood"?

The subject of this post is a bit odd but I'm not the first to ponder it. A not so quick Google search landed me with just about all the dang links in this post. OK so let me start at a sort of beginning...

A few years ago, I forget exactly when, after discovering this trivia topping thing I started to collect a little bit. To clarify a little of this vagueness. I acquired a liking to the various fruit juice flavors from the Nantucket Nectars Brand. The company prints facts about the island of Nantucket (and people although I don't recall seeing any about people) on the inside of the bottle caps. This practice of printing facts on the inside of bottle caps seems to first been done by Snapple. At least they claim that, the practice might go back farther. Well now as in currently the mother company that owns/runs Snapple owns/runs Nantucket Nectars. According to the online sources I found there have been over 750 different Nantucket facts printed with 100 some being produced in any one year. In doing some poking around I found this "Put a lid on it" article which is interesting.

When I was first trying to figure out how many different ones there were I discovered this 101 Things Blog from a 2011 post which updated her 2010 post on the subject. Back then she seems to have 70 some caps. I found an archived list that someone else came up with that has 257 caps on their blog from sometime earlier. That is the largest list I have seen from the semi-quick research Googling I did for this post.

Back those few years ago I was going to try to collect them all before I discovered there were over 100 per year made at any one time and a grand total of 750 or more. I don't know why I have kept the ones I do have, other than to write up a post about the phenomenon of it. I wonder if I can sell the collection on Ebay? Or find out if the 101 Things Blogger Amy still collects them. Maybe I have some she doesn't.

More recently I noticed they now use plastic recyclable bottles with plastic caps. They still print local facts about Nantucket under the plastic caps. The caps are dark purple and the facts are printed in white or light gray which makes it difficult to read the facts now.

NOTE: This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for ages and ages. When I first began the draft for this post the company was still using glass bottles with metal caps. I don't know when they made the switch from glass to plastic. The switch to plastic bottles takes some of the fun out of getting the juices. I tried adjusting the plastic images to read the inside sayings better but I'm not an expert at photo editing. Sorry those don't look right.

March Madness Or March Mindless?

 

This month of March was one for the books. I don't have a proper subject to rant about or to discuss as it has been a Family Thing month. 'Nuff Said. 

Not sure what I'll blog about on my cards blogs. Well I do know what I'll blog about over at Curly W Cards, but not at the other one just yet.

Till Next Month.

Name Game: Why Haven't I Seen This One?

 

It has been quite a while since I had one of these. The last time or two I thought I had seen every possible way my name could be perverted or messed up. Well a few months back in October Me my sibs and my blood nephew were having a Family VaCay in Virginia Beach, VA off season. One day for late lunch almost dinner we stopped at Starbucks. Now I'm not a coffee guy so I rarely get anything coffee I don't like it straight I need it either Mocha style with enough cocoa to drown out the coffee bean "burned water" flavor that I hate coffee for (just as smoking is like sucking ash) or have some caramel in the mix. So anyway they had some kind of Apple Cider/ Apple Crisp type flavor. I think it was a limited time flavor. It was pretty good. I think I'll stick to Mocha style though. The hint of apple seemed a bit off.

Anyway the purpose of this post is that a variation of my name was used, as you can see from the scan of the sticker that was on the cup. "KERT". Now at times I could have sworn that I had maybe seen this variant but usually it is the "CERT" or "CURT" or maybe even "KURT" that I have seen. OK Whatever.