Some New Purchases (November 29-December 1)

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Some New Purchases (November 29-December 1)

     If you've been reading my blog, you'll have noticed that I'm using a larger-sized font, as well as a slightly-gray colour against a black background. Both ,my wife and a reader suggested that I do this to ease the strain on their eyes. If you want, tell me how it now appears to you.


    I'm trying out a new strategy for buying toys. I'm trying to buy more from 1 person to save on shipping, and I've bought a few toys that are outside my realm of knowledge. The latter are a Dinky toy and a Johnny Lightning mg toy. I hope the latter is not an "omen" in terms of buying a "dud", but it certainly looks nice (see below).
I also bought some nice Slik tractors, and when they hopefully all sell, I'll tell you how it's going.

A Tootsietoy Ford Station Wagon

More Tootsietoys 

The green panel truck and the orange Woodie are more in demand than the flatbed truck. 

A Tootsietoy Convertible

Very Small Tootsietoys!

I didn't read the seller's description well enough.

These tiny Tootsietoys are much newer ( 1960's) and don't sell well.

"Live and learn" as the expression goes.

A Tootsietoy Jaguar. 

It's the same story as the previous 3.

It looks great, but it's newer and very small-not a good seller!

Aha, Some Excellent News!

This is a beautifully restored (repainted) Tootsietoy fire truck.

I bought and sold one without the ladders, and this one comes complete.

This one should sell well!

An Older Hubley Cast Iron Tow Truck.

This one came with some others, and I wanted to have it to photograph. I've presented to you the larger version way back when I started to write this blog.

I'm not sure how this one will sell, but being old and cast iron, it certainly will show interest when I list it.

 An Almost Year End Review   

I took much more time this past month in selling off most of my inventory. I had a lot of items that I purchased that did not sell, so I needed to sell them lower to get rid of my inventory. This week on E-Bay I have most of my remaining toys discounted to sell. 

I hope!.

I'm trying not going to buy as many toys that need repairs or repainting. However, I certainly had lots of fun learning how to remove old paint, sand them with a Dremel high-speed drill, and paint them. As well, I've met some great people who I buy parts from. I'll mention them later today, when I find their names and addresses.

I had wanted, in the spring and summer of this year to travel to the states New York and Vermont  in search of toys. In this way, perhaps, I 'd be able to find the toys at source in flea markets and from dealers. However, the US economy is worse than I think most experts and economists say. I never ventured out, as I didn't want to spend more money (gas and travel), when the market seemed, for me at least, to have bottomed out. Maybe it was the summer period or maybe it was the news of more people losing their jobs. 

So May-October was very slow. November picked up, both perhaps from better news on the economy, or maybe more people buy toys then. And also, I was reducing my selling prices.

It took me the month of November to sell most of my toys, and to start buying again. It takes anywhere from 2-4 weeks for toys form the U.S. to get to my house in Montreal,Quebec, Canada.  So right now, I'm waiting for toys to arrive, and Christmas is coming upon us fast. I don;t know what this time of year does for toy sales, as I'm sure most people are saving for Christmas.

I always ask for USPS First Class International to save on shipping costs. USPS, by the way stands for United States Postal Service. Because this service is the least expensive, it does not come with tracking, nor insurance. I always promise my sellers that I will not file a claim, nor give them bad feedback, since E-Bay does not cover this service when a buyer complains. I have to tell you though that both the USPS and Canada Post are super-great services with great people. It's being said that these services are losing business, and have to compete in the 21st century. But to mail a letter in Canada or to the other side of the world is still a "great deal". And the same goes for sending packages, especially from the USA to Canada.  And so far, "knock wood" ( a superstition), I have only had 2 incidents in about 711 transactions. 1 cast iron toy arrived broken. It was insured, but the USPS would not pay the claim, and I didn't want to complain against the seller on e-Bay. Another old die-cast toy was poorly packaged and arrived broke. I kept my promise and didn't complain to the seller, although I did inform him about the poor packaging.

If you were to ask me if I've made any money, I'd have to say no, but I don't think I've lost too much either (thinking optimistically). o why would I do this? 

First of all, I started to sell toys by accident (read my first month's blog instalments). As time went along, I decided to repaint and restore toys, which kept me busy, but these toys are harder to sell. Then I started to write this blog, and then my other one on pro learning photography.  Selling toys and writing about them has kept me busy, and I've met some wonderful people (read my guest blog writers) on the way. It's kept my brain active, and my mood positive.

In the New Year, I'll probably make a resolution to exercise more, and spend less time on toys selling. There's an old expression that says "work expands to fill the time" When I taught, it certainly was a "cushy" job and most of the teachers in our department spent less time working compared to me. I did the opposite - I would expand the work to fill the time.I did plenty of research , I wrote books, gave out tons of handouts, and so forth. Was it worth it? For some students yes, many had no opinion, and others couldn't care less. 

I still carry my teaching philosophy with me. I haven't just bought and sold toys. I've researched them out, bought books, found contacts, and wrote blogs.

What I have learned is that I like what I am doing. I can do it well, but need to research the business end. I can sell, but maybe I should be selling Canadair Jets rather than $ 10.00 toys. I've learned to accept limitations on what I can control and what I can't, but live with it. I didn't have much readership in this blog at the start, but right now, I 'm averaging about 50 page view a day. My other blog on Pro Photo Learning is starting up, but has from 5-30 view views a day. But rather than dwell on the negative (only 40% of the students appreciate all the work I did), I now appreciate whomever reads the blog. If it's only 1 for the day, it's 1 more person than nobody! Am I happier now, yes. 

I'm going for my morning coffee at Dunkin' Donuts - it's now 6:10 A.M. Philosophy sure takes a long time!

 It's going to be -5 degrees Celcius and cold- I don;t have a choice in the weather, so I might as well make the best of it!

Have a great day everyone!