When I first started selling on eBay a friend of mine commented “You’re going to have to show me how to do that”. What that in mind, I shall from time to time post my tips for selling on eBay. These tips in no way reflect the opinions or policies of eBay, they’re just my opinions based on my experiences and obtained knowledge.

Now that we have the disclaimers out of the way, let’s talk about the eBay listing title. What to say in this title. Do you know what you have? Well, sure I know what I have. I have a green vase. Okay, let’s assume you list it as such. My search just turned up 26,531 green vases. I’m sure yours will float to the top. Well, it does say Frankoma on the bottom. Okay, let’s check that out. Now we have 140 listings. Much better, isn’t it?

What if this lovely green vase doesn’t have a name or a sticker or a Grandma who can tell you from whence it came? Well, Dear Seller, this is the part where the phrase kicks in “if it were easy, everyone would be doing it”. Granted, it seems everyone is doing it, in this case, selling on eBay, but like most everything else, there’s a difference between doing and doing well. In short, you’re going to have to do some research. Good news. There are several avenues for researching – eBay, the internet, books, to name a few. And there are hundreds of collector pages on Facebook with people who are happy to help you discover what you have. An aside from our topic: Be nice. But that’s another blog.

Let’s say you just cannot find out about your lovely green vase. It sure looks like Frankoma. Should I include Frankoma in my listing anyway? NO. Just NO. Not only will you risk your credibility, but collectors will eat you for lunch. They have the power of social media and they know how to use itr How about if I put L@@K or OOAK (One of a kind) or NICE or WOW? Again, NO. Search engines drop these words, and you want all your words to serve a purpose. You want to bring as many buyers as possible to your lovely green vase.

So what can we say about our as yet unidentifiable lovely green vase? Well, you can say it’s lovely, but you have the opportunity to post 12 photos to back that up. What does it look like? How tall is it? Is it solid green or are there other colors? Is it glass? Is it pottery? Does it have flowers? Dragonflies? You get the idea.

Green Pottery Vase W/Flowers & Dragonflies. Just what I’m looking for—SOLD!!

Now wasn’t that easy?

Call me old school, but a neighbor used to be someone who lived just down the road. I grew up in a rural community, so my closest neighbor was about a mile & a half away. Not exactly an across the street experience. And now we’re cruising along the information super highway where our neighbor could be anywhere. Vancouver, Seattle, New York City even. I feel as though I know several people in internet land better than I know the folks two houses down. I hope to meet more of you through Blogging 101. Howdy Neighbor.

Remember the Discover Card commercial where the guy says “My name Peggy”? Well, that’s me, I’m Peggy. Hello everyone. I’m here to learn about blogging because I want to use it primarily to increase traffic to my business, oohshinycollectibles. At Oohshiny, I sell glass & pottery. You can find me on eBay & Facebook. But it’s not just about selling. I love chatting about glass & pottery and a multitude of other things. Like world peace. And pandas.

It seems my best laid plans of writing a blog about yesterday’s exploits has been obliterated. Ironic? maybe Frustrated? Oooh, yeah…

Oh, the joys of treasure hunting. I was out & about yesterday, so I went to an estate sale. So many beautiful things. The heart starts pumping, the adrenalin starts flowing. I want this and this and this. Let’s check online. I swear my phone has a diabolical bent for me. Looking for info at a sale: why yes, here it is, it’s worth a fortune! Buy it and bring it home and google on the computer: sorry dear, nothing special. Where did my fortune go? But I was saved from buyer’s remorse by the seller. No haggling on Saturday. Whew.

Next stop, my favorite thrift store. I actually walked out without buying anything. Maybe this room full of Oohshiny with a trail to my chair is finally making an impression on me?

Maybe I need to intentionally treasure hunt without buying. Really look and not just grab, pay attention to detail. Breathe. Research. After all, there will always be more. There will always be more, right?

After resting up from doing yard work, I decided I was tired of being hot & sticky, so it was shower time. So I get in the shower and I’m basking in the cool clean water and all of a sudden the power goes out for about 3 seconds and I hear a sound I can only describe as “mmmnnnnnffff”. At first the paranoid me thinks maybe it’s the zombie apocolypse, so maybe I need to find a gun. So I grab my towel and dripping wet, I creep out of the bathroom and peek around corners and am quickly satisfied that there are no boogie men or women about, so I figure we had a brown out type of thing going on. Thinking I’ll be a good citizen and consumer, I turn the central heat up so the a/c won’t kick on and use more electricity, and it was at his point that I smelled something burning. I might be more aware of this smell than the average woman because I’ve lived with The Volunteer Firefighter for 33 years and if I had a dollar for every time he’s made the comment “I smell something that smells like burnt insulation” we could all go out and eat a pretty nice meal.

So it’s time to find the fire. I have it in my head that it’s coming from the central unit so I’m kinda freaked about maybe the fire is in the ceiling, and bye bye house. But like Toucan Sam on the old Fruit Loops commercial, I followed my nose. There are 2 doors in the hallway, one for the water heater and one for the central heat & air. I open the door to the water heater and there it is, nice little flames coming out. AAAAAAGGGGHHH!! PANIC TIME!! Time to call a fireman, time to call MY HUSBAND!! I call, the phone’s ringing, I’m thinking “pick up! Pick up!” Finally, after an eternity, he answers and I of course yell, “the water heater’s on fire!” In addition to calling my beloved husband & fireman, I had grabbed the fire extinguisher and I’m looking at the fire I decide good grief I don’t want to figure out this extinguisher, so I snuff out the fire with my towel. IT WORKED, IT WORKED, PRAISE GOD IT WORKED!! But is that the only place the fire is burning? Did I mention I was in panic mode?

So Dear Husband/Volunteer Firefighter is yelling “turn the power off!” which I hadn’t thought about yet, because for some reason, I’m thinking we have a gas water heater, never mind that I KNOW it’s electric and we’ve never had a gas heater in our 33 years of married life. I’m trying to tell him “I already have it out!”, but my wonderful wonderful Samsung 3, piece of crap phone is doing its thing where I can hear him & he can’t hear me.

Sooooo, he goes into hyper-drive, high adrenalin save my fair lady from suffocating or burning up in a house fire mode. I hear him hollering about something, so I assume he’s grabbing Sam to come with him because when they’re together and there’s a fire, that’s what he does. At this point I realize I have no towel around my body or anything else around my body, so better get some clothes on, Ethel you shameless hussy! I grab a shirt and some pants, put ’em on, pick up the phone, and like magic, we can hear each other again. And he’s about 300 yards from the house.

What I didn’t know was that my Dear Husband was screaming because he was trying to bail off the tractor to come rescue me and had pretty much done a wishbone, got his left leg stuck in a place legs aren’t supposed to go on tractors and his right foot’s hanging around up on the clutch. Easy move for a ballerina, not so much for my farmer. He can give the details on that much better than I. Let’s just say he has numerous “owies” and that’s three accidents for him in two days and that’s enough.

Thank you, Lord, for watching out for naked firefighters and their pumped up on adrenalin firefighter husbands!!