The Monday Morning Moan & Mirth........or why I rarely shop on eBay any more and sell my wares HERE now! (YES - click and see!)

This morning I decided I might list a couple of items on eBay. In order to see if it's even remotely worth it, I decided to do a little research on current and recently ended listings.

With the first search I did, I noticed something that, quite frankly, I am unable to not be snarky about. On what planet does a search for a piece of vintage jewelry relate to a search for a cursor or something I can not even fathom - "pixie kitchen". What the heck is a pixie kitchen?

Naturally I had to see if additional fairly general searches returned similarly just plain idiotic references in the "Related Searches" area.

Well, yeah. Of course it did. I got lost in doing more to see what eBay's so-called Best Match returned for me. Some of them returned nothing but some were so funny and outrageous that I took a few screen shots for your amusement.

Here's the pixie kitchen one - my original search was for 'celluloid rhinestone bracelet". I include the screen shot to prove to you - "you can not make this stuff up" or truth is always better than fiction:

So, for the record, if you are interested, this is what you get when you do that "related" pixie kitchen search on eBay.

Next, I did a similar search and this is what came up:

Yeppers, you got it ! I had never thought to look through the blackberry storm listings to find vintage jewelry - what was I THINKING? No WONDER other people sometimes find better jewelry for less than I do - I am just too stupid to know how to do searches on eBay. Only eBay's fine search software is smart enough to help me find what I want! How in the WORLD could I have missed that? I will find exactly what I am looking for if I search for a blackberry storm while really trying to find a celluloid flapper bracelet! OMG! I am just dumber than a puddle of redneck mud!

It's like a train wreck - you can't stop looking when you find these outrageous suggestions. With a train wreck, you know you might see twisted metal and severely injured humans. With eBay you never know what is going to happen.

Next search: "celluloid bangle". This one was not quite as outrageously stupid but it's still just not anything that anyone in their right mind would ever associate in any way with a 1920's flapper bracelet with rhinestones and a colorful resin wash - an ametrine ring!

So, one more - I moved away from Celluloid and on to Bakelite for this moaner.

This one really cracked me up! What does a cursor have to do with jewelry?

But this next one is my personal fave of the day and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do - yep, eBay this stuff is totally related to a carved Bakelite bracelet:

I have no more words. eBay just never ceases to amaze me.

Cheers - have a great week!

Come visit me - new items being listed as soon as I get off my patoot and go take some pictures!

Killer Queen of the Vintage Jewelry Box!

Well. There is very little that needs to be said about this. The colors are stupendous. The style is classic. The quality is unmistakable. It's Eisenberg. It's unsigned but not all of Eisenberg's work was produced with a permanent signature.

Enough said:


Come visit this fine find right here and now. And remember - we've got FREE LAYAWAY!

SEE THE EISENBERG DETAILS HERE!

DRESS CLIPS - redux - What they ARE!

I was just informed by someone over on Bonanzle that they did not even know what a dress clip was!

WELL! Here are a few back photos:

That lever on the back lifts up and it's "loaded" with a curved piece of flexible metal inside that holds it taught when it's closed.

Dress clips come in all types - metal, plastics, Bakelite, rhinestones, you name it!

Another similar mechanism is called a Fur Clip or Pin Clip and it's similar to the dress clip:

The fur clip mechanism sometimes has a c-closure that one or both ends can be inserted into.

When you see a patent for one of these, it generally is referred to as a "pin clip" for the obvious reasons. It's got pins and it clips (or clamps) down. It's spring-loaded in a similar fashio to the dress clips.

Bonanzle-ya GOTTA love it!

Hello out there! All bloggers have to start somewhere and this is my beginning. I decided that since I'm so enthused about Bonanzle, my new selling venue, I should share with as many people as I can how great it is to shop and sell there.

I've been selling online since 1999. Long before that I made my living selling at antique shows, flea markets, & antique malls. I've traveling all over the US and had some really great times. I'm sure you will hear about some of them when something fun comes to mind.

Every venue - be it online or out there in the "real" world - has it's good and not so great features but this new site, BONANZLE is just so terrific and fun that I can not see how anyone could fail to fall madly in love with it.

If you do some searches on blogs, on Squidoo, twitter, etc. you will find a lot of other folks who are just as enthusiastic as I am. I'll be hooking you up with some of those in the future, too.

It's one thing to have a place for people to buy and sell. Bill & Mark - who we Bonanzlers refer to as The Boyz have created a very different and innovative way for the users at Bonanzle
to connect and work with each other. This is a concept lost on some of the other selling venues on the net. But that's a whole month's worth of negative input - we'll try to avoid that!

Shutting up - time to talk about Bonanzle and it's great features. My personal favorite is Hand Picked Lists

Since I can not resist some shameless self-promotion, here's one I recently created as an ode to the color fuchsia:

Fabulous, Flirty, Freaky FUCHSIA!

HPLs are not just for the fun of it. When you search on Bonanzle, you find lists that have been created with items on them that match your search criteria. It's a way of people showcasing other people's items which, IMO, goes to the heart of what Bonanzle stands for: community, sharing, and caring. See - right above the "FIND > fuchsia..."? That's where the HPLs that match that search are listed. Easy. But that's Bonanzle's middle name!

Here is one that I found that literally took my breath away because, well - just take a look. It is from seller pugs

Personally I think this list just speaks for itself:

EYE CANDY

I'd take a screen shot to temp to you click on that link but what woman can resist any kind of eye candy? Good taste, pugs. {applause} and holy attack of the vapors, Batman.

OK - that's it for right now. I'll be back. There's very little I like more than chatting even if it's just to myself so I'll probably be back soon with more HPLs, features on other Bonanzler's booths, blogs and just personal middle-aged musings about the internet, life, Bakelite jewelry, cars, dark chocolate and other health foods.......