My attempts at developing a third
career at age 86 by selling off items on EBay that are left over from my art
studio have run into a stone wall. It all started off in a blaze of glory when I
sold two Indian mannequins for over $500 in October. And right after that these two Matthew Brady cartes des visites (visiting/calling cards) from
Civil War days were bought for $177.
I had accumulated a collection of
about 100 Victorian era photo albums that I had bought because I was intrigued
by beauty of some of the celluloid or leather covers of these albums and because
of the portrait photos from the mid to late 1880’s, some of which had names of
the people attached. As I leafed through the dusty pages I wondered about the
lives of the folks whose faces stared blankly out at me (the subjects had to
hold steady for the camera) and I thought about my mortality - - - and what
would happen to the albums of my family that lay on a shelf in a closet.
Some of the larger photos,
called ‘cabinet cards’ were used in one of my installations. There aren't any photos of this installation but just as you entered my studio a hospital bed was displayed in a room and on
the walls I attached a horizontal series of 53 cabinet cards on each of which was placed a single letter to form the sentence:
100 YEARS FROM NOW NO ONE LIVING WILL KNOW IF YOU OR I EVER
EXISTED
Another installation in nearby room, the
walls of which were covered with Playboy magazine covers certainly
received a lot more attention from my visitors than the one with the hospital
bed.
But back to my story: The albums n my collection each cost about $75 to
$250 some 10-15 years ago. In the past month I have spent hours researching the
ancestry of some of the names in these albums to make them more
valuable to potential purchasers. But when I went to sell them at auction on EBay the best prices have been anyone would pay was between $20-$40. This market has taken a beating.
To add insult to injury one cabinet
card of a General Joubert, of South African fame, which I was selling as an
individual piece and that I thought would fetch $50 brought in only $ .99. And
to add further insult to this transaction, the buyer emailed me that the card
had cracked in the mail and she wanted her $ .99 back.
Anther auction of a lovely calendar from 1907, with a photo of a lady
dressed in Victorian apparel, started at $ .99 and that’s where it wound
up after being in the auction site for 7 days. Three weeks later the buyer
emailed that he still hadn’t received it, so I’ll have to refund his $ .99
And since I was getting such lousy prices by starting the auctions at
the $ .99 price that EBay recommended I changed my strategy and put in a
starting price of $ 50 - - - and not a single bidder appeared.
Perhaps Wal-Mart will need an extra ‘Greeter’ on BLACK FRIDAY.
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| THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT A UNIFORM. |
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