Featured Hoarder or storer?

I really dislike that an adult would use a child that way. What a distorted view of values to teach a child.

 

Are there types of items that usually do better on CL than others? I'd like to try it for larger items that would be a pain to ship, but might also use it for smaller things.

 

Look at this article that was in the ecommercebytes news letter about using police stations.

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y16/m03/i03/s03

 

Furniture and larger items are what I've listed the most but I have sold small lots of costume jewelry, art, figurines, clocks, antique photographs, historical memorabilia related to the area. I've listed full sets of china but it took months to sell. I sold my old chain link gates when I replaced my fence. Last summer, I sold a large flowering bush that I had to dig up.

 

It may be just me, but I really would not want to live in such a land of fear. Police station meetings, burner phones, secret e-mail addresses, and all for stuff that sounds too crummy to put through a decent or even half decent auction house?

It's not kilos of Mexican Brown you are trading, it's just stuff, and it's not the Matalan Cartel, it's your neighbours.

I have sold stuff from home before, with a small ad in the local paper, people either turn up or they don't, if they do they come in and see the item (I found that 1930s chiming grandfather clocks sold well this way) and never had even a tiny problem.

It just sounds a bit panicky to me.
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On a related decluttering note, I have consigned half the contents of the garage, about 30 x 40 litre storage boxes with all or most of our car boot, flea market and antique fair stuff to a local auction room for sale. This is the sort of place where a catalog description might read '2 boxes of books' or '4 boxes of household items' or 'a box of collectable items' but the first 10 lots that went through last week did pretty well for what they were, the rest will be scattered over the next couple of months of bi-weekly sales, and combined with the continued sale of items from the Manchester Hoard in a better class saleroom, will provide a handy income stream, some of which I have frittered away on pieces of silver and most of which is just sitting in the bank.

A summer cruise to Iceland to see the volcanoes, etc. may be on the cards, you can't, after all, take it with you.

 

It just sounds a bit panicky to me

AF, while I WANT to agree, and actually DO, the strangest stuff does seem to happen now & again, and the very thought that something might go wrong becomes pervasive... I can almost understand the paranoia.

I blame the media for enforcing the fear factor & making some folks so paranoid. I imagine that 95% (just to pick a percentage number) of transactions/CraigsList listings, etc, etc, etc go just fine.

Then we get the news report about some guy in "wherever, mid-America," who listed his car (or boat, or bookcases, or whatever) for sale and ended up missing, his bones found umpteen months later in the desert or some such...

Despite it all, I tend to be a rather trusting soul. I like to think that faith in human nature and common sense can prevail.

Some dude sends me an email and says that he's miles & miles away but just HAS to have the thing I've listed for sale locally? Eh... Let him find it elsewhere. There has to be another one out there.

No "thing" is worth the stress or the worst-case possibilities. My mantra has long been, "Use your head, trust your gut, and don't be greedy."

Too good to be true? Leave it. Could be a scam? Leave it. I kind of like this guy? Give it a shot.

If I believed everybody out there was a potential danger, I don't think I could continue to exist in this world.

I am neither naive nor stupid, but I honestly like to believe that most people out there neither are scammers nor have bad intentions.

I say use your brain and trust your gut.

(p.s. Should you hear about my demise at the hand of an evil CraigsList stalker, please refer the local P.D. to my post here at Antiquers...)

-C-

 

I love the turnatble

 

It's hard to not let women use a bathroom.
I'm shocked when I discover places that won't.

 

I trust, just about, everyone...til they change my mind.

 

Any time I have a scary errand I just go pick up my Uncle Benny and take him along.. he looks just like the actor Danny Trejo. And he's always in a bad mood and always available because he's on military disability with a very bad leg. But he looks crazy enough just sitting there. Maybe he could make a new career out of this.

 

Ah, the police station in a neighboring town is listed here... glad to see that...

http://www.safetradestations.com/safetrade-station-list.html

 

Af, I haven't looked up the statistics, but I suspect there are far more violent crimes in the US than in the UK.

On the one hand, yes, it's a small number of transactions that go wrong, but some do go wrong. If it's wise to accept cash because a check or money order may not be good, why isn't it wise to meet in a safe place?

Also, from what I can tell, we don't have nearly as many local auction houses as the UK. And from what people have been reporting, hammer prices have been pretty low lately on most things so they're a great place to shop but not so good for selling.

 

Then we get the news report about some guy in "wherever, mid-America," who listed his car (or boat, or bookcases, or whatever) for sale and ended up missing, his bones found umpteen months later in the desert or some such...

This happened here in Canada.....
2 guys were caught and are being charged with murder....all cuz some nice guy took them for a test drive in his truck !

 

It was the child who had to go.......not the woman.
or so i was told..

 

Thanks Fig, I think I might understand what you meant by electronic conversion safety measures (no not quoted lol). Like a .pdf file that cannot be altered - right?

 

Pat - about the CL ads: I make them give me their name and phone nr to call me without my email because that way scammers don't get my email. If someone is too flakey to give me their name and phone nr, then they cannot really want the item.

Oh yeah, cash only of course. I ask them to call before they leave so I can give them the directions and I remind them to bring CASH.

 

are you selling the record player?

 

I would say that the pictures indicate a combination of the two - collector and hoarder! When I worked at the thrift store, we would get a mixture of things like you have pictured! A collector would go through things and organize them. I saw items, like the clocks, that are valuable, but they are mixed with common items. My advise is to start at one corner, get banana boxes, and sort. Take a section at a time. Have a garage sale with common usable items and keep collectibles and items of value separated. If you set the tone people will pay more than you think possible, and come back for your next sale! Don't let buyers con you by put downs or games --which many dealers will do for their advantage!

 

An afterthought about meeting strangers and safety...

I guess a lot of my wariness comes from growing up in New York City and living in Boston and Cambridge when we were younger. Also knowing that there's a very economically depressed city about 20 minutes from us.

Things do happen. My husband and I were held up in the lobby of our Boston apartment building. When my mother was in her 70s and alone she was mugged in a supermarket parking lot, including being thrown to the ground.

Our car was stolen when we lived in Cambridge, a rolled up rug was stolen when we were moving into one apartment because my husband left it in the hallway when he went to get more stuff from the moving van.

When I was a young kid, our apartment was burglerized by someone entering the bedroom via a window... while we were in the living room. When I was a teenager, my uncle's downstairs apartment in our two-family house was burglerized the same way... through a bedroom window while people were home. Not to mention the incessant news stories of shootings and other violent acts that seem to be ever increasing in frequency.

Legitimate news sources report there have been at least a hundred incidents of people being killed in connection with using Craigslist.

Am I a little paranoid? Probably. Do I have reason to be? Enough that I want to be cautious even if the chances of something happening are slim. Would I like to live somewhere safer? You betcha!