Useful Information
I Hope
To go to the page specifically for ebay buyers, click here
The rest of this will be filled on an ad hoc basis

Such was the harsh regime of the proprietor
that his wife could rarely be persuaded out from behind the furniture.
 Back to Afantiques

A mistress of disguise. the household teenager was
on the Interpol 100 most wanted list

General Frequently Asked Questions.

Items described as being Hall marked are always what they are described as. I know my national and international hallmarks on precious metal and am familiar with all the varieties of plated and metal filled wares that are sometimes referred to as gold or silver.
If the description says 9 carat gold the purity is 0.375 fine, 14 carat is 0.585 fine and 18 carat is 0.75 fine gold, fine gold being another name for pure gold which is 24 carat and as soft as butter (almost) so is very rarely used for anything except gold ingots that hang out in bank vaults.
Sterling silver is 0.925 fine silver, and the term should not be applied to lower grades. Common alternatives are 0.935, used by the Swiss for watch cases in the late 19th century, and 0.800, commonly used in Europe and especially Germany for all manner of goods including watch cases. British coins from 1920 to 1946 inclusive were 0.500 silver but this low a grade is not used for anything else. With the exception of Coin silver (0.900) any word before the word silver means that it is not silver at all, so Nevada Silver, German Silver, Community Silver, etc. mean either a copper-nickel alloy or a silver plated item.

Why are you such a long-winded big head?

I am British and it is typical of quite a large number of us.

Will the Customs inspect my goods and charge me tax ?

Most countries have an exemption from import duties for small purchases from abroad. This is as much for administrative convenience as generosity on the part of the national governments, as it would be a nightmare in staff time and administration examining millions of small packets and collecting the duties would cost more than the revenue raised. The actual figure varies from country to country and in practice the equivalent of $100 - $200 seem to be average, but this is not applied with any precision and although I have sent shipments of watches, for example, of higher value, no-one has reported having to pay any tax. All packages I send have a customs declaration attached, stating them to be merchandise of whatever modest value they are to me, and this seems to do the job adequately.

Is it safe to use a Credit Card ?

No, under no circumstances whatsoever is it entirely safe to use a credit card. Whenever you use a card for whatever reason , a copy of all the details that someone would need to make a fraudulent charge is left with the person who accepts the card. As a card user, however, you do have some safeguards. First, if you query any 'Card Not Present' transaction, the Credit Card company will refund the money first from the account of whoever benefited from the charge , and ask questions later. Second, if something ordered and paid for with a card does not show up or is defective and is over a certain lower limit in value, the Credit Card company will make good the loss and seek recourse from the supplier. This has to be a judgment thing for you, as the convenience of the card as a method of payment is undeniable and I have a number of regular buyers whose simple response to my end of sale notice is 'Charge it' and off goes the item. Foreign currency is no problem at all as although the Credit Card companies charge typically 2% on deals, this is probably as cheap as it gets for international transactions, and the convenience for buyer and seller has to be worth it. As a seller I pay the CC company another 1.7% commission but once again I consider this to be good value. A point to note is that with card deals over the internet or indeed any form of transaction where the card is not present, the Credit Card companies do not guarantee payment to me in any way whatsoever, even if I have an authorization code.

Where do you get all your nice stuff ?

I pick it out from about a million tons of total rubbish and just plain dull stuff that I see in my quest for saleable items in and around Birmingham and Wolverhampton. My criterion is that if I like it , then probably some other folk will and although this sometimes proves not to be the case, usually I am right enough to carry on in business, even if not very profitably. (No farmer of antique dealer has ever made any money) ( they say)
Things do not have to be expensive to be good, and often humble little fragments of past lives and times can be as richly evocative of their period and origins as much fancier items. It helps a great deal to have a sense of the history of the items dealt with , and some understanding of their social backgrounds, and this will also improve a buyer's appreciation of their purchase. Receiving the items should be the start of a voyage of discovery into history. I doubt it always works like this.
 

What do you think of Ebay feedback ?

In most cases it seems wildly overblown. These are comments about routine business transactions conducted presumably between people of reasonable intelligence, affluence and sophistication, but have a tendency to sound like 'thanks for giving cardiac massage that saved my child's life'. Just because someone does what they say they are going to do should not be considered such a miracle. It leaves very little room to give credit where it is really due when some exceptional service has been rendered, but the culture is such that anything less than hysteria becomes seen as condemnation. In my experience, two thirds of buyers do not bother anyway, for whatever reason.

What do you dislike most about the ebay system and culture.

The system seems to work pretty well despite occasional glitches, which in so complex a system are only to be expected. Off-hand I would say the system was more complicated than the average air traffic control system, fortunately crashes are less literal. The lower echelons of retailing skills and techniques really hold themselves up for study in many of the offerings I have looked at and to me it is a wonder that some folk bother to try selling at all, or do not bother to take the trouble to improve their presentational skills and product knowledge. It is no more trouble to offer a decent picture , if you are prepared to take a few minutes to practice with a decent image processing package. Before selling on ebay I spent a lot of time on Usenet, reading the newsgroups in my fields and digesting a host of commentary about ebay. There were some pretty constant themes which seemed to be generally reviled and the high start bid or reserved auctions were the stand out favourite for spleen. Many people seem to treat the system as a retail shop window with their retail price the first bid and if the item does not sell, they simply re-list with a mouse click until the thing does sell or the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first. If something is worth having it will be bid for. If it only has value to the seller, it will just sit there with a sad 'no bids yet' tag. Using the headline to incorporate keywords for the search engines that will lead folk to your item is a lot more effective than space wasted on L**K and other vain exhortations, or fancy punctuation patterns.