“You’ve Got Mail”

I love buying and selling vintage things and running my Etsy store. It is a lot of work, but I’m my own boss and create my own schedule. But lately I’ve been getting a lot of emails from people that leave me shaking my head.

This morning’s message was from a guy telling me the price on my antique sterling silver creamer was too high. He was basing this on the current melt price of silver. Here is part of his message to me complete with grammatical mistakes and typos:

Sterling denotes 92.5 % silver. At 105 grams it’s melt value is only $57.86 and smelter pays 70% which is $40.50 So unless someone wahts it to complete a setting Price is way to high

Here’s the thing…this is NOT a scrap item. This is a beautifully crafted, scarce sterling silver creamer by German silversmith Wilhelm T. Binder. It is heirloom quality and a similar one sold for close to $200 a few years ago. I’m not even going to respond to this guy. No point. Obviously he doesn’t appreciate that the value of an antique is not just in the material it’s made of.

Now yesterday’s message was from a new Etsy store owner. She made an offer on a set of vintage crosses I have in my store…and she wanted free shipping. (Mind you she doesn’t offer free shipping. In fact her shipping for one ring cost more than mine for 6 crosses!) Essentially she wanted a 30% discount and these crosses are already reasonably priced. (Dang girl, that’s cheeky!) I rather wonder how she would react if someone offered her 30% less for one of her rings.  I declined her offer.

And the day before that I received a well-intentioned, but ever-so-slightly snarky message. A woman told me that a Staffordshire figurine I had in my store was actually a 1920s/1930s reproduction and she listed some clues why she thought it was, and as such, it was nearly valueless.

Now this message was potentially helpful as I am not an expert in Staffordshire, but she ended her message with a stern:

Do the research if you want to learn.

I thanked her and told her I had researched it (hours in fact) and did she have a site she would recommend. Alas, I never heard from her again. I decided to deactivate the listing until I can do yet more research. (I have contacted one expert, but she is not knowledgable on the Victorian-era pieces.)

Anyway, hope your week is going well. It’s been a wild ride here in the U.S. with the presidential election. Trying to be hopeful. On the positive side, sales have been steady this month and I’m heading off to Houston, Texas, to visit my brothers for an early Thanksgiving. You know I’ll be doing a little treasure hunting while I’m there! 🙂

Happy hunting!!