a great auction tool!

Now that we have been on ebay for a while now we have finally found a great auction template that we really love. Auctiva! If you aren't sure about it just go to www.auctiva.com and check it out. it's easy to use, and it can make you auctions look great! We searched for a long time for something that could give our auctions a unique look and finally we got it with auctiva. I also forgot to mention it's FREE.. that's right.. FREE ... check it out


Until Next Time...

Joba suspended two games?

New York Yankees relief pitcher Joba Chamberlain was suspended two games for throwing two balls at Red Sox First Baseman Kevin Youkilis' head. The Red Sox, naturally, feel that it was on purpose. My thoughts? Doubtful. I don't think that Joe Torre is going to send a 21 year old pitcher with little experience out there to send some kind of "message" to Boston. And if he was trying to send a "message" as the Sox feel, what message could it possibly be? "We swept you, but are still 5 games out, and probably won't win the east". That's ridiculous! The Red Sox need to man up and stop whining about every little thing. They have a great team, but if they would just stop whining, they could be a lot better of a team.


Until next time...

Some housekeeping

Well, I decided I should give a little bit more background about our business and who we are (don't worry, it wont be too long).
Downs and Outs Collectibles is run by a mother-daughter team from a small eastern Iowa town. Don't let that fact fool you, not only have we been in this business for about 6 years but we are always researching to learn more. We are both huge sports fans, mostly baseball, but enjoy a lot of sports so we are always interested in the happenings there.
Now to the name, we have had several Ebay customers ask us. If you think about it, it makes sense, we deal in football and baseball cards, in football there are downs, in baseball there are outs.. they just seemed to fit together.
Now on to the next topic I want to write about...Ebay!
In some ways, Ebay is a blessing, especially in helping our sales skyrocket over the last few years, we can reach customers we never would have been able to reach otherwise. However, there are some pitfalls to ebay as well. I'm not just talking about the listing fees that continually go up, but there are other things that drive me nuts about it:

• As a seller, I am not a fan of the still fairly new rating that a buyer can fill out about my shipping time, cost, communication etc. If a buyer doesn't like my shipping prices (which are very low, and are lower than almost everyone else) then why are they bidding on my auction? If they don't want to pay that, then they don't have to bid. The other nagging thing about this is I have yet to see a seller who has a complete star in any category. It's frustrating, we send out items timely, describe items completely and still have 4.8 on most of our stars. I feel that there should be a similar thing for buyers. I have had plenty of buyers who haven't paid very quickly (but they still got a positive feedback because they did pay) and i have had buyers who haven't paid at all.
  

• Then there's Ebay stores. We had one for awhile and it just didn't work out. We have considered opening another one, but can never decide for sure. The problem is, we have many items that we sell that are .99 and even though they do sell, its pointless to have a store for those items. The price for the store is too much for things like that. If ebay dropped their prices on the stores (permanently dropped them) it might be more profitable for not only our business but for others as well.

I think that's enough of my venting and complaining for a while. Until next time....

The First Blog....

Well, this is it, the first blog for Downs and Outs Collectibles. I guess the best place to start is at the beginning. Downs and Outs is a sports card business based out of eastern Iowa. We specialize in football and baseball cards.
To start, I will discuss the news that hit the world today, Michael Vick's plea deal. When I heard about this deal, I was appalled. A plea deal? Why? There are witnesses who have already rolled over on him and were willing to testify against him. Why a plea deal? Yes, either way his NFL career is over, but if you can do the crime you can do the time, the real time, not the plea deal that the prosecutors should never have given you.
However, I will find it very interesting to see what his cards do over the next few weeks. They have already dropped and I expect them to continue to drop, especially after sentencing (no matter what that is). The NFL's awaited decision will also help to determine the fate of Vick's cards. If they totally and completely rid themselves of him, his cards will drop right away, but after a few years they may resurface, certainly not at their current or previous values, but people will move on and some will forget what he did and they will buy his cards again.
However, I wouldn't look for many more Vick cards to be made any time soon. Upper Deck has dropped their endorsements of Vick and I would be very surprised if they made any Vick cards in the near future at all.