It’s been a few days so I wanted to check in with some odds and ends. Rest assured I’ve been hard at work over here, though much of that toil has been spent on souping up some of our old pages, such as the individual pages of the Movie Collectibles Index and the Search Results pages. I also spent a good many hours last night on the Immortal Ephemera Store, mostly brightening up the shops Add to Cart buttons and probably more importantly changing some of the store’s default verbiage: Shopping Cart instead of Shopping Bag, and other such minor but necessary improvements.
I’ve also gotten started on cleaning up many of the listings inside the new Store. In fact all listings inside the Movie Ephemera section have been spruced up with cleaner item descriptions and have had large gallery photos added to help you see the items a bit better. I’ve also started cleaning many of the listings under the Movie Cards heading, though there are so many items there that that’s going to take a bit of time and work still. I’ll get there. The Immortal Ephemera Store now holds over 3,000 vintage movie cards and collectibles, all available for immediate purchase and all priced 20% below my current eBay Buy it Now prices.
If you make it to the bottom of this post there are some quick (mostly) non-sales related notes including what I’ve been watching lately and what the next review I’m working on is, but first a little more on my eBay items.
Over there I’ve realized that the time has come to revert to old strategies, benefiting both you and I. For the past couple of years the eBay market has been strongest for Fixed Price goods. Buyer and seller alike enjoyed instant gratification. But with over a decade’s experience selling on the site I’ve come to realize, and more importantly accept, that old strategies very often become new again. Thus a major return to auctions on my part, notably for all movie cards and collectibles I list for the first time. You can’t have them right away like with a Buy it Now offering, but you may be able to get an item a heck of a lot cheaper–my opening bids at auction have been and continue to be the absolute lowest I ever make an item available for–this is often 40-50% lower than Buy it Now prices.
And so, here’s what’s ending this week:
Go here to see all of my current eBay auctions.
New: 1936 Godfrey Phillips Screen Stars Series B – Singles from a broken set, offered for sale for the first time at auction. Names include: Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Errol Flynn (pictured below), and Jean Harlow. Ending Tuesday night, see them all in the Immortal Ephemera Photo ID Guide.
New: 1936 R95 8×10 Linen Textured Premium Photos – A recently arrived offering of 40-plus different R95’s. Names include: Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Frances Farmer, Errol Flynn, Katharine Hepburn, Gloria Swanson, Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell, and for the first time I’ve ever seen it after handling hundreds of these, W.C. Fields (pictured below). Ending Wednesday night, see over 150 different R95’s in the Immortal Ephemera Photo ID Guide.
New: 1936 Godfrey Phillips Stars of the Screen Tobacco Cards – Singles from a broken set, offered for sale for the first time at auction. Names include: Greta Garbo, Ginger Rogers (pictured below), Shirley Temple, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. Ending Thursday night … Updated Photo ID Guide coming this week, here’s the old one for now.
Relisted at auction for the first time: 1935 Secrets Magazine Mini Playing Cards – Singles from a broken set. If you thought I priced them too high to use Buy it Now, well, here’s your chance, cheaper than they’ll ever be made available. Names include: Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford (pictured below), Gary Cooper, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, and Jean Harlow. Ending Saturday night, see them all in the Immortal Ephemera Photo ID Guide.
Relisted at auction for the first time: 1938 Chilena Polo L series of Tobacco Cards – Singles from a broken set. Same reasoning as the Secrets cards above, if Buy it Now was too high, minimum bid will likely be the lowest you see these singles. Names include: Paul Muni, Barbara Stanwyck with Joel McCrea, Jean Arthur, Fay Wray, Tyrone Power with Loretta Young, a scene from Captains Courageous featuring Spencer Tracy with Lionel Barrymore and Freddie Bartholomew, Clark Gable with Marion Davies, Boris Karloff on a rare cardboard appearance with Marguerite Churchill (pictured below), and Johnny Weissmuller. Ending next Sunday night, September 26. See them all in the Immortal Ephemera Photo ID Guide.
Shipping is combined as always. For Trading and Tobacco Cards that’s typically $2.00 U.S. shipping for one of my cards up to every one in the Store. For larger flats like the R95’s just $2.50. Basically you pay the highest quoted shipping rate once for movie flats like this, then wait for my invoice and I’ll add it all together for you (magazines excluded).
Other notes: Should be a new review coming sometime this week, I’ve got notes, a title and a first paragraph at least, but won’t have time to pull it all together for another day or two. The subject? 1935’s Kind Lady with Basil Rathbone and Aline MacMahon … Anyone catch the premier of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire series Sunday night? How neat was it that they worked in a Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle clip? Since it’s set in 1920 it’ll be interesting to see if any of our other Silent heroes show up in coming episodes, I’m betting they do. Speaking of Arbuckle, since this is pretty much exclusively a sales posting, I’ll have several vintage late 1910’s Arbuckle cards at auction in about two weeks (other period stars too, such as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, and many more) … following up mention in last week’s Jackie Cooper post I did watch The Devil Is a Sissy (1936), and boy, was it kind of weird. If you’ve seen it when I say weird the first thing that pops to mind is the scene where Jackie, Mickey and Freddie go to visit Aunt Rose who pulls a cartwheel before a bizarre song and dance scene breaks out of nowhere … Speaking of bizarre dancing from out of nowhere I also watched Roxie Hart (1942) this week … I’m sure I would have discovered it myself soon enough, but thanks to MaterialGirl850 on Twitter (aka Angela of the excellent The Hollywood Revue site) for pointing out the IMDb’s self-butchery. It was only recently I posted about a workaround to one of their updated features, well this past week they went whole hog with the redesign. What do you think?
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