We received an outpouring of stories from our inaugural publication of the "First Item Sold Online" feature on March 19. It seems everyone remembers his or her first item ever sold online!
Today we hear from Barbara Nelson, who along with her husband Jim runs Grandpa's Trading Company. I met Jim and Barbara at eBay Live in Orlando, Florida, in 2003. They are wonderful people, truly the cream of the crop. I'm delighted to help them share their story in today's issue.
Hi Ina,
Always enjoy emailing you! Also enjoying your video news bytes. Just like we were visiting with you person-to-person again, like we did at ebay live in Orlando a few years ago! LOVE the doggie in your "commercials". Envy you your technological knowledge and ability to do all that you do. We've referred lots of folks to AuctionBytes and they have all thanked us! Please keep up the good work!
Anyway, our "first item sold on ebay" tale.....was in June of 1997. We were bound and determined to try out this new site called ebay, explained to us by a customer at one of the monthly antiques shows we did in West Palm Beach. Guess we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could actually join the online world! Had heard about email and the internet but we had no CLUE how to get "online" or even how to use a mouse. At the time I had a medical transcription service and did have a computer with a teeny tiny hard drive and even smaller memory..... and used Word Perfect as the only program I knew from transcription work and used DOS commands. Did not have a mouse nor could I figure out how to get my fingers "off" the keyboard to use a mouse.
As a self-employed medical transcriptionist for nearly 30 years, it was all about production and you never wanted to take your fingers off the keys as that would decrease your speed! Of course when I began transcribing in the early 1960's we used manual typewriters and lots of correction fluid. Anyway, took a college course in website design. (A big mistake as, having never used the internet, a mouse OR even been online...having NO clue what HTML was, etc, etc..... you "get" the idea. As a "bonus", the instruction was Argentinean and I could barely understand her instructions). Got through the course with lots of tears and determination!
Purchased the first digital Sony Mavica camera that came on the market, (still use it today for all our photos) and took some pictures. Figured out how to edit them and had them on our computer, ready to list! Tried for days and days to list an auction. Could not for the life of us figure out HOW to get them viewable on the ebay site. (This was of course, before ebay had detailed tutorials, a picture/photo manager or storage space, etc).
I took the bull by the horns and told Jim I was NOT coming to bed until I figured out HOW to get ONE auction running! It was 3 a.m. I was in tears and frustrated to the max. I sent an email to ebay BEGGING for help and if ANYONE was there at that time of the morning who would hear my plea. A VERY nice email came back to me about 5 minutes later. It was from a Jim Griffin, an ebay staffer who was on line at the time. (We know him now as the famous...."Uncle Griff). He told me in a one paragraph email exactly what to do to upload my images via an FTP server, how and where to get a "free" version and WOW.....in another 15 minutes had our first auction going! Ran into the bedroom where Jim was deep into his second dream and gleefully woke him up to tell him we had our very first auction item listed! He was as excited as I was.....came into the office to "see" us actually with that listing up and running! We celebrated with milk and cookies and went to bed!!!
Now that I have bored you with THAT story...... the actual item was an electric, 20 cup Maxwell House coffee perker, the kind you use for large groups to serve coffee in, with the spout at the bottom to dispense. We had one that I had gotten free with Maxwell House coffee labels many years before. It was blue and white with the Maxwell House logo, etc. Jim was a scouting pack leader when our sons were young....and had used it for our den and pack meetings for several years, then when the boys grew up, had packed it away in the garage. We had cleaned the garage and put it in a yard sale the month before and no one had purchased it for $3.00. There were NONE listed on the small and new ebay site at the time but we decided we had to start somewhere. Had NO idea it was advertising memorabilia (by now it was about 12 years old) and we said if we sold it for $3 (that we could not get even at a yard sale), we would be amazed! Well, a week later (there were no 10 day auctions back then)....it actually sold for $39!
Of course, that one sale determined our future for eternity! We gradually stopped doing the 48 antiques shows a year that we had done pre-ebay across the eastern portion of the USA. We later pulled out of the three antiques malls that we were in across the southeastern USA. Finally we sold our antiques shop and now sell only on ebay. We had two grandchildren when we started selling on ebay in 1997 (now we have six) and they were SO delighted when we gave up our traveling "ways" and could actually be here for their school plays, recitals and concerts instead of at some far away antiques show when they "needed" us. Those first two grandchildren are now in college and help Jim part time in his ebay endeavors. Our granddaughter takes & edits the digital images and helps with listings and research; the grandson helps Jim with the packing, shipping and inventory portion of the business.
We met Uncle Griff at ebay live in Orlando and he smiled when we told him we could have never done our first listing without his middle-of-the-night helpful advice to provide the very last "link" we needed to get our photos available on the ebay site.
Best Regards,
Jim & Barbara Nelson
Grandpa's Trading Company
Do you remember the first item you ever sold online? Let us know by sending an email to ina@auctionbytes.com and we may publish your story.
