posted on May 15, 2004 06:06:44 AM new
Someone mentioned Joe Cortese, the stamp/coin seller who instigated the eBay Elite group. I looked at his auctions. He does often seem to have a vast discrepancy between the final bid price and the "Estimated Final Auction Hammer Price" on many of his items.
But what really interests me is the sheer volume of photos for each auction. Here's an example:
152 pictures in this one. I saw one of his auctions that had over 400 photos.
I don't get it. Even assuming there's a camera fixed on a tripod and the pictures are framed in such a way that they won't need cropping, how in the hot country do you ever take enough photos to keep 700 open listings up all the time?
posted on May 15, 2004 06:44:15 AM new
someone in the family must really enjoy taking photos!!!!
-sig file -------we eat to live,not live to eat.
Benjamin Franklin
posted on May 15, 2004 06:56:27 AM new
Thanks Fluffy for listing this. WHy on earth would someone have so many fotos for one auction? I t hought I had too many fotos for my auctions. This takes the cake. Final auction hammer price! That's a term I have never heard before.
posted on May 15, 2004 07:08:47 AM new
I have a G4 with a ton of memory and this auction drove it crazy, broke up on screen and froze my browser. I think that is waaaay too many pictures.
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The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as of the pen.
Maholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 1947
posted on May 15, 2004 07:17:59 AM new
wow, my computer didn't freeze up, but it sure took a long time to load!... It would be impossible for dial-up users to ever snipe a bid on this kind of listing LOL
posted on May 15, 2004 09:21:54 AM new
I'm assuming there is more than one preson involved in this process. 1 is cameraman with camera connected directly to computer, 2 is computer person, cropping and filing photos as they are coming in.
The one I feel bad for though is the poor fool that had to create that listing in all of it's usuless photo glory. Wouldn't it have been easier to just list the contents of the tubes rather than photographing someones scrawl?
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If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on May 15, 2004 10:00:46 AM new
I am amazwd at the number of pics, I had no problem downloading this, but I would never would have looked at all of them. What a waste of time. I think 5 is the most pics I have ever used on an auction.
posted on May 15, 2004 10:20:07 AM new
There's an integrated camera/computer system I saw recently but I don't know what it's called. Runs on Windows, what else.
This was at an ecommerce site I visited in person recently, thinking they were a walk-in store. They took me in back and I got a closeup look of their operation. Really fascinating. They photograph everything they ship out, since they sell computer parts and memory. The camera is fixed on a stand. No need to crop, resize or name a file; just position the item under the lens and push a button. The computer attaches the invoice number to the file and stores it. The order taker who assisted me didn't have a dollar amount on the system but said it was really expensive, as in five-figures expensive.
If anyone's ever heard of something like this, I'd be interested to know the name.
Oh, by the bye, these folks had their sales numbers scrawled on white boards. They do about $11,000 in sales per day, just off their website. I can dream...
posted on May 15, 2004 10:23:54 AM new
This is the way they do their auctions. When you have a large quantity of stamps, some bidders want to see them ALL, and will ask for more pics. This solves that, although it does seem OCD to do it with tubes of coins. My old emachine did this one in 8 seconds (got cable).
posted on May 15, 2004 10:31:49 AM new
Okay, I looked at the source for some of his auctions and I get it now.
He's letting the camera name his files. He creates a directory on his image server for the "stock number": x1234, let's say, and all the images are x1234/1.jpg, x1234/2.jpg, x1234/3.jpg, etc.
I would do this by using a separate Smart Card (or other media) for each lot and labelling each one with the lot number.
Still, even with a fixed camera, it has got to take some time just to pick up the item and hold it to be photographed, put it down, pick up the next...
Some of his auctions have as few as 5 pictures. Some have more than the one I mentioned. And he posts an average of 100 auctions per day.
posted on May 15, 2004 10:44:03 AM new
Fluff - I have seen this type of system with auto integration used at photo studios before. Nice system since you can see your proof immediately on screen. Might want to check some of the professional photo supply sites.
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If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on May 16, 2004 05:32:30 AM new
One thing I noticed about that auction is that he owns Meridian his image hosting/auction management software company. The demo is pretty slick - this isn't a "mom & pop" organization. Anyone using Meridian?
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Sig files are too much trouble! http://stores.ebay.com/Moody-Mommys-Marvelous-Postcards
posted on May 16, 2004 07:24:47 AM new
I found 1157 auctions using Meridian. Of those, about 700 were Joe Cortese's. Another seller accounted for 429 auctions.
So, literally a handful of sellers, which means no presence on eBay at all to speak of.
posted on May 16, 2004 11:31:13 AM new
Another interesting thing is that the winner of the auction listed above was Jay Senese of jayandmarie (OneCentCD's).
