Monday morning, 21 orders staged on the desk, nothing too fragile in the stack. Candice’s read on the day was that the only breakable was already in its original box — “there you go, you jinxed it.” She did, a little. We’ll get to that.

The headline, though: somewhere around order six I freehand-resized a 14×14×10 box for a set of car mats, looked up, and Candice was over there cracking up at the result. “You laughing at my package?” That became the title before I had time to talk her out of it.

The 25mm reels and the $5 fill-a-bag

[0:26] Vintage 25mm/35mm movie trailer reels — three sold out of ten listed. I locked myself in the office on Thursday with Toby the cat and got ten of these listings up. By Monday morning three had moved. They pre-pack into a slide-in size, so once a sale comes in I’m just labeling and going. The plan is to keep it measured — these things eat shed real estate, and we have a stockpile we don’t want all listed at once.

This was also the third sale out of the $5 fill-a-bag run we keep talking about. The buttons, the armchair pin cushion, and now this lot — three orders at $25 a piece out of $10 in stretchy trash bags. Big-money listings from that haul still haven’t even hit yet.

The car-mat resize — the title moment

[13:33] Car mats — freehand resize on a 14×14×10. Couldn’t find my regular box-resizer tool, so I went eyeball. The first cut was bad. The second cut was worse. The middle line was crooked enough that I called it out before Candice had a chance to. The bit on a wonky resize is that it has to be wonky enough to be funny but not wonky enough that USPS bounces it as an irregular package and charges me the irregular-package rate. “That’s how you know it’s wonky — if they don’t even know how to measure it.”

I look up. [16:50] Candice is over there laughing. “Whoa, whoa, you laughing at my package?” She tries to walk it back — “I was thinking about something.” No. That’s the title. We’re using it.

D.H. Holmes mugs going home to New Orleans

[18:47] D.H. Holmes coffee mugs — $200, sold on eBay, headed to New Orleans. I bought these without Candice with me, sent her a picture, and she could not figure out why I was so excited. The big HOLMES across the front is the giveaway — D.H. Holmes was the New Orleans department-store institution before Dillard’s bought them out in the late ’80s. Anything stamped with that name has a built-in audience down here, and these mugs were going almost literally back home.

The pack was easy because the original boxing kept each mug separated cleanly. I papered the insides anyway and called it. Candice’s pack philosophy on something like this is “slap a label on it and we’re good” — and on a short trip in their original cradles, she’s not wrong. (She is also, as I pointed out on camera, very committed to never being the one who has to pack.)

Vic & Nat’ly serving tree

[19:50] Vic & Nat’ly serving tree. Another local-cartoon piece. We’ve sold a Vic & Nat’ly serving tree before for good money, so this one going out felt like a category we should be paying more attention to. It led down a side road on the Times-Picayune — turns out picayune was an 1800s Spanish coin worth about six and a quarter cents, and that’s what the New Orleans newspaper cost when it launched in 1837. They named the paper after the coin. Did not know that until this pack.

Blenko (Blinko? Blendo?) art glass

[31:40] Vintage Blenko mid-century art glass. The pronunciation got litigated on camera for a solid two minutes. Blinko, Blendo, Blenko, Plinko — Plinko’s the Price Is Right game, not the glass. The glass is Blenko. Probably. Maybe. The pack itself was a quarter box-in-box — a piece of cardboard cut and slotted between the items so they couldn’t bump each other in transit. Not the full box-in-box treatment, just enough rigidity to keep two pieces of art glass from arguing during the truck ride. (We then accidentally turned the rest of the pack into thirty minutes of Drew Carey discourse. Hot take from the shed: Whose Line Is It Anyway was good despite him, not because.)

Stanley nesting cookset to Norway

[40:39] Stanley two-cup nesting stainless cookset — sold on eBay, going to Norway. Second international sale on this cookset. Candice immediately joked we should just send it with Molly next month and it’d probably get there faster — Molly’s about to take a cruise that hits Norway and Iceland with a few days in London on the front end.

The pack on a nesting metal set going international is straightforward — structurally sound, parts nest into each other, tiny box. Small dense items going overseas are quietly some of the best margin we run.

The $200 paintball bundle to Texas

[49:35] Paintball gun bundle — $200+ worth of guns, sold for around $20, going to Texas. When I sent the offer and the buyer accepted at $20, I was a little stunned. Probably the best as-is paintball lot we’ve ever moved. I’m not trying to get $20 a whack on these — I’d rather pass the deal along, get them out of the shed, and let someone in Texas have a great weekend. Pre-taped the box, oriented the irregular shapes so they left clean pockets, and went UPS — I prefer UPS for anything that even looks like it could trip an x-ray scanner. “USPS — ain’t no telling with them. We might shut down a whole distribution center.”

In the middle of this pack, Candice told the story Ryan sent us yesterday — [53:21] the dude in our parish who led the police on a five-mile go-kart chase, hit the ditch trying to take an off-ramp at speed, and clocked the cop in the head with a wrench when they jumped out. Two civilians pulled over and helped wrestle him to the ground. The go-kart had a speaker mounted on top. “Like an OJ Simpson chase.”

USPS bumped rates on a Sunday

[29:24] Most postage went up about 8%. USPS always does it on a Sunday — catches the resellers who can’t pop in and ship over the weekend (which is us). My quibble isn’t the rate hike, it’s the day they pick. “It’s pretty bold that they go up on the shipping on a day they’re not even open.” And even when a customer buys it anyway with the higher shipping, we still pay the platform fees on the now-bigger total. There’s no version where this doesn’t hit the bottom line.

The Dick Stoner book and the wrap

[1:07:08] Dick Stoner magic book — vinyl mailer. I love these vinyl mailers. Even if you don’t sell vinyl records, they’re worth keeping in the rotation — flat, rigid, the right shape for a thin hardcover. Then [1:08:40] the last item slid into an 8×6×4 and we were done.

I thought today was going to be easy. It had a few challenges but nothing fragile — and that’s the difference. Big stuff, weird shapes, a wonky resize Candice will not let me forget. We earned this one. We’ll see y’all in the next one.