The thumbnail pack is two free Ground Advantage boxes joined end-to-end to ship a toy Corvette. The Corvette was a hair too long for one box. So I used two. “I hope we don’t get in trouble with the post office for this.”

The pack-of-the-day Corvette pack

[0:00] Candice ran the camera close so y’all could see this one up close. The Ground Advantage free boxes are decent but not thick — joining two together effectively gives me a double-walled, longer-than-stock box for free. I split a flap mid-pack — “we got a splitter” — taped it back together. “At least it’s not your pants.” It looked fine in the end.

Other packs

[4:00] Six old-fashioned glasses — Santa’s sleigh and a reindeer on each (Rudolph included). Original divided box. Best advice I’ve gotten from glass packers (and I am not one of them — I just try to get stuff there safely): fill the void inside the glasses. A bit of paper inside each one creates outward pressure that helps them resist crushing. “I’m not a physicist, I’m an eBay seller.” Then we got into a Mythbusters tangent and Grant Imahara — gone way too young. Fly high, Grant.

[20:00] Movie reels — sale #6 from the big buy. 2,000–2,500 reels in the haul, paid $1,500. Sold this lot for around $54. Six lots and a few singles in so far — we’re closing in on getting our money back, with a long tail of reels to keep listing. Bulk buys take floor space, but the per-listing-effort drops way down once you’ve researched one.

[23:10] Two Stanley camping cook sets — pair sale. These keep selling steadily and we’re not even in spring camping weather yet. Selling them in pairs makes sense — each set has two bowls, so a pair feeds a family of four.

[37:00] Civil War chess set — $300. Packed in a 2D printer box from the new printer in our office. Padded corners came built into that box; the chess set fit it like the box was made for it. Re-wrapped the outside so it doesn’t look like I’m shipping a printer. One foot of the chess set was missing a rubber pad — bought new feet on Amazon and Candice insisted I do all four so they’d match. Disclosed it on the listing as new and improved.

The magazine I should have answered sooner

[17:00] Buyer messaged about a single magazine in a $100+ lot I had listed. Made a fair offer to break it out for him. I was busy, didn’t reply, told myself I’d reply later, didn’t. He messaged again days later. By then I assumed he was mad — and I told him so when I finally wrote back: “I’m sorry, I dropped the ball, I assumed you’d written us off.” He just said “It’s fine, I still want the magazine,” sent me $20, and I broke out the lot and sold it. Then he mentioned, casually, that he’d been published in that issue.

The lesson is the obvious one: come clean fast when you mess up. Most people will think back to a time they did something similar and meet you halfway. Best case is you don’t drop it in the first place — but if you do, honesty closes the gap.

Pirate Ship vs eBay labels

[44:00] Bought the chess-set label on Pirate Ship for the cheaper insurance. Heads up though: when you buy your label on eBay, there’s a protection where if the buyer claims item-not-received, eBay refunds them, but if the package later shows delivered, eBay automatically reimburses you. That protection only applies to eBay-purchased labels — that’s their nudge to keep you on platform. Sneaky, but real. So we balance: cheaper insurance + cleaner one-vendor support on Pirate Ship vs the platform safety net on eBay. Usually if it’s a four-figure item I lean toward the eBay label for that protection.

Wrap

The Corvette is in two boxes taped together and the post office can come find me. The chess set is double-padded. The reindeer glasses are stuffed with paper. We’re caught up. Bye y’all.