13 eBay orders today. The headline isn’t a pack — it’s a near-miss. We jinxed ourselves talking about how rare wrong-item shipments are, and then almost shipped one. The only reason we caught it was the scale.

The packs

[0:00] Lot of 25 35mm film theater preview reels — UPS Ground at 21 lbs. Pre-packed last week. Six of these lots have moved now from a 2,000+ haul we paid $1,500 for. Money’s coming back nicely.

[7:48] Set of 4 Spode Buttercup mugs (Made in England) — $99.99. Estate-sale buy at $10. One mug has a misprint flaw — Candice spotted it during photos and put it in the title. I’d have packed it without ever noticing. Box-in-box on this one — these are too good to lazy-pack.

[18:59] 1994 Easton Press Treasure Island — $22.49. Those Easton Press leather-bound editions just look fantastic on a shelf. I get the collection.

[23:16] Pee-Wee Herman 1000-piece puzzle — $19.99. Going to Sarah, the long-time viewer who asked us to sign the box. Box signed. Buddy, you’re getting a signed Pee-Wee.

[36:41] Stephen King “Cycle of the Werewolf” Signet 1985 first edition — $19.99.

[44:50] 2014 GPS Block IIF-7 Atlas V Cape Canaveral launch challenge coin — $13.49. Going in a small bubble mailer, Ground Advantage.

[46:39] Holiday Fiestaware Holly piece — $59.99. Mercari.

The catch

[33:53] Pulled what I thought was a Whistle Stop Cafe Mysteries 13-book lot — bin 9-Alpha, custom label WSC13. Built the pack, weighed it on the scale: 23 lbs. The system had it as 12 lbs.

That kind of gap doesn’t happen from a scale being a pound off. That’s a wrong-item gap. Stop. Open it. Encyclopedia-looking volumes, definitely not Whistle Stop. Wrong stack pulled from the same shelf area.

The Whistle Stop lot is on a different shelf. Found it. Re-packed. The Dr Seuss correction at [39:03] is the actual right item going to the actual right buyer.

If those two lots had weighed within a pound of each other, this would have been a wrong-item shipment, a bad customer experience, and a return label across the country. The scale catches what eyes miss.

The smaller lesson buried inside this: I’d literally just been bragging to Candice about how we never ship the wrong thing anymore. “Would you stop it?” she said. Pre-jinxed. Don’t tempt fate during a pack day.

The garage-sale story I want to come back to

[46:12] While we packed, I told the story of a sale this past weekend with a guy selling four sets of high-end calipers. I asked the price; he pointed at $150 on the lid. I said “nice, somebody’s going to be happy with these,” and walked off — the way I framed it to myself was that he was selling to a user, not a reseller, and there was no negotiation to be had.

But thinking about it now, that was an excuse. I never even looked them up. They might have been $300, $500 a set. I could have come back and said “I know that’s a lot less than you’re asking, but $300 for the table is what I can do.” That’s not insulting — it’s a real offer for a real chunk of money. Sometimes that works on a tableful of stuff. I stood there with the bat on my shoulder and watched the pitch go by. “Have I lost my edge too much?”

Wrap

Right items in the right boxes. Sealed up. Out the door. We’ll go check on that pile of calipers next time we see them.