When I was a kid Hopalong Cassidy was my hero. I had the complete Hopalong outfit - shirt, pants, cowboy boots, the double holsters with matching six shooters, bandanna, and the trademark hat. If memory serves me correctly, I even had several pair of Hopalong underwear. The only thing I was lacking was a white horse. Even though we lived on five acres on the very edge of town, no amount of begging could get my parents to agree to my own version of Topper.

I insisted my parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and siblings all call me Hoppy. I spent three or four months making sure mom and dad knew I had to have an official Hopalong Cassidy bicycle for my sixth birthday. There likely wasn’t a more excited kid on the planet when one mysteriously appeared on our garage the morning of my birthday.

I ate, slept, and breathed Hopalong Cassidy. My goal in life was to become Hopalong Cassidy.
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Saturday morning I’m leaving for a week long fishing trip in Ontario, Canada. We will be returning the weekend of June 14/15 so there will be no new posts here until after I get back.

During last summer’s trip I caught the 30″ walleye pictured above. If tied for the largest walleye caught out of the resort we go to last summer.

It appears our trip this year will be wet. If the weatherman is to be believed, highs will be in the 60s and it will likely rain every day we are there. Last year, it was sunny and in the 80s and 90s every day except for one.

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I left the house this morning in a good mood. My to-do list for the day was relatively short and tomorrow morning I would be leaving for the NCAA Frozen Four Hockey Tournament in Denver.

First stop - Holiday Gas station for a steaming hot cup of Columbian coffee. Life is good.

Second stop - The ATM machine where I bank to withdraw some money from my PayPal account using my PayPal debit card. As soon as I’d entered the amount and pushed the enter key, my card was immediately spit out and the screen read “Card not accepted. Please contact your financial institution.” A second attempt produced the same results.

A phone call to PayPal produced a twenty-minute wait on hold after which a pleasant customer service rep told me that my PayPal debit card, along with many others, had been canceled because the card number had likely been compromised due to a security breach at a merchant I had used it at. I was able to have a new card issued right over the phone, but was told it would probably be 7 to 10 business days before I would receive it.
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Every week I get emails from readers asking various questions about how and what I sell on eBay and about eBay in general. Some of them don’t even have anything to do with eBay.

Since many of these questions, and their answers, would be both helpful and of interest to other readers, today I thought we would do something a little different.

If you have a question you would like to ask, use the comment form below and I’ll answer it.

First though, a few guidelines before we get started.
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If I live 200 miles from the nearest airport, I’m probably not going to spend too much time worrying about a Boeing 747 falling on my home because it came up a little short of the runway. If I live one mile from the end of the main runway of a major airport and their landing lights have a history of malfunctioning, then it might be a different story.

That was my first thought a short time ago when I read Randy Smythe’s post And So It Begins! in which he talks about a new web site for “serious eBay sellers” called BidBlocker.

BidBlocker’s home page says:

“The only way sellers can protect themselves from unwarranted negative feedback is to block problematic Ebay customers. Customers who have left negative feedback in the past are more likely to do so in the future.”

Unwarranted negative feedback? - In more than nine years, selling across six eBay User IDs with a total of more than 14,000 feedback I’ve received a total of eight negative feedback ratings. Were any unwarranted? Two may have been, but even those two were from buyers who honestly felt they had a legitimate complaint.
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One of my loves in life is ice hockey. It doesn’t matter what level - everything from a park board game between 8-year olds, high school, college, professional - for me, there’s no better game in sports. And there is no better celebration of the game than Hockey Day Minnesota.

The celebration began at 9:00 am this morning on the regional Fox Sports Network (FSN) which will broadcast nothing but Minnesota related hockey until sometime after midnight tonight. In total five hockey games will be broadcast - high school games between Eveleth and Lake Of The Woods (LOW), Roseau and Blaine, Hill Murray and St. Thomas Academy, tonight’s college game between the University of Minnesota and Denver University, and the game between the Minnesota Wild and the New York Islanders. When there is that much hockey on TV in one day, all thoughts of eBay pretty much go right out the window.

Two of the high school games - LOW & Eveleth at 10 this morning and Roseau and Blaine at 1:30 this afternoon are being played on a special outdoor rink in Baudette in commemoration of the game’s heritage in the state - old time ‘pond hockey.’

At the beginning of the first game of the day, the windchill factor at the outdoor rink was 30 degrees below zero and it isn’t expected to warm up much for this afternoon’s game between Roseau and Blaine (hockey players and Minnesotans are tough).

I’m off to enjoy the games and the celebration.

Photo by PointnShoot.

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Tomorrow it will have been two weeks since some of the functions of eBay’s Marketplace research have worked.

This is the second time in recent months some of the features of eBay’s Marketplace Research Pro aren’t working properly. The first time this happened the problems lasted about a week and, while some parts of the program didn’t work at all, it still functioned well enough to get most of the information I needed.

This time, the problem is with being able to sort the returned results making Marketplace Research virtually useless.

Both times eBay has handled the problem in a similar professional manner. Inquiries to customer service regarding the problem get a canned response which pretty much says:

Deal with it! We are aware of the problem. We’ll get around to fixing it when we feel like it. You’d like a partial refund you say? LOL - Not likely!.

A lot has been written over the last few months by knowledgeable people such as Randy Smythe and Scot Wingo regarding the problems that eBay is facing. There is no question that eBay has bigger problems than whether the sort function of Marketplace Research is working or not. However, this ‘little’ problem does raise a question.

If eBay is either unable to fix this minor problem, or doesn’t care about fixing it, what in the world would lead anyone to believe they are going to be able to provide workable solutions to any of the much larger problems they face?

Over the last year there is an arrogance and disregard for both buyers and sellers that has permeated eBay management and customer service. While eBay will likely come up with solutions to the problems they face, it will be their arrogance that will eventually be their downfall.

And Meg, John, Jeff, or whoever is in charge next week. You can just keep my $24.99 monthly fee for the privilege of using Marketplace Research Pro. I’m pretty sure eBay needs it a lot more than I do.

Photograph by Doug Murray.

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I want to wish all reader of The Auction Rebel a Happy Holiday season, and ask that whatever your personal beliefs, whereever you are, however you celebrate, you keep others in your thoughts and prayers.

A friend sent the poem below to me a couple of days ago and I would like to share it with you.

A Different Christmas Poem

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know,
Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
“What are you doing?” I asked without fear,
“Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!”
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light
Then he sighed and he said “Its really all right,
I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night.”
“It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ‘ Pearl on a day in December,”
Then he sighed, “That’s a Christmas ‘Gram always remembers.”
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘ Nam ‘,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue… an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.”
“So go back inside,” he said, “harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.”
“But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
“Give you money,” I asked, “or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.”
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
“Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.”

Photo by soldiersmediacenter

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This Thanksgiving Evening I would like to extend to everyone and their families my warmest thoughts and a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you take the time to enjoy the day and the time spent with family and friends.

If you live in a country where Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated, tomorrow, or any other day, is still an opportune time to reflect upon the many things each of us have to the thankful for and to enjoy some time with others important to us.

I would also like to take this opportunity to extend a heartfelt ‘Thank You’ to each and every reader of The Auction Rebel.

Every time you take a few minutes to read something I’ve written here, you are giving me a special gift - your time and your attention. I know how precious you time is. I’m grateful.

So, have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and Thank You!

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RSS Feeds

If you subscribe to The Auction Rebel RSS Feed you may have already noticed the change made to the RSS Feed. It is now a full feed rather than a partial feed. This means that you will now be able to read each post, in it’s entirety, right in your RSS reader rather than having to click through to the blog to read the entire post.

Email Notifications

The old option to receive an email notification whenever new material is added to the blog is no longer available to new subscribers.

In it’s place, readers will now be able to have each new post delivered, it it’s entirety, directly to their email in-box. Similar to RSS subscribers, this means you can read each new post right in your email without having to come to The Auction Rebel to read it.

These emails will actually be a daily digest of any new content on The Auction Rebel. By using the digest format I can refrain from cluttering up your email box on days there might be two or more new posts. The digest will be sent each day between 3:00 and 5:00 pm. On days when there is no new content added there will be no digest sent out.

This change has been made because, with the garage sale and auction sale season coming to a close here, I’m going to be spending a lot more time on the road in search of new inventory. When at home, I’ll be pre-writing several new posts and scheduling them to be posted on the days that I’m gone. The old email notifications were sent out manually and this may not always be possible when I’m traveling. With the new system, the digests are sent automatically each day there is new content.

For those who are already receiving email notifications of new content, you will continue to them. However, I encourage you to subscribe to the full feed (you can use the subscription box at the top of the right-hand menu bar). Once you have done so, and verified you are receiving them, you can unsubscribe from the old notification system simply by clicking on the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of any old email notification you get.

If you have a question about the new full-feed emails, you can use either the comment section of this post or just send me an email.

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