WELCOME to the second issue of Random Issues! I do apologize for the delay, as I ideally wanted to get this out to subscribers on December 31, but I'm a one-man show and sometimes I get a little behind. I hope you had a great Holiday and a Happy New Year's celebration. I'm very pleased to have several new subscribers on board for this second issue, and hope that you both enjoy it and the issues to follow at the end of each month throughout 2006!

WHAT'S UP As many of you know I've been on a mini-vacation myself for the past couple of weeks. What I mean by this is that I typically work at my sites and my sales in two shifts per day, once from about 10-11 am until 5-6 pm, and then again from about 10 pm until I tire out, usually around 3,4,5 am. Since December 19 I've treated myself to days off and only put in the night shift, mostly concentrating on site updates. In fact, I have not listed anything new for sale since Friday, December 16, but am glad to say that I've had some decent store sales since then.

Regular auctions of new items will resume this coming Tuesday night, January 3, and it will be back to business as usual after that. I have a lot of neat old magazines to list at auction including several 1950's TIME Magazines, 1930's-40's LIFE Magazines, 1930's-40's and 1960's Saturday Evening Post, 1970's Newsweek, 1955 Sports Illustrated, more Wrestling Magazines, and 1940's-60's Boxing Magazines--that's just some of the better stuff sitting here in bulk, which will probably take me most of January to scan and compose auction listings for--it's going to be a busy month once I get going!

I've been mostly tinkering with my movie related website, things-and-other-stuff.com, these past couple of weeks, but have done some work on Collecting-Old-Magazines.com as well. I've split the Harper's/Atlantic article I mentioned as coming soon last issue into two separate pages for the site: the Harper's Magazine page is up on the site, the Atlantic is to soon follow (note-taking is done). I'm proud of my Harper's article, as I think it does a good job of delivering the history of the publication and a better than usual job of talking about collecting Harper's. If you haven't seen it yet I hope that you enjoy it. I'd like to stick to a similar outline when I put together the final version of the Atlantic page, but at the same time I don't want to parrot the Harper's page, so I think it's good that I put a little time in between them.

The Photoplay Magazine Checklist was updated shortly after the first issue of Random Issues, on December 4, and I will be trying to update it again sometime in the coming week (probably closer to or during next weekend). I split the first issue of Random Issues into two separate web pages, so that the Random Issue itself (TIME Dec. 29, 1941) would have its own page--I'm going to do that with this issue soon after it's sent out as well, and will continue to do so with all future issues. Also, since the site is beginning to grow, I figured better sooner than later in creating a Sitemap. I realize that the way that this site is constructed the navigation has the potential to become confusing, so I figured setting up the sitemap somewhat early in its development would reduce that problem.

COLLECTING This is a good spot to note that USPS postal rates will be increasing on January 8. Most people are aware of first class stamps rising from 37 to 39 cents, but there are other increases as well including Flat-Rate Priority envelopes going from $3.85 to $4.05 and Flat-Rate Priority boxes from $7.70 to $8.10. I currently charge $4.00 and $8.00 for these services and am trying to decide if it's going to be worth the time and aggravation for me to bump these up a little. I will likely have to adjust my own flat rates for oversized magazines (ie: LIFE, LOOK, etc.), but I may ride out the USPS's own increases on their flat rate items for a little while anyway. This leads to a seller hint, one that I burned myself on again:

When listing items in quantity, by this I mean a large number of listings, you shouldn't quote your postage rate in the text area of the listing--only in any available pre-defined area for shipping. For example, I'm currently using eBay Turbo Lister to bulk list and I previously used Marketworks--both have separate areas in their templates for listing your shipping fees. There's no need to repeat this information in the text description of your item...as I unfortunately did when switching to TurboLister--now I've probably tacked a week's worth of work onto my schedule which I'll be forced to lose a little money here and there until I finish updating. I want to say "Do as I say, not as I do!" but that sounds a little presumptuous on my part--in this case it would save you quite a bit of work though as I goofed!

eBay buyers and sellers, have you noticed the orange RSS buttons at the bottom left of some of the eBay stores? eBay store owners, I don't know how much extra business it will bring you, but the potential is there so I suggest taking advantage of this free promotional tool from eBay--it takes about two clicks from your "Seller Manage Store" page. Buyers, if you subscribe to a seller's RSS feed you will have the opportunity to get a jump on other buyers in spotting the newest items that your favorite store owners post for sale. It's really a no lose situation for buyers and sellers alike--not much effort and potentially more opportunity. Personally I think this is going to catch on and be a popular feature and a good excuse for eBay sellers to upgrade to eBay Store owner status.

Another note, to both buyers and sellers, have you found Google Base yet? I mentioned this on my blog a few weeks ago--it's not only for collectibles, but basically allows you to post an ad for anything from a web page to a blog to a real estate offering...to collectible listings. I tried it out with a couple of my eBay listings--you can draft a basic listing to link to a pre-existing listing such as an item on eBay or another online venue, or you can create your listing completely from scratch using your GoogleBase listing as your main listing. It's absolutely free to buyers and sellers--well, sellers, it does cost time, but I see on the home page you can now post with a bulk upload file. I haven't read about that yet, I just entered a few by hand when I tried it out. We've all seen our shares of failed eBay competitors over the years (Wagglepop?) and many hope for a viable alternative, though I have to admit Google's emergence as a competitor scares me a little. I'd love more choices in auction/fixed-price collectible venues, however the thought of Google entering the game could actually spell a little trouble for eBay down the road. What scares me most is eBay is cooperating with the project at first (allowing links to eBay listings) thus helping build what could in years to come be their top competitor. I know Google's been stepping on some toes here and there lately, but overall I really like them and what they do; however eBay is my favorite site of them all, so I would really hate to see them lose too much of their edge. Oh well, I don't think that's anything to worry about anytime soon, but still...

SOME LINKS Before we get to the meat of the issue I just want to set down some of my most basic links here: