Fellow Listers, I have a confession to make !
After eight long years of indulging myself in my eBay buying obsession while at the same time rapidly diminishing the family fortune and depriving my heirs of their rightful inheritance, I have taken the plunge and have become a seller.
It's not easy in one's eight decade taking up these new fangled electronic hobbies particularly when the fear of failure is ever present. For at least five years it has been the question of how to actually get the photos on to the advert that has troubled me. I have bought magazines with lead articles advising "How To Become An Overnight Ebay MIllionaire", some even came with CDs that made the whole process even more electronic - or should that be digital..and therefore even more insurmountable. The tome - "Absolute Beginner's Guide - Launching An eBay Business" remains unopened, let alone unread.; fear of failing again. It is now so any years since my wife and sons bought me the computer programme "Super Seller for eBay" for Christmas that it is now too late to register it for use with the authors.
Then...it was over the coffee and chocolates course at the end of the Settle World Wide Wheelers club dinner in a classy hotel way up in the northern Yorkshire Dales - Appleby - where all the Romany horse traders assemble once a year in June - that I broached the unapproachable with the fourteen-year-old daughter of my clubmate and barrister, John. Up to that point Hannah and I had been discussing, intellectually, the pros and cons of the gent's diamond frame design over the mixte polyvalent one, with particular reference to each design's ability to carry loaded panniers.
Having exhausted , at least for the time-being, that brain-teaser, we turned to education, to discuss just how long that piece of string is when one is only fourteen.She told me that, in common with "all the kids these days... she was taking Computer Studies. At just about that juncture her father chimed in to advise that at least she was learning something useful now as she had just taught him how to sell on eBay, as a result of which he had turned his stable of time and fashion-expired Colnagos into serious money.
A lot of pepermint mints and cappucinos later....and after I had regailed her with numerous stories of frustration and hand-wringing while at the keyboard of my computer with eBay's SELL page staring at me from the screen ... I had learned from Hannah that I was obviously just those "..two Clicks way" from being able to transfer the images from wherever I stored them to where I wanted them to be.
Now that was some five years ago...Recently having just had a dreadful fright about what I thought up-to-that-point was my robust health, I have been forced to wonder just how my family would cope with the hundreds of bikes and frames, not to mention the boxes loaded with accessories...if any should happen. Time to get a grip of selling on eBay..to find those "two Clicks" that Hannah had mentioned and which had not really eluded me since the Appleby dinner..It's just that I never seriously went looking for them until now.
Not wishing to make a major mess of Selling on eBay..I thought I would just experiment with a few small "goodies".. And it was ever so easy..just as Hannah had said it would be..and Ebay actually came and found the photos inside my computer.
So..for those afficionados of the Steel-Is-Real School of Framebuilding.. I have listed three sets of rare lugs... If I manage to sell these, receive the money through Paypal..and get them to their purchasers I will venture forth with much more...and many impressive offerings. The Items are:
*230431788033 - HADEN CONCORDE lug set* *230432035345 - PRUGNAT 65 VICTOIRE set* *230432050985 - PRUGNAT 65L VICTOIRE set* ** If you have read this far...Many Thanks. If you actually buy any of them I would be incredibly grateful as I would be forced, thereby, to learn to complete eBay's selling process. The journey thus far has been long...Come on..make my day!
Norris Lockley
Up to my ankles in lugsets...Settle UK