Pre-Orders for the Holidays

As Thanksgiving approaching, and the end-of-year holidays not far behind, I have made two new offerings available in the Vintage Section:

Pre-Order - Vintage Go Set - Refurbished
Pre-Order - Vintage Go Set - DIY Refurbishing

When I started my Etsy shop four years ago my hope was that I could sell sets, sight unseen, at a reasonable price. Selling sets without photos is difficult, because everyone prefers to see the exact items that they are paying for. Selling sets at a reasonable price is difficult on Etsy because of their abusive fees - at this point I've abandoned Etsy except for Pre-Orders, and you'll see that they are 20% cheaper here.

In an ideal world, I could finish refurbishing a set and then immediately pop it into a box to take it to the post office and send it to you. Instead, I have to take that finished set to the office, back and forth across the photo studio, and I'll spend another hour or more to make the set available on the storefront: 

1. Staging the equipment in several ways for a variety of photographs
2. Using different lighting setups to capture the wood grain and clamshell patterns
3. Creating product pages, uploading and cropping photos, writing descriptions
4. Setting prices based on the quality and condition of the materials (less than 50% of their cost New)
5. Measuring and weighing the packed boxes to purchase the correct shipping labels

All that time adds up, and the work is tedious to boot. With a Pre-Order I can get back to the workshop to focus on more refurbishing and I can show my appreciation with reduced prices and greater care.

For the price-conscious, you'll find our cheapest offering in the new Pre-Order for a DIY Vintage Set. This option saves me the most time, as I will only need to give the set a cursory inspection. Check out our Care Instructions and you'll see that you can easily take on the refurbishing yourself (sometimes very little is needed): 

• If the bowls have a poor finish or no finish, we clean them and apply a paste wax.
• We wait an hour, buff away the excess wax, and give the bowls several days to cure before buffing them again.
• If the clamshell stones are dirty, we soak them in hydrogen peroxide for a week, scrub them if needed, then rinse them and let them dry.
• We identify stones that are out of place (the wrong material, the wrong size, badly chipped, etc).
• We count the stones to make sure there is a full set of 181 black and 180 white.
• We replace missing stones with matching pieces from our library of Spares.
• We find a good fit for the stones with a pair of matching bowls. 
• We pack everything securely for shipping (with reused materials when possible).

A pre-order isn't for everyone, so if you have your heart set on something specific then please message us to let us know. Or you can simply wait for a suitable set to appear on the shop.

However, if price is the biggest concern, then a pre-order is a great way to maximize your holiday budget while still ending up with the best equipment.