ALDA JEWELRY and GIFTS

New Ebay Fees

2010-01-27T13:45:00.000-08:00

I am just looking into the impact of the new Ebay fees which are supposed to help sellers. In our case, it may negatively impact my business so we are looking into closing our Ebay store. Since Larry is retiring at the end of May, we are going to expand on our physical shows and have our products available in more states. This has always been where we make the most money so it makes since to expand in that direction instead of trying AGAIN to cope with website and Ebay changes. We may also look into making better use of our physical presence at the South Tacoma Antiques and Collectibles mall. Because of 2 break-ins, we no longer trust putting certain jewelry items at the antique mall but it is still our best bet to expand versus the on-line area. We will continue to post our show schedules online at ALDAJewelryandGifts.com, We will keep you posted here and on our website about any other new changes.

New Ebay Auctions, Shows, Product Lines

2009-09-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

We have been finally getting some more auctions on Ebay. A few weeks ago, I added some size 14 and size 15 men's skull rings in sterling silver. This was for a man that we met this last summer at a festival. He purchased a Navajo indian made ring from us and asked for other designs, especially skulls in the size 15 range.

We ran some vintage jewelry a few weeks ago and half sold and the unsold items are now in our ebay store. Several of the items were 50s -70s tourist jewelry from New Mexico. This week, we have added several bolo or lariat ties from that same era and with unusual designs.

We are still in the process of confirming our fall and winter show schedule. Some updates will be added later today and more to follow. Next years show schedule is also tentative and will depend on Larry's retirement schedule. If Larry is available to travel with me, we'll add the VA hospitals in Idaho, Utah, California and Arizona to our schedule. If not, we will follow our current schedule of shows in Oregon and Washington. Visit our website for the updated show schedules.

We have purchased the domain: ALDAPetProducts.com which is the first step into a new product line for us. Since we have put so much time and money in Rosie's training, we are understanding the importance of price and convenience on purchasing some hard-to-find items. Rosie demolishes 99% of the toys available and she does this within a day or so. Also, she is fussy about her training treats so we are testing and maybe investing in some food tubes for training. More on this soon!

Ebay Store has Expanded - Old Website Catalog Closed

2009-07-29T14:19:00.000-07:00

We have finally closed our old Prostores catalog and have moved many items over to our eBay store. It is still in progress and we plan to carry an average of 500 items on ebay at a time (we are currently at about 275). As we have mentioned before, this will allow us to ship Internationally which we couldn't seem to set up correctly with Prostores. In addition, we will be able to close our sites when we are on the road doing our shows. To see our show schedule, our ALDA Jewelry and Gifts site now has a show schedule tab. Our ebay store and Amazon store will be closed from August 2-7, 2009 since we will be selling in the Portland area. You can place an order during this time but it won't ship out until August 9.

We are also working on expanding our blog and other websites to include articles and interesting stories both related to our business as well as our sometimes crazy personal life. The later will include our Weight Watchers journey (we keep getting within a pound of goal), pet classes for our boxer/heeler Rosie, Eckankar talks and discussion in the South Puget Sound area and other fun and hopefully interesting stuff.

New Websites and Discontined Sites

2009-06-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

We are undergoing a major renovation of our several websites and online venues. First of all, we are planning on closing out our regular website, currently listed under www.aldajewelryandgifts.com and will be moving many of the best selling items from that site to our ebay store. This will give us more ability to provide International shipping as well as to temporarily "close" our online store during sales trips and vacations. Also, having 4 separate online stores as well as doing shows and running a booth at an antique mall has us running around in circles. We have great product and want to show it off in the best possible way. We feel that this will be a HUGE step in that direction.

Our website www.aldagifts.com is under construction and will be one of the main sites for viewing our show schedule. Eventually the www.aldajewelryandgifts.com domain will also pull up this site - it currently shows the schedule, products and other useful information which will eventually be moved to the new site.

Most of our July shows are cancelled this year. We will make up for this by setting up more August and September shows. The Fall City, WA show that we did last weekend was a hit and we will be back next year.

We thank you for bearing with us through these changes and look forward to better serving you. Thanks! Jean

Amazon books and VCRs

2009-04-17T16:12:00.000-07:00

We have just set up a regular Amazon.com user account to sell some books, DVD's and favorite VCR's. The following are 2 listings by the financial teacher, Suze Orman. The first listing is a 3-volumn set of VCRs called "The Power to Attract Money". I have the set listed for $14.99 plus $2.98 shipping. The second Suze Orman favorite is one of her newer books called "Women and Money". My listing is selling this book in almost new condition for $5.99 plus $3.99 shipping. We hope to someday have an Amazon store but at this time, we'll just routinely give links to our favorite listings here and on our website. (The links we added today are not working so we will be adding them shortly.)

Other news - We'll be gearing up for our Mother's Day, Graduation and Father's Day shows soon. We'll start at the American Lake division VA Hospital in Tacoma, WA on April 29- May1. We are getting in more of the palm-grip canes that have been such great sellers. In addition, we have just received a new shipment of wonderful Black Hills style sterling silver rings from South Dakota. These are fantastic designs with stones such as blue topaz, Mt. St. Helen's "Emerald", White CZ and Pink Ice CZ. We also have some new band style rings, in plain, diamond cuts or mixed with gold fill.

We are changing up our shows for this summer. We are dropping the Ethnic Fest in Tacoma this year but adding a North Bend area festival called Fall City Days. We are returning to two shows that we have missed the last few years: Buckley Logger Days (we are set up at the Buckley Eagles) and Treasures in the Park, a fundraiser to support Homestead Park in University Place, WA. We will have the show information updated on our website this next week. We are also awaiting confirmation on each of these shows.

We will also be adding more wholesale charm lots to our eBay store this next week - many with a Mother's Day theme. Check them out by clicking here to see our eBay store and click on Wholesale Lots.

Spring Shows and Sales

2009-02-26T12:20:00.000-08:00

We had a crazy end to 2008 and start to 2009 but we are now back on track with lising more items online and increasing the number of shows we will be at this year. Please check out our new jewelry lots of 5-6 sterling silver charms currently running on eBay. Go to www.stores.ebay.com/ALDA-Jewelry-and-Gifts?refid=store to see our listings. In addition, those of you who know us from shows purchase our stone sterling silver dangle earrings. We are now offering these online at both our main website http://www.aldajewelryandgifts.com/ as well as a few designs in our eBay store. We have also updated our Spring show schedule on the main website toward the bottom of the HOME page.

We will continue to add more jewelry online. We are cutting back on the charms and other jewelry down at the antique store - South Tacoma Antiques and Collectibles. More information on our booth there is found on the home page of the main website.

Our next show is a fun event at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. It is a fundraiser for scholarships offered by the League of Women Voters. The event is on March 21 from 9am - 4pm at the Fieldhouse. We use this show as a clearance and spring cleaning so in addition to our regular jewelry displays, we also bring clearance books, collectibles and general flea market items. Clearance items that are not sold that day will be donated to charity. Admission to this event is $1.00 but if you see me at the VA Hospital at American Lake before then, I'll have 10 free admission tickets to give away.

End of the Year Clearance Sale on Ebay

2008-12-29T11:23:00.000-08:00

As we are getting ready for the New Year, we have decided to put over 60 of our eBay earrings on sale! We are offering a 10% discount on sterling silver dangle and post earrings. Check out our eBay store. New to our eBay store will be collectible jewelry and other gift items. Our goal is to put at least 1 - 5 auction items per week. This week, we will post a WWI pin. We are still researching it and hope to have it listed by Wednesday. Our eBay store may be closed later this week so that we can take a short break as the New Year gets started.

Down at the antique store, we are going to start pulling the sterling silver charms and replacing them with older pins, earrings and other collectible items. The charms will eventually be listed in our store or on eBay. Our store website is www.aldajewelryandgifts.com. Also on the website is information on the store location and hours. Our January and February show schedule is posted on the home page of the website. We have moved VA American Lake to March from February. We will continue to book shows for the spring and post them as soon as they are confirmed.

Laurel Burch Earrings and Pin

2008-11-09T14:26:00.000-08:00

We have been busy with the holiday shows now and will be selling next week at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA and hopefully at a Cancer Society Benefit in University Place, WA. We'll focus the rest of the month on putting more items online and updating stock availability on our website www.aldajewelryandgifts.com.

We have been cleaning out our stock room and have come across several older pairs of Laurel Burch earrings as well as a Olivia cat pin in perfect shape. They will all be listed in our eBay store next week. Click here to access the store. We will be running these on 7-day auctions. We have added several new sterling silver earring designs to eBay this last week. They include an anchor design, several heart designs including one with peace signs and Christmas and winter holiday designs.

We have received notice from Harvey canes that they will be increasing their prices as of October. We will be ordering more of the right-handed palm grip canes for our VA Hospital shows but they will be sold at the new price. Existing pricing on canes that we currently have in stock will not be changed.

We will be closed from December 20-25, 2008 so please place your orders by the 19th to ensure that they will ship out before the holiday.

Ebay - Website - Holiday deadlines

2008-10-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

We have been putting in the effort to get a number of fun miniature post and dangle sterling silver earrings on eBay. We currently have about 145 different items listed and on some of the designs, we have more than one in stock. We have decided to list the items on fixed price instead of doing the auction format. In most cases, the post earrings will start at $9.99 and the dangle earrings will start at $11.99. Also, we are continuing the free shipping on regular mail in the U.S. Click here to see our eBay listings.

We are hoping to add another 25 styles of earrings to eBay by the end of this week. Some will be miniatures and some will be Christmas designs.

Some charm and pendant styles have been removed from our regular website. We are doing this since stock was out or very limited on these items. We will be separating our show stock from our website stock completely so if an item is limited online, email us at aldagifts@msn.com with the item number in the subject line and we will check if we have more of that item in our show stock. Check out our website by clicking here.

We also want to let our customers online know that we will be closed from December 21-25, 2008. We will be selling at the Portland VA Hospital on December 22-24 but will close early on the 24th in order to get back home. The last date for mail orders to ship out will be December 20, 2008. Express (overnight) and Priority mail will be available.

Seattle VA Hospital Show

2008-10-14T21:48:00.000-07:00

This week, we will be set up for 4 consecutive days at the VA Hospital in Seattle, WA. Normally, we don't do more than 3 days but due to the Monday holiday, we were asked to do the rest of the week. During this hectic week, mail orders will still be shipped out but it will be difficult to reach us by phone during the day. Best to leave a message with an evening or weekend time for us to call back.

Ebay free shipping sale on sterling silver earrings

2008-10-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

We are back doing shows again and spent most of this week selling at the American Lake VA Hospital in Lakewood, WA. We did well with the jewelry especially our selection of men's sterling silver rings as well as our Harvey canes. We also brought out some of the Native American made pottery that we purchased in the Four-corners area of New Mexico. The pottery is Navajo made and comes with their certificates of authenticity. We will try to bring a few smaller pottery items to the college shows that we do later this week.

We have been busy adding more items to our eBay store as well as continuing to run a free shipping special for our post and dangle miniature earrings. We are currently relisting the pairs that did not sell during the first auctions but appeared popular in the searches. Other pairs that did not show much traffic have been moved to the Buy It Now category in the store inventory. We are offering a Best Offer on these for folks who want to get a small discount, especially if they are purchasing multiple pairs. (We have the settings set for a minimum price but if you are planning on purchasing at least 5 pairs, we can negotiate an even better deal.)

We are hoping to relist the dangle earrings this week as well as any duplicate pairs of some of the earrings that sold in the first auction. We are running this special to clear our stock. Some earrings are already sold out while we still have multiple pairs for some of the other designs.

We are also in the process of getting out some fun, miniature Christmas earrings including several Santa designs, a cute Christmas stocking, reindeer and more. We have a few pair of Halloween designs that we are making a priority to list this week. If they don't sell in a 7-day auction, we will move them to our booth in South Tacoma Antiques and Collectibles south of Tacoma, WA. More information on our shows and the antique store are found by going to our main website http://www.aldajewelryandgifts.com/.

Copper Baby or Infant Bracelets Now Online!

2008-09-24T14:38:00.001-07:00

We have been busy this week working on over 80 pairs of sterling silver dangle earrings to put on eBay in the next few days. The last group of 83 pairs of post earrings have been bringing in bids and the auction will end today and tomorrow. We will be relisting the pairs that did not sell.

We have just finished putting 5 fun and unique baby bracelets on our website. They are solid copper and are made in the U.S. They include a moon/star design (see photo above), a unicorn, a moose, a bear and a kokopelli. We will check in again when the new dangle earrings go to auction.

Jean - ALDA Jewelry & Gifts

New items on eBay with FREE shipping

2008-09-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

We've worked hard this week getting our websites, eBay store and booth in the antique store ready for the holidays. Most importantly, we have just listed over 80 pairs of post earrings in sterling silver on eBay. These are really cute designs, starting at $9.99/pair including a small gift box made from 100% recycled paper. We are testing out something that we've never done before - we are offering FREE Shipping on orders sent 1st Class mail in the U.S. We hope that this will make it easier for our customers to shop. We hope to have free shipping on our main website bu January 2009.

Getting ready for Fall

2008-09-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

This is a welcome message to this blog as well as news of changes happening with ALDA Jewelry and Gifts as well as All Nations Jewelry and Keepsakes. Newest change is the addition of Harvey canes to our websites. We actually set up a separate site for the canes since their shipping is so different than the rest of our products. If you place orders for jewelry or a Dreambox TM, as well as a cane, we can combine the order and credit back the extra shipping. We need to know at the time of the order that you'd like them combined. If we notice it, we may contact you first. To view the new cane website, go to www.aldagifts.com.

We are heading down to the antique store for a short time today to add some new sterling silver charms and pendants to our case. The antique store is South Tacoma Antiques and Collectibles in Lakewood, WA (just south of Tacoma). We are in the process of discounting the art work as well as figurines in our booth to make room for some fantastic new Native American made stock that we purchased in New Mexico during our buying trip in June.

We will try to post on this blog about twice a week, letting you know what is happening with our many enterprises as well as addressing questions and posting information on our products.
Jean
www.aldajewelryandgifts.com