Have Cribbage Board Will Travel and Saving $ on Supplies

Now that I've seemed to reached the Saturation Point of selling templates on ebay, I am focusing my attention on back on drilling cribbage boards. I'm about 1/2 way through drilling the 100+ boards currently in the work queue. Some of the smaller boards which would have been relegated to the classic 2 pass, 2 street, no continuous track layout, have instead gotten a new continuous layout. I'm calling this new drill pattern a 2 or 3 player continuous track layout in a convenient travel size.

I actually got the idea to do a layout like this about a year or so ago when someone emailed me wanting a continuous track template layout for a board length of 12" or less. At the time I couldn't think of a way to do it, but recently, when thinking about new template layouts, I remembered the request and came up with the layout. The 2 player size length is actually less than 12". It's 10" long and about 3" wide. The 3 player travel size board is 10" long about 4" wide.

There seems to be a consistent pattern to supplies and running out of supplies. I have 5 items (not counting wood), that I have to restock from time to time. These include packaging tape, bubble wrap, complimentary frig magnets, template mounting screws and plastic cleaner/glazer. I hate running out, so I keep a look out for ways to save $ and stock up at the same time. Costco recently had a sale on packaging tape, so I stocked up on that. VistaPrint.com constantly wants to give me free magnets (I just pay a nominal shipping fee), so I stock up on those. I bought 2000 mounting screws from McFeely's, so I'm good with those for the next 200+ templates. To tackle the running low on the plastic glazer/cleaner problem, I'm going to pick up a gallon of the stuff next I'm at Tap Plastics. Finally, that leaves bubble wrap. Last time I bought it, I got a good deal on 4 100 ft rolls at ebay. And its almost time to buy some more.

19 Templates & Counting off to 29

So having settled on 19 template designs, I've mapped out the last 10 designs - which will give me a total of 29 template designs. It wasn't that hard to come up with another 10 designs. I actually came up with more than 10 designs, so I had to pare it down. The last 10 template designs will be as follows:

1) 2 Player CT Tournament Style - with half circles - 180 Degree curve every 10 points - kind of like a Sin Wave.
2) 3 Player CT Smaller/Compact Oval Design - similar to the existing oval design, but more compact
3) 3 Player CT Rectangle with an "S" Curve track orientable in either direction
4) 3 Player CT Square
5) 3 Player CT Triangle
6) 3 Player CT Star
7) 3 Player CT Full Circle - right now the circle template is a half template, that you flip to come full circle - assuming I get the plastic in this larger size
8) 3 Player CT Quasi Circle
9) 3 Player Spiral - Spiral inward - not outward
10) 3 Player CT - Board in the shape of a 29!

Ebay and the Mafia - they both skim 20% off the top

2009 marks ten years that I have been a buyer and seller on ebay. I like ebay for buying things, not so much for selling. I don't sell crib/chess boards on Ebay anymore. I prefer etsy.com for selling crib/chess boards as a supplemental selling channel to my website. By far, my biggest complaint about selling on Ebay are the high fees (as a percentage of the item sold). For me, it's approximately 20% of the cost of the item sold. (Insertion Fee + Final Value Fee (12%) + Paypal processing Fee (%6)). Ebay owns paypal.com BTW, so it's all going into ebay's pocket. In the end it adds up to about 20%. Ouch! So why bother? If you have something to sell on the Internet, ebay is still a viable way to sell it, despite the ridiculously high fees. That said, I'm testing the waters of selling crib templates on ebay. I've sold a lot of templates off the website, but I thought I'd test the ebay waters to see what kind of response I get.