These days, when I use the phrase “PLS”, I’m generally asking someone to DO something about something — for instance, a pictorial coin.

“PLS that!” means to actively pursue the coin’s symbolism through the mechanism of PLS inquiry — “What do you see?”, “What do you know?” and “Tell me the story”, all of which are of course the standard PLS technique.

On the off-chance that you don’t know about PLS, it refers to a past-life memory restoration technique called a “Past Life Survey”, and we’ll talk more about this later on as we get deeper and deeper into Coinology.

My concept for a Coinology Booth or Kiosk is very, very simple, and I’d tend to keep it simple.

There’s a mannequin bust on a tabletop, where you’ll also see a flat glass-topped display case, next to which will be a standing framed Pegboard.

I myself would tend to put the frame into a fancy portable painting easel, and lock it down in there with the crossbar, thus allowing easy access.

With a firmly placed Pegboard, the customer can feel free to just yank the thing off the hook without worrying about dumping the whole mess onto the floor for a horrible game of “100 items pickup”.

I want my prices totally dummy-proof.

I’m not going to be there every day. My stuff’s gotta be priced so anyone can get it.

That means simple, easy to remember prices, almost disregarding the merchandise. On the low end, it might be unfair to the small buyer, but on the higher end, there’s a lot of stuff going out the door for very little profit, if any, except in the artwork, where the markup is a LOT higher.

By the way, if you sell any of my art or the artwork of any member of the Grass Valley Graphics Group, you DO get a commission, which will vary depending on the piece.

I have some paintings that cost me $1,000 or more to frame. Those are gigantic hall-sized paintings, architectural scale, and the 6″ wide carved hardwood frames were made to museum specs back in 1987 and 1988 for a New York gallery show.

So, okay, keep it simple, right?

Right.

Ten bucks is the number I have in mind for very very high-grade pictorial quarters — far less than the average of $50 for the same coin graded and slabbed, or is it slabbed & graded???

Same coin in a sterling silver bezel, $39.95.

Put two of those into sterling silver coin-edge bezel and you pay $69.95.

Exact same coin but in a fancy handmade rope-edge bezel, it’s gonna be $89.95. Double that order in a pair of sterling silver fancy bezel earrings and it comes out at a mere $139.95, and the whole set sells for just $189.95, a whale of a saving!

Speaking of whales, I have some legal ivory beads for sale in a necklace that also sports some Ashanti gold weights, on sale now at only $495.95, guaranteed authentic & rare, but forget about those things — they’re part of the “extras” you’ll want to place around your standard fare at standard prices.

So what else we got??? Continue reading →