Customs for Disaster Relief Project

[Darth Delicious]

Excellent...we'll make September 30th the deadline for mailing out your figures to me...then I'll take the pictures and Red5sixx can get them up on E-Bay.

Jokabofe: Appreciate your looking in to the E-Bay aspect of this.

Anyone who's joining us on this, thank you. PM me so I can give you my address.

-DD

[jokabofe]

Well, here's the email I sent them:

Along with a few others, I help to run a Star Wars Fansite (www.jedidefender.com). Some of the forum members and I are looking to do some auctions for another forum member who lives in New Orleans, and we want to label them as "Hurricane Katrina Charity Auctions" - is this allowed? I know that there must be hundreds of "charity" auctions right now with people taking advantage of that label, but we are for real and I don't want ebay taking our auctions down. Can you please let me know if we would be able to post these auctions and state that all the monies collected are going to a specific person to help them recover from Hurrican Katrina? Thank you.

Now the question is, how do we sell "Custom" figures without ebay taking us down because of the LFL issue? I know that many auctions for custom figures have been removed by ebay over the years, but I didn't want to get into that with my initial email to customer service. I guess we'll see where this takes us first.

[Phrubruh]

With all the custom clones that have been on there recently, LFL has been pretty lax in taking down auctions. They seem to take down the guys that have multple auctions for the same figure.

Another idea might be to make a matching contribution for whatever amount your auction ends at.

[CHEWIE]

I think the idea of either sending them all to DD would be fine.

 

[Glassman6]

Or why not one big aution?  Or two or three with multiple figures?

THose might do better?

[Gregorbian]

Maybe if we could figure out what everybody is going to send to DD, then we would have a better idea of how to do the auction (group the clones, droids, jedi etc into their own auctions, or just have individual auctions for every piece). 
I'm not sure what type of custom to send in, I might do another Rocket Clone if I have the time.  If it's getting too close to the deadline to send in the figures, I might send in a custom that I have already made.

Do we even need to classify the auction as a charity?  What would be the difference between notifying eBay that we will be donating the proceeds to a victim of the Hurricane and just having Red5Sixx send Darth Ennis the $$$?  (I'm asking because I honestly don't know, not to be difficult ).  Does eBay waive the fees if it's a charity auction?  Does this count as a charity auction?

[Darth Delicious]

Gregorbian makes a good point. I think we could just post the auction as a regular auction, but maybe in the description mention that the proceeds are going to go to a friend devastated by Katrina. I don't think E-Bay can get fussy about that...but you never know.

I don't think LFL will take down the auction... for one, like Phruby said, they've been really lax lately...and two, they'd look like douchebags taking down auctions where we're trying to help out a friend affected by Katrina.

I'll even post a link to this thread in the auction, in case anyone wants to check out the veracity of our claims.

I guess the only real question left is...what figure does everyone want to donate?

-DD

[jokabofe]

My only thinking behind that idea of posting auctions as being for charity is that sometimes people are willing to spend a little more money on stuff when it's going to a cause instead of going into someone's pockets, so to speak. I'm sure we've all seen stuff being auctioned off for charity that sells for well over and above what an item would regularly sell for.

I'm not saying that these figures are going to be fetching $1000 if we label as "charity" - but it might not hurt.

Either way, I'm fine with whatever. Just a thought.

[Darth Delicious]

That's a good ppint, jokebofe...well, we have a little time to decide this as we await E-Bay's response.


-DD

[jokabofe]

Well, from everything that I have been reading on ebay about this, it looks like we really can't list items as being for "Hurricane Katrina Charity" in the title, but I'm not sure if we can just mention in the listing itself that all proceeds from the sale of this item will be going to a victim of Hurricane Katrina or something to that extent.

Again, I just see that alot of the auctions that are listed as being for charity often go for more money than the items would regularly sell for, so I'd love to be able to tag these items as such. But it looks like it won't happen.

Now, if we can get some of the collecting sites on board for this - obviously here, RebelScum, Galactic Hunter, TheForce.net, etc. etc. we might not even have to worry about it. If we can get them to post news tidbits on the main page with links to the acutal auctions, that might drive more traffic to check out the items, and hopefully drive the final prices up.

[Darth_Ennis]

Hey everyone, I am currently  Gatlinberg Tennessee. Ive been set up with a local Library so hopefuly I can communicate a little better. You are all being very generous, but I have no problem with sharing. There are probably several more people that could use this as well. You acn look in the Louisiana listing on the area reports section on RS. I set up a hurricane roll call thread a couple of days after the hurricane hit, several people responded, so if you wish you can put their names as well. there could be people hit worse than me, I still dont know.

Ironicly, September 30th is my birthday, thats kind of weird.

I am in good spirits here, I snagged me a temporary job, and my roommates company put us up in som pretty sweet digs for the next month if neccessary. This place is much sweeter than my apartment back home, Im actually going to miss it when I leave. But who knows I may end up staying here, this place is nice.

My email is still the same Darth-Ennis@hotmail.com if anyone wants to drop me a line.

[Phrubruh]

I think jokabofe is on to something here. We don't need ebay to raise money. JD and the other star wars sites could run auctions on custom figures, exclusives and other toys from their main pages. Members could donate items to be auctioned off.

This could be a friendly competition among all the star wars sites to raise bids. Since this is charity work by the site staffs, 100% of the winning bids would go to the red cross to help everybody.

I could see daily totals saying that Jedi Defender is ahead on their auctions by $2500 over RebelScum. All together they raised $54000. You know how much Wise likes to be numero Uno so he would spam his forum members with email to bid on his auctions. But at least the spamming would be for something good instead of TRU advertisments.

This seems to be the most effective way to get the most money donated to help the most people. 

[darth_ripley]

Phruby and jokabofe that's a great idea. i would be more than happy to "advertise" the auctions on Yakface.com. i know auctions in the past that i have showed links to get easily over 1000 looks and plenty of bids. i haven't been able to post my normal Bounty Hunting articles that spotlight ebay auctions like i used to for many personal reasons, but i would be more than happy to help anyway i can for a worthy cause.

Keri

[jokabofe]

Well, here is the response I got from ebay:

Thank you for taking the time to write eBay Customer Support with your
question.  I understand your concerns and will be happy to explain.

Please remember if you fundraise on eBay, your auctions must comply with
our charity listing policy.  For more information, please visit us at:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/fundraising.html

Unfortunately,  there isn't a way to revise an auction and make it an
eBay Giving Works listing at this time.  You can only designate a
listing a charity auction when you first submit your auction.  If you
wish it to be an eBay Giving Works auction, you will need to end the
auction early and relist it.  I apologize for any inconvenience this
causes you.

In the "Pictures and Details" section of the Sell Your Item form on
eBay, you will be asked whether you would like to donate a percentage of
your listing's final sale price to a nonprofit. Click the "Add" link to
select a nonprofit beneficiary and to designate your donation percentage
(10%100%). Once you have made your selections, complete the Sell Your
Item form and submit your listing. Be sure to select PayPal or a credit
card as one of the buyer payment options.

Note: If you have not registered with MissionFish, you will be prompted
to create a MissionFish account to proceed with the listing. You will
need to provide your credit card information to guarantee payment of
your donation, and you must consent to terms in the MissionFish User
Agreement. You will only have to complete this registration process
once.

All of our charity auctions and fundraising efforts are handled by
Missionfish.  For the best assistance with your charity questions,
please contact Missionfish Customer Support at:

http://www.missionfish.org/Help/contactus.jsp

I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help.  Good luck in all your eBay
activities and thank you for using eBay.

So it looks like whoever is going to list the items for sale will have to fill out all kinds of stuff to make it "official". Personally, I say screw that, let's just advertise them on the major SW fansites as being auctions helping fellow forum members. I can see that we've got the support of Yakface.com (thanks Keri  ) and obviously I can pimp these on our main page here at Jedidefender.com - now we just have to see if those "other" sites can put aside their differences - with us and every other collecting site out there - and just pull together for a good cause. Will they? Can they? Who knows.

[Gregorbian]

How would that (having the Star Wars Collecting sites host the auction) work?  Would people just submit bids via e-mail?  I don't really follow...