Pretty OT: e-Bay Selling Question - Decals

How about scanning the instructions so people can see what the finished product is supposed to look like? I like that better than a decal sheet where it's just jumbled up RAF code letters and stripes or whatever that make no sense. Then people can't copy the original artwork from the decals-

Personally, for ease and speed of viewing, I usually save all my eBay images as JPG and the resolution of 640x480. That usually ends up being a 50-80Kb file. It has enough detail (especially if taken with any good Digital Camera) and it is small enough to be downloaded through a Dial-up connection without waiting forever. Yes, there are still some people who use dial-up (I sometimes do too).

One of my pet-peeves is eBay listing whith huge images in it! There is usually no reason fot that. And please restrain yourself from using ALL CAPS in your listing or title! And no HUGE fonts! Less is more, when it comes to good eBay listings. Trust me.

Here is an example of one of my images:

I like to see what condition the decals are in; I would like to see the decal sheet itself. You can always take a low-res picture or scan, and it would be difficult for someone to use that to print a quality decal sheet. They'd have to redraw it anyway.

---Stephen Tontoni

I should have been a bit clearer: If you scan your decal sheet, just save it as JPG and make sure that the image size doesn't go over about

Peteski

Alternatively, use your image program to 'distort' the image, or put a 'watermark' over it.

Remove nospam to reply!!

Do a combination of some of the afore-mentioned suggestions to show an overall pic of the decal sheet. A digital camera shot at a weird horiz and vert angle and reduced to low res would generally be enough to thwart copying. Don't go nuts, though...the intention is let the bidder see whats there.

Then use a second pic of a small area on the sheet to show the fine detail.

Good luck!

-Bill

Thanks for the responses, guys. I'll probably use a combinations of your suggestions.

Don McIntyre Clarksville, TN

What I have seen (and makes perfect sense to me) is to take a small piece of clear mylar and write your name on it. Then place this across the scanner bed and lay the decal sheet on that. That way, anyone using a scan of your scan will have to figure out how to remove your name from the sheet. Folks that sell posters and prints do this all the time.

Sounds like a good idea, hadn't thought of that at all. Thanks

Don McIntyre Clarksville, TN

Maybe "Old Timers" use mylar film. :-) Nowadays, most bitmap editting software has a "watermark" feature which places some specific text onto the image to make it very hard to use for anything but viewing it.

(Just giving you hard time - clear mylar solution is a KISS solution and will work perfectly well).

Peteski

You need to be creative with watermarking. Most of what you typically see can be corrected out by anyone savvy enough to rob pics and print decals if its not made 'complicated' enough.

Take a decal sheet - or poster, etc. - with red green blue and white colors and place a grey watermark over it. It takes a single keystroke to select out all the grey. Then its simple to go back and fill in the colors as needed.

Low-res jpegs are enough to thwart any image thief with intentions of resale. Grabbing a 72dpi jpeg off the net to reuse for printing is not worthwhile for most people. At that resolution, and being in jpeg, is simply too much effort to clean up. It would be easier to start from scratch for the type of decals we are discussing.

But...as stated before...do all of the above if its really a concern. It all *could* be corrected out but the thief *could* also spend a few bux and PURCHASE the decal and proceed to make high quality scans and copies!

-Bill

I've put some on already but I never thought about anyone ripping them off. Then too, I scanned them inside their envelopes so I assume the polythene film would have distorted them sufficiently.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

"Don McIntyre" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

considering

figure out what

the sheet,

want to

on e-bay to

of 72dpi.

take a photo

Some of the review sites just drop the res. It allows them to display what's on them yet make them somewhat unuseable.

I've had a lot of success selling decals on Ebay, I just used a simple digital photograph of the sheet and the instructions together, on the whole anybody buying aftermarket decals knows generally what they're looking for and all they want to know is that the sheet is intact and complete with placement diagrams etc.

I always expand on the contents in the description e.g.

Joe Bloggs Decal 48-003

Fruitbats in Worldwide Service

Fruitbat Mk.1 - 2 Squadron, RAF

F- 24 Fruitbat - 1 FW, USAF

F-24C Seabat - VF-14, USN

I tend to find this gives potential buyers the information they want without the need to see the decal sheet in detail.

Hope this helps. Ant

P.S. What you selling ???

Mostly 1/72nd scale stuff. A little of everything, Modeldecal, Super-Scale, Micro-Scale, Repli-scale... Trying to thin down the 1/72nd scale herd. Anything in particular you're looking for?

Don McIntyre Clarksville, TN

How many RMS'ers it takes to take a pic of a decal sheet? Just kidding!

R.