Are Your Collectibles Valuable? Heres How to Find Out-Hobbies
Are Your Collectibles Valuable? Heres How to Find Out
The first thing you will need to do is check out the condition of your item, be it a train, collectible Barbie doll, Disney collectible, or some other collectible item. Is it scratched, torn, clean, dirty, new, in a box, without a box? You get the idea...Use a good light source and check the item out very carefully, noting the name, identification marks, and any copyright marks. Also, check for any imperfections, tears, scratches, color imperfections, mars, stains, etc.Many dolls are collected with the box intact. An intact box can raise the value of an item a great deal. Some are worthless if the box is damaged badly or missing.NOTE: Some dolls are meant to be played with and taken out of the box to dress. Examples are the Tonner Doll Company dolls: Tyler Wentworth, Sydney Chase, Gene, etc.Remove the doll from the box for inspection. Look for forums, discussion boards, or news groups where similar collectors gather online. You can also check on eBay (or other online auctions) to see what similar items are selling for and what their condition was at the time of sale. Compare the prices with, and without a box to see the difference.To find your item on eBay:1. Find the category on eBay where your item would most likely be listed. (Dolls, bears, trains, Disney collectible would be likely categories.2. If using Dolls, use the [check only in Dolls box] in the search.3. Use your keyword to search, such as "Barbie doll". This will bring up the current auctions window.4. Now, check the completed auctions box, to check out the prices and descriptions on the sold items.5. When you click on the individual auctions, you can see the price the item sold for, the condition of the item and whether it had a box. Look for terms such as NRFB (Never Removed From Box) or MIB (Mint In Box).Note that the price on eBay is not the best price for your item. Usually, the price could be more if sold locally because the online auction buyer cannot actually handle the item and examine it in person.Other places to find information about your item (doll) would be websites selling your item (doll), antique or boutique shops, toy or hobby shops, and resell shops. Also, check out the resource books at the public library.Popular collectibles might have a price book that is printed for collectors. You can also use a collection of hobby magazines to price items or to locate the year the item was made.If you have done all of the above and still cannot find the information that you need about your item, check out some local hobby clubs in your area. Most hobby enthusiasts will be willing to help you find the information you need and are eager to talk about their hobby. You might even find an expert on your items, or a buyer!!
Fall is the Time to Get Your Garden Trees and Shrubs Ready for Winter: Heres What to Do-Gardening
Fall is the Time to Get Your Garden Trees and Shrubs Ready for Winter: Heres What to Do
Tips for winter care of trees and shrubsWith the garden season drawing to a close, it's awfully tempting to forget about your plants. But you should continue to water all woody plants - especially newly planted trees and shrubs and all evergreens. Helping your valuable garden trees and shrubs sail through winter starts with thorough watering in the fall.Water your plants well until the ground freezes, and make sure you water enough through a dry fall. Your plants will need the equivalent of one inch of rain per week. (In a wet fall, you can relax.)Evergreens and broadleaf evergreens (shrubs such as rhododendron and boxwood) don't lose their leaves, so they need a good store of moisture going into winter because they continue to transpire (give off water vapor) through the cold months.Most winter damage to evergreens doesn't actually come from cold, but from the drying effects of late winter sun and wind. With the soil frozen hard, plant roots can't take up water to make up for moisture losses from transpiration and, as a result, dehydration can cause browning or burning of foliage.Winterizing trees and shrubs: To wrap or not to wrap?When considering winter care of trees and shrubs, don't go crazy with burlap wrap. It's extra work and doesn't look great.After all, the whole point of evergreens is to give you something green to look at in the winter! Contrary to popular belief, most established evergreens hardy in your region don't need to be wrapped.However, as with many things in gardening, there are exceptions. Some evergreens, such as dwarf Alberta spruce, are prone to winter-burn, so they should be covered, as should newly planted evergreens. (New plants haven't had time grow extensive roots that help them take up enough moisture to prevent excessive water losses.)To make a windbreak around vulnerable plants, hammer four stakes into the ground and staple on a burlap covering. Never use plastic, or your plants could "cook" on sunny days. (Remember the greenhouse effect?)More tips for winter care of woody plants:
If your plants get salt spray from the road,
burlap may help, but wrap them with a
double layer, not a single layer. To avoid
having to cover your evergreens, don't plant them near a road that gets salted, or plant salt-tolerant species such as junipers.
Protect broadleaf evergreens such as rhododendron, pieris and laurel from the drying effects of winter sun and wind with an anti-desiccant spray such as Wilt-Pruf, which coats foliage with a protective waxy film. You can also wrap with burlap, if you must.
To help preserve moisture, cover the root area of evergreens and broadleaf evergreens with a three-inch thick layer of leaf or bark mulch.
Protect upright evergreen junipers and cedars from breakage due to ice and snow by wrapping branches with heavy string or mesh covers sold for this purpose. Once fastened into place, you'll hardly see the string or mesh.
Protect young trees by putting plastic tree guards around the bottom of their trunks to prevent damage from gnawers such as rabbits and mice. Make sure the tree guards go high enough - over the snow line. (Remove them in the spring because it looks better and avoids the problem of the guards trapping moisture against the bark in the summer and attracting insects.)
If rabbits are a big problem in your area, put chicken wire cages around the plants they find most tasty.
Prevent rabbit and rodent damage with a repellent spray that you apply on lower trunks, branches and stems. Such products generally have to be reapplied after wet weather. Yvonne Cunnington is a garden writer and photographer and author of a how-to book for novice gardeners, Clueless in the Garden: A Guide for the Horticulturally Helpless. For more infomation, visit her website http://www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com/
Heres an Easy Exercise to Improve Your Texas Holdem Play-Gambling
Heres an Easy Exercise to Improve Your Texas Holdem Play
Many beginning Texas Holdem players develop a playing style that is tight but weak. Maybe they have learned the value of playing only a select few starting hands. Tightening up their starting hand requirements has the effect of improving the beginning player's results. They typically improve from a losing player to a break even or slightly winning player at the lower limits.The trouble is that the tightness the new player has developed with more selective starting hands bleeds over into their flop and post flop play. Such tight-weak play causes them to fold too often during the latter betting rounds. They tend to see "monsters under the bed" whenever an opposing player bets
or raises. Such a timid approach can spell disater especially when the pot has grown large.We all know how hard it is to get a good strong hand in Texas Holdem. However we may tend to forget that it's just as hard for our opponents to draw a good hand. We may be rolling along with a good but not great hand and get stopped in our tracks when a scare card comes along. Sure, our opponent may
have just drawn out on us. Or, he or she may just be using the scare card to represent a big hand.There are many factors that will enter into your response to your opponent's action. Those actions are beyond the scope of this article. But, if you realize you are backing down to heat all too often; try this simple exercise. It can be really eye opening. Here's the exercise: get a pack of cards and deal a round of Texas Holdem face up. Notice how few hands are actually good starters. Notice how many are junk.Now think back to all those games you've played where four or five players were always in the pot. There was a lot of junk being played, wasn't there? There was a whole lot of chasing going on, wasn't there? Now turn over three cards for the flop. How many hands missed the flop completely? Play through the hand. Sometimes a good but not great hand holds up, sometimes it doesn't.Also, notice how often or how rarely that scare card matches up with any of the starting hands. You'll get a good idea of how hard it is to fill a straight or flush. After you play around with this exercise for a bit, you'll likely realize that there have been many times in your past play that you should have stayed with a hand. You may also see that there have been occasions where you could have successfully represented a big hand to your opponents.Playing a few face up rounds of Texas Holdem can really be an eye opening exercise. It may help drive home some lessons that you already knew but never really applied. Of course, there are still situations where you'll need to lay down that hand. But if timid play is your downfall, this easy exercise can help improve your play and aggressiveness.Chip Westley regularly posts a series of online poker tips at his Online Poker Tip Guide, http://homerunpoker.blogspot.com/2005/06/online-poker-tip-guide.html, at Home Run Poker.