I thought some people might be interested in this suite that has started with E-Bay and some of the slabbing company's. This I think could get very interesting and may work. It also highlights some of the problems with Third Party Grading services/slabbing.
This could get interesting I had suspected E-Bay was having some trouble as they had what I considered a very aggressive advertising campaign in Canada for their website. It should be interesting to see what the future holds, though I suspect things will get worse before they get better in my opinion.
Let me know what you think.
eBay CEO Meg Whitman is reportedly pondering retirement as the online auction giant struggles with slowing growth. Makes you wonder about those fourth quarter results eh?
The Wall Street Journal reports that Whitman is seriously thinking about retirement after a decade at the helm. That’s a lifetime among Internet companies. For instance, Yahoo has been through three CEOs in the last decade. John Donahoe, who leads eBay’s auction unit, is the front runner to succeed Whitman.
What’s Whitman’s departure mean? Big changes are coming. A few hints of how big these changes are will come Wednesday when eBay reports its fourth quarter earnings. Analysts are expecting a profit of 41 cents a share in the December quarter with sales of $2.14 billion, according to Thomson Financial.
Going into the quarter, analysts expect eBay to cut its outlook for 2008 with a lot of management time spent on reviving listings growth. Listings growth in the U.S. is expected to be up roughly 3 percent in the U.S., according to Jeffries analyst Youssef Squali. However, Squali notes that eBay gets more than half of its revenue from overseas and a weak dollar can boost results. Overall, eBay is going to spend a lot of time talking about listing prices and potentially a major price adjustment.
eBay’s has two critical issues. First, Amazon’s third party partners are taking eBay market share. It’s unclear what eBay can do to boost listings revenue (it doesn’t have pricing power anymore). Most analysts expect eBay to cut insertion fees.
Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post writes:
EBay management has indicated that the company is looking at restructuring its listing fees structure in order to improve seller sentiment and increase listings activity (and better compete with Amazon for high volume sellers, in our view). Industry sources and our calculations indicate that sellers currently pay approximately 50-60% of their eBay fees upfront in insertion, gallery, and other option fees and only 40% in final value fees on goods that actually sell. For many sellers, particularly larger professional sellers, the lack certainty on their marketing cost of sales (because they can’t predict conversion rates) limits how much they are willing to commit to the eBay marketplace.
Simply put, it’s a good time for Whitman to hand off the reins–especially if impending changes at eBay will take a while to pay off.
This is part of an ongoing series about coinage and history. I thought since the 14Th Dalai Lama will be visiting Canada soon it might be interesting to see a Coin from Tibet.
The coin pictured above is from 1880-1894 the following below is a description for this coin type.
Gaden Tanka Circa 1880-1894 All Classes Have the following types:
Obverse: Stylised Lotus design within circle surrounded by the eight Buddhist lucky symbols in radiating petals.
Reverse: Eight petalled flower within star surrounded by inscription broken up into eight oval frames. Inscription in Tibetan reads as: "Ga-den Pho-dang chhog-le rnam-gyal" The Golden Palace Victorious on all sides.
This Gaden Tangka I believe to be a Class B Type IV using Rhodes Classification system.
This coin is from the time of the 13Th Dali Lama a brief biography follows below in an attempt to put the coin into an historical perspective.
Thubten Gyatso (born February 12, 1876; died December 17, 1933) was the 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet. He was an intelligent reformer who proved himself a skillful politician when Tibet became a pawn in the great game between Imperial Russia, China, and the British Empire. He was responsible for countering the British expedition to Tibet, restoring discipline in monastic life, and increasing the number of lay officials to avoid excessive power being placed in the hands of the monks.
Legislation was introduced to counter corruption among officials, a national taxation system was established, and a police force was created. As a result of his contacts with foreign powers and their representatives (e.g., Pyotr Kozlov and Gustaf Mannerheim), the Dalai Lama showed an interest in world affairs and introduced electricity, the telephone and the first motor car to Tibet. Nonetheless, at the end of his life in 1933, he saw that Tibet was about to enter a dark age.
The 13th Dalai Lama predicted before dying:
"Very soon in this land (with a harmonious blend of religion and politics) deceptive acts may occur from without and within. At that time, if we do not dare to protect our territory, our spiritual personalities including the Victorious Father and Son (Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama) may be exterminated without trace, the property and authority of our Lakangs (residences of reincarnated lamas) and monks may be taken away. Moreover, our political system, developed by the Three Great Dharma Kings (Tri Songtsen Gampo, Tri Songdetsen and Tri Ralpachen) will vanish without anything remaining. The property of all people, high and low, will be seized and the people forced to become slaves. All living beings will have to endure endless days of suffering and will be stricken with fear. Such a time will come."
Furthermore, the 13th Dalai Lama went on to predict the invasion of Tibet and announced that he would die early, in order that his successor would be old enough to act as a leader for the Tibetan people at the time of this invasion. He died several months later.
I hope you find this interesting please let me know what you think any feedback would be great.
This seems to be an ongoing story that keeps changing as Microsoft seems to be trying to spin it it, maybe I'm just dense, but what part of no does Microsoft not understand? To make it plain and simple no means no and whatever way Microsoft wants to spin it people still have the right to choose what they want updated or not updated. Microsoft can spin it any way they want, either way they have broken peoples trust, and I think most people will see that. Microsoft spin away, how stupid do you really think people are?
Microsoft has posted a long and complex explanation to its Windows Software Update Services (WSUS) blog, explaining the latest case of why software updates are being pushed to users who believe they've turned automatic updating off. Here's the abridged version of what the Redmondians said.
read more | digg story
