The Conversion Has Begun In Earnest While Sales For June Begin to Taper Off and James Bond Films

Steph and I are huge James Bond fans. In fact the only movies that we own are all of the Bond films produced since the first one, Dr. No from 1962. It has turned out to be a wise investment, since for $10 we own movies that we have seen at least a dozen times together. Every three months or so, we will watch them in succession. The amazing thing is that even though I know that the general plot is and what happens, I can never remember all of the scenes exactly, so each time I watch them, I pick up on something different. That is especially true of the double-entendres that Bond comes out with. By now, I thought  I had caught them all, but just this past week, we started watching them again and sure enough, both Steph and I noticed others that we didn't get before.

One of the popular debates among moviegoers is who was the best bond. Of course, most seem to favor Sean Connery. I feel that it is a bit unfair to the other actors who played his roles, as I have usually managed to find something to appreciate about all of them. Our favourite actually is Timothy Dalton, who played Bond for only two films in the late 1980's. For most of my youth my favourite by far was Roger Moore. I like his quips and puns, through many other people I talk to think he is cheesy and a bit of a buffoon. Moore clearly didn't take the character too seriously and you can tell that he had a lot of fun playing the role. I've heard in contrast that Sean Connery, as good as he was as Bond, actually came to hate the role and was only too glad to leave the franchise in 1968, and then again in 1971.

Ranking the movies themselves also elicits much debate among moviegoers. I find that the older films, despite the special effects and dated references have stood the test of time as movies and are easily watchable even now, over 50 years later. My favourite 5 are:

1. From Russia With Love - The helicopter chase and boat chase scenes are still amazing to me.
2. You Only Live Twice - The chase with the gyrocopter "Little Nellie" is entertaining.
3. Octopussy - The opening scene where Bond flies the miniature jet plane is very good.
4. The Living Daylights - the scene where Bond and Necros fight while dangling from the cargo plane is also very good.
5. Casino Royale - the scene where bond has to restart his heart after being poisoned and where Le Chiffre tortures bond are both entertaining.

There are scenes from other movies that would make my list of favourite scenes, but these five are the best when I consider the overall movies, in my humble opinion.

Turning to business matters, we have finally been able to start the conversion of US dollar e-bay lots in earnest. To date, we have converted all but about 3,100 of the lots. I anticipate that the whole effort can be completed in 5 full 12 hour days, which although a lot of work, will result in all of our material being listed for sale on Delcampe, which is a good thing, and in addition, it forced us to learn how to bulk edit lots in e-bay itself, which is not as difficult as I had originally thought.

Sales for the month are beginning to slow down now. I am anticipating that we will end the month with about $4,000 in sales - all of which will have come from the less expensive, high margin material. This is very exciting, as this type of material is almost exclusively what we are listing now.