Paul Krush

I have been running diamond auctions on eBay for 5 ½ years continuously. Stopping these auctions is quite a big deal for me. It’s an emotional because there is still a little profit left, I have been doing it for so long, and I guess because it was my first profitable business. It’s hard to know when to pull the plug. Averaged out, I have broke even on too many months to care. My time has to be spent on my new career in executive search and IT talent. I want to move on and learn new things. Probably the biggest reason is I want to do business face to face. The jewelry industry has been in recession for years. I am not emotionally invested in jewelry, this would be a dumb industry to start a new business in where I am working face to face.

Financially it was a bigger deal when I pulled the plug on making jewelry. That was easier because it was basically bust all the way. Not listing on eBay any more is emotional. It’s not like I am selling my eBay ID. I think it will have substantial value one day. Started in Dec of 1998, it’s 9 years old. The ID GemHunt.com is Grandfathered in. eBay has not let people register domain names as eBay ID’s.

I am still going to sell diamonds, but I am not going to pay to advertise them. So for the past 5 ½ years I paid eBay $224K. It’s like I gave them a house. I sold $5.4M in diamonds, but many were repeat sales and referrals. So I paid them 4.1% of sales. Compared to a retail store this is not bad. It started out 1-2%, and is now up to 7-10%. The margins on the sale over the years have shrunk. It was easier when I was one of the first in the business. There is no room left to pay eBay. With no profit there is no business. I knew this in the beginning, and have spent the past 5 years fighting it. This is called the “evils of discounting”. I got into this business because information became available to consumers on how to buy diamonds at a wholesale price. I am one of the people that taught that information. But you never win at this game, there is always someone fighting harder for the last percentage point of margin. Diamonds have suffered because of this. Diamonds have valve because they were promoted. With less people promoting diamonds, their demand drops. The value stays the same because the dollar is dropping and demand is coming from outside of the US. People want stuff from Best Buy instead. Will the demand pick up like it did in the 1970’s because of inflation? I am not going to try to guess that. I can always get back in the business. This time I will have a network build out locally.

You can hardy call this crowdsourcing. Just to get our feet wet with some real products I’m doing some name/mothers rings on eBay. I’m trying to keep it simple. I always get to complex with my offerings.
$9.90 is a steal for these. If I had a system set up and were doing thousands a month it would be profitable. I bet these can be done for under $2(still in silver) in China. This is going to kill us customer service wise. My CNC mill can make 60 a day. I think about 10 orders a day would be our limit.

So next I am going to add in that people can submit 2D curves to design the ring themselves.
Here is the auction text:
This auction is for a 5mm wide silver ring that we custom make for you. You can choose any names, words, or phrase that will fit.

Please email me at paul@paulkrush.com if you have any questions.

This is an example of raised text.

This is an example of sunken text.

I wore both of these rings in these pictures. Your ring will of course be new, and custom just for you.

You can choose:
Ring sizes 3-14 in whole and half sizes.
Raised or sunken text.
Any names, words, or phrase that fits on the ring.  

The font will be in like in the two pictures below.

The ring you ordered might be displayed on the Internet in future.

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

Payment is by Paypal only.

This auction is our first offering in this process. We will be having better auction descriptions, FAQ’s and pictures soon. For now please ask questions.

Shipping & Handling is $3.50 and free for any additional rings. We ship via USPS First Class Mail and to the US only for this auction.

Please email me at paul@paulkrush.com if you have any questions.

I expected things to be very slow to start. All I am offering is waxes. I am starting a new eBay wax auction for a half-dollar size coin wax once a day. There are 5 out there all starting at a penny. I have no pictures of waxes or finished coins in the auction text. It’s dull, but you have to start somewhere. Heck, I haven’t cut any waxes myself. Once I make some prototypes of finished silver coins I will start offering custom silver coins for a penny. This will force people to look and bid because it will be a more valuable service. At some point I want to have a contest and give one silver coin away each day to the best design.

Day one.

I’m sure this is going to be a slow and disappointing start. It could be a month or more before I really have people bidding on my auctions. It’s going to take time to get the PaulKrush.com site up and running and to get the right people to notice these auctions. For now I am going to start with one wax auction a day. Starting at a penny, I might have some that end under a dollar. I know the going rate is $50 for a wax like this, but I don’t care, it’s going to be that way for months. I bet one person wins over half of them because he is the only person that understands what I am doing. I’m sure most of the auctions will be won, but the winning bidder will not submit a file to be cut for whatever reason. After a while the right hobbyists will find my offering and take me up.

This is not a halfhearted attempt; I’m in this for the long run. I am planning on the site to handle thousands of models a month, most of which I will not handle physically. I see arrays of double spindle CNC mills pumping out buckets of waxes or even finished metal parts an hour. I can’t think small. In fact I am thinking about a goal of one million parts made from our systems in 2009.

This is my first eBay auction for waxes. It’s crude and with no pictures. I think it would be cool to start with the 3D content from the users. I did a few examples models, but I want to see what this generates. For now I am going to post one of these auctions a day. With my Revo CNC mill I can do around 500 of these half dollar coin size waxes a month, but I don’t think I can handle the admin work to do this without software.

It’s going to be fun watching this evolve.
This auction is for a wax model of a custom US half dollar size coin that you design and we mill for you. Please email me at paul@paulkrush.com if you have any questions.

This wax can be cast using a lost wax casting process, but this auction is for the green wax model only. You have to summit the 3D file(s) to have the wax created.

This is NOT private. By submitting the 3D files you are granting us unrestricted use of them. We are going to post them on the Internet for anybody to download.

These terms of this auction are very restrictive, yet liberating once you understand why they are restrictive. We are opening up the world of CAD/CAM for jewelry to a far greater audience. Normally to mill a wax this size would run about $100!

As per the US Mint:

A half dollar is 30.61mm diameter by 2.15mm thick. The only thing you control is the front and back surface 29mm is diameter and 0.5mm thick. You can’t change the rim, outline, thickness, or put holes in the wax. Take .5mm off each side and the center will be at least 1.15mm thick.

Think of us as a printer that the world can see printing. Or think of us as a jewelry store in which the customers fill the cases. We can’t do anything unless you supply us with a 3D file.

The design submit must be copyright free, PG13, and not contain private information. We reserve the right to refuse any design.

The wax will have a tolerance of +- .2mm. It will be better that this most of the time.

The wax will still have tiny tabs from milling so will need to be cleaned up for casting. It’s just a little filling.

Depending on your design the model also may have packed wax from the milling process that we can’t clean automatically. Wax dust might get packed in a tiny hole say .5mm in diameter and .5mm deep. Avoiding this comes with experience.

Casting a coin is not the same as stamping one like most coins are made. Detail gets lost in the casting and polishing process. Details smaller then .3mm might get lost. You might have trouble with text under 2mm and 1mm high text is difficult to make. 1mm high text on a stamped coin will be crisp. The advantage to casting is you can do one coin at a time for much less money.

For now you are going to have to email us the 3D. We will accept STL, OBJ, 3DS, 3DM, and many more 3D formats. You have to be able to import the 3D into Rhino 3D CAD software. We will also take a 2D file grayscale image file with the image color representing height. We might also take vector formats Adobe illustrator or Corel Draw.

We will be using green wax for the coin.

Shipping – US mail only, $2 for the first and $1 for each additional wax. You can combine auctions.

Payment is by Paypal only.

This auction is our first offering in this process. We will be writing better auction description, FAQ’s and pictures soon. For now please ask questions.

Please email me at paul@paulkrush.com if you have any questions.