Mark's Gear Station

"Who here loves T R A I N S ?"

In the midst of the pandemic "Mark's Gear Station" took flight on Reverb.com. I posted one item at the beginning of April 2020 and it took 30 days to sell. 79 items later the virtual online store has racked up over 80 sales with ALL Positive Feedback.

Along the way I thought it would be fun to make a custom banner photo for the online store to give it a touch of my personality. I used Plasticville components I bought used off eBay, these are copies of the same pieces I had in my train set as a child.

Prototype photo test shot for Mark's Gear Station

Another photo-proto on the road to Mark's Gear Station banner

My beautiful partner, Mary helped me do test shots in our screened in porch area to get the aspect ratio figured out. Reverb has very specific specifications for the size of the photo, 160 pixels high by 960 pixels wide. I reshaped the original digital master photos using Photoshop so I could crop and resize the contents just right.

Version on Reverb as of August 2020

I made it clear in the text details on Reverb that this is not a typical music store, I'm only selling 1-off used pieces from my personal collection, so when it's gone, it's not coming back.

$21,000+ from stuff laying around that I never thought I'd get any money for. If you look around the studio you can barely tell anything is gone. Today the last EHX 44-Magnum amplifier sold, I got a hair more than $100 from something that has not been used in years. I thought it was "sunk cost" but nope :-)

First 2020 Baby Peacocks at P2

This evening we saw the first batch of baby peacocks.... the moms brought them to visit us for the first time this year. We had a tiny puffball, and two older peacock babies. Music is "Mark King - Sailing Ships - Live" (c) Mark King 2020

HURRICANE ISAIAS AUGUST 2020

This was not really a hurricane by the time it "grazed" Florida, we often get more rain in an afternoon shower than this storm brought to us. 

We're not complaining but as usual the media blew it all out of proportion.

We had a peak 10mph wind speed register on our Weather Station, total rainfall was under half an inch.

Banana Twins

Banana twins!  And delicious too.