how to post that hard to sell item on Ebay

 I am not making this up, a real posting from Mike's Sunday morning perusal of Ebay.

Overseas buyers please not that I do not ship via first class mail if you pay with paypal. UK buyers please contact me regarding alternative payment methods.

I accept returns however I will not renegotiate a new price, if you are unhappy with the item return it for a refund. Ask as many questions as you like before the end of the auction, thanks! :-)
Warning-Due to the Graphic nature of this story tender sensibilities may be offended. If you feel you may be in this group I suggest you read a different description.
Buddy,Can You Lend a Hand? #1
Paddy Kayk was the product of a marriage between a cargo steamer Captain Seamus Kayk and a young Chinese girl May Wong. The Captain plied the smaller ports along the Chinese coast delivering Irish linens and foodstuffs to the small expatriate communities scattered around the eastern edge of the vast land. The girl was alone in the world as her parents died in a house fire just a day before the rusty ship coughed and spluttered its way into port. She was sixteen, bedraggled and blackened by soot when Seamus set his eyes upon her.
It was an unsaid part of his job description to collect news to pass it on to the next little community down the way and being a man to enrich and embelish with a masterly choice of illustrative word, Seamus was greeted warmly wherever he went and would hold his news briefs in local tea houses surrounded by locals and expats alike with rapt attention.

May Wong sat in the corner lost in her misery but as Seamus regaled his audience with the goings on in the other towns she found herself drawn into his world and soon she forgot her own. At the conclusion of the evening she knew that this was a man she wanted to be with, Seamus having a fine and practiced eye for the fairer sex wasted no time in introducing himself. May had a difficult time understanding her language being spoken by a white man with a strong Irish accent but she managed to understand enough for the spell Seamus cast to take effect. At weeks end they were married and she left the small village by the sea never to return.

War had broken out and Seamus found himself in Los Angeles at the time stocking up on supplies. A trip home over the Atlantic was becoming a very risky proposition with the U-boats prowling so he decided to spend the war in California building fighter plane wing sections. Besides, he now had an extra mouth to feed, a wee lad called Paddy.

The years passed, speeding into decades and it became clear to everyone that Paddy had his Fathers wit and his Mothers delicate touch and eye for composition. When he wasn't in the kitchen baking he was toting an 8x10 Deardorff around Chinatown taking beautiful pictures of the people and streets. With some cash saved over the years Paddy opened a small bakery and lived above it. With his personality it became a local highlight, Paddy Kayk was renowned for making cakes of light texture and delicate flavour very quickly, It was said he could make, bake and ice a cake in fifteen minutes. So you can understand that it came as a great shock to this thriving little community when the bakery unexpectedly closed a few days. ...Neighbours knocked on his door and after several hours decided that something was terribly wrong, they broke down the door to find Paddy...dead.

It wasn't pretty, Paddy was slumped in a chair, a long stump hung limp where his right arm used to be, from the dried pools and splatters everywhere it was obvious that he had died from the great loss of blood. Curiously though...the room contained no arm. His camera stood in the corner on its tripod without any lenses, his wallet was still in his pocket. Robbery was obviously not a motive. Gang warfare was the verdict though close friends swore he had nothing to do with any illegal or immoral practices. They say time heals all wounds and there are probably few people who can remember Paddy now, except his good friends who still miss him.

The building that was once a bakery changed over to a bookstore then an antique shop, Fongs.

The upstairs rooms that housed Paddy were in sore need of refurbishment after fifty years of rental abuse. The new landlord called in his handyman John to replace the floor and spruce the place up. After removing the old mats and yellowed newspapers John swept the floor in preparation of replacement. He noticed one edge of a floorboard had a copper button, he hit it with his heel and the board shot up in a flash. The stout board halted just inches from his face, after a few seconds he looked into the secret compartment and almost fainted when he saw....

 

(actual crime scene photograph)

The mystery of Paddy's arm was over, there was no gang connection it was an accidental death resulting from Paddys love of his lenses, the ones that no-one could find all those years ago. After his mother was notified(Seamus had long since passed away) she called me as she wanted nothing to do with the lenses, the cause as she saw it of poor Paddys death. And with that the lenses that have remained in a secret compartment now come to the open market for all in the world to see.