Cool place where we've recently shipped:

VINCENNES, Île-de-France, France

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Johnny-Sells has Christopher Radko Christmas Ornaments!

Click here to see our awesome collection of Radko!

Christopher Radko is a world famous designer of high quality Christmas Tree ornaments. Johnny-Sells has lots of Radko. Some are very rare, some discontinued. Fire Fighter Santas, Police Officer Santas, Dentist Santas! Many different beautiful, delicate and delightful ornaments from the world famous Christopher Radko. All Radko Ornaments ship free!

Johnny-Sells at NHL Winter Classic!

It was the biggest hockey day in Chicago since the Black Hawks won the Stanley Cup in 1963, and Johnny-Sells was there. The Detroit Red Wings beat the Hawks 6 - 4 at a game played at Wrigley Field, home of the baseball Cubs.

We didn't go in, of course, that would have cost money. But we got to enjoy the ambience of the day just walking around the outside of the place.

Here are some photos of our visit:
Frigid Cubs Park dressed up for a hockey game!

Ronnie "Woo-Woo" Wickers playing street hockey outside the baseball ticket office.

This kid could bounce a ball off his hockey stick for as long as he wanted. The hole in the wall gang trying to get a free view of the action.
This is what they saw. The rink was 150 feet away and blocked by the boards. Even people in the good seats didn't have much a view.

But everyone had a good time and they sold a lot of beer. We hope they play a hockey game here every year.

Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner...
that is what I'd truly like to be....

We already sold this Oscar Mayer Weiner mobile, but we like this video so much, we decided to leave it in.

Don't you step on my blue suede shoes!

Timberland Womens Blue Suede Hiking Boots

Oh man! I could hardly believe it! Blue Suede Shoes! Well, actually, Blue Suede hiking boots but they're still cool. Please click on the YouTube link above to see these boots dance!

So, don't be nothing but a hound dog! Somebody bought these shoes and will love them tender.

Thank you, thank you very much!

Johnny-Sells visits Norway!

The crack sales team at Johnny-Sells.com travelled to scenic Norway for some well deserved rest & relaxation. Something drew us to Norway, and we weren't sure what it was. All travel is educational and we learned Johnny's ancient ancestors may have been Norwegian! Scroll down for more infomation.

Janet & Johnny about to embark on a boat trip through the fjords.

The train from the airport goes 130 miles per hour, but a one way ticket is $30.

We spent a lot of time on trains crossing southern Norway. We shared the trains with incredibly fit Norwegians who cross country skied the still plentiful snow of mid May.

Janet & Johnny at Kjosfossen waterfall near Myrdal, Norway.

Janet clowning around with a couple new friends, the trolls. Troll statues are in lots of tourist spots of Norway. But we didn't see any under bridges.

The view from our room at the Heimly Pensionat (hotel) in Flam.

The Heimly Hotel (in red) during a visit of the Queen Mary 2.

Geneologial discovery: It was in Flam, Norway that I came to the realizaton that my ancient ancestors may have been Norwegian!

My recent ancestors came to America from towns on the west coast of Ireland. This is just the sort of place that would be subject to Viking raids hundreds of years ago. Conlisk is not your typical Irish sounding name. All my life, people mispronounced and misspelled my name. Conslick is a popular mistake. Conlisky for those more familiar with Polish names. And the Chicago Tribune used to send delivery bills to Cowlick.

Until I got to Norway. The friendly and helpful tourist information man in Flam, Norway heard my name and spelled it out correctly as if he had done it a thousand times before. Lots of words in Norway end in "isk". One of the big oil field that makes Norway one of the richest countries in the world is Ecofisk. Johnny Conlisk was in the land of the "isks"!

Therefore, I believe I am begat of the Vikings! That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Fjords look like rivers, but they are actually places where the seawater has eaten into the rock for miles inland. The surrounding hills are 4000 feet high. The water is as deep as 1000 feet.

Bob and Olive are 2 characters from Australia on a marathon tour of Europe. Olive reminded Bob 5 times that it was Mother's day as our boat plied the scenic waters.

More Fjord scenery

We arrived in Bergen, Norway's ancient capital at 8PM. The sun gave no hint of setting.

The Bryggen (wharf), the ancient and historic part of Bergen.

High school graduates. They all wore red overalls, but these girls crawled on their hands and knees in front of the tourist filled sidewalk cafes as part of a graduation ritual.

More students

The top of the Floybannen funicular, a cable car that went straight up a thousand foot mountain. There is very, very little pollution considering the size of the Bergen.

Floibannen funicular cars. They look like regular trams in this photo, but they're going up a 60 degree incline.

She wasn't a troll, but I couldn't resist her blue eyes. Besides, taking her picture was free. Norway is VERY expensive. The Burger King restaurant in the Oslo Train station offered "Whopper" sandwiches for $14US! A tram ride across Oslo was $6.

The Thon Bryggen Hotel in Bergen (tall building, center) was adjacent to a military fort that dated from the 16th century and was heavily damaged in World War II. The Norwegian resistance to Fascist occupation is inspirational.

Back in Oslo, we visited Vigeland Park, which is dotted with nude sculptures of people in various fields of endeavor. The column is called "the Struggle of Man".

A friendly Norwegian took our picture in front of the National Theater, which features the works of Henrik Ibsen, Norway's most famous playwrite. The fountain behind us is filled with foam for some reason.

As we bid a fond farewell to Norway, some trolls wish us happy travels.

Viva Agentina!

Johnny-Sells customer Jose Lipari from Cordoba, Argentina was so impressed with Johnny-Sells service that he sent presents. He sent the beautiful leather wall hanging map of Argentina (shown above), as well as an Argentinian poncho, a pin and a local guidebook for scenic Cordoba, northwest of Buenos Aires.

Johnny-Sells customer meets Cubs Manager Lou Pinella!

Chicago Cubs Manager Lou Pinella
& Johnny-Sells Customer Wally Colon

Wally Colon meets Lou Pinella! We here at Johnny-Sells are big Cubs' fans. That's why we were very impressed with customer Wally Colon's email that included pictures of himself with Coach Pinella as well as General Manager Jim Hendry. He met them both at the Baseball Winter meetings in Florida a couple months ago.

It's sort of our brush with greatness. We didn't get to meet the coach, but one of our customers did.

The Cubs did well in the regular season, but they got blanked in the playoffs. Wait til next year.

Click Just One Bad Century to see Rick Kaempfer's blog about the one hundred and one years since the Cubs last won the World Series.

The United States Postal Service delivers!

Johnny-Sells sold a set of Noritake China to a lady in South Australia. She was a very patient lady and we heard from her 3 months later. She very politely asked if we had, by any chance, shipped her china, because she hadn't gotten it yet.

We were horrified. Sometimes, on rare occasions, non-US packages take a month or even a little more, but never three months! We contacted the Post Office to try to track it down, but it was not to be found in their system or in the Australian Postal system.

We refunded the nice lady's money and asked her to let us know if it ever showed up.

Three more months later, we got a call from a lady postal worker in Vernon Hills, Illinois, about an hour north of Johnny-Sells in Chicago. They had the Noritake china! Somehow, it had been misdirected by Customs, not the USPS, to Portugal, where it sat in the dead letter office for six months.

Finally, the Portugese authorities had a package going to suburban Chicago, and they attached the china package to that. The postal customer in Vernon Hills was from Portugal and had ordered some cooking spices from her home country. She didn't know what the china was all about, so she called her local Post Office to let them know.

The Vernon Hills postal worker called us and we drove up one sunny day and got it. We then contacted our original customer in Australia and she was thrilled! She paid us again. We shipped it again (in a new box) and it got there in 3 weeks! That set of china went half way around the world one way, then half way around the world the other way without a crack.

Best of all, our patient customer in South Australia is happy with her well travelled china set!

Johnny-Sells helps save
a Grandma's love!

A little boy in Texas accidentally knocked over and broke his grandma's favorite Hummel figurine. We had the same one listed in auction on eBay. The little boy's dad emailed us to tell us the story and ask if we would do a buy-it-now on the figure. He proposed a reasonable buy-it-now price and we accepted and quickly shipped it to grandma.

We normally don't add buy-it-now after a product is listed as that can be unfair to bidders who may be waiting until near the end of the listing to make their bid. But this was an emergency, so we agreed.

Dad was ecstatic. Grandma liked the replacement just as much as the original. The dad wrote back to us afterwards that we had saved the day and the little boy wouldn't be written out of grandma's will after all!

Johnny-Sells is glad to help!

Ave Maria!

A couple of years ago a client showed us a ton of items her late aunt had recently left her. She was about to throw it all out when she asked us to take a look at it.

Among the items we found was a toy Farmall tractor that the aunt had let the neighborhood kids play with for years.

It turns out this funny little toy tractor was a valuable antique factory sample of a Culti Vision Farmall-A. The model was manufactured by the Arcade Toy Company. The tractor sold for hundreds of dollars to a farmer in Texas who collects these tractors.

Some of the money from the sale of the tractor was used to hire a singer for the memorial service for the aunt.

The old Italian lady was given a grand send off with a beautiful rendition of "Ave Maria".

She was not a rich lady and the family wouldn't have been able to afford the singer if Johnny-Sells hadn't "recycled" her toy tractor.

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Friends of Johnny-Sells

Rick Kaempfer's Blog
Musings of the well known author, radio producer and dad.

Gordon Munden Real Estate
Sell or Buy real estate in Chicago with a true professional.

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Johnny-Sells' commitment
to the Environment

Saving the earth is not just a good idea, it also makes good business sense.

We use clean, recycled bubble wrap and foam to protect your purchase.

You may wonder why your Johnny-Sells purchase might come in a box from some other company. We have contacts who supply us with clean surplus boxes that would otherwise end up in a land fill.

But it's not like we're patting ourselves on the back for all this. It saves money.

And our use of lots of recycled packing material insures that your purchase gets to you in excellent condition.

We encourage you to reuse and recycle whenever possible.

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August 2007: The Windy City got a whole lot Windier!!!

Johnny-Sells employee of the month, Janet Treuhaft tries to console our 50 foot sugar maple tree r after a severe summer storm damaged it on Thursday, August 23, 2007.

But we got off easy. Here's the scene 150 yards west of here.

That's the garage of Real Estate Wiz Gordon Munden

The sidewalk next to Helen Keith's apartment building.

Tree removal trucks arriving on the scene of another downed tree a that blocked our route to the Post Office.

They said it was coming. Large thunderstorms would strike Chicago in the afternoon. I turned on the cable channel that shows the local weather radar and saw an orange blob on the far left side of the screen.

Then I went back to eBaying, going in the other room from time to time to check. The orange blob got closer and closer. The sky darkened in the west.

I edited some photos and checked the TV again. Larger, more orange, maybe even some red. I thought I was going to see a good show.

I've always loved storms. They're exiting. There were a couple of tornados near my parent's house when I was a kid and I remember how fun it was to run to the basement and scrunch into the southwest corner.

Janet and I were once in a car in a torrential downpour and saw lightning strike Chicago's Hancock Building over and over. She likes storms even more than I do. She revels in telling me stories of being in huge storms on a sailboat in Lake Erie. No thanks.

I thought this was going to be one of those great-to-watch storms.

The orange blob was now over all of Chicago, but still no rain on our back deck. I sat down on the couch near the window watching the orange blob on TV.

The trees across the alley started waving around. Nothing unusual. Then the sky was filled with debris. Not just single leaves, but clumps of leaves. Three and four leaves together still on a small piece of branch. They filled the air. The sky became not so much black as dirty.

Then part of a tree fell over a garage down the block. Then a huge tree fell over the power lines, dragging them down. A large fireball appeared within the falling tree.

I yelled to Janet that we should go to the basement. She asked if she should turn off the computer.

"No! We've got to go right now!"

She could tell I wasn't kidding and she met me at the top of the basement stairs. I grabbed a container of semi-sweet chocolate chips in case the house collapsed. At least we'd have something to eat. The fact that it was my favorite snack and not her's was not lost on Janet.

We hugged in the basement/photo studio for a couple of minutes. Everything seemed calm after a while, so we went back upstairs.

The house was still there. But two thirds of the 50 foot maple tree in the back yard was blown down, taking the phone lines with it. It was a relatively young, healthy tree and it snapped like a twig.

This neighborhood is filled with old, half rotted trees. Lots of them are still standing. The wind was very capricious. It seemed to scream down our back alley, but wasn't so strong down Eddy St. in front

The tree down the block that took out the power line also fell over one garage and its roots came up from the ground, taking out half of another garage.

300,000 electric company customers in Chicago lost power after this storm

We were without power for 60 hours. The phone service returned just after the electricity and Comcast internet cable was restored today, Monday.

We have nothing but respect and admiration for the City of Chicago tree removal crews, Commonwealth Edison power line workers, AT&T telephone line workers and Comcast Cable people. You'll never meet a more efficient, no nonsense bunch of men and women. We thank each and every one of them.

We're just thankful no one was hurt.

We apologized to our customers who may have been inconvenienced by this disruption in Johnny-Sells service.

Aftermath

Johnny & a helpful neighbor cutting down the remainder of the fatally injured tree.

I could have been a tree surgeon, but I couldn't stand the site of sap.

It was a good tree, gone but not forgotten.

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Chicago Cubs

So what if the Cubs got humiliated in the National League Playoffs of 2008. One of these centuries, they are going to win the World Series!

Win or lose, Johnny-Sells love the Cubs! We're so close to Wrigley Field that we can sometimes hear the fans sing "Take Me out To the Ballpark" at the seventh inning stretch.

Hey Cub Fans! Buy one or more of these great Cubs products like Cubs Road Cap, Cubs Ornaments and even adorable Cubs Baby Mobiles.

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Buy something from Johnny-Sells and get 10% off your next Buy-it-Now purchase.

Buy any Johnny-Sells auction or Buy-it-Now item and we'll give you 10% off your next Buy-it-Now purchase within 60 days of original purchase.

Buy them at the same time and get a further discount for combined shipping!

Check out the bargains available at the Johnny-Sells eBay Store

Clients, Click here then enter in your code in the "Store Search" box.

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