OK, it’s been a while since I last posted to the blog, mainly because posting on Twitter has been enough for the most part. But to today I’m going to get a bit more long winded the 140 letters.
Today I got in the mail my second Whirley Salt and Pepper combination shaker. While my collecting is mainly aimed at Atari and hotel stuff, these cute combo units fit in because they remind me of the one mom bought on one of the trips to Florida when I was a kid. They use to sell them in hotel gift shops.
I have no idea what ever happened to the original one. My guess is maybe it wore out and mom got rid of it at some point. So part of my collecting was to find another one because it was one of the things I really wanted to have. At first I didn’t even know what they were called or who made them, but some online searching led me to the Whirley brand then it was just a matter of watching for them.
The first one I bought a few months ago was indicated as “used” on the listing, and has no markings on it, and it’s in great shape. Many I’ve seen for sale are on the grungy side or rusted, or worse, the seller used the Global Shipping program on eBay which totally rips off the buyer. They cause a least a week delay (usually more) in getting it, and add extra handling fees and adds taxes that would not be charged if the seller would just ship direct to Canada. I don’t know what eBay tells the US sellers, but it is simple to mail an item directly to Canada from the US. Just address and mail like any other package, the only difference is they might have to add a customs label to the outside of the package. Even if you’ve never filled one out before you should be able to do it in well under a minute.
To add injury to insult, the Global Shipping people open your packages and snoop, and then repack them in something else smaller if they can with less packing material to save money. I know this first hand as a vintage TRS-80 Expansion Interface I bought last winter was badly damaged due to their incompetence. These devices are very scarce now, and rarely come up for sale and the idiots miss handling and poor packaging resulted in it being irreparably damage.
So even though this new Whirley S&P shaker came via the GSP, it will be the last time I buy anything that way. Yes, they opened the package by slashing it with a knife and luckily the seller put it in an extra box that took the damage. I knew it was risk, but I wanted this one, but now I close any eBay listing the show the Global Shipping stuff, it’s just not worth the risk and extra cost. If you don’t belive me, look on Youtube or the AtariAge forums, there are many people on that that have has stuff destroyed because of Global Shipping Program.
Ok, back the the salt & pepper shaker.. It’s was listed as new, and shows no sign of use, so I’m very happy with the item itself. In fact the plan is to put it to use in the kitchen 🙂 I gave it a good washing and will let it dry overnight and tomorrow it gets filled for the first time and will be a daily reminder of a simpler time.
And odds are, I’ll probably buy more of these, if the seller isn’t using GSP…
Atari Hotel 
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