As you know, I have had my share of issues with Paypal recently, and while I appreciate the effort they made to do the right thing in our case, I still have a lot of misgivings about them as a company.
This e-mail didn’t help.

Dear Helen Killer,

I love your site and was thrilled to hear of your “win” against PayPal. I recently had a heartbreaking experience of my own with them.

I sold an old French violin to a buyer in Canada, and the buyer disputed the label.

This is not uncommon. In the violin market, labels often mean little and there is often disagreement over them. Some of the most expensive violins in the world have disputed labels, but they are works of art nonetheless.

Rather than have the violin returned to me, PayPal made the buyer DESTROY the violin in order to get his money back. They somehow deemed the violin as “counterfeit” even though there is no such thing in the violin world.

The buyer was proud of himself, so he sent me a photo of the destroyed violin.

I am now out a violin that made it through WWII as well as $2500. This is of course, upsetting. But my main goal in writing to you is to prevent PayPal from ordering the destruction of violins and other antiquities that they know nothing about. It is beyond me why PayPal simply didn’t have the violin returned to me.

I spoke on the phone to numerous reps from PayPal who 100% defended their action and gave me the party line.

Erica

I forwarded this e-mail to my contact at Paypal several days ago. They have not replied.

UPDATE: I neglected to mention in the original post that the violin was examined and authenticated by a top luthier prior to its sale.

UPDATE 2: Thanks to sharp-eyed reader Mr. Pete, who found this paragraph in Paypal’s Terms of Service:

People often ask me if I buy any of the things I feature here. And when they do, I laugh and laugh, and then I start to cry, because this site has cost me a small fortune. After all, I spend at least 5 days a week looking at things you can buy online. What do you think is going to happen?

Besides the financial aspet, there is also the very real issue of managing your hoard. If not displayed artfully and culled regularly, you will soon find yourself sleeping on a pile of laundry in the garage.

My piles of craft are manageable for three reasons:

1. I tend to give a lot of things away. A robbery at the age of 20 left me with absolutely nothing but a card table and a black and white TV, and having survived that, I developed a completely different relationship with objects. I have my attachments to certain treasures, but ultimately I understand that life would go on without them.

2. I’m borderline OCD, which means I am forever putting things away and trying to create surfaces. The bonus there is you never really grasp how much shit I have in this house. The downside is that no one will ever intervene, so I have to rent my own dumpsters.

3. I am discriminating about what I buy, though it may not appear that way. Everything that calls to me has something special going for it; a weird intangible that makes it the cream of the crap. You may see Phil Spector on velvet, but I see a painting that will reduce my guests to stunned silence, allowing me to talk more.

So without further ado, here are my 5 favorite purchases of 2011.

5. SCOTTY QUILT

Jesus Christ. I love this so much I’m actually jealous, and I own it.

This is less of a quilt than a quilted panel, and someday I hope to incorporate it into a much larger piece. The hard part is going to be finding pieces worthy of being joined to this for all eternity. Like say, this one, which I completely missed, and still drink to forget.

- Scotty Quilt by The Alligator Bride on Etsy, who doesn’t make enough stuff as far as I’m concerned

4. SPOCK COOKIE JAR

This was one of those things that simultaneously stimulated my pleasure center and kitsch zone, like a pop culture shocker. Yes, I was three fingers deep when I saw this baby, which now sits comfortably in my kitchen, surrounded by other sacred objects.

This cookie jar is also noteworthy as it represents the first and only time I broke my cardinal rule about not buying anything edible on Etsy. I’ve shown you enough hairy candy and dirty countertops to make my point about buying food from a stranger’s kitchen.

But a reader linked this in the comments, and I decided to give it a try:

This was one of the best buying experiences I ever had on Etsy, and believe me, I’m as surprised as you are. The cookies were delicious, the packaging was beautiful and sturdy (not one broken cookie), and the seller was perfectly professional and accommodating.

These cookies arrived while Bronc was at Burning Man, and it was extremely difficult not to eat them all while he was gone. Fortunately, the seller included a bunch of samples and a few extra cookies, so no one had any idea how many I actually put away that week.

SCORE

- Spock cookie jar by Neatorama
- Star Trek cookies by All Things Exquisite on Etsy

3. A TIE!

A) O’CLAMA

I bought this thing before I even put this post up in March. I normally don’t like to do that, because I believe in giving others a chance to own these masterpieces. But the idea of anyone other than me owning this and proudly displaying it in their office made me extremely cranky.

Besides, this one is still available. But I would act fast, if I were you. The 4th photo down is getting to me.

B) CUSTOM PERLER PORTRAIT

I originally purchased a custom Perler portrait as a prize for this contest, but I was so delighted by the work that I bought one for myself.

- Osama clam by Pineconeman on Etsy
- Perler portrait by PXL8R on Etsy

2. HELLBOY ON VELVET

I’m not a big collector of velvet paintings, but I have a few. They just have to be very special, which means I get sweaty when I see it and make a gurgling sound.

When I saw Velvet Geek’s work, I was both thrilled and dismayed. Thrilled, because Hellboy was still available, and inconsolable that I had missed so many great pieces (this, for example, hangs in some other asshole’s house). But I’ll always have Hellboy, and the memory of Ron Perlman blowing me off at Nordstrom’s when I tried to get his autograph.

- Hellboy on velvet by The Velvet Geek

1. CLASSIC WRECKS

On a bookcase in my office, I have a collection of junker cars by Classic Wrecks on Etsy. These are hand built model cars, made to look like rusted old junkers.

The detail is incredible. The doors are off, there’s “rust” on the fenders and if you look carefully, you can see that the car in the middle has a tiny “hanger” as an antennae.

When I first saw this shop, I only intended to buy one of these models, and wound up with 6 or 7. The seller, who was extremely pleasant to deal with, asked me if I was “building a junkyard.”

If he only knew.

- Junker cars by Classic Wrecks on Etsy

- Submitted by Black Market Beagle

I FOUND MY NEW RINGTONE

Here’s a sample:

Is that incredible or what? It’s like Cat Stevens, only with better lyrics.

Now, I’m only giving you a little taste, because this is worth your money, and I think you know that. I laid down my coin and purchased this entire album a few minutes ago, and if you don’t think this is going on my New Year’s Eve playlist, YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION

- Download the whole vertical gluteal crease kicking album here