Thursday, September 28, 2017

"A Mazing Burr" Puzzle to Auction

We have put three puzzles up for auction on eBay!

Since we produce puzzles mainly using hardwood timber, it is impossible to completely avoid some imperfections, such as chips, grub holes, and cracks. Juno eliminates puzzle pieces that are not good enough to use as he processes the products. He also mends the pieces if the defect is not so significant.
When we finish producing the puzzles, there are a few that we are reluctant to sell at a fixed price. We usually mark those as second grade and give those away to our close friends as gifts. This time, we decided to put those puzzles up for auction and donate the sales to the AWLQ, the Animal Welfare League Queensland, to help save stray and surrendered pets. It's a little off topic, but we adopted one of our cats, named Midon, from the AWLQ.
You will find three A Mazing Burr puzzles in our eBay store. The starting price of the puzzles is $1.00 AUD! The puzzle will be officially released at our online shop for $75.00 AUD after the auction. There is nothing wrong with the three puzzles in the auctions, they are fully functional, and many people would find it difficult to find the subtle imperfections. It might be a good chance to get Juno's puzzle at a cheaper price!

We are looking forward to having you participate in the auctions.

Monday, September 11, 2017

Visible Framed Burr

This is our twelfth product on our online shop.
There are only four pieces and a frame but Visible Framed Burr is diabolically difficult because of its tricky moves of the pieces when you assemble and disassemble the puzzle.

Juno again used a CNC router to make the recesses onto top and bottom panels, also to gave a modification to one of the pieces to made the puzzle have a unique solution. Maybe, he just would like to play with the CNC router for fun. He also cared to prevent deformation of the pieces in long term, especially to the top and bottom panels, inserting Jarrah timber pieces to the ends of the panels.

The puzzle has reasonable size, though it doesn't mean the puzzle can be solved easily. You might struggle even to disassemble the puzzle.

We hope that puzzle lovers enjoy the puzzle.

Visible Framed Burr is available on our website.

Friday, September 8, 2017

Shipping puzzles overseas

It has been about 10 months since we started our online shop. Time flew by so fast.

When we just opened our online shop, some people who saw our postage might have thought that shipping costs were expensive. We have noticed that we had mistakenly checked the extra shipping options on the postage settings and it reflected total shipping cost. Juno soon realized the issue and disabled those non-necessary options. We also made a partial refund for the shipping when we realized we overcharged for the postage.

The shipping cost for our online shop is calculated automatically from an Australia Post lookup based on size, weight of shipping box and weight of products in the customer's cart and shipping destination.

As you know, we also have a shop on eBay and we are selling our puzzles there. When we sell puzzles on eBay we have to pay commission fees to eBay. So, we have decided that we will give a discount for the shipping cost for our online shop. The discount is cheaper than paying a commission to eBay. Now our overseas customers have the following discounts for shipping.

  • International Express - A$5.00 discount from Australia Post amount
  • International Standard - A$5.00 discount from Australia Post amount



There is also another change on the shipping for our online shop.
We realized that many of our customers chose the Economy Air option when they ordered our puzzles on our eBay shop. We enabled that option on our online shop as well. The option is available unless the total weight (puzzles and box) doesn't exceed 2 kg or 4.40 lbs.

Economy Air is the cheapest option on our online shop but the parcel is NOT trackable, unlike International Express and International Standard. Then it is harder to estimate where the parcel is and when it will be delivered. We therefore do recommend you choose trackable shipping options.

We are looking forward to your visit to our online shop.

Yukari