Sale has Ended

Another record—the 160th print in the Great Last Dye Transfer Blowout Sale was ordered at 5:06 p.m. CST today, Wednesday, meaning we sold out in five hours and six minutes.

Good news—everyone who sent an order will get the print or prints they wanted. "Roses" sold the fewest, but not by much, and the other three pictures sold in almost equal numbers.

Because he needed to track the sales on each print, Ctein's been busy all afternoon entering data, and hasn't sent out acknowledgement emails yet. If you sent an order, though, you'll be hearing from him soon. But don't worry if you haven't gotten that acknowledgement yet.

As for the future...
All prints will ship by the 17th of June at the latest, but for reasons of efficiency the orders won't necessarily be filled in the order they are received. All buyers will get an email from Ctein when their prints ship.

We'll post an update here when all the prints have shipped. If you haven't gotten a shipping confirmation email from Ctein by the 17th of June, you should contact him—but please, not before then. (He'll be very busy!)

Ctein will include special framing instructions with the prints (dye transfer needs to be handled differently than other media).

That was definitely our fastest sale ever! A big thanks to everybody. Enjoy your prints!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

nige: "This all must have happened whilst I was asleep!"

Mike replies: Ctein and I discussed this at length, and originally the plan was to begin this sale at midnight as a courtesy to our overseas customers, to give them the drop on American buyers for once. Alas, the reality is that a sale of the intensity of yesterday's makes for a full day of very focused work, and, as bad as it is for you to wake up to discover the sale's gone by, it would be ten times worse for the two of us to wake up to hundreds of emails, problems, inquiries, and, say, 250 sales for 160 prints.

So, with regret, we've simply come to the conclusion that this is a North-American-based website, and our sales are going to have to be timed according to our North-American-based schedules. With our acknowledgement of your inconvenience. We do appreciate our international customers (hence Ctein's decision to adopt a universal shipping price this time), and TOP's international readers, though, make no mistake there.

Marcelo Guarini: "A real pity for me. I was so busy today that I didn't have the time to buy a print. Fortunately, I got two smaller Ctein dye transfers from a previous offer. To the guys that got one, enjoy."

Mike replies: Ctein and I have both heard from several people who missed those earlier offers, and went to great lengths not to miss this one.

When 90 prints sold in the first hour, I realized we were going to be disappointing a lot of people who were going to miss the sale. Sorry about that! Note that many of our sales are not restricted in terms of the number of prints that can be sold, so you can plan to purchase any time within the five-day sale period. That was not possible this time, for obvious reasons.

Comments

[Peter]

I for one would be interested in hearing about those framing instructions separately.

[Omer]

Congratulations to Ctein and TOP. It's nice to see photography do well.

[Spencer H.]

Wow....im really glad I just went for my print instead of thinking it over a day or two.

Congrats on the swift sale!

[Ed Eubanks]

I want to echo Omar’s comment: congratulations to Ctein and TOP. What a fitting tribute to a long and fruitful career for a master printer and craftsman; Ctein, I hope you feel honored by the interest in your excellent work.

[ctein]

Dear Folks,

All the confirmation emails have now been sent. If anyone who placed an order with me did not get one, they should email me immediately.

pax / Ctein

[Eric Peterson]

I will never wait to discuss anything with my wife again.

[Thingo]

I've just done a bit of mental arithmetic: Ctein will be making on average two or three prints per day for the next two months.

That's real commitment, and even more so considering the reasonable price for this print offer.

Thanks again.

(I wonder how Mike will TOP this?)

[Sarge]

Congratulations! To Ctein, Mike, and all TOP readers from all time zones who were party to this historic dye transfer print sale.

Though not a member of the party, I'm happy to note that Ctein's portfolio lives on in inkjet prints.

[David Vatovec]

Woke up this morning at 7 sharp CET. Saw Your post and saw the sale has ended ...
Kinda unhappy but then it is the crisis raging out there and I could use those 500+ USD.

[Roger Bradbury]

Bl@@dy well done! Congratulations to both of you.

[Keith I.]

I KNEW I was going to regret not hitting send on my email for the shuttle print.

[toto]

Dang! I totally missed it... was too busy at work.

[Michael Matthews]

Congratulations! Couldn't take part, but I'm glad to see such success in recruiting buyers for photography.

[KeithB]

Of course, the real question is "What will the value for these limited editions turn out to be in the sceondary market?"
8^)

[These are NOT limited editions. Even though the total number of prints made will now be limited by circumstances...which, in point of fact, is the case with most photographic prints. --Mike]

[David Vatovec]

I admit it, I am not a great fan of Ctein as a photographer, but the Niagara picture is one of the best pictures I saw in while!
And that is based on an onscreen jpeg!
Good work, North American Fellas!

Bye, David.

[Rob Grey]

I am sad that I completely missed this sale. Very, very sad.

[James Sinks]

I have to admit, while I'm disappointed the prints were all sold by the time I got home, I'm also a bit relieved that I'm not staring at a huge purchase.

[ctein]

Dear thingo,

Oh, it's even worse than that. Yes, I'll have to make close to three prints a day on average. But it's not just darkroom time; the spotting and finishing on dye transfer prints takes longer (sometimes a lot longer) than the time spent in the darkroom. Then there's the packaging and shipping. Especially for the international orders, which is a lot more time-consuming than US ones. Put it all together and it's a full-time job for the next two months.

Which would be fine, except I already have a full-time-job's worth of commitments –– long-term projects that I cannot put on hold for two months and clients and deadlines that I can't just tell to go away for two months.

And it's not really going to be two months–– I have to take some significant breaks somewhere in there, or I'll get so fatigued and punchy that I'll start making mistakes. It's happened before. Problem is, a “mistake” in this case translates to a ruined print that has to be scrapped. Given that I have a severely limited supply of materials, I can't afford to let the reject rate climb. Hence, time off will be mandatory. Which makes the work days even fuller.

So, yeah, it's going to be a little bit crazy.

But then I never, ever have to do it again (yay!)

pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. MacSpeech in training! ]
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-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com 
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com 
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[ctein]

Dear folks,

Along with Mike's well-expressed words on why sales need to be North-America-centric, let me say a few things. Mike and I were reasonably confident that this sale would sell out, but we were hardly sure. If we had been, Mike wouldn't have put in the time and effort create a press release. The optimistic opinion of those in the know was that if things went very well we might actually sell out all 160 prints in two days. That would've provided ample time in all time zones for readers to place orders.

Selling out in one tenth that amount of time was so far beyond any reasonable extrapolation, that it wasn't even a consideration.

Don't forget that this was also the most expensive TOP sale, with print prices that were 50% higher than anything previous. Neither Mike nor I were entirely sure the readership would support that price point.

Like Mike, I very much value my out-of-country customers. Even in past sales, where I've charged extra for foreign orders, that premium hasn't been enough to cover the extra time and cost of international shipping and handling. I eat $10-$15 on each international order, but the costs are already so ridiculous that I just can't stomach charging folks any more than that. In this sale, the print price is so much higher than usual I'm willing to swallow a lot more of the international cost, which is why I charged a simple flat rate for everyone.

pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. MacSpeech in training! ]
======================================
-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com 
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com