Posse fall Swapmania roundup

Happy Monday, everyone! So our Posse Swapmania is starting to wind down a bit now, but keep on swappin’, folks, as the fun’s not done yet! As of this writing, we had nearly 350 posts, so I’d call that a success, and it seemed like we had a lot of different folks playing, which is great.

Now it’s time today for everyone to dish.

Musette, did you get any of your beloved scents, Diorling or otherwise?

Any cumin bombs 🙂 or honey-laden scents for you, March?

And Patty, what’s the latest on those elf slippers? Inquiring minds want to know!

As for me, I didn’t have a whole lot to throw in, so I kind of laid low and mostly watched the Swapmania action. It’s fun to see what folks are pulling out of their closets, perfume cabinets, etc., and so nice to see so many great fragrances going to new homes. (Some of scents listed I had never heard of — that was fascinating.)

We’d love to know what you thought this time around. What worked? What didn’t? What would you change for next time?

Share what you swapped away, swapped for, or any surprises that you found during the weekend.
What’s the most unusual thing you swapped away or will be getting? I’m thinking here of Musette and the Great Sables/Postage Muling Swap adventure. Any funny stories come out of Swapmania weekend?

  • Patty Schneider says:

    This is my third Swapmania, and as usual was a lot of fun. I made three swaps, and will be receiving Cristalle EDP, Parfum Sacre, and Nuit de Tubereuse, in exchange for perfumes that are in the like-but-don’t-love category. Up to now I’ve only shipped within the US, but maybe next time I’ll try international swapping as well. Thanks to my fellow swappers – perfume people are the best!

  • Millicent says:

    This was my third Swapmania, and I just love it! And I’m in eight swaps, which is incredible — thanks so much to all of you willing to mail to Malaysia. My guideline for this swap was to focus on moving out the things I don’t wear, especially by decanting lavishly, and I’m getting to try a bunch of new things.
    The only challenge (so far — my fingers are crossed for postal and customs success) was the commenting format and disappearing posts that many others have mentioned. In the old format, posts were listed with earliest at the top, so I made a point of posting at the beginning to have lots of people see my list. This time, though, the order was reversed and not all the comments loaded at once, so those of us at the bottom were two or three reloads away from the top. It sounds like Disqus is what it is, but a format that allowed notifications when a post gets a reply and better control-f would be great.
    Anyway, a huge thank you to everyone!

    • Patty White says:

      Yeah, Disqus is sorta annoying. But!!! You can subscribe to comments and notifications, but you do have to register either with them or use your Facebook, G+ or Twitter account. Once you do that, then it will e-mail you notifications. I get a bazillion of them a day! 🙂 I’m not entirely happy with Disqus, but the old system wasn’t working at all.

      BTw, at the top, you should see Discussion, and you click on that, and you can sort it newest at the top or oldest at the top.

      If you are registeried with Disqus, you can log in there as well, if you don’t want all the email and see your replies.

      • Millicent says:

        Thanks for replying and for the information in the full post about how to make Disqus more user-friendly.

  • Kirsten D says:

    This is the first Swapmania where I’ve made some successful swaps. Last two – no bites, nada, zilch! This time I’ve got 6 swaps on the go! In fact it’s taken me so much by surprise I need to rush out and buy packaging materials. I don’t know if I was less picky about what I wanted, or if what I offered this time was way more interesting. Anyway, once I got going I felt totally liberated – and looked on all those poor bottles lurking at the bottom of my perfume drawer in a completely new light – “I like you, but I can honestly live without you”. So they’re going off to new homes in Canada, Croatia, Estonia, Poland, Italy and England! Amazing fun, looking forward to the next one.

  • Mary says:

    I swapped out a few good things that I just couldn’t wear, even though I was intrigued by them and enjoyed smeling them every now and then. Now, those bottles will be on their way to nice people, who, I hope, will enjoy them to the last drop. And I am very excited about the packages coming in the mail–one of them will be holding the bottle of Dune I have been patiently abiding, hoping for a trade. And hurray! Some more of the beautiful Tauer perfumes– I am on the $5 sample per month installment plan on those babies. And some other niice little things I cannot wait to try. It is always a pleasure to interact with Posse folks! I wish I could throw a perfume party and meet you all in person.

  • poodle says:

    This was my first swap and it was fun. I don’t have much to offer yet but I did manage to make some swaps anyway. I’m sure it will get to be a lot easier and much more fun as my collection grows. Everyone was so nice. Now I just have to get the packages to the post office and hope everything gets where it’s going without any issues. The posting format was a bit challenging but I may go and take another look at people’s lists later when I have a moment to see if there’s anything that got posted late I might want to beg and plead for. My hubby was laughing at me when I was on the computer checking the site, checking email, responding, etc. He said I looked like a football coach on draft day.

  • Heather F says:

    I had a wonderful time (and this was only my second swap, after the NST-hosted one in September) and nearly cleared my swap list with fourteen (14!!) swaps…though 2 are postponed until after Thanksgiving, which made today’s trip to the post office a little lighter, which my shoulder and back appreciated. Thanks again to all of my swap partners, and thanks to you all at the Posse for hosting.

  • Kismet says:

    I had an amazing time at Swapmania, and unbelievably found most of my wish list, including some things that I have been jonesing after for about a year plus a couple of bonus lovelies. Got into the spirit of things and sent three of my five swaps this morning. As last time, I found Posseites to be lovely and gracious. I did feel bad for Patty and Musette, since it seemed that our little clambake nearly brought the PP hosting service to its electronic knees once or twice. Thank you, ladies, for your patience and fortitude.

  • tammy says:

    I had a blast, as always, and I already got one of my swaps! I have swapped with the ever-fabulous 50 Roses before, so I wasn’t surprised, but I was certainly impressed!

  • Swap #4 is a go, so I’ll have one more package to send out tomorrow. Yay! I’m getting some good stuff. Small decants of TF Tobacco Vanille, SL Chergui, Illuminum Black Musk, a sample of OJ Woman, a couple of FMs (Portrait of a Lady and Parfum de Therese), the Ineke A-G sample set, and a set of perfume oils from a line I’d never heard of before that I’m excited about trying.

  • Annie Amos says:

    I ended up doing three swaps, and sent everything off this morning. I thriftily used old, padded envelops, which were solid if ratty-looking. Seem to have a Christmas tea tradition going on, which is fun…

  • Queen Cupcake says:

    I missed Swapmania this time around but I really enjoy reading all of your comments. Sounds as if people had a lot of fun with this one. I have to say that I am still just getting around to sampling some of the things I swapped for the last time!

  • NeenaJ says:

    This was my first time swapping perfume and issues with the commenting format aside, it was really enjoyable! I’m getting lots of things that I have wanted to sniff and found new homes for things that deserve to be better appreciated. It’s all hearts and flowers now but, I’ll let you know the real verdict after I hit the post office, LOL!

  • Lucas says:

    Swapmania is great. It was my first time when I participate in it. My only wish is that it would be great if there were more people from Europe or willing to send to Europe. Still I got some amazing swaps! Can’t wait to post my packages later this week and wait for the exchange packages to come

  • rosarita says:

    I had a great time except for being at the bottom of the list, which I commiserated about with Sherri below. I swapped for some things I’ve really been wanting and a couple of wild card items and as always, Posseites are friendly, gracious and fun to be around 🙂 I actually packaged mine up yesterday and mailed them this morning except for a couple who requested a later mailing time due to holiday travel. I hope I conveyed to my swappees that they didn’t need to be as compulsive about mailing as I was; my husband and I both have upcoming medical stuff and his requires a hospital stay in another city, so I just wanted to get all this stuff taken care of right away. I was more organized for this swapmania than I ever have been before, but I’m unemployed too so I spent all day Friday sending requests and drooling over lists, which was especially fun. I also will apparently have that darned bottle of Fresh Sugar in my life forever, ha! I am done swapping now until next spring. Thanks Posse peeps.

  • dinazad says:

    I’ve enjoyed myself immensely and have several awesome swaps going on. But what is it with Disqus? Some comments seem to have disappeared (I re-posted an updated swaplist at some point as well – and it “got eated”) in comment nirvana, some stayed at the top for days.. .very curious.
    But still – it was great fun. Thank you!

    • tammy says:

      I found that I had to go to the Discussion drop down menu, right below where one would leave a comment, and constantly change it to Newest, even though it was already checked as being Newest!

    • Helena says:

      My list disappeared twice, too.

  • This was my first time swapping anything, ever! It is so much fun! I don’t have any scents really to swap, since I’m a newbie, but I’ve met some lovely, generous people that are willing to swap with me for other items such as chocolate, coffee, tea, scarves, homemade personalized massage oils, my first born…… okay, maybe not the last item. 🙂 I took a chance and they are lovely, friendly, and wiling to help a newbie discover more in this lovely fragranced world! Thank you!

    • Ann says:

      Hi, Shiloh! So happy you got to do the swap. Like I’ve said before, perfume people really are the best: kind, generous and welcoming.

  • Patty White says:

    Alas, I have no idea how to put a swap list together anymore, I kept doing it, and it got longer, and then I got sorta insane, so I stopped. Then I got buried in a knitting project (yes, I’ve taken i up again, but I”m not quite ready to do the elf slippers). If someone wants to knit them and swap for perfume, i’m completely open to that!

    • Ann says:

      Aw, Patty, that’s OK! I think someone has you covered on the elf slippers (see Heather’s comment below).

    • Heather Wood says:

      Hi Patty, I’m knitting happily away on elf slippers, not exactly like the ones in that picture because I wanted them to have a proper turned heel. If you would be willing to email me your shoe size, I’ll reply with a photo as soon as the first one is done. This does not commit you to anything whatsoever; I’m just entranced with the project. My email is wooddogs3 at gmail dot com.

  • Andrea says:

    This is my first time I participate to a Swap and it was so much fun and I virtually met really nice people. I ended up with two swaps which I am really happy about: one because I am getting a perfume I love (Vetiver Tonka by Hermes for Seville à l’Aube) and the other one it’s a blind choice (Grey Flannel for a bunch of samples), but I rather try something new (which sounds great from the comments around the internet) than keeping unwanted bottles and samples. Still on hold for a third swap.
    I sent the 2 packages this morning and I also realized that is much much cheaper to send within Europe… I’ll keep it mind, but I don’t regret it.
    I hope to have better perfumes next time, because a couple of swaps couldn’t go through , which can be comprehensible.
    I have 3 bottles of perfumes by italian brands which are not well known around the world…this doesn’t help to persuade other swappers! Too bad…
    Thank you!

    • Ann says:

      Congratulations on your first swap, Andrea! Sounds like you’ll be getting some good stuff. And you’re so right — perfume folks really are the best!!

    • tammy says:

      Oh, I’d have LOVED some of those Italian perfumes, but I didn’t have anything you wanted and I try to limit myself to one international shipment per swap, because it’s so spendy, especially right before Xmas. And I must say, between your list and some of those Ozzie’s, my resolve was sorely tempted!

      Love Swapmania; the best part of all is meeting new peeps and touching base again with old friends. God bless all y’all…you rock!

      Thanks so much for doing this again!

      • Andrea says:

        tammy, you should have tried me! That’s pretty much what I did for my swaps 😉 I am quite new so I am open and I am curious to smell new perfumes. But I understand that the international shipment is quite expensive…as I discovered this morning! You can always note my email and contact me in the future if you wish.

        I agree, this was great!

        • tammy says:

          I will definitely be in touch after the new year! Swapping samples wouldn’t be all that expensive, would it?? 🙂 ( See, I can justify anything!)

          • Andrea says:

            I spent 8Euros (about10$) to ship 14 samples to Canada.
            Sure, after the new year or next swapmania! I need to load my sample box again 😉

          • Annie Amos says:

            Well, Andrea’s package was the priciest, at $17, but it made me feel so international to ship to Italy…

  • Musette says:

    Alas, my life got so crazed that I couldn’t participate, save nearly getting some vintage Diorling (alas,alas….my swap offer fell through because I can’t add! LOL! Or see.)

    Swappers – this is ongoing, if you wish it. Just because we’ve moved on doesn’t mean you have to – there were some last-minute postings as late as last night . xoxoA.

  • Sherri says:

    It’s been really wonderful as always! So, in addition to the “sensualist nerd” kind of personality of the hardcore perfumista, I think we have to add the adjectives gracious and generous to the official perfumista definition. I like this Swap better than the dollar-for-dollar swaps on Makeup Alley, etc. because of all the sweet, kind people I get to “meet”. Thank you so much for doing it.

    Now the thing with this particular swap is I’ve only swapped out 2 of the 10 bottles listed. I’m way down at the bottom of the list and I think people lost patience scrolling. Also, there have been quite a few other swaps (NST, etc.) and online fragrance swapping forums, so maybe alot of people are “all swapped out”. I’ve also had a busier than expected weekend and haven’t been able to browse as much as I’d like. I am going to try to repost my remaining items with additions (the more I clean the more I find) and see if I can’t clean out my closet and give a little fun to someone else before it is all said and done.

    Also, I don’t know if it should be a separate category or event, but there are a few super-rare perfumes (in my case it is Guerlain Candide Effluve, Plus Que Jamais and Voilette de Madame). I did see several looking for Gobin Daude. These are not the same as clearing out unwanted bottles obviously, but it would be nice to be able have a place to throw it out there. I would be willing to decant from my rare bottles in exchange for these only, or purchase, but obviously not willing to swap for Britney..lol Maybe you should do a forum, “What are you looking for?”

    Thank you so, so much again for doing Swapmania! I really enjoyed it! 🙂

    • Musette says:

      Sherri, Patty actually did a forum like that somewhere on here – I’ll ask her where that is (or where it went). Your super-rares make my eyes water with lust! xooxA

    • Patty White says:

      Hey, Sherri, I’ve played around with the forum thing a couple of times, but it usually nets me more spam than I like to think about! But I’m absolutely fine with putting up a post once a month or every couple of weeks that’s just for you guys that poses that questions – what are you looking for, and everyone can list like one thing. Then anyone who wants to do a karma thing can offer to send or swap or something like that. I love that idea!

    • rosarita says:

      Hi, Sherri – yeah, I was way down there at the bottom of the list with you and you’re right, I think it got too unwieldy for people to find us. I kept checking for new lists and made offers but then people can’t see my wishlist and I was hoping for some samples. Other than that, it was a blast 🙂

    • Mariekel says:

      I would LOVE to have a place for super-rare swapping! I have some very hard-to-find gems I would gladly (oh all right, gladly but a bit grudgingly) swap for one of the aforesaid Gobin-Daudes or a certain old Coty.

  • Ines Stefanovi? says:

    This was my best swapmania so far! 🙂 I somehow ended in 9 swaps. I have no idea how that happened and I’m getting a bottle of Elixir de Merveilles! It’s been on my wishlist forever. And some Ambre Narguile to finally try and Cumming and many, many great things. 🙂 A great success in my opinion.

    • Ann says:

      Wow — nine swaps — that’s amazing! So glad you got your much-wanted Elixir and also lots of other neat stuff to try.

  • This was the first swap I’ve ever participated in, so it was exciting. I had fun with it. I didn’t participate in the NST swap a while back because I didn’t think I had anything to swap yet, but this time I felt like I could get in the game. I made three swaps and just got them packaged up and ready to take to the post office tomorrow. I also just sent a last-minute email for a fourth, so we’ll see on that one.

    • Ann says:

      Hi, Jennifer! You are good, having everything all packed up and ready to go. Wish I was that organized, ha! Glad you had fun and got in some nice swaps.

  • Heather Wood says:

    I’m pretty new to the perfume obsession and couldn’t participate because I don’t have anything I’m ready to swap yet (unless somebody wants a full bottle of Paloma Picasso ; )) but I had a wonderful time reading about what other people have in their stashes. So thanks for some great lurking. I also got interested in knitting elf slippers and have one about half done, so I’ll be in touch with Patty if they come out well. By next year, I hope I’ll have some surplus scent to swap.