Riker Mount Information

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spudgy
Posts: 98
Joined: Tue Mar 02, 2010 3:21 pm
Location: Birmingham, Alabama

Riker Mount Information

Post by spudgy »

For anyone who may be thinking about buying Riker mounts, here is what I found in my search for the best price. It seems that there are several sites on the Internet that sell Riker mounts and the prices vary a good bit. For a case of 16x12x3/4 (12 mounts) prices range from $45.00 to $72.00 and up. The price on the site that Jeffrey mentioned is $69.00. I'm sure there is a difference in quality as Jeffrey mentioned but all these sites call their products Riker mounts without specifying a specific brand or maker. I did discover that some sellers use foam inserts and others use poly-fill. A few of the very expensive mounts use acid-free fill. I also read that some folks have experienced "outline ghosting" developing over time inside the glass where cloth and paper items came in contact with the glass. The ghosting will wash off but I have to wonder what causes it and whether it might be harmful to the items inside.

Anyway, I ordered 24 of the "cheapies" at $3.75 each on sale. They are fiber filled with glass inserts. I'll let everyone know later how they look in case anyone else is looking for some.

Their url is http://www.rikermounts.net/catalog.cgi

I can't wait for them to arrives because it means I get to start all over rearranging (read playing with) my CJ collection.



Thanks, again.
Jeffrey Maxwell
Posts: 162
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2011 11:48 pm
Location: Wellington KS

Re: Riker Mount Information

Post by Jeffrey Maxwell »

Wow! At that price, who wouldn't want to use those? I used to pay $8.00 each for them from a local seller who probably got them from this place. Thanks for sharing your research and info! Happy collecting.
spudgy
Posts: 98
Joined: Tue Mar 02, 2010 3:21 pm
Location: Birmingham, Alabama

Re: Riker Mount Information

Post by spudgy »

Yeah, that size, which they say is their most popular, is normally $107.40. This is from the site.

"R-7(1Cs)---- 16"x12"x3/4" Riker Display Case SALE. OUR BEST SELLER PACKED 12 PIECES @ 3.75.EA. This is 1 full case of the best selling Riker ever!. MANUFACTURERS OVERRUN SALE. WHEN THEY'RE GONE THEY'RE GONE FOR GOOD AT THIS PRICE.
(12 per case; unit price $3.75) $45.00 per case (List $107.40)"

Strangely, there are multiple links to this same site on the Internet (.net vs .com) but they are all Potomac Display at the same location in NC but the other links don't reflect this sale amount.

They only sell one grade of mounts so I don't think this is a lower grade item. Hmm. I sound like an advertiser for them.

Update: They mounts came in and they look great. I guess time will tell how well they hold up. One of the boxes was sent without fillers or pins but they agreed to replace it.
Jeffrey Maxwell
Posts: 162
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2011 11:48 pm
Location: Wellington KS

Re: Riker Mount Information

Post by Jeffrey Maxwell »

Now that you have your displays, the real fun of collecting begins. Sorting and colating are my favorite things to do. But showing off my stuff is the real reward.
Jeffrey Maxwell
Posts: 162
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2011 11:48 pm
Location: Wellington KS

Re: Riker Mount Information

Post by Jeffrey Maxwell »

The other links don't reflect the sale amount because they are likely mirror sites where the owners get a cut of the traffic they send to the seller.
spudgy
Posts: 98
Joined: Tue Mar 02, 2010 3:21 pm
Location: Birmingham, Alabama

Re: Riker Mount Information

Post by spudgy »

Ahhh! Mirror sites. That explains it! Thanks, Jeffrey.

Showing off my collection is great fun even though family and friends don't appreciate it as much as I. Showing it off to other collectors? Now that would be great fun. I wonder if anybody has thought about finding a way to post pictures of their entire collections. I'm sure some collections would be too large to even consider but others (like mine) would only require about 24 pictures (24 full mounts). I for one would love to see prizes I've never seen before. Of course, the pictures would have to be replaced occasionally to reflect changes. Just a thought.
Jeffrey Maxwell
Posts: 162
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2011 11:48 pm
Location: Wellington KS

Re: Riker Mount Information

Post by Jeffrey Maxwell »

Showing off a collection is one of the great rewards of collecting. It might not be as exciting for your friends and family as it is for you, but because it is Cracker Jack, and a very diverse and colorful collection, you will find it has much more appeal to non-collectors than other types of collections. For example, try showing a baseball card collection to someone who has no interest in baseball. Cracker Jack is universal -- something that every red-blooded American can relate to -- even if only for a brief viewing.

Once you get comfortable with your collection, and feel you can tell others a little bit about it, you might consider doing a public display. That is great fun! I was a member of the depression glass collectors club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which has hosted the National Depression Glass Convention more times than any other local glass club. We recognized the fact that there were many many glass collectors in the group who also collected other things. So we started having a different member come in once a month to do a display and talk about something they collect that is not related to glass collecting. This turned into an annual collectibles show-and-tell tour of area libraries that became quite successful.

When I did my first display, I had a very modest collection. But it was exciting for me, because it reminded me of the first display of Cracker Jack prizes I saw in a public library showcase when I was a child. Eventually your friends and family will tell others about your collection. And, like a lot of us, you will become known as the local Cracker Jack nut. If you are ever offered opportunities to publicly show and tell about your collection, I encourage you to do it. You will have a blast.
Skitter
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2012 7:41 am

Re: Riker Mount Information

Post by Skitter »

I'm necroposting in this because this thread came up high in the search results when I was looking for Riker mounts, so it's likely that other people are reading it as well for that reason.

The following websites (that I've found so far) are all the same company, Potomac Display:

rikermounts.com
rikermounts.net
wholesalerikermounts.com
officialrikermounts.com
potomacdisplay.com

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find some more of them, too. I started getting paranoid when I noticed the following in the shipping terms of the first one of the sites I looked at:
By Placing an order with us you agree not to refuse any delivery.
Next site ... the exact same quote (there's a whole paragraph of quote, not just that one line). Exact same capitalization errors. Next one ... the same. So I started doing a bit of digging, and found they were all the same company. Overlapping admin contacts, phone numbers, etc. To my cynical mind, this makes me wonder why they have those particularly strange terms on their site, as compared to the place I finally bought my Riker mounts from, which says: "If you receive an order that is damaged in transit please refuse it if you are there when it arrives." Do they want to be able to just dump a bunch of broken glass in a box and send it to me, and then require me to pay for it?

Majorly webgeeky stuff aside, here's some of what I found:

potomacdisplay.com is, of course, Potomac Display.
rikermounts.net is registered to Potomac Display.
rikermounts.com is registered to Potomac Display.
wholesalerikermounts.com has the same order fax number as rikermounts.com
officialrikermounts.com has the same order 800 number as potomacdisplay.com
(one of their pages mentions officialrikermounts.net, which is not an active domain)

So at least those five websites, while pretending to be competitors of each other, are actually all Potomac Display.

I bought my Riker mounts from another company (a lapidary supply company). I don't know if they're any good or not, since my order hasn't arrived yet. But I like buying from people who begin our business relationship honestly.
spudgy
Posts: 98
Joined: Tue Mar 02, 2010 3:21 pm
Location: Birmingham, Alabama

Re: Riker Mount Information

Post by spudgy »

I was the original poster on this thread so I feel an obligation in all fairness to post a follow up comment. I think I may have mentioned earlier that there were multiple sites on the Internet that lead to the same Potomac company. As Jeffery Maxwell mentioned, these were probably mirror sites that get a cut from funneling orders to the actual manufacturer. As I also mentioned, the prices differed from site to site which I assume indicated that the mirror sites were not necessarily kept up-to-date with current sale prices. At any rate, I did order from Rikermount.net (I think that's right) and had a very positive experience. The cases were great and the price at that time was unbelievable. One box came in without inserts but when I brought it to their attention, they immediately sent me a return label with postage prepaid and then sent me a replacement box. I ended up buying from them again and in all I bought three boxes of 12x16" mounts. Each time I ordered, they included a bonus item that I didn't expect. The nice one was a magnification loupe in a little plastic case which I use often reading the fine print on some prizes. They also sent a bonus Riker mount in a different size and several samples of finish material.

If it sounds like I work for them, I don't, I'm just a Crackerjack collector like you. I just felt that the company didn't deserve to be ruled out especially after they treated me so well.
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Luke
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Re: Riker Mount Information

Post by Luke »

Welcome to the forums Skitter!

Part of it appears to be an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) trick, that helps them rank high in search results from Google, Bing, etc. The theory is that more links from other websites pointing to you, the higher you'd rank in search engines. The're doing this by putting up many duplicate websites, and most of them point to Barnhart & Barnhart, Inc, the link can be found at the bottom of their webpage. That company designs and hosts most of the Ricker Mount websites in question. On their portfolio page, they point back to all of the various Riker Mount websites, as well as others such as, ShadowBoxes411, and FlagCases411, which has links pointing back to Barnhart & Barnhart, Inc and links pointing to the various other Riker Mount sites. The ShadowBoxes411 and FlagCases411, don't sell any items, they just offer information on how to store and use cases, and have links to the Riker Mount websites for ordering, as well as to Barnhart & Barnhart, Inc. So it's a massive tangle of links pointing from one site to another, and back again, to trick Google into rating them higher in search results. Personally I think it's more work than it's worth to set all those sites up, and Google has been cracking down on what some call "Black Hat" tricks, trying to fool search engines.

I know a lot of collectors use those mounts, although I'm not sure where they buy them. I'm probably the only collector that doesn't use them, which makes me a bit of a rebel.

Do you collect Cracker Jack items, is there something else you display in the cases?
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