Stamp Luck

I've had my eye on a rubber stamp for quite a while now and a few months ago I decided to finally order it. Just my luck, they were sold out! I checked back frequently to see if it was back in stock, but it never was. I emailed the company, who says they respond to every email they get within 24 hours, but never got a response. So typical these days. Then one day I was surfing around the web and I found a woman's blog who said she is a designer for that company! I emailed her and told her about everything and she wrote back to me and copied the woman who in charge! I emailed back and forth with the woman in charge and she said it would be a few weeks before the stamp was back in stock and she'd get back to me. That was in early April. Yesterday I wrote to her to see if she had an update since I'd not heard from her. She said there is a delay with the manufacture and didn't elaborate. I took that to mean new stock is either never coming or it will be a long time. What further makes me believe this to be true is.....she offered me her stamp! She said it's been used twice by her, but if I want it, she'd give it to me -- FREE. She is even paying the postage to send it to me. I think this is really nice of her and I was more than happy to take her offer. I'm fairly sure she would not give me her stamp if she expected new stock to come in. So I happened to run into some good rubber stamp luck on that one. Of course, I'll have to wait and see if she really sends it to me.

Speaking of stamps, I have been stockpiling handmade cards with the idea I will open an Etsy.com store in November. Most of what I have is non holiday stuff. I picked November as a month to shoot for because I figure people might be looking for holiday cards to send out around that time. But, I need some opinions. I want to do sets of holiday cards rather than individual cards but I'm not sure how many to put in a set and how much to sell them for? Should it be 5, 10, 15 in a set? I could easily do 5 in a set, but if I had to do more than that, I bet I would get overwhelmed with the sheer quantity I'd have to produce.....that's a lot of cards! I will have to learn to pick simple designs and not fuss too much....eek. As far as cost....no idea. I am the worst at looking at my work and determining value. The cards on Etsy are currently selling for around $3.00-$4.50 each. I found a set of 6 cards for $10.00....not too many sets that I could find. It would be interesting to put together a birthday card package but have it be gender specific. So 5 guy cards or 5 girl cards. Or perhaps using my photos to create cards. I also thought of making cards you don't see a lot of, like Happy Retirement, Bosses Day, Admin Assist Day...stuff like that. I welcome your honest opinions on all these points and also welcome ideas I may not have thought of :)