on 31 Dec 2005 00:49:43 -0800, xerlome stated:

Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

xerlome wrote:
This is what dealers in every area have always done.

Obviously it is much worse now. As a buyer i have noticed dramatic
change in just the last few years. I used to regularly buy books for 3
for a dollar at a local Salvation Army Store, grat items, old and new,
every time i went. Now i rarely see any of that level of material. I
don't believe this is due to extreme increase of personal buying.
There are clearly vastly more resalers than a few years ago.

I think you should also take into consideration the shifting
market. As someone else has said, there are probably plenty
of people now who put their books on eBay instead of donating
them to thrift stores. And there are probably a lot of people
like you - not big dealers - who are buying up the very
inexpensive books from thrift stores and also putting them
online. I'm not a dealer, nor have I had a lot of experience
with them, but I wouldn't go blaming them entirely for the
shift you're seeing.


Over the last few years, more and more of these stores have started
"smart pricing" books, perhaps in response to the booming internet
resale industry. Often the prices are not so smart, though, but based
on what someone imagines is "worth something." I have noticed that
many stores are treating all dictionaries as if they are "hot." Some
trashy Collegiate 7th edition might cost as much as 5 or 10 dollars ( a
particularly egregious example). I was annoyed by this at first, but
now i appreciate that it at least discourages the resalers enough to
reserve items i want (something better than a Collegiate 7th, though.)
It is preferable to paying $20 or $50 or $100 or more to resalers.

Well, you know, I think it's perfectly reasonable of thrift
stores to "smart price" their books instead of selling them
four for a buck. One of our local stores has volunteers
working there, and donates all of their income to care for
the elderly. Why shouldn't they get $10 for a book instead
of $0.25, if people are willing to pay it?

I'm sorry, but my heart just doesn't bleed for collectors
like you (*and* me) who can no longer get an astonishing
deal every time we turn around. At least we're not 95 with
no one to care for us.


The good thing about the Internet is that
even if one dealer decides he wants to charge $200 for a book, one can
see if other dealers are selling it for $20.

This is rare, you must admit.

Absolutely not.

A range like $20 to $200 is not common
for identical books in equal condition. The high range is usually some
preposterously unreasonable price for the item. Yes, i've seen this.
I think there are some sellers who just hope some fool will come along.

It _is_ incredibly common. The only times I *don't* see
it are for some of the books for which there just aren't
a lot of copies available. And that's only because (I
think) there aren't enough copies for sale to demonstrate
the typical $1 to $10 (or $20 to $200, or whatever) range.

As an example, I chose a title randomly that I remembered
seeing sell well (new) off the shelves when I worked for
a book distributor, and looked it up in addall. (You do
know about used.addall.com, don't you? *Excellent* place
to get a good idea of the price range of a book; I go there,
look at the prices, and see if I can beat them on eBay.)

Ironweed, by William Kennedy, paperback. Discounting the
two uncorrected proofs (going for $500 and $600, latter
signed), there are 300 listings for this book (which
probably means there are about 200 copies - several are
duplicates) and the price range is $0.49 to $45.63. Note
the nearly 10x range.

I see this *all* the time. I've gotten accustomed to
thinking that I should be paying at the bottom end of the
10x range; the top end is usually either people trying to
scam a large $ amount (as you seem to think is mostly
the case) or people who actually paid a fair percent of
that and are trying to recoup, or, sometimes, people who
have a book that actually is better than those priced at
the bottom end, but haven't made it clear in their listing.
Or those who are clueless about the fact that others are
selling the same title for 1/10 their price. I suspect
the last to be the case more often than not. That's their
problem; their book will just sit there and gather dust.

I see it all the time on eBay, too. I collect "Materia
Medica" books (medical books on drugs from 1800 to ~1920)
and I have frequently seen the same author's work, in
similar condition, selling for $5 and for $50. Or even
for $200 or so. In fact, there's one such on eBay right
now: Robert Bartholow's Materia Medica (I have two copies,
one I probably paid $5 for, and a much nicer one I think
I paid $20 for): three listings, $19.99, $36.00, and
$375.00. I think the last seller is nuts, personally,
but there's no law against making a fool of yourself
online. I also suspect that the $375 copy is no better
than the $19.99 copy (which ends in 4 hours and has, so
far, no bids; if I didn't already have two copies I'd
buy it). That fool with the high price has not
provided any pictures, so I don't entertain any high
expectation that he'll ever sell his copy.


I've often seen in book searches where someone is selling a used copy
of an in-print book for twice or more the current retail price of a new
copy of the same edition. I wrote to one of these sellers and asked
him why. He replied that he didn't know, he wasn't familiar with other
people's prices.

My point. There are clueless sellers out there. It isn't
that there's a racket, or that they're trying to scam the
public (not most of them, anyway); they just haven't taken
the time to look around and see what their books are
actually worth.

So why don't you just ignore them? They're just fools;
not worth jacking up your blood pressure over.


-Allison