Unscrupulous Dealers and Price Gouging in Seattle?

On Feb 10, 8:40 am, "my-wings" wrote:
"Stone Mirror (the Great and Terrible)" wrote in
ooglegroups.com...



I own a pristine copy of a volume titled "The Picatrix", published by
Ourobouros Press in 2001 in a limited edition of 1000 copies (mine is
#331). I'm doing an appraisal of the current value of this book, so I
searched Bookfinder to see what was listed there.

There are several copies listed, ranging in price from a low of $204
to a high of over $500 (the latter from a Seattle brick and mortar
store for a copy with a scuff on the cover!) One of the outliers,
pricing a copy at $430, was an outfit called "seattle_bookseller". I
wrote and asked why the price was so high, and got an amazingly
vituperative and abusive response, stating that this "WAS HOW THE RARE
BOOK BUSINESS WORKED" and that I "NEED A COURSE IN REMEDIAL ECONOMICS"
and so on.

I was a little surprised at this, but a little research turned up the
even more surprising information that this seller is one "Luis M.
Arsupial", the same person who was doing business (kinda) as
"texas_bookseller" up until about six months ago, and who previously
created a huge stink in this group over some questionable
transactions!

This kind of pricing seems like nothing more than gouging to me. I
could buy two copies of this book for what this yoyo is asking for it.
I can only assume that he's doing business on a basis of relying on
his customers being ignorant and not doing their research. Based on
the listings on Bookfinder, I'd estimate the value of this book at
$225 to $250, certainly nowhere close to $430.

Is this a usual practice? Do a lot of booksellers price their wares in
the hopes that their buyers will be too stupid to know that they're
being asked to pay twice what a book is worth?

(Apparently this "Luis M. Arsupial"--"marsupial"...?--was once known
as "Jason Christopher Hughes", a name which turns up a wide variety of
odd and amazing postings on USENET...)

I remember some sort of hoo-haa over "Luis M. Arsupial" but forget the
details, so my comments are general.

First: Good for you for doing your homework! The first rule of internet book
buying is "buyer beware".

Second: While the seller's response to you was over the top and
unprofessional, it's hard to know by how much without knowing how your
inquiry was phrased. Did you say: "I collect this author and I'd be happy to
know if you've got something special I haven't seen before that would make
your book worth more than most of the others I've seen"? Or did you say:
"You are a price gouger and a thief who preys on the ignorant and unwary.
Why are you charging so much?"?

Again, I'm ignoring whatever reputation the seller has already acquired.
Just talking in general.

One possibility is that the seller doesn't even own the book. That happened
to me not too long ago. I sold one to another seller who asked me to drop
ship the book. When I looked at his web site, he had copied my description
lock, stock, and barrel and upped my price by a third.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that that's what's really happening with your
seattle_bookseller. He finds books worth a few hundred dollars, prices his
copy a bit below the top, and plans on buying one of the lower priced books
if he has to fulfill the order. What could be better? Somebody else buys and
stocks the book, and it doesn't cost him a cent until he gets the order.
Again, just speculation, but that's my first guess.

All that said, basically used books are worth exactly what some one will pay
for them. The internet has been a great leveler as far as pricing, because
most people, even with a simple Google search, can do exactly what you did
and get the range of prices available. In the "old days", books moved much
differently. Sellers had shops, and priced for their geographic areas and
their specialty. A book that was priced at $12 in one shop could bring $50
or $200 when moved to a dealer who had the right clients for it. Sales from
dealer to dealer were a much bigger part of the trade. It was understood
that part of the value a dealer added to a book was his knowledge of the
collecting area and years of cultivating the kind of customers who would
want that kind of book.

So...your seller may indeed be a sleaze-bag. I would certainly never buy
from him based on the unprofessional response he made to you. But if he's
got the book and he wants to list it at $400+ when most copies are in the
$200-range, so what? Maybe his policy is to never revise a listing, and he's
just waiting for the market to catch up with him! You don't have to buy the
book, and he doesn't have to justify his price to you, unless he's got a
really good story that truly makes the book worth what he's charging.

Not that I think it's necessarily right for a dealer to charge any price at
all. I've seen some things that would simply embarrass me to be involved
with. There was an auction on eBay two weeks ago where a seller paired two
common $25 books, hyped the illustrator and sold the pair for over $200. And
a copycat did the same thing with the same titles and netted over $100.
Again, nobody made any of the customers bid on the auctions, and the books
were started at a very reasonable price, but seeing the final values, I just
cringed. I would hate to be either of those sellers when their customers
found out they could have gotten the same books for a quarter or half the
price on amazon.

And that, my friend, is why serious collectors often support specific
sellers over a period of years, even if it means they pay a small premium in
the pricing over what the same titles in the same condition would bring in
other venues. They do it because they know they can trust the seller to
accurately describe the books, to stand behind their products, and to price
fairly, even if not at the cheapest price.

Alice

--
Book collecting terms illustrated. Occasional books for sale.http://www.mywingsbooks.com/

That 'unprofessional response' is completely fictional. This person
never, ever contacted Seattle Bookseller regarding this or any other
book, ever.

On Mar 3, 3:10 pm, "RF" wrote:
On Mar 3, 6:05 pm, "seattle_bookseller"
wrote:



On Mar 3, 2:48 pm, "RF" wrote:

Feedback 30 days 90 days 365 days Lifetime
Positive: 97% 94% 94% 93%
Neutral: 0% 0% 1% 2%
Negative: 3% 6% 4% 5%
Count: 75 179 415 724

That 93% folks.
93%
93%
93%
93%
93%
93%
Did I mention 93%

its 94%+ actually, over 365 days. and that's high for amazon. i
have 99.6%+ on ebay.

Yet you have the time to post here endlessly. Strange, very strange.
By the way did I mention 93%?
BTW: 94% still sucks, I don't know why you're so proud of it.

I can barely keep up.

That's what your wife says!

You weak insults are wholly puerile and not worthy of a 6th grader on
a playground. You have the wit and originality of a damp cardboard
box.

On Mar 3, 3:10 pm, "RF" wrote:
On Mar 3, 6:05 pm, "seattle_bookseller"
wrote:



On Mar 3, 2:48 pm, "RF" wrote:

Feedback 30 days 90 days 365 days Lifetime
Positive: 97% 94% 94% 93%
Neutral: 0% 0% 1% 2%
Negative: 3% 6% 4% 5%
Count: 75 179 415 724

That 93% folks.
93%
93%
93%
93%
93%
93%
Did I mention 93%

its 94%+ actually, over 365 days. and that's high for amazon. i
have 99.6%+ on ebay.

Yet you have the time to post here endlessly. Strange, very strange.
By the way did I mention 93%?
BTW: 94% still sucks, I don't know why you're so proud of it.

I can barely keep up.

That's what your wife says!

Your weak and puerile insults are not worthy of a mouthy 6th grader on
a playground. You have less real with and less originality that a
damp cardboard box possesses.

On Mar 3, 6:17 pm, "seattle_bookseller"
wrote:
On Mar 3, 3:10 pm, "RF" wrote:





On Mar 3, 6:05 pm, "seattle_bookseller"
wrote:

On Mar 3, 2:48 pm, "RF" wrote:

Feedback 30 days 90 days 365 days Lifetime
Positive: 97% 94% 94% 93%
Neutral: 0% 0% 1% 2%
Negative: 3% 6% 4% 5%
Count: 75 179 415 724

That 93% folks.
93%
93%
93%
93%
93%
93%
Did I mention 93%

its 94%+ actually, over 365 days. and that's high for amazon. i
have 99.6%+ on ebay.

Yet you have the time to post here endlessly. Strange, very strange.
By the way did I mention 93%?
BTW: 94% still sucks, I don't know why you're so proud of it.

I can barely keep up.

That's what your wife says!

Your weak and puerile insults are not worthy of a mouthy 6th grader on
a playground. You have less real with and less originality that a
damp cardboard box possesses.- Hide quoted text -

Yep, it sounds so much wittier the second time you said it, stinky!

On Mar 3, 3:17 pm, "seattle_bookseller"
wrote:
On Mar 3, 3:10 pm, "RF" wrote:



On Mar 3, 6:05 pm, "seattle_bookseller"
wrote:

On Mar 3, 2:48 pm, "RF" wrote:

Feedback 30 days 90 days 365 days Lifetime
Positive: 97% 94% 94% 93%
Neutral: 0% 0% 1% 2%
Negative: 3% 6% 4% 5%
Count: 75 179 415 724

That 93% folks.
93%
93%
93%
93%
93%
93%
Did I mention 93%

its 94%+ actually, over 365 days. and that's high for amazon. i
have 99.6%+ on ebay.

Yet you have the time to post here endlessly. Strange, very strange.
By the way did I mention 93%?
BTW: 94% still sucks, I don't know why you're so proud of it.

I can barely keep up.

That's what your wife says!

Your weak and puerile insults are not worthy of a mouthy 6th grader on
a playground. You have less real with and less originality that a
damp cardboard box possesses.

typo - less real WIT.

On Mar 3, 6:20 pm, "seattle_bookseller"
wrote:
On Mar 3, 3:17 pm, "seattle_bookseller"
wrote:





On Mar 3, 3:10 pm, "RF" wrote:

On Mar 3, 6:05 pm, "seattle_bookseller"
wrote:

On Mar 3, 2:48 pm, "RF" wrote:

Feedback 30 days 90 days 365 days Lifetime
Positive: 97% 94% 94% 93%
Neutral: 0% 0% 1% 2%
Negative: 3% 6% 4% 5%
Count: 75 179 415 724

That 93% folks.
93%
93%
93%
93%
93%
93%
Did I mention 93%

its 94%+ actually, over 365 days. and that's high for amazon. i
have 99.6%+ on ebay.

Yet you have the time to post here endlessly. Strange, very strange.
By the way did I mention 93%?
BTW: 94% still sucks, I don't know why you're so proud of it.

I can barely keep up.

That's what your wife says!

Your weak and puerile insults are not worthy of a mouthy 6th grader on
a playground. You have less real with and less originality that a
damp cardboard box possesses.

typo - less real WIT.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

How's that body odor problem working out for you stinky?
Don't you have to pack 200 books to be lost by the USPS?

On Feb 10, 10:46 am, "Don Phillipson"
wrote:
"Stone Mirror (the Great and Terrible)" wrote in
ooglegroups.com...

Based on
the listings on Bookfinder, I'd estimate the value of this book at
$225 to $250, certainly nowhere close to $430.

You may have a mistaken apprehension of the retail
market for genuinely rare books. In comparison with
other goods (e.g. computers, e.g. mass-produced new
books) vendors cannot set prices in order to undercut
the competition (because these items are so scarce
that price competition seldom works.) By contrast,
haggling (bargaining) over price may be as common
as in some other markets (e.g. automobiles.)

We still do not know why you did not buy a couple
of copies at $250 and offer to sell them to this dealer
at $350.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

I paid $50.00 for my copies.

On Mar 3, 6:29 pm, "seattle_bookseller"
wrote:

I paid $50.00 for my copies.- Hide quoted text -

Who cares? Everyone here hates you - just like your customers!
Now go take a shower Mr. Stinky!

On Mar 3, 3:40 pm, "RF" wrote:
On Mar 3, 6:29 pm, "seattle_bookseller"
wrote:

I paid $50.00 for my copies.- Hide quoted text -

Who cares? Everyone here hates you - just like your customers!
Now go take a shower Mr. Stinky!

Ho-hum. Yawn. Call the White House when you achieve real humor.
That will be just about the time Jesus H. Christ rides a flying Pig
straight out of Hell holding an ice cream cone in one hand and a copy
of 'Atlas Shrugged' in the other.

"seattle_bookseller" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Feb 10, 8:40 am, "my-wings" wrote:

snip

Second: While the seller's response to you was over the top and
unprofessional, it's hard to know by how much without knowing how your
inquiry was phrased. Did you say: "I collect this author and I'd be happy
to
know if you've got something special I haven't seen before that would
make
your book worth more than most of the others I've seen"? Or did you say:
"You are a price gouger and a thief who preys on the ignorant and unwary.
Why are you charging so much?"?

Again, I'm ignoring whatever reputation the seller has already acquired.
Just talking in general.

snip

So...your seller may indeed be a sleaze-bag. I would certainly never buy
from him based on the unprofessional response he made to you. But if he's
got the book and he wants to list it at $400+ when most copies are in the
$200-range, so what?

snip

That 'unprofessional response' is completely fictional. This person
never, ever contacted Seattle Bookseller regarding this or any other
book, ever.


1. Above is a lesson in how to trim a post to leave only the pertinent
parts. It would be a nice knack for you to pick up, if you're going to
continue to post on Usenet.

2. I heard you the first 83,000 times and didn't think it was worth a
response before. You haven't changed my mind.

Alice