My There's a Coincidence! was:Value of Eurographica edition ?

m.adams wrote:

As you're posting from 82.51.63.51, it would appear that you live
in Florence yourself. So why not contact Nero Wolfe, the Ebay seller
of the Reginal Hill title you mention ?

Luckily enough I do not live in Florence, but near Pisa, since I'm
Nero Wolfe too. I did not want to put too blunt a statement about
my ebay auction (I did not add a link) but I was really trying
to understand if there is an indicative value for the two books I own.
When once I lurked more often this group, this kind of question was
common and commonly obtained useful replies.

Now there's a surprise!
And guess what? Both books were printed in Italy too!
Now there's another coincidence!

Please, do not strain your investigative capabilities too much.
For what I know, several books of this series by Eurographica

(which is based in Helsinky) have been printed in Italy on
a special made paper (which onestly I do not like very much).
But I bought the Westlake book from USA several years ago and the
Reginald Hill's one from Great Britain more recently.

Tootle pip!

To you too. :-)
g.

dr_demento wrote:

I did not want to put too blunt a statement about
my ebay auction (I did not add a link)

Fair enough, but it's a common ploy of spammers to refer to items they are
selling with specious guile. "I spotted this eBay auction for [insert
whatever you like here]. Do you people think the seller's asking a fair
price?" That kind of thing.

I was really trying to understand if there is an indicative
value for the two books I own.

OK. Well, as you say, these specific items may not come up very often, but
have you tried searching for comparable works?

Try going to ABE (http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchEntry) and just
entering the author's name and sorting the results by "Highest Price" (leave
the other fields empty).

The first result is 35 first editions, including the signed, limited Horse
Laugh, for $2650. That's an average of well under $100. As a signed, limited
edition, you might expect Horse Laugh to be above average, but you need to
confirm this, and you need to try and work out how much above average.

I know nothing about Westlake, and a quick look at the results of the ABE
search suggests that prices are all over the place, with one seller asking
$1950 for a signed copy of the first edition of The Hot Rock, and another
asking only $450. One thing you could do is take a look at other signed,
limited editions on offer (the seller of the 35 firsts lists some of them;
that should help).

For example, there are quite a few copies of the signed, limited edition of
A Likely Story (1984), at prices ranging from as little as $32 - $116.
Prices for the signed, limited editions of High Adventure and Drowned Hopes
are in a not dissimilar bracket.

Unlike these, Horse Laugh never came out in any other edition, but unless
you can see any reason why that would make a difference I'd be inclined to
value it in the same kind of price bracket. For a start, it's a collection
of short stories, and as such is probably of less interest to a Westlake
freak than his novels.

But, hey, you may put it on eBay and get people bidding it up to a much
higher figure, and completely giving me the lie! As John Stovall says, in
the secondhand book market everything's worth whatever someone's prepared to
pay for it.

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com

John Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:

Fair enough, but it's a common ploy of spammers to refer to items they are
selling with specious guile. "I spotted this eBay auction for [insert
whatever you like here]. Do you people think the seller's asking a fair
price


I'm sorry, I've been out of this group too long. I did'n realize
I was falling in a cliche'.

Thank you very much for your suggestions.
All in all I think I will not separate from my books,
an event that, since I'n not used to it, is always a little
traumatic... :-)
regards,
giovanni aka nero wolfe aka dr.demento

michael adams wrote:

Fair enough. Just the two points about that. First up, as you didn't
actually include a link to the auction - and thus as you weren't
providing any extra information about the book anyway - I can't really
see what purpose there was, in mentioning the auction at all.

Yes. I tend to overestimate other people expertize (expecially
in fields which are not my own). When I wrote that the message
I probably tought that if an expert about Eurographica editions was
reading, then the title was enough to pinpoint the book.

Secondly, being given to curiosity I couldn't help noticing that
your 100% feedback rests on 87 transactions - which as far
as I can tell anyway - in only one of which were you a
seller. Like you I have 100% feedback because I'm solely a buyer,
and like you, I've found that when you're a buyer using Paypal it's
fairly easy to build up a 100% feedback profile.

I can't help that. I've always been a buyer (on ebay since 1999).
I've probably more than one feedback as a seller (say 3 or 4) but
before 2001 ebay did not distinguish between seller of buyer feedback.
You can check this easily, if you notice that I have a total of 95
positive feedbacks of which 1 as seller and 43 as buyer. The others
were not categorized. On the other side, if I had started building
up a fake credibility since 1999, this means I'm quite a patient or very
negligent crook...

Anyway the point is that generally I do not sell books:
I'm not, strictly speaking, a collector, but I have completistic tendencies.
When I like an author I like to have all (s)he wrote. I'm
mainly interested in the words, not in the paper they are written
onto. So most of my books are used paperbacks or ex-lib or in general
books that are not collectable. Sometimes, to second my weakness
(I regard completism and collectionism as mild mental deseases...)
I'm forced to buy better editions, since the bad ones do not exist.
This was the case of the Reginald Hill collection of short stories:
one of them it is not published elsewhere. But it is very short,
I have taken digital photos (not a scan, to respect the book)
so I really do not need the book anymore.
For the similar book by Westlake was even worse: I did not find
anywhere a list of contents, so I had to buy the very scarce book
only to find that I already have all the stories in other editions....
(By the way, I have a checklist of westlake at this address:
with no ads, no pop-up, no sales, no nothing:
http://www.imc.pi.cnr.it/resta/westlake.html ) to help other people
in collecting the short stories. Sooner of later I'll add some
links to Amazon, but I think later, since I'm deadly lazy...

It isn't that I'm suggetsing there's anything sinister in this
particular case

I hope so. I regard myself as quite cristalline. My address is
traceable, my name is clear. Using google it is easy to see
I've a stable position as computer science researcher in a
national agency. I've coauthored a book and several
papers published on international journals (in my field).
I admit that I never thougt that potential buyers will try
to figure me out (even if as a buyer I'll do that sometimes ...)

[ some interesting considerations by Adams cutted ]

Limited editions of highly specialised authors are a very illiquid medium
for investment.

I did not buy books as investement, that's my fault. In general
my feeling is completely adverse to separate myself from my books.
Only recently I'm starting to look at these books in english,
say 800, thinking that probably I'll not read them again,
and that probably my children will not be interested in them
(since we do not share the same tastes).
So I'll probably try to sell the very few of them that can have a
market. But I promise I'll not disturb the newsgroup again.
regards,
giovanni