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#21
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Website for finding out what my books are worth
R. Totale wrote:
On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:29:37 GMT, "foad" wrote: "R. Totale" wrote in message . .. On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:21:02 GMT, "foad" wrote: "R. Totale" wrote in message m... On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:21:05 -0800 (PST), David Downing wrote: I'm looking to sell them for as much as they're worth. Can somebody tell me what a good website woulld be for this? eBay. Start them at 99 cents. They will sell for as much as someone is willing to pay you for them, and that's how much they are worth. Wow that's stupid. How do you figure? Auctions have been used for hundreds of years to sell items from thimbles to mansions for exactly what they're worth (at that particular moment in time). How better to determine what something is worth? A firm cash offer beats speculation, guesses and opinion every time. That's very postmodern. Ebay will tell you the minimum price that the 24 people who are searching for a particular item in a particular week are willing to pay for it. As well as the maximum, which is what it's worth. I don't see Bauman's Rare Books selling their stuff on eBay. There are many kinds of markets for many purposes. An auction market is fine for certain types of fungible goods, provided that enough people know to look there, as with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, for instance. But the more unique goods are, the more you generally need time to sell them. For that, a Bauman's is ideal. They have a web site and a place of busines. An exception would be the well-publicized (internationally, that is) auction of a rare work of art. I was just listening to NPR about the planned auction of a rare (700+ yr old) copy of the Magna Carta. It is being advertized world wide. It is the only copy likely to come up for sale in the lives of anyone interested. These circumstances make it suitable for that special kind of auction. But, you would not sell it on eBay. The mechanism of eBay is not suitable for such an item. The clock ticking limits prices on the high end. Retail stores are best for goods that need to be compared (televisions, for instance). The complexity of our markets reflects the complexity of types of goods, ways of investigation, social circumstances. you wouldn't sell the latest Harry Potter on eBay when a fixed price (more or less) at your nearest Border's gets it to your customer base on Day 1. Besides, the publishers would want to control the price and on eBay it could slip below what is acceptable to them. Francis A. Miniter |
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#22
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Website for finding out what my books are worth
On Dec 20, 1:51 pm, "Francis A. Miniter"
wrote: But the more unique goods are, the more you generally need time to sell them. Something can not become "more unique". Either it is unique or it is not. |
#23
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Website for finding out what my books are worth
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:51:09 -0500, "Francis A. Miniter"
wrote: I don't see Bauman's Rare Books selling their stuff on eBay (followed by lots of other blather) And this relates to the original poster looking for a =website= (not a Manhattan retail store, not Sotheby's who wouldn't take his stuff anyway) to sell his merchandise on, as in the title of his thread, how? |
#24
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Website for finding out what my books are worth
R. Totale wrote:
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:51:09 -0500, "Francis A. Miniter" wrote: I don't see Bauman's Rare Books selling their stuff on eBay (followed by lots of other blather) And this relates to the original poster looking for a =website= (not a Manhattan retail store, not Sotheby's who wouldn't take his stuff anyway) to sell his merchandise on, as in the title of his thread, how? It relates to _your_ comments about eBay and auctions as a mechanism for determining market value. Francis A. Miniter |
#25
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Website for finding out what my books are worth
On Dec 18, 5:21*pm, David Downing wrote:
I've got a bunch of books that I think might be worth something -- for example, several P.G. Wodehouse Autograph Editions -- and I'm looking for a website that would let me input title, author, and other relevant information and would give me back an estimated value. *I did Google "antiquarian books" but the sites I got back seemed aimed more at people who were looking to buy books. *I'm looking to sell them for as much as they;re worth. Can somebody tell me *what a good website woulld be for this? Thanks David You are asking the impossible. The only way a website could CORRECTLY give you the value of a book would be for them to have a real-time tie in with Abebooks, Bookfinder, AddALL, etc., and further, to have the capacity to continually read listings and average those which were both pertinent and legitmate. That is not likely to happen soon. I sometimes see people out scouting around with those hand-helds which are downloading supposed "book values" from a service they subscribe to. What a joke! Not long ago, I noticed someone browsing in a used bookstores with one of those gizmos. I struck up a conversation with the person, and I ask him if he would be good enough to tell me the value of an expensive art book in the store. Now, the store had this book priced at $300 dollars, since it is quite scare and also signed. From curiosity, I had checked that book out,a couple of weeks earlier and I knew that there were only two other dealers offering that book on the entire Interent (as opposed to any single venue). One offered a brand new shrink-wrapped copy for $1,000 and another offered a damaged copy for $250. Anyway, the person with the hand-held checked and reported that his service told him that the book was worth eighty dollars! That experience provided an excellent example of how worthless such a "service" is. Providing they do not cut their data from whole cloth, then they are selling woefully out-of-date information. Perhaps that book did cost $80 brand-new a few years back or pehaps someone listed it for that on eBay in 2003.. Anyway, if there are only three copies available on the entire Internet, priced from the damaged copy at $250 to the shrink-wrapped copy at $1,000 it is worth a whole lot more than $80. Lately I have even seen some seedy-looking types who are somewhat furtively scrounging around in thrift stores and library donation stores with hand-helds, obviously hooked into something sold as a "book valuation service." Such folks remind me of those people who used to invest a couple of hundred dollars in those "metal finders" and then go out on the beach and scrounge around for small change dropped by beachgoers. Anyway, if anyone is serious about learning book values, the only way he or she will get that knowledge is by looking up many thousands of books in the real-time top venues such as Abebooks and the others. Wasting money on cockamamie "book valuation services" peddling obsolete information in order to "find gold at your library donation store or thrift shop" is ridiculous. [Memo from the upstairs office.] |
#26
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Website for finding out what my books are worth
On Dec 19, 7:46*am, R. Totale wrote:
On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:33:52 +0000, Jack Campin - bogus address wrote: I'm looking to sell them for as much as they're worth. Can somebody tell me *what a good website woulld be for this? eBay. Start them at 99 cents. They will sell for as much as someone is willing to pay you for them, and that's how much they are worth. Wow that's stupid. How do you figure? Auctions have been used for hundreds of years to sell items from thimbles to mansions for exactly what they're worth (at that particular moment in time). How better to determine what something is worth? Most goods since the invention of money have *not* been sold at auction, but by the seller fixing the price. EBay tells you what you'll get if you advertise to a rather specific clientele and finish the sale in a week. *It doesn't tell you what you'll get with different marketing and more patience. Making EBay the standard is like saying sex is worth what prostitutes get for it. *Women with better marketing strategies marry millionaires, but it takes more than a few minutes to make the deal. But the original poster did not ask for a marketing strategy which at some time may or may not birng him the maximum possible return upon surrendering his possessions. He asked for a =website= where he could sell the items for "as much as they are worth". I'd still say there is no website better than eBay for his stated purpose.- Most of the time, listing with Amazon and selling at the Amazon low price would bring better results Ebay can be great with popular collectibles, such as old Wizard of Oz books, vintage Hardy Boys and Nancy Drews with dust-jackets, and the type of old cookbooks which are so popular these days with collectors. But when you get away from the very popular items which many people are looking for every day, then you are usually paying ebay to list something that perhaps no one is even looking for during the time you have it listed. Actually, in favoring Amazon I am only referring to books with ISBN's, because for pre-ISBN items their search engine is not even close to comparing with Abebooks or AddALL's. Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - |
#27
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Website for finding out what my books are worth
On Dec 18 2007, 8:21*pm, David Downing
wrote: I've got a bunch of books that I think might be worth something -- for example, several P.G. Wodehouse Autograph Editions -- and I'm looking for a website that would let me input title, author, and other relevant information and would give me back an estimated value. *I did Google "antiquarian books" but the sites I got back seemed aimed more at people who were looking to buy books. *I'm looking to sell them for as much as they;re worth. Can somebody tell me *what a good website woulld be for this? Thanks David This is one of the top questions I receive via my site http://www.leatherboundtreasure.com/ In my opinion the best way to find the true value of your books is to search for the same books listed for sale online. Any site listing values of books are simply estimating because the values are always fluctuating. It takes effort, but it is the most acurate way to judge just what your books are truly worth. |
#28
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Website for finding out what my books are worth
On Sun, 13 Jan 2008 09:05:10 -0800 (PST), helloguy
wrote: On Dec 18 2007, 8:21*pm, David Downing wrote: I've got a bunch of books that I think might be worth something -- for example, several P.G. Wodehouse Autograph Editions -- and I'm looking for a website that would let me input title, author, and other relevant information and would give me back an estimated value. *I did Google "antiquarian books" but the sites I got back seemed aimed more at people who were looking to buy books. *I'm looking to sell them for as much as they;re worth. Can somebody tell me *what a good website woulld be for this? Thanks David This is one of the top questions I receive via my site http://www.leatherboundtreasure.com/ In my opinion the best way to find the true value of your books is to search for the same books listed for sale online. Any site listing values of books are simply estimating because the values are always fluctuating. It takes effort, but it is the most acurate way to judge just what your books are truly worth. That's "accurate". You seem to be contradicting yourself above. On the one hand you say you should go look at prices listed online, but on the other hand you say these are only estimates because the values are always fluctuating. (You leave out that anyone can put any ridiculous price on an item offered for sale, which doesn't mean any sane person would ever pay it.) Wouldn't one be better off checking prices where an item has actually changed hands, like the auction results which have been published yearly for more than 100 years in both Europe and America? |
#29
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Website for finding out what my books are worth
"helloguy" wrote in message ... This is one of the top questions I receive via my site (snip) Which tells people that the best places to sell their books are EBay [sic] and craigslist? |
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