A couple of years ago I discovered that I had two copies of a long out of
print monograph. I looked it up on a couple of book selling websites and
found that the asking price was several hundred dollars (the original price
was around $30).
I took one copy to a reputable second hand bookshop and was told that it
was worth around $25 and they had two copies in stock. They suggested that
I could list it with an online bookseller but it would be a miracle if it
sold at all, let alone for several hundred dollars. I sold it to a
colleague for $20!
The moral of the story is to check with reputable bookstores before
shelling out your hard earned money for books with inflated prices.
Cheers
David
On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 5:59 PM, Peter Shute <> wrote:
> It was also suggested in the article I liked to, that the price goes up if
> there are a lot of page views for the book, so it's not just about demand,
> it's also about possible demand.
>
> Peter Shute
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> > On 27 Jul 2015, at 3:40 pm, Carl Clifford <>
> wrote:
> >
> > Out of curiosity, I just looked up Birds of Wallacea on Amazon. They
> want USD 899.97 for it. Needless to say, my copy is going to chained and
> padlocked to my bookcase. I believe that the prices for books of this type
> on Amazon are priced on the basis of the laws of supply and demand, and the
> philosophy of "there is a sucker born every minute".
> >
> > Carl Clifford
> >
> >
> >> On 27 Jul 2015, at 1:20 pm, wrote:
> >>
> >> This appears to be a not irregular scam with 'out of print' books.
> >>
> >> I found a copy of the out of print 'Albatrosses and Petrels Across the
> >> World' a couple of years back on ebay, sold from the US. IIRC there
> >> was a $500 'Buy it now' option but they would only sell to the US so I
> >> needed to set up a proxy mailbox.
> >>
> >> While I was doing that it sold.
> >>
> >> And was immediately relisted for $2500 by the new 'owner'.
> >>
> >> I emailed the new seller and wished them luck selling an obscure
> >> ornithological text book at about 10 times the original RRP.
> >>
> >> A few days later they had obviously reneged on the deal and it was
> >> back for sale at $500 through the original seller. I'd sorted out my
> >> proxy mailbox by then so it now sits in my bookcase :)
> >>
> >> mjh
> >>
> >> -------------------------
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