Not just Book Happy, but BOOK INSANE
Correspondent:: nenslo
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 23:39:41 -0800
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Earlier this week Mrs. Nenslo spotted a notice on craig's list about
some books. She got lucky and got in there first and made an
appointment to meet the guy at the storage locker the next day. Turns
out it was remnants of a huge crate that had been placed into a storage
warehouse in 1954, and auctioned off when they closed the warehouse this
year. In the book business you get used to seeing the same old crap
over and over... well this was ENTIRELY DIFFERENT crap. Two tightly
packed station wagon loads, maybe a thousand books, and even the
cardboard boxes they were in were fifty years old. Lots of old novels,
sure, but maybe 20 percent of them were different and better with
definite sales potential.
So now we have boxes in the dining room, boxes in the basement, and a
table filled with books stacked twelve deep just to be looked up to see
if they are any good, stuff pulled from the boxes as just maybes or
probablies. Mrs. N pretty much needs to do all the looking up herself
to get accurate pricing, so I figured just for fun I would go through
the boxes in the basement from which we had pulled what we thought were
the best ones.
Perhaps I should describe what constitutes a possibility in this batch -
a biography of the wife of Thomas Carlyle, or a book about Whaling Wives
or The Old Coast Road from Boston to Plymouth, things of unique historic
value is mostly what looks good in this bunch of stuff. Very few things
that are even vaguely weird - the one notable exception is a book
entitled DOPE from the 1920s, which contains the remarkable statement,
and I am not making this up, "Enough marihuana can be grown in a window
box to drive every person in America stark, staring, raving mad." I
TOTALLY FUCKING WISH!!! So I started going through the books downstairs
again and pulling more stuff to look up just for laughs since I am not
allowed to look stuff up for real and I told the boss I would just give
them a thumbs up or down, i.e. if they looked good I'd put them on the
table and if they looked bad I'd put them back downstairs. When you
look things up on BookFinder, what looks bad is 246 copies starting at
$2.95 and going up to $12. What looks good is six to twenty copies
starting at $20. That sort of thing.
So here I am looking stuff up and getting mostly nothing when out of the
blue an otherwise unassuming bit of fiction I find in this edition
(first) with a half dozen copies starting at 45 bucks! I figure that's
my score for the night and am happy. Very next thing I pick up, a silly
little book in the third printing of the second edition from 1950 has
two copies at 65 BUCKS. Earlier editions go into the hundreds. So I
figure THAT'S my score for the night and I can just relax. Couple of
books later I LIKE TA CRAP because there are again a half dozen copies
in this edition STARTING AT $65 AND GOING TO $125! That's it. I am
done for the day. I can't take the stress.
Wondering what we paid for the lot? Well, if we sold those three books
tomorrow we'd be making a profit.
What a business.
Correspondent:: "Rev Chain Smerker"
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 07:45:55 GMT
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"nenslo" wrote in message
news:41DF8E3A.165CE659@yahoox.com...
> Earlier this week Mrs. Nenslo spotted a notice on craig's list about
> some books. She got lucky and got in there first and made an
> appointment to meet the guy at the storage locker the next day. Turns
> out it was remnants of a huge crate that had been placed into a storage
> warehouse in 1954, and auctioned off when they closed the warehouse this
> year. In the book business you get used to seeing the same old crap
> over and over... well this was ENTIRELY DIFFERENT crap. Two tightly
> packed station wagon loads, maybe a thousand books, and even the
> cardboard boxes they were in were fifty years old. Lots of old novels,
> sure, but maybe 20 percent of them were different and better with
> definite sales potential.
>
> So now we have boxes in the dining room, boxes in the basement, and a
> table filled with books stacked twelve deep just to be looked up to see
> if they are any good, stuff pulled from the boxes as just maybes or
> probablies. Mrs. N pretty much needs to do all the looking up herself
> to get accurate pricing, so I figured just for fun I would go through
> the boxes in the basement from which we had pulled what we thought were
> the best ones.
>
> Perhaps I should describe what constitutes a possibility in this batch -
> a biography of the wife of Thomas Carlyle, or a book about Whaling Wives
> or The Old Coast Road from Boston to Plymouth, things of unique historic
> value is mostly what looks good in this bunch of stuff. Very few things
> that are even vaguely weird - the one notable exception is a book
> entitled DOPE from the 1920s, which contains the remarkable statement,
> and I am not making this up, "Enough marihuana can be grown in a window
> box to drive every person in America stark, staring, raving mad." I
> TOTALLY FUCKING WISH!!! So I started going through the books downstairs
> again and pulling more stuff to look up just for laughs since I am not
> allowed to look stuff up for real and I told the boss I would just give
> them a thumbs up or down, i.e. if they looked good I'd put them on the
> table and if they looked bad I'd put them back downstairs. When you
> look things up on BookFinder, what looks bad is 246 copies starting at
> $2.95 and going up to $12. What looks good is six to twenty copies
> starting at $20. That sort of thing.
>
> So here I am looking stuff up and getting mostly nothing when out of the
> blue an otherwise unassuming bit of fiction I find in this edition
> (first) with a half dozen copies starting at 45 bucks! I figure that's
> my score for the night and am happy. Very next thing I pick up, a silly
> little book in the third printing of the second edition from 1950 has
> two copies at 65 BUCKS. Earlier editions go into the hundreds. So I
> figure THAT'S my score for the night and I can just relax. Couple of
> books later I LIKE TA CRAP because there are again a half dozen copies
> in this edition STARTING AT $65 AND GOING TO $125! That's it. I am
> done for the day. I can't take the stress.
>
> Wondering what we paid for the lot? Well, if we sold those three books
> tomorrow we'd be making a profit.
>
> What a business.
Nice work, im amazed there are some people who would pay top $ for some book
though, hmmm I may just have to order 100 copies of the Stangs book, could
be worth a bit when he....
Correspondent:: König Prüß, GfbAEV
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 08:07:11 GMT
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nenslo wrote book stuff--
Yeah, old books! I had a twenty-five cent copy of
H. Allen Smith that turned out to be worth $75!
Somebody tossed out a 1917 edition of
"Blow the Man Down"
And not just old books, but leaving the Korean store
which is not far from the local "Borders" stacked up
by the corner of the building was maybe $500 of brand new
books of esoteric and occult nature, like "The Magician's Companion"
I have a 1st edition of "Dracula" that should be rebound.
"No, it doesn't say that I collect Raeboks, that's rare books!"
Yeah, a couple of loads of old books is quite a score!
Correspondent:: "Revi Shankar"
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2005 10:46:32 -0500
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"nenslo" wrote
> Earlier this week Mrs. Nenslo spotted a notice on craig's list about
> some books.
...
> the one notable exception is a book
> entitled DOPE from the 1920s, which contains the remarkable statement,
> and I am not making this up, "Enough marihuana can be grown in a window
> box to drive every person in America stark, staring, raving mad."
Wow. What's the bibliography of this book: Authors, publishers, etc.
> That's it. I am
> done for the day. I can't take the stress.
Don't worry, you'll be cranky has hell soon enough.
Correspondent:: nikolai kingsley
Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2005 03:06:04 +1100
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> a biography of the wife of Thomas Carlyle, or a book about Whaling Wives
aren't they the ones that fish from the top of the Whaling Wall?