5.09.2011

Everyone Misses Stuff

I mentioned a visit from one of our regular scouts earlier. I've found a couple of decent internet finds from the mountain of stuff we bought, which is interesting given the withering intensity he brings to straining books for the internet operation which generates most of his income.

First, he has a scanner. He held out for years, but as a man without a store he's much more dependent on public sales than we are, and public sales are overrun with the Borg. He couldn't beat 'em so he joined em. Second, he's savvy enough to know scanners miss stuff and he had many years of 'real' book buying under his belt before making the switch. His stuff goes through multiple 'washes' before we see it- he lists the obvious stuff himself, he has a list of bay area bookstores who get 'first look' at what's left (and pay more than we do per book for the privilege), and there are bookstores behind us in line who pay progressively less, until finally the stuff no bookstore wants is shipped off to Alibris and their automated listing service. When Leons still existed he'd sell to us in the morning then drive across town and sell to them in the afternoon.

Even so, I always find a few things. Today's discoveries are a 1st edition of a biography of Bill W., the founder of AA. AA people are notoriously 'collect-y', and early editions of core AA books bring ridiculous prices. This one isn't core, but it looks like it'll sell pretty quick at around $30. I also found an exhibition catalog for a painter that was tricky- it looked like a junky graphic art brochure and the copywrite page was buried in the back, but it ended up being 'worth' $50. I've also nosed out some oddball pocket books and a few other things.

When I extract a few hundred dollars of net stuff from a $1300 buy made from a guy that makes his living off Amazon, that gives the shop a leg up.

I was chatting with him at the counter and noted as I was going through a box that if he came in tomorrow with exactly those same books, I'd probably buy a different mix. There's always the super obvious stuff that whistles and waves a handful of money to get your attention, and there's always crap that you'd never buy, but between those two poles is a wide range of stuff that looks pretty good. One day maybe you buy these books, another day maybe you buy those books. I guess that's how he can show a van-load of books to a bunch of stores before we see them and we can still find over a thousand bucks worth of stock to buy.

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