Ethics & eBay – No, Really: Perspectives from a Modern Library Collector

Ah, Commerce! The sounds of the hawkers touting the superiority of their goods, the sights of the brightly colored merchandise shining in the sun, the smell of the camels, oh, wait. This isn’t Morocco. How could I have become so confused?

Maybe because were in eBay, the world’s largest flea market. And a flea bite is a flea bite, no matter what the source of the vermin whether it be a camel, a badly cleaned oriental rug, or a bookseller with the morals of a 42nd Street watch salesman.

Step Right Up Everyone’s a Winner

As a Modern Library specialist and webmaster of www.ModernLib.com, a website for Modern Library collectors, I get lots of e-mail from folks looking for leads on ML bargains and how best to find them. EBay would be the perfect place to find bargains if (among other things) you could trust what the listings say. But, of course, you can’t. Eternal vigilance is the price of a great deal (sorry, Mr. Jefferson), especially in a virtual reality viper’s nest.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that all, or even most, eBay sellers have larceny in their hearts. The majority of sellers I’ve encountered show no obvious inclinations to robbery or even deceit. Many are professional booksellers of long standing who adhere strenuously to a high code of ethics such as IOBA’s. Why, some of my best friends are . . .

Of course, the majority of eBay auctioneers are just-plain-folks selling old books from the basement and attic. They don’t describe books completely or accurately, have no clue how to do so, and they can’t be expected to. To these folks, eBay is just an electronic garage sale.

Still, the Internet highways are fraught with marauders when all roads lead to eBay.

Puffery versus Treachery

Here’s a fairly common near-prototype example of an eBay book description. It mixes plain old puffery with outright lies. The book advertised is a 1950s Modern Library copy of Brothers Karamazov.

“This Rare Hardcover Dustjacket Edition is in excellent condition. . . . This book is very elusive and copies of this scarce book are extremely hard to find.”

The puffery here lies in excellent condition.” Looking at the images of the book, it’s Very Good at best. But as we all know, the seller’s Near Fine is the buyer’s Near Very Good. But that’s OK - few mothers describe their children as average.

The problem in the description lies in touting the title as elusive and scarce. On the surface the claims are absurd because:

-Modern Library was a reprint house and few titles from the ’50s are scarce. –Karamazov is one of the most commonly reprinted titles in the world, and it certainly is common in the Modern Library. -At the time of the listing there were six copies of that printing available on eBay alone.

The technique is a common one: claim everything is unique and see how many sell. I looked at the other titles this seller had for sale. The same paragraph appeared in nearly all his listings.

Ignored Expertise

We all make mistakes especially other people. Being a natural troublemaker and the owner of an asbestos suit that I purchased many years ago soon after discovering newsgroups, I always write to sellers pointing out what I believe to be just plain mistakes, and I’m polite about it. After all, most book dealers are certainly not Modern Library experts! So I expect to see errors and omissions, not out of malice but out of ignorance.

Not assuming folks will take my word for it, and why should they, as I am just some guy with an e-mail address (Excuse me, dude in the next seat in the diner, you wouldn’t happen to know the first edition points for Styron’s The Long March, would you?”), I usually back up my claim with references to expert texts and reliable web sources. Here’s what I include:

-Description of the alleged error. -Statement of why I think it’s an error. -If I have it, reference to my source material. -Suggestion(s) for correcting the error.

My favorite response, a common one, runs something like, "Hey, thanks for that information, I didn’t know that.” I used to think that meant that the listing would be changed. Often it doesn’t. When I write back to the seller pointing out that he forgot to change the listing, I’ll be ignored or get the reply, “I don’t know how to change the listing because I already have bids.” (And yes, if the listing is for an important book and I’ve got the time I do write back with a pointer to the eBay instructions telling him how to do it. And no, the listing is usually still not changed.)

Reputable sellers are always interested in correcting errors. Beyond being the ethical thing to do, it’s just good business because it attracts long-term customers. These sellers welcome corrections and will thank you for them. (Well, sometimes they will and sometimes they’ll just fix the error without thanking you.)

Guarding Against Sleaze

Here’s a list I use to determine if I’m dealing with somebody with whom I need to take extra care.

-Has an eBay positive feedback rating of less than 99%. EBay folks are reluctant to leave negative feedback for fear of getting negative feedback in return. So if there is negative feedback, there’s reason to be suspicious. Feed the seller’s eBay name into the Toolhaus eBay Negative Search at http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs and see what comes back not just in terms of the kinds of complaints people have about the seller, but the responses that the seller gives.

-Accepts payment only by money order, cashier’s check, wired funds, or cash. This is a deal-killer for me. If the book turns out to be a dud, I’m stuck with it if I pay cashand all of the methods listed above are essentially cash, so I have no recourse.

-Does not allow returns ("all sales final”). This is another deal-killer on the face of it. The seller won’t stand behind his/her product. Often the listing has a qualifying statement such as, "All sales final unless the book is described incorrectly.” But in such listings the terms are generally arguable condition statements, and the seller has the final say about what’s an

-Refuses to answer questions or gives evasive answers. Prima facie Deal Killer # 3. I can’t think of a single reason that a legitimate seller would refuse to answer a question directly. Of course, “I don’t know” is a direct answer and often quite acceptable. This is especially the case when the dealer isn’t a Modern Library specialist. For example, if a seller claims that the book is a first edition and I ask for the points, he/she may only know the obvious one, say, a first edition slug on the copyright page. But determining firsts in Modern Library editions can be fairly complex, so I’ll tell the seller what the points are and ask him/her to verify that the points are there. If the seller doesn’t get back to me, I won’t bid.

-Totally ignores e-mail. I make no exceptions here, no matter how much I want the book. If the dealer won’t contact me before the auction, it’s a pretty good bet that I’ll be ignored if I have problems after I send my check.

-Wants unreasonable shipping charges. A great bargain is no bargain at all if the shipping charges are three times the price of the book. Some eBayers use shipping charges as a profit center. Generally I won’t bid when shipping is high. I check Priority Mail rates for the weight of the book and add $1.50 or $2.00 for packaging and handling. Any non-giant Modern Library book should have charges of around $5.50 to $6.00 tops, less if sent by Media Mail. If shipping charges and method aren’t listed, I always ask before I bid.

-Keeps bidder’s list secret. The chief reasons that sleazy sellers keep bidder’s lists secret is so that you can’t contact other bidders to ask embarrassing questions or to warn them of an obvious scam eBay’s auction interference rule” be damned), or so that you can’t see obvious shill bidders.

-Refuses to send additional scans/photos without good reason. Sometimes a book is too cheap for a seller to spend a lot of time on it. I’m not going to ask for extra scans for a five buck book. (I say "extra scans” because I usually ignore listings without scans unless the title is genuinely scarce.) But when the price gets over $20 or so, I won’t buy a book without scans of the front, spine, and back.

-Uses stock book photos. A stock photo for a used collectable? I don’t think so.

-Makes absurd claims. Here’s my absolute all-time favorite and incredibly common stupid statement: “There is no copyright nor print date so it’s probably a first edition.” Such claims can often be blamed on plain old ignorance rather than skullduggery, but it’s certainly a warning flag.

What an Ideal Modern Library Listing Includes

Sometimes sellers deliberately fudge on their listings knowing that what they have wouldn’t pass muster even as reading copies. But the vast majority of book listings on eBay are incomplete because most sellers aren’t professional booksellers, and many professional booksellers aren’t very good at their jobs. Additionally even the best non-specialist booksellers will have trouble determining the finer points of Modern Library titles. (By the way, sellers who handle a lot of Modern Library titles really need to own a copy of Henry Toledano’s Modern Library Price Guide, and should spend some time at the Modern Lib website as well.) Here’s a list of the items I tell folks they need to see in a listing or should ask the seller about before they bid on a Modern Library book.

-General condition statement based on AB Bookman’s Weekly guidelines. Actually, this may be the least important item on the list if clear scans and fault descriptions are present. Condition statements are vestiges of the pre-internet era when listings were one paragraph long with no photographs. In such situations puffery ran rampant (even more than now).

-Clear scans or photos. Scans of the front and spine of the dust jacket or, if the jacket is lacking, the front and spine of the book are sine qua non for me. There’s really no excuse for not scanning these days: scanners are very cheap to buy, very easy to use, and work very quickly.

-Description of all faults. Here’s where the above-mentioned AB Bookman’s guidelines come into play. Listed faults must include tears, folds, chips to the dust jacket (front, spine, and back), browning, foxing, underlines, highlighting, loose pages, stains, warping, ex-library indications, integrity of the block in the boards, and so on.

-Copyright date if present. Many Modern Library titles came in two or more editions. For example, Don Quixote had different translators, The Mayor of Casterbridge included introductions written by different people, and several of the short story anthologies had their contents change while the titles remained the same.

-Date of the printing. This can be really tricky. Sometimes the only way to hone in on the correct date is to use the catalogs that often appeared

-Description of the binding type. There are nearly 20 distinct Modern Library binding styles. Different styles were used during specific periods, including one that was employed for just a single year.

-Whether the book and dust jacket match. This is another tricky area in Modern Library collecting that most sellers don’t know about. A cooperative potential bidder should supply the points and ask the seller to verify their presence.

-Number of titles listed in the dust jacket catalog. The number usually appears on the upper inside of the dust jacket in a statement such as, “Which of these < XXX> outstanding books do you want to read?” The number of titles currently available in the Modern Library series at the time of printing is often a key first edition point.

-Statement saying if the printing is a first or later. This may be the trickiest point of all. Many first editions carried statements identifying them as such, but around 10% of titles in the series most of them published between 1959 and 1965 carried no such statement. To make matters worse, titles printed by offset lithography (all titles after 1965 going into the 1980s revival period and about six earlier titles) retained their first edition slugs in later printings. Once again, the Toledano guide and the Modern Lib website are your best friends here.

-If a buckram or a paperback, the number on the spine. Both college paperbacks (T series) and quality paperbacks (P series) had numbers on the spine. Buckrams, all of which were issued with no dust jackets, were supposed to have the number of the title at the bottom of the spine and the words Buckram Reinforced” above it. (Some printings lack the statement and number but have the distinctive binding.)

-If a paperback, description of the type. College Series, numbered series, and so on.

Buyers Can Be Unethical Too

“But wait,” you say, “What about unscrupulous buyers?” Well, there certainly are such people. Sellers don’t have an exclusive on unethical behavior. Buyers can cheat by not paying for the books they receive, by claiming they didn’t receive the book, or by sending back for a refund a different book than the one they received. Here are some ways that I

-Don’t ship until the check has cleared. I accept money orders, cashier’s checks, and personal checks. Sometimes I accept PayPal (although I don’t like to because of the cut they take the eBay hit is high enough as it is). If I don’t know the buyer I wait until the check clears before shipping the book.

-Unobtrusively mark the book and dust jacket. Sometimes the buyer wants to return the book. I want to make sure that the book I get back is the book I sent. So I make the lightest possible pencil mark in a non-obvious place on the back of the dust jacket and on a specific page in the book and make sure the marks are there when the book is returned.

-Make and keep scans of the book and DJ’s front, spine, and back. I make 300 DPI scans and keep them until my warranty period expires (generally ten days after the book is delivered). This is a further check in case the book is returned, as I can compare the scans against the book and DJ.

-Don’t send a refund until the book is returned. If the book I get back is the one I sent, I send a refund the same day.

-Always use Delivery Confirmation. As a small-timer who doesn’t sell that many books, I always use USPS for deliveries. I’ve never had one go astray. But to protect myself I always use Delivery Confirmation.

-Sometimes I act in sleazy ways myself. For example, a seller will advertise a book as a first edition but the dust jacket or binding photos don’t match what a first in that title should be. I write to the seller asking for the first edition points even if I already know that I don’t want the book. If the seller makes stuff up, I know to put him on my kill list to be excluded from future searches. You might claim that this is sort of unethical on my part in that I have no intention of bidding on the book. I’m just playing Net Cop and in some ways wasting the seller’s time.

Unethical? Maybe but this is eBay. I’m just trying to fit in.

Scot Kamins can be contacted at http://www.ModernLib.com.

#ebay

Ephemeral Assays: Pulp Frisson

There are many excellent print and internet resources on pulp magazines, and I wont rehash the essential features here, but just take a look at http://thepulp.net sometime if you want a good crash course in all things pulp. Ill use this space instead to relate some personal stories about the genre.

I kind of liked staying at Grandma Elizabeths in a small upstate New York town hard by the side of the Upper Delaware River. It was a landmark house, centrally located at the bottom of a slight incline leading up to Main Street, well shaded with a wide turnaround in front for horses, though by then the old stone hitching post was just ornamental. It was filled with brooding antiques, however, particularly Victorian furniture and cut crystal, and we always felt in danger of breaking things. Even years later, when the contents were sold in an onsite auction our branch of the family did not get enough advance notice on, I had no remorse whatsoever. Looking back now, I sorely wish I could have attended for the family heirlooms and the bargains, as this was all pre-Antiques Roadshow. Years later some jackass installed a wood stove where it didn't belong and the whole thing burned down.

Anyway, old pulps my Dad and his three brothers collected back in their youth were lined up along a second floor landing in a pile two deep, and about four feet high by twenty feet long. He did manage to score about fifty of those before the auction, where the whole massive pile probably went for well under $100, and I remember him trying to market them back in the 1980s by laboriously sending lists to collectors and dealers advertising for same in the backs of magazines. Invariably, they just wanted one or two famous cover artists like N. C. Wyeth, and they only wanted to pay $5 or so each. I have one left from the original horde, with our family name in pencil on the front cover as that is how they were held at the country store.

In the intervening years I would see these puffy and nicely musty missing links between magazines and comic books at auction, usually in poor condition due to their cheap manufacture, and I followed the prime pulp market from afar, as prices and interest went through the roof. I received a very fortuitous though expensive phone call not long ago from a family that wanted to clear out two full van loads of pulps, magazines, and newspaper comic sections, primarily from the 1920s through the 1950s, and this opened a rare and thrilling door into the lost world of pulpdom which I had missed all those years before.

In this case, the boy whose name was penciled on many of these was lying in a hospital bed at an angle in the middle of the living room, attended there by various machines and visiting doctors and nurses, well toward the end of his long road. He fixed one rheumy eye on me somewhat balefully, as in a Poe story, as I whisked out load after load on a very hot summer day. I could not tell if he was taking note of this, or was long past such earthly concerns, but I enjoyed my visits with this family, which drove a hard but fair bargain.

For a paper and periodical freak, it was great fun cracking open these dirty old cardboard boxes out on my gravel driveway work tables and sorting the hundreds of pulps by title and year. While I had been hoping for top of the food chain titles like The Shadow, I was well pleased with what emerged anyway, and they were all basically new to me. Many of them were in fairly long runs, which is the best way to understand any periodical. They were in good to very good condition with the covers attached, though edgewear on old pulps is almost inevitable, as the covers overshot the text block. Some even showed up in duplicate and triplicate for some reason. A large portion of the lot (which must have been his favorites) was composed of Ace-High Magazine, largely western and pretty collectible, and Short Stories, which is less sought-after but interesting. Every Short Stories cover had to have a large red orb . . . usually the sun but sometimes a gigantic crystal ball or something along those lines. Dozens of people associated with this pulp from artists to ad men must have discussed and dealt with that red orb branding mandate, but does a scrap of that publishing history survive?

Research quickly proved that the monetary value was in the titles themselves, the cover artist or art, prominent contributors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, and, as always, these factors were all leavened by condition. Some of the common titles with boring covers died on eBay, but most went for an average of $25 or so, with some of the coolest detective examples up around $100. I quickly learned who the core group of pulp buyers were at that time, their bidding habits, etc. I accommodated them by running up long tallies, in order to save on shipping and bookkeeping efforts. Once I sent collecting rivals the wrong issues, but instead of swapping they just kept them, as the price was about the same and they were just upgrades anyway. All the lesser examples were consigned to paper auctions, and eventually it was over.

I saved the images though, and some are presented here. Once again, they are not the most spectacular examples ever published, but by the same token their covers may be more unfamiliar. Pulps had only a few moments to sell themselves, like comic books did years later when people like my other Grandmother tapped her foot while we quickly decided how to spend our small change. The best covers were lurid, colorful, and full of the promise of action, adventure, and mysteryproviding an almost pleasurable sensation of fright. Youngsters were transfixed by images of the Wild West, the Far East, the steamy south, the frozen north, inner cities, and outer space, not to mention beautiful women who seemed to be in peril or bondage more often than not. Though pulps had their origins at the turn of that century with the publication of Argosy, many consider the 1920s and 30s the true zenith of the art form.

When I hit the boxes from the 1940s, when paper rationing and sanitized patriotic themes held sway, I felt a bit like boys such as my Dad must have back then when the thrills of childhood and promise of adventure were replaced by drab uniformity and duty. Some of the pulp titles sputtered through the late 1940s, but the world was a much smaller place after WW II, and TV dealt the fatal blow. The exotic mysteries and adventures of pulp readers receded from the mind and back into the earth, save for those happy cases where they were physically preserved for future generations to enjoy.

Shawn Purcell operates Balopticon Books & Ephemera and can be contacted at http://www.balopticon.com.

#ephemera

House Calls, Estate Sales and Auction tales

Of all the ways to find books, house calls are now better than ever, what with all the competition in other venues. House calls are generated through direct contact if you have your own book store, through advertisement, and through referral or word of mouth. This is not an in-depth tutorial on house calls, but here are a few points to remember.

It really pays to weed out those likely to be unproductive right in person or on the phone, before you make the trip. This takes a bit of practice. Have a list of questions ready. Type and approximate number of books, hardcover or softcover, on shelves or in boxes already, have all the family members taken what they want yet, etc. Condition is paramount. Were they in a damp basement, did they belong to smokers, etc. I also like to get a rough idea of what they expect for them, which is an age-old game in which the seller is usually in the drivers seat. Most are wary enough not to name an amount, in case you offer much more. What I am more concerned about though, is that they dont have extremely inflated ideas about what the stock is worth. If it seems helpful, I often provide a quick explanation of how we pay a certain percentage of what the retail value may be worth for stock that we may have to carry for many years, and how many copies are probably available online since The Glut. I also mention other options, like getting a second opinion from another book buyer, running them through an auction, yard sales, donations, etc.

My preference is usually to take the good with the bad all in one lot for one money. It is very time-consuming to cherry pick the titles you want, and if the deal falls through you have just provided the seller with your valuable knowledge free of charge. I prefer clients who simply want everything cleared out because they are moving, settling an estate, or whatever. I triage these books as soon as I get home, out in the driveway. Usually about 5% get listed online, 10% or so are good for the shop, and the rest go to auction, get donated, or get recycled or dumped.

You have more of an obligation to be above board when making house calls than in any other situation, such as an auction or estate sale where everyone had the same opportunity that you did. First of all, you should be qualified to make house calls to begin with. You wont find many booksellers who will take you along for lessons, for obvious reasons, but you should know something about the trade from the regular school of hard knocks before you presume to claim expertise. There is a big difference between an appraisal and an offer to buy.

Appraisals are more properly reserved for experienced professionals, as there is probably more at stake for the seller. Appraisal fees are often steep, and the bookseller will sometimes ask to purchase materials of interest separately. In most cases, however, the stock is not worth that much, and if you can pay ten to fifty cents on the dollar (depending on how quickly you can flip the winners) and the seller is happy with that, both sides can make out well.

Practice with these common transactions and work your way up to estate books and fine libraries. If you come across one that is way over your head, work with a more established bookseller or auction house on a shared or commission basis. I recall an early house call where I was very nervous borrowing most of the $12,000 necessary to close a deal for a large collection of newspaper file photos and books. It probably took me two years to make $20,000, and there was a ton of work involved, but it was a great learning experience. The seller was very happy, and at one point his wife took me aside and said, I want to thank you. I havent been able to sew on this front porch since the 1950s.

Here are a few more recent examples from my own experience, starting with a poor one. An astute elderly woman one town away said she was trying to sell a house that had nothing left in it but books, which needed to go. They sounded common and I was not interested, but she persisted, and upon inspection I finally agreed to take them all for $100. This took two full van loads and the better part of a day, and I was quite sorry I agreed, though she was sort of an early independent-minded university graduate and I enjoyed meeting her. Loads of book club editions, biographies, and the like, and she had a bad habit of slicing up the front dust jacket panel and lumpily pasting it down on the inside front cover. My favorite title in the otherwise bland lot was a nice first of The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Terrier, fairly common but sweet.

Anyway, a few days later a wealthy son who she mentioned was not very helpful called up and accused me of ripping her off. I was finally able to convince him that if I hadnt already dropped off 98% of this common dreck for donation or disposal, I would have been very happy for him to come pick up the whole load for a full refund. It was a good reminder to avoid bad house calls, and to be extra careful when dealing with senior citizens. I usually try to ascertain if there are any relatives who can be present during the transaction, though in this case she understood getting rid of crappy old books better than her son or I did.

On a happier note, I just completed my third house call over several years to the widow of a magician. They met in 1945 when she was a young blonde in the Black Forest of Germany and he was with a passing U.S.O. show. She became his professional assistant back in the states, but he succumbed to Alzheimers decades ago. Once she came home to find that an unidentified colleague had stopped by and basically stole all the props and artifacts from the confused man, along with some books, which is about as low as you can get. She finally decided it was time to divest herself of his remaining professional literature, which spanned the mid-1900s, and she heard about me through the lovely woman who cuts our hair. First came all the booklets, laid out in piles on some card tables for my inspection. I took my time cataloging them, and learned a lot about the magic scene. Many were on specific tricks, with cards or coins or silks, and they all stressed practice and patter. I did well with the booklets, but a year or so later I paid more than I should have for runs of journals with great names like The Linking Ring, Ibidem, and The Jinx. This last trip was for the books, quite a few of which were signed first editions. I bought my wife along this time as I wanted her to meet this remarkable and charming person. I volunteered that a signed Harry Blackstone second printing with decorated covers and cracked hinges was probably the pick of the litter, and she pulled a little magic of her own just before the final settlement by keeping it, but that was fine.

Some of the scavenger booksellers in this area would have seriously lowballed her, and many of the premier booksellers are now above this sort of house call. (I previewed an auction just last month and was surprised to find truly fine antiquarian estate books that the local expert had declined to appraise at the home they came from.) In the long run, it pays to treat people with respect, and to pay a fair price. And it is often far more enjoyable to purchase a small specialized library than to wade through tons of junk or spend half a day at some exasperating auction or library sale.

Just after this, I received by mail a five-page typescript list of titles from a woman up in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York. What a pleasure to indulge in such an old-school method of book buying again. She explained that she was moving, had a trusty typewriter but no computer, was working off a list of upstate NY booksellers, and preferred to sell everything as one lot. There were some common works of poetry and literature, but the majority was composed of hardcover and trade paperback titles relating to Adirondacks local and natural history, many of them signed. Some relative rarities too, such as two copies of Notes on the Amerind Manufacture of Smoking Devices as Artistic Expression in Northeastern Iroquoia, one of which carries a nice signed inscription thanking the seller for her contributions to the work. Others are not to be found on the major search services at all, which does not always equate to immediate sales but is better than a silverfish running around in your boxers. I put her list aside for several weeks, to give everyone else she contacted a chance to make an offer, and finally called. Of more than a dozen booksellers, only one nibbled, and he wanted her to bring them to his distant shop so he could cherry pick desired titles a month or two later. She sounded shocked at my generous offer, and was delighted that I would take them all and even make the long journey up to Indian Lake to retrieve them. I picked the one sunny day in a two week stretch of rainy May weather, and was in her living room by 11:00 A.M. We had a nice chat. She herself was an Adirondacker of some note, having rubbed elbows with many of the greats. Coincidentally, she had run into her first moose exactly one year earlier, almost literally. Indian Lake is tiny and charming, though I would not want to brave the winters there. There is not a single traffic light in all of Hamilton County, and the scenery is fantastic. I found one no-name restaurant in town for a nice post-sale lunch, and fished my way back on smaller roads, bagging a fine brook trout to enjoy for dinner in the spirit of these books. I received a follow-up note, offering lots of ephemeral items that I wish she had shown me the first time. I called, and she confides that she only sent this list to two other booksellers this time around. The nibbler replied that he does not purchase ephemera, perhaps miffed at the loss of his cherries. She brought her list into one shop as well, where the proprietor told her to bring the material next time, but that she does not make offers but rather requires the seller to name a price. This really rubbed her the wrong way, and she accepted my offer to take the lot through the mail on approval.

One more tale. This same week, a fellow one county to the east saw my advertisement and wanted me to look at 100 old cookbooks before their garage sale on Saturday. I wasnt into it but tooled out there anyway. They turned out to be little commercial pamphlets from the 1930s I see everywhere, with a few okay Jell-O examples in the usual stained condition. There was one interesting signed coast of Maine fishing book whose title I forget. He claimed that Hitler offered thousands for a copy of this at the beginning of WW II, as it had maps which showed all the coves. Anyway, as I finished up a tour of garage sale junk in the living room, a wall of LPs and 78s came into view, and before you could say Django Reinhardt I gave him $3,000 for a lifetime collection of jazz albums. (And records are a lot like books, except it is often harder to determine their condition with the naked eye.) I can see now that half of them are from the ubiquitous likes of Mitch Miller and Perry Como, but the jazz titles are numerous and in very good condition, and the 78s are mostly blues. I use banana boxes with perfectly-sized flat USPS Priority Mail 1097 boxes in the bottom (which I eventually utilize for the intended postal purpose), and habitually travel with ten or so, but not this time, so I had to stack the albums in long standing rows instead, and they waved like wheat in the field on the careful return trip. We had a great chat too while loading up, and he had enough stories to leave a book of his own on the mid-to-late 1900s New Hampshire jazz scene, which I strongly suggested. I called him when I got home with a few going prices on better books he asked about like that Maine title, and to let him know my tires didn't burst.

To review, there are too many jackals after too much dreck at many yard, estate, and library sales these days; too much wasted time, chicanery and competition at many auction houses; and fewer seriously under-priced bargains at most book stores than in the pre-internet days. House calls are relatively relaxing, both parties usually come away quite satisfied, and you often meet highly interesting people. Just learn the ropes first, and practice good karma.

That was a relatively pedestrian ramble, but it had a purpose. Please consider sharing your own significant house call accounts under this heading. Also soliciting short, one paragraph stories for a future compilation entitled, House Calls from Hell, which will be more tasteful than it sounds.

Garage/Estate/Library Sale Tales

Estate sales are not the relatively genteel affairs they used to be, mirroring new pressures and tactics one also sees at garage (aka yard) sales, library sales, and auctions. First of all, there is the morning line, which I don’t deal with any more. Some of these people are incredibly obnoxious. In this neck of the woods, the antiques dealers, furniture guys, estate jewelry women, and vintage linen and textile ladies are the worst (not to generalize, as there is some gender crossover within these specialties). Many of them who compete for the same items despise each other. I think of that line these days as a bunch of people stuck in their own little bleary-eyed coffee-breath corner of hell for two hours or so. Or familiar turds with a regular Saturday morning appointment to bump into each other in a swirling bowl of maniacal mercantilism that never flushes all the way. While they strike up catty little conversations or peer through windows, I’m either sleeping, cruising the more fluid yard sales, or preparing to make house calls or preview auctions, where you are firmly in charge of your own schedule.

This is all a fairly recent development. I have fond memories of pulling up to estate sales at the opening bell and strolling right in, or arriving at yard sales around noon and still finding $20 quilts spread out on the lawn. In Florida, my mother had a happy hunting ground for years, especially for vintage linens and signed pottery. She brought me home the best-looking set of dust jacketed Elbert Hubbards Little Journeys Ive ever seen, for peanuts. Now it isn't even worth going out, as good merch is rare and the competition is fierce. I was down recently clearing out her house and had to fight people off from going through the garbage bags I was putting out. Town-wide sales are not what they used to be either, as the good stuff is long gone.

Not long ago a friend of mine got a very early waiting line number for an estate sale. She dropped it off with her husband and went elsewhere. When he showed up and strode to the front of the line with that valid number there was practically a lynching. The police were called and he got out of there just in time. I went to one early in the summer where a couple of gun guys slept in their car all night just to be first on line. When I entered that one the daughter of the estate sale operators was filming the whole thing for a college level documentary from behind the money table. That is the only safe place to stand, because they burst through the door like a human avalanche. I made a wrong turn for the book shelves one time and couldn’t get out of a bathroom for many precious seconds, which is an eternity when the competition is at the trough. The furniture and antique guys slap pre-made sold stickers on the better pieces. Compatriots guard these against sticker-removers, and later on they take their time deciding if they really want those items, often dickering for a lower price earlier in the sale than is generally acceptable. Another trick I heard about not long ago was a clock fancier thirtieth on line paying the antique dealer friends and bribers of the estate sale operators who are always given the number one spot $200 to reserve all the clocks for their perusal and purchase. The vast majority of shenanigans occurs even more behind the scenes though. This includes operators or specialists cherry picking the best stuff early. The dealer dumps really get to me. These are objects which could sit in an antique shop for years, but they sell quickly in the heat of the moment during estate sale mania. You learn to identify these as belongings which don’t fit the general tone of the estate. Another telltale sign is hang tags and stickers with different letter codes on them. Your average estate sale shopper, including the bottom feeding (but happy) late arrival pot and pan brigade, is completely oblivious to all these machinations.

Even though I am mainly after books, one has to deal with all the above, plus a long check-out line at the end. I avoided estate sales for a couple of years but have started going again, when the crowds are thinner a couple of hours into the sale. There are more book competitors than there used to be, but half of them are just guessing. You can stroll in and find good items after they are long gone. I bought five boxes of music for $10 each late the second day once and made huge profits off the softcover clarinet and recorder books, with some single items going for $100 and more.

The other approach is to get friendly with the estate sale operators and point out how it would be to their benefit to let you in early. I know I’m prejudiced, but with something like books this is a smart option. Unless they use the shotgun approach of uniform pricing, marking every book and piece of ephemera is time-consuming, items get stolen or damaged, the line is swollen by those waiting to buy $1 novels, and they are stuck with most of the detritus at the end anyway. I say let me take the good with the bad for one money before the sale. You might even leave a few outstanding books for the estate sale with a suggested price, as a gesture of good will. Sets and big old bibles come to mind. Several of the estate sale operators around here are amenable to this arrangement on a case-by-case basis. The others are usually newer to the game. They don’t know books, but they are seeing some high prices online and marking everything unrealistically high.

Although I like the thrill of the hunt and what sociability there is, I really don’t want to compete at the intense level increasingly evident. Life is too short. Such venues are very good experience for newbies, like that first crumby job you had, largely so one can learn the ropes and more deeply appreciate greener pastures once they find them. Also, at least in the northeast, there are plenty of book fish in the ocean. Garage sales, library sales, and estate sales often require pushiness and physicality. With auctions, it comes down to how much time and money you are willing to spend, as well as psychological sparring skills. Book shows are the best place to learn about better books, and house calls are the best place to acquire them.

Please consider sharing your own significant garage/estate/library sale tales under this heading. Also soliciting short, one paragraph stories for a future compilation entitled, Library Sale Shenanigans, which will be as tasteless as it sounds.

Auction Action

We know the basics of auctions. Previewing is nine-tenths of the law, especially if you can do so before the day of the auction. Set limits for yourself, get to know the auction house, identify your competitors, and become friendly with the owner, auctioneer, and runners. If you want all the books and they are choiced out to begin with, win the choices you know you need, let the bidding get down to low levels after that, and then discretely tell the auctioneer you will start all the remaining books at a fair price, like $500 or whatever. This usually appeals to them, in terms of setting up for the next auction with a clean slate. Rather than dissect this venue to death, heres a tale of how you can make a killing at auction.

When I first started attending auctions, before the era of eBay, the Antiques Roadshow, and price guides for everything under the sun but rectal thermometers, I found a good down-and-dirty one (a rural auction . . . not a thermometer) where the largely male regulars taunted anyone who bought an old doll, and you could get fifty boxes of books for five bucks. Not $5,000 Manhattan art books, but some great finds. There was a rather crazed runner there who pointed whatever rifles and shotguns came up directly at the audience. He began to learn which people ducked or cringed at this practice. His little pastime got me to wondering if anyone was ever shot at auction in such a fashion. One night an elderly gentleman who was previewing rifles while the auction was in progress discharged a .22 by accident. The gun was pointed away from the crowd, and luckily nobody was back there where they usually are due to ongoing renovations (some linoleum had come up just before this, someone from the crowd shouted that the auctioneer should buy it himself to use in the new bathroom, and he replied that he didn’t want to make any more improvements in there than necessary so people would be out bidding). Anyway, the bullet punctured a kerosene-fueled Salamander, which operates rather like the exhaust nozzle of a NASA rocket in its efforts to heat up (in this case) the old amphitheater livestock auction barn we were in. There could be an illustration of this great country auction hall next to the word firetrap in the dictionary to begin with, and 200 or so people sat in silent shock as the leaking fuel rapidly spread out in front of the heater, which was still raging away. I quickly decided I would take my chances out a small window way up top, rather than trust the thin veneer of civilization between me and the merchandise-jammed lower exits, and then found myself thinking what a great commercial for Salamanders this would be if the thing didn’t blow up. Finally, one older fellow halfway up in the crowded seating who always bids on military stuff vaulted down and pulled the plug. We cheered him, the shooter left in a state of shock, plywood was thrown over the spilled fuel, another Salamander was wheeled out, and one of the runners went outside to fire the remaining cartridges into the night air. I still might research the subject of auction mortality some day, but I’ve seen enough to satisfy me for awhile.

Please consider sharing your own significant book and paper auction experiences under this heading.

Book Show Impressions

Book shows range from flea markets and car boot sales to extremely high-end affairs. Aspiring booksellers can learn much from them. Visit a few first, and then start with a cheap outside space at an antiques show or festival. If this agrees with you, try a couple of tables at one of the better inside book shows. Most of your show colleagues will be glad to offer advice along the way, shortly after they raid your under-priced offerings and comment on your unfamiliarity with mylar. Losing money and losing face are two things that get ones attention, so you learn at a far quicker pace than through other methods of education.

Some years ago I ventured into a very large community-wide yard sale in an old established development early one Saturday morning. These get panned out, there are more cars than ever, and you see lots of last year’s kiddie clothes and plastic junk. I went right to the very back first this time, where there is still a bit of woods. The driveway of the most remote home was a real hill. I walked up to the garage and there sat a large amount of rare titles on early firearms, shelved no less, and obviously someone’s lifetime collection. A woman was leaving with a couple cookbooks or something and I overheard the price as $1 each. I took pretty much every one before I noticed a round color sticker scheme. I inquired about this when checking out. I’m afraid I didn’t have a chance to tell you. Yellow is a dollar, but blue is $2 and red is $3. I suppose you’ll be putting most of those back?”

One week later I was all set up at the Albany, NY Antiquarian Book Fair. A few minutes before the doors opened the line outside was pretty long. I always positioned myself in the back of this old armory, as my ephemera buckets took up many tables and may have looked a bit unseemly up among the more established tweedy types. One guy showed up almost immediately, following the same rear-first strategy I applied at the community sale. He let out a small gasp and bought nearly every one of these gun books, which as luck would have it was his specialty as a dealer. He thought they were all priced right (about $75 each on average) except for one, which he bought anyway. He told me he got up in the middle of the night and drove straight down from New Hampshire, not expecting to find much. A bulls-eye for both of us. Please consider sharing your own significant book show impressions under this heading.