Recently -- driven by the glacial pace at which my PBA book are coming and a wife who's out of commission with knee surgery -- I've been playing a little 'best guess buying'.
While I'm happy to buy books on eBay, at other auction houses, from ABE, from known dealers and so forth, one of the things I really get a bang out of is getting the rare 'insane deal' online.
It's like finding some crazy rare book in a bargain bin, only it requires pouring over hundreds of listings, generally late at night. You can't quite tell the condition, you may not be able to suss out the edition, but if you're smart and quick, you can make a great score, cheap, which is half the fun.
I ordered three books from different book sites w/o asking questions, using some intuition, and praying to the book gods.
1. Found a $51 copy of Fante's 'Dreams from Bunker Hill'. Listed as 1/500 (which would indicated normal trade edition), but once you read the entire listing it said it was signed (which came in an edition of 200). Best case scenario, it's signed of 200, worst case, it's a first (still easily worth the $50), and the seller just misread the colophon. Went for it, and I'm now the proud owner of a $50 signed Fante. DAMN!
2. Found a listing for Pulp for $57. Listed as having acetate jacket with a spine that only said 'PULP CHARLES BUKOWSKI' with no 'BLACK SPARROW PRESS'. Given that the first trade of Pulp came shrink-wrapped and did have BSP on the spine, I thought I could get lucky. Additionally, the listing said there was 'writing on the first blank page'. Could the writing be a signed tipped-in page? Sadly no. Shockingly, it turned out to be a second print with some yahoo's name in it. While I overpaid for a 2nd print of Pulp, I'm in no way sad.
3. Found an ex-lib copy of Burning in Water, Drowning in Flames for $17. Listing says it' says it's a hardcover, and dated 1974, so I'm feeling at least a little hopeful it's one of those fantastically rare library trade editions. Hell, if not, picking it up in hardcover for under $20 is a deal no matter what.
Pretty solid week overall, thought I'd throw this out there to see if others had come across any crazy finds lately.
While I'm happy to buy books on eBay, at other auction houses, from ABE, from known dealers and so forth, one of the things I really get a bang out of is getting the rare 'insane deal' online.
It's like finding some crazy rare book in a bargain bin, only it requires pouring over hundreds of listings, generally late at night. You can't quite tell the condition, you may not be able to suss out the edition, but if you're smart and quick, you can make a great score, cheap, which is half the fun.
I ordered three books from different book sites w/o asking questions, using some intuition, and praying to the book gods.
1. Found a $51 copy of Fante's 'Dreams from Bunker Hill'. Listed as 1/500 (which would indicated normal trade edition), but once you read the entire listing it said it was signed (which came in an edition of 200). Best case scenario, it's signed of 200, worst case, it's a first (still easily worth the $50), and the seller just misread the colophon. Went for it, and I'm now the proud owner of a $50 signed Fante. DAMN!
2. Found a listing for Pulp for $57. Listed as having acetate jacket with a spine that only said 'PULP CHARLES BUKOWSKI' with no 'BLACK SPARROW PRESS'. Given that the first trade of Pulp came shrink-wrapped and did have BSP on the spine, I thought I could get lucky. Additionally, the listing said there was 'writing on the first blank page'. Could the writing be a signed tipped-in page? Sadly no. Shockingly, it turned out to be a second print with some yahoo's name in it. While I overpaid for a 2nd print of Pulp, I'm in no way sad.
3. Found an ex-lib copy of Burning in Water, Drowning in Flames for $17. Listing says it' says it's a hardcover, and dated 1974, so I'm feeling at least a little hopeful it's one of those fantastically rare library trade editions. Hell, if not, picking it up in hardcover for under $20 is a deal no matter what.
Pretty solid week overall, thought I'd throw this out there to see if others had come across any crazy finds lately.