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Post Office HB 1st on ebay (not so nice) (1 Viewer)

bospress.net

www.bospress.net
As much as I'd LOVE to have a copy of this book, I can't bring myself to spend more than $100 for such a f'd up copy. They listed it last week for $800 and, no surprise, did not sell it. I wonder how long until I get my wish and get this book. Sure, it is not worth much, but it is probably the only chance that I'll ever have one. Orf course, I think $500 is still painfully overpriced for a book that has been treated SO badly...

Bill (Cheap Right-Handed Bastard) Roberts

http://cgi.ebay.com/Post-Office-by-...8QQihZ013QQcategoryZ29223QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
 
But something tells the seller that"Bukowski wouldn't mind" so I guess that makes it alright. Ever notice that some sellers actually play up the lousy condition of their Bukowski books by saying something along the lines of "Buk would have approved" or "beat up like Bukowski himself"?

I agree... I'd go $100 for this book (just to have it as a placeholder) but not more.
 
Bill, you are not cheap, you have standards. If you bought this book, even at $500, you would always look on your bookshelf and instead of thinking, "there's a signed edition of POST OFFICE," you'd think to yourself, "there's that book I paid too much for." CONDITION IS KING! This book is only worth a small fraction of their asking price
 
Agreed. When I saw it last week for an $800 opening bid I actually laughed out loud. $500 is still about 10 times too much. ;)

I have a certain fondness for the messed up old ex-library copies of his older books that I have (It catches, and Terror Street - or is that Terror Sreet?), but that copy of Post Office is pretty bad. It looks a bit moldy and rank.
 
I sent him a message saying it might be better to start it really low and try to get bidding interest, but his response lead me to believe he would re-list after the current auction ended. Guess not.

I think if you listed something like that for a dollar you could get a ton of bids and get people involved. but then $149 was low enough to catch your interest, so what do I know.

It will be interesting to see if there is more bidding. The way things are going on eBay right now, I would think that book would be a tough sell.
 
mjp said:
I think if you listed something like that for a dollar you could get a ton of bids and get people involved. but then $149 was low enough to catch your interest, so what do I know.
Someone should write a paper on the psychology of ebay. I imagine that it would make an interesting read.

I've listed items at very reasonable starting bids and had no interest, then relisted them at very low starting bids and have them sell for much more than my original BIN price. It seems like, for many people, once they place a bid, the item is "theirs" and there's no way in hell that they're going to let someone else outbid them.

Also there's a certain adrenalin rush (at least for me) when sniping for an item that you really want. Maybe it's just me, but I imagine others experience this too.
 
chronic said:
It seems like, for many people, once they place a bid, the item is "theirs" and there's no way in hell that they're going to let someone else outbid them.
I almost mentioned that in my previous post. It's definitely true, some people, once they've bid, imagine themselves the owner of the item and are offended when someone outbids them. ;)

And of course if you start an item out at 99 cents, you have a lot more bidders feeling personally invested. Works sometimes. Depends a lot on the item though.
 

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