Several years ago, I was given 4-5 boxes of mostly science fiction paperback books of various types and conditions. A few are from the “Golden Age” of Sci/Fi. I’ve finally pulled them out of storage and started going through them and found two potential gems. The first book is for sale on Amazon for $969. The copy I have is the same edition, apparent condition, publisher etc. The second book is on sale once again on Amazon and IIRC, Ablebooks for $579. Once again, it is the same edition, publisher, condition, etc.

Granted, putting something up for sale is a lot different than actually selling it for your asking price. But, I think these copies warrant some more investigation. Now, if I could find a first edition of Asimov’s Foundation or Heinlein’s Starship Troopers then I for sure would have something worth a little bit of $$$$.

I would check Ebay to get a more reasonable estimate. . . I've seen run-of-the-mill books going for $20-30 on most Amazon listings, then some dude will have the exact same book listed for several hundred dollars.

I don't know why - maybe some people are so stupid that they just pay whatever price. Maybe a wife told the husband to 'sell all those useless books,' and they jacked the prices so nobody would buy them.

It's a mystery to me. Of course, I DO have a copy of the book Sled Driver, about the SR-71, which is going for (if you can find them) $4-500 nowadays. Collectors will pay ridiculous amounts of money for rare books these days.

I have a LOT of such sci-fi books. I should do some investigation.

a couple of years ago the whole limited print/run, rare book thing was a money-laundering scheme. People would buy or sell books as rare items, vintage, or rare prints on amazon. A person or company would buy it, and laundry their money that way.

The above was an offshoot of the white-paper scam that preceded it. basically they would rip off a white paper, publish it on amazon, charge 25k, and when it sold the criminals had just laundered their cash.

There were a few more steps to each, ie shell companies on both ends. For the most part that was the stick.

quote:

Originally posted by Hound Dog:
I would check Ebay to get a more reasonable estimate. I've seen run-of-the-mill books going for $20-30 on most Amazon listings, then some dude will have the exact same book listed for several hundred dollars.

I work at a used book store, and we buy used books from the public all day long. We do use Amazon and eBay listings as well as our own sales history records to determine book prices and offers.

Independent sellers on Amazon can list things for whatever price they want, so a lot of times that's a poor indicator of book worth. Sometimes you'll see a new item for hundreds of dollars but their used listings will show 20 sellers offering books for around $5.00. A dozen or more listings of a high price is a better indicator.

For eBay, again, sellers can list whatver price they want. Be sure and check the "sold items" and "completed items" search boxes on eBay to see if anyone is actually buying the books at those prices or not.

AbeBooks is also a good place to check book prices.

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One of my books was listed for an equivalent price on Abe Books. I was also checking Thriftbooks.com as well which is my favorite online retailer.

But as I mentioned, a listed price does not equate to a sales price. But they appeared worthy of further exploration.

using ebay, you can filter it out to show sold only, so you know that it was bid on ,,



I used Bookfinder, ebay and addall, when researching book prices,


firearms reference books bring stupid money,,, so the above help give me an idea what current market value is when buying estates,

It's aggravating if you want to re-read a book you remember, but the replacement is priced as a collectable.

^^^^

Kindle is a good work around to that problem if you like to read and buy books regularly.

I mostly read on Kindle, but these days if I buy a book that is politically "hot", I also get a paperback copy so Bezos can't make it disappear if he has a bad day.