A Furry "rare" book again?
Posted by Fred Patten on Mon 5 Sep 2011 - 14:54 — Edited by GreenReaper
Four months ago, Amazon.com was selling the out-of-print first edition of "Best in Show: Fifteen Years of Outstanding Furry Fiction" for $348.33. Now it's $477.82 (+ $3.49 shipping). Is anyone really paying these prices? (Retitled second edition Furry! is still in print for $11.11)
About the author
Fred Patten — read stories — contact (login required)a retired former librarian from North Hollywood, California, interested in general anthropomorphics
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I'm sure it's just screwy pricing algorithms. There's no cost to used book stores listing an exorbitant price (which varies daily; it was over $500 in the initial post), and apparently some people will buy some books at that price, some of the time.
They might not even own the book - they could just have seen an auction for it and applied a markup.
I've seen such pricing come up in other books across a wide range of subjects. It seems if a book is hard enough to find, they will put a high price in case someone really wants it. But if it is too niche and not a known collectable, the seller isn't going to take the time to research the pricing in any detail. And that was before Amazon's automated pricing algorithms, which can now exaggerate it even more. That system lets the seller just copy-paste a pricing formula that automatically updates the price based on other things selling on Amazon, so the seller might invest even less time researching appropriate price for a given book.
Indeed, Slashdot once reported a textbook on flies posting a price of $23 million ($23,698,655.93, to be exact).
LÖL
Might as well be a good time to mention:
"Port in a Storm" and "The Rat's Reputation" are my favorites.
If you liked "Rat's Reputation", you might be interested to know that it's the title of a novel by the same author. The short story that appeared in "Best in Show" (slightly altered but essentially the same) is one chapter of it. So far it's only available as an audiobook; hopefully we'll see it in print eventually.
It's been a while since I read "Best in Show"; I don't remember what all stories were in there and I don't have my copy handy. One I do remember, however, is "Wings". Talk about a tear-jerker of a story!
Well, as all compilations go, I disliked some of the stories.
Some authors are better than others.
Shouldn't this be 'Rare Furry' instead of 'Furry Rare'?
Some crazy sellers are a bit too optimistic and not too concerned about unloading these items anytime soon.
I seen this a lot with hello Kitty I=items on Ebay, somebody put up a "rare" Hello Kitty plush like the recent 50th anniversary plush and expect to get $120.00 for the same plush one can get for $30.0 or so. some people do not have a sense what is collectible or not or flat out being deceptive
PS not all collectibles have great value. I learned this lesson the hard way on Ebay.
September 23rd - today it's two used copies at $728.26 each.
Fred Patten
(o_O)
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