Saturday, October 4, 2008

More Crazy eBay Prices #2

Nancy Drew RARE Vintage 15 Book Set Vol. 1-15 ExcCond Item #280260181168

First, the books are not RARE. Second, they are revised text picture cover books. Third, there are only 15 books in the lot. Why would someone pay $153.50 for 15 books?

Here is a much better deal:

Lot of 38 Nancy Drew Yellow Spine Carolyn Keene Item #160275663035

This lot of 38 picture cover books sold for just $87.77 and contained many original text books.

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NANCY DREW MYSTERY AT LILAC INN 1930 4 GLOSSIES Item #380060789888

This early Nancy Drew book with orange silhouette endpapers, four glossy internal illustrations, and no dust jacket closed at $147.50. I have no idea why. It is not a blank endpapers edition. It is early, but often books of the same age with dust jackets close at lower prices.

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Nancy Drew The Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk 1ST ed Item #320293854735

This is insane. A first printing picture cover that is really not in that great of shape closed at $71.00. What were the bidders thinking? Personally, I think anything above $25.00 is outrageous, and yes, you can get first printing picture covers for under $10.00 if you look carefully.

Of course, the seller says that it is rare, but not in the usual capital letters. It is not rare! Far too many of this particular seller's books are described as RARE, usually in capital letters.

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Why not? Here is a RARE book from the same seller:

Nancy Drew The Clue of the Tapping Heels 1ST ed PC RARE Item #320293691060

It-is-not-RARE! It is a first printing picture cover book that is not in that great of shape, and it closed at $51.00, which is also too high.

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This is a different seller, but I have the same complaints:

Nancy Drew The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes Item #260287127079

The subtitle reads, "VERY RARE TRI-FOLD ADVERTISEMENT." No, it really isn't. Yes, it is scarce, but not RARE, and definitely not in the condition the book is in. The book looks to be quite worn. Probably quoting another recent auction for this book, the seller states that the book is valued at $100.00 in Farah's Guide. No, not in that condition. The book closed at $50.00, which I feel is far too high.

2 comments:

Robert said...

Thank you so much for doing what you can to alert people to be vigilant and suspicious of seller descriptions when checking out ebay auctions for series books. It's always exciting to win something hard to find. I recently found the final white cover Dana Girls book, The Witch's Omen, one of the harder ones to find, for $6.53, so I was pretty excited.

Jennifer White said...

Good for you! I'm glad that someone who actually needed the book was able to get a good deal. Usually, the bargains go to the people who buy to resell. It is good to see a few collectors get some of the deals.

There are far more bargains on eBay than the average buyer realizes, and nearly all people who sell series books on eBay buy their books on eBay. I know more about what is happening than the average buyer since many of these people have bought from me under their secondary IDs. I had some auctions end a week ago, and in that group, a seller bought from me using an ID that I did not know belonged to that person. Wow! I learned of another one!

The reason why the ID gets outed is that the buying ID shares the same PayPal account as the selling ID, and the email address reveals who the buyer actually is.

I have seen many auctions for dust-jacketed books in which the top three to five bidders are all people buying to resell. If the people who actually need the books would bid a little higher, then the resellers would not win so many auctions.