Unreasonable and Combative Collectors

This post is from late 2018.  Quite awhile back, I published the text of this post in a private group on Facebook.  This is a story about a combative collector who was irrationally angry with me.

The situation began with this collector making a post about free electronic books in one of the Facebook groups.  This person believes that Simon and Schuster is greedy, and that the company should offer free electronic copies of all Nancy Drew books that are out of print.  This person believes that there is nothing wrong with offering pirated copies of copyrighted works.

Nobody supported this person's belief, and why would we?  We want Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys to remain viable, and free electronic books are not going to help keep the two series in print.  Furthermore, offering free electronic books of works protected by copyright is illegal.  We are not going to support that. 

I had to shut down the thread since this person had become highly argumentative, trying to beat everyone down.  That's when he went off on me through private messages about his personal grievance with me.  This collector told me that he was still angry with me for purchasing his books. 

I made the mistake of telling him that he didn't have to sell the books.  He really went off on me then, telling me about medical bills and offering to show me proof.

Um, okay.  What I meant was that I didn't create the situation.  He didn't have to sell those particular books.  I do understand that sometimes a person is forced to sell items to raise money.  If those particular books were so important that he would be angry—one year later—that he sold them, then he should not have sold them.  This is the irrational world within which we live.

And if he is going to be angry, then he should direct his anger at his life situation and not at me.  I didn't create the situation.  When I see books for sale on eBay, silly me, I think that the seller does want to sell the books.

He also informed me that he doesn't have thousands of dollars to spend on books like I do.  I'm sure others have said that about other collectors who have shared expensive purchases.  After all, we are the privileged few who can spend lots of money on all that we desire.  Actually, no.

Most series collectors are not wealthy.  I certainly am not.  Those of us who make expensive purchases are making sacrifices.  Each of us has found a way to acquire certain items.

I sell books to raise extra money.  My sales finance my collection.  I don't go to the movies, eat out, or go on expensive trips, which gives me more money to spend on books.  Other collectors who have no more money than I do have made similar sacrifices.

Most of us focus on one aspect of collecting.  We pay higher prices for some items while not for others.

This person also told me that he paid something like $2,500 for the books that he sold to me for a few hundred dollars.  I am a bit skeptical, but let's say that he did pay that much.  If so, then he, too, has paid thousands of dollars for series books, contradicting his own statement of how he cannot afford that kind of money.  I find that rather amusing.

Also, this person wanted free electronic books to replace the books he sold to me.  Since I didn't agree about the free electronic books, I was evil indeed.  I had purchased his books, and I didn't support his idea about how to get the stories back for free.  That made me a very bad person.

I had to block this person on Facebook, since the messages kept coming with one attack after another.

I won't link to the post about the books I purchased from this person, but you can look in the blog archive at the posts from November 2016 to find a certain bulk purchase.

Finally, consider this.  If this person had just contacted me and told me about his situation in a polite fashion, I would have found a way to help him.  He could have explained about having to sell the books to pay medical bills and then asked me to let him know if I ever ran across any of the books.  Do you know what I would have done?  I would have started looking for inexpensive bulk lots, and I would have helped him get a new set of the books.  He would have gotten his set and not had to pay that much.  Instead, he chose to attack me.