The Conflict Caused by Pricing

Before reading this post, it would be worthwhile to read three old posts.  The first post from 2011 mentions events from the 1980s and 1990s.  The second post from 2008 mentions the hoarding of the Nancy Drew Applewood editions.  The third post from 2008 mentions the hoarding of the Nancy Drew Applewood and Cameo editions.

Series Book Collecting and Prices

The Hoarding of the Applewood Editions

eBay Prices Hit Record Levels

In short, series book collectors are often bitter about the pricing of series books.  Some collectors believe that dealers hoard series books just so that they can sell the books at inflated prices.  In the case of the Nancy Drew Applewood and Cameo editions, a few dealers actually did hoard those books in the late 2000s, causing them to appear to be quite rare.  In reality, the books were just rare to everyone other than the sellers who were buying up all available copies.

Some collectors also believe that series books should always be priced for extremely cheap prices, like for under $5.  I wrote about it in 2017.

The Expectation of Low Price Regardless of Scarcity

I haven't seen many complaints about prices in the last couple of years, except for the ones about the Three Investigators series.  That series has been selling for extreme prices since the pandemic began, and there is some hoarding and shenanigans going on with at least one of the sellers.  I don't want to get into any of that in this post, but I do want to acknowledge the Three Investigators situation even though I state that I haven't seen many pricing complaints recently among series collectors.   

Another big interest of mine is vintage teen books from the 1980s and 1990s (Sweet Valley High, Christopher Pike, etc.), and this interest inspired this post.  Even though this is a major interest, I have been unaware of the drama between collectors of the vintage teen books.  It appears to be the same old story as detailed in the posts to which I linked above.

I have a group on Facebook about the vintage teen books.  Every so often, someone will ask where to purchase the books.  These posts have gone fine until the most recent one.  When someone asked in July about where to find the books, a member linked to a certain online store.  

After the link was placed, the seller was said to be a scammer.  I am paraphrasing, since all of this has been deleted.  Some others jumped on the bandwagon, going so far as to bash the site that the seller uses, saying that it is full of fraudulent sellers who pad each other's feedback.  Claims were made that the seller and their clients spam groups on Facebook.  Members complained about the seller's very high prices. 

Someone stated that the pricing wasn't fair and that fans should never take advantage of other fans.  Fans should always be willing to help other fans out and should never price the books above a reasonable price.  I got the impression that a reasonable price means not higher than $5.  This all sounded so familiar.

I didn't know whether the complaints about spamming were true, so I was neutral about that.  I very much did care about the site that was bashed.  That really annoyed me, since I do sell on that site.  If the site was full of fraudulent sellers, then I was being lumped in with them. 

I hate it when blanket negative statements are made about online sites.  The blanket statements are most often made about eBay, Etsy, and Amazon.  Those statements are unfair.  While bad sellers can be found on most sites, the vast majority of sellers are good.  Bad sellers do out themselves if buyers will pay attention.  Taking a look at the seller's feedback and viewing the listings with a discerning eye will reveal the truth.  I would have almost no books in my collection if I had not been willing to purchase from the many fine individual sellers on various online sites.  It pains me that people are discouraged from buying from those sites.  

Getting back to the complaints about the seller of vintage teen books, the part about the pricing was something that I could check out for myself.  I went to the seller's store.  I didn't go through all of the listings, but the ones I saw looked fair.  They weren't cheap, but the particular books that this person sells are scarce and very much in demand.  The pricing looked just fine to me.  I was baffled, to be honest.  People were complaining about the seller's prices, yet the prices looked fair to me.

In my opinion, this is just the same old story about how books shouldn't be priced high.  As a buyer of vintage teen books, I very much do understand how the fans feel.  I would prefer for the books to be under $10 each.  However, that's not the reality.  Many of the books are now quite expensive.  It is frustrating.

I also sell books, so I understand the seller's position as well.  The books aren't easy to acquire inexpensively.  Some people are lucky and can find the books in great quantity for very low prices in thrift stores.  That's not true for most of us.  Here in Oklahoma, vintage teen books rarely appear in any stores.  When they do, thrift stores price them at $2 each.  Bookstores tend to price them at $4 to $5 each and sometimes a bit higher.  I am referring to softcover books that are typically in rough shape.  

R. L. Stine's fans are annoyed that people are buying up the Stine books and pricing them extremely high.  In one example, someone purchased some R. L. Stine books for $15 each.  The person who sold them was quite annoyed when the buyer placed them back up for sale at $150 each.  In that case, the price does seem a bit extreme.  While I don't have a problem with books being sold for profit, pricing at 10 times higher is a bit much for a paperback book from the 1980s or 1990s that is in rough shape.  Yikes.

But is that scamming?  It's not nice, but a seller does have the right to sell the books at whatever they want.  

I recently wrote about some R. L. Stine books that I found in a local store.  I am going to sell them but it is a dilemma on how to price them.  If I price them too low, then they could get purchased by a reseller who will then raise the price.  I might end up pricing some of the R. L. Stine books at $25 to $35.

That might make me seem greedy, but I would be trying to give the books at chance at going directly to someone who needs them instead of to someone who will price them even higher.  I can't prevent it from happening, but I can make it more likely that the books will go to someone who needs them.  Sellers do have to price books at above the bare minimum in order to give the books a chance at going to someone who actually needs them. 

I have used the same strategy for years with the Applewood editions.  In 2008, around three to four people were buying up every Applewood edition and then selling them for hundreds of dollars.  I did not put mine at extreme prices, but I did tend to sell them for a bit higher than I would have.  Even then, many of my books went to the people who were reselling them.  This is why I know exactly who was buying the books since I was one of their sources.  So at least I got a little more for them but I still didn’t actually sell them in the hundreds of dollars.

So does that make me a bad person if I sell certain books for above what people would like?  Where do we draw the line between someone selling the books at a fair price or selling the books at an extreme price?