Books Listed on eBay and Etsy + A Listing Dilemma

This week I listed a large number of books and other items on eBay and Etsy.

Jennifer's Series Books on eBay

Jennifer's Series Books on Etsy

I had a dilemma concerning some hardcover Three Investigators books.  The books needed to be on eBay due to condition issues, but I prefer not to sell Three Investigators books or early Nancy Drew books with dust jackets on eBay.  There is a certain problematic eBay user that I have blocked on three of their IDs.  This person deals in Three Investigators, early Nancy Drew books with dust jackets, and other books outside of my interests.  Even though I have this person blocked, he could very well circumvent the buyer block yet again.  He's already done that once before.

Circumventing a Buyer Block

His selling practices also disturb me, so I would rather not become his supplier again.

eBay's New Search Uncovers a Shady Seller
Tainting the Book Supply
Why I Don't Want to Sell Certain Books on eBay

The above posts are worth a read.  They will make clear why I keep certain books off of eBay whenever possible.

Getting back to my dilemma, I have quite a few Three Investigators books that have a musty odor.  Early this year, I used an ozone generator on the books in an attempt to get rid of the musty odor.  I believe that it helped some, but the books still smell musty.  I don't want to mess with them anymore.

Etsy is not a good venue for books with hidden flaws.  I cannot place text in bold or change the color of the text on Etsy.  I find on Etsy that buyers are less likely to look at all of the photos and are less likely to read the description.

This meant that I needed to list the musty books on eBay, but then my books would be visible to the blocked buyer.  I needed to price the books high enough to avoid gaining this person's interest.  I finally focused on this person's prices when selling the books.  I priced my books about the same as comparable books offered by this person. 

Another dilemma that I encounter fairly frequently is how to price extremely scarce books that are not in the best of condition.  The original text picture cover edition of Nancy Drew #7, The Clue in the Diary, falls into this category.  That printing is unbelievably scarce, yet it usually surfaces in bad condition.  

I have a copy available on eBay.  I may have priced it too high for the market.  We'll see.  I believe that the book is worth a good bit more than what people are willing to pay.  Quite a few people want that book fairly badly, but many of them expect for it to be priced at under $20.  The book is so scarce that pricing it under $20 is illogical.  Also, I haven't gotten my extras cheaply enough to price them that low.

At some point in the near future I want to get into a more lengthy discussion of my observation that many desirable books have an invisible cap on their values.  I find that this invisible cap often applies to the library editions and the international editions.  In short, very scarce books sometimes fail to sell due to the expectation that the price must be low.  It's an interesting topic.