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?

The Problem of Pricing Books

Sellers often face the dilemma of wondering how to price books for which they do not know the value.  This happens to me fairly frequently when I sell books that I do not collect or do not actively follow on eBay.  In this post, I will detail two recent experiences in which I had to guess at prices.

Some sellers are paranoid about pricing and price books at consistently steep prices in order to avoid ever selling a book at below cost.  Unfortunately, this practice keeps the books away from people who would like to purchase them.  I prefer for my books to sell, even if I sometimes get less for a book than it might be worth.

A few months ago, I purchased a large number of Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books locally.  The books were cheap, but they were also library discards in rough shape.  I was aware that CYOA is a popular franchise, which is why I purchased the books.  However, I had no idea how to price the books.

I spent around an hour researching the different sets of CYOA books.  The original set was published by Bantam Books in the 1980s and 1990s.  Random House purchased Bantam Books in 1998 and somehow let the trademark for CYOA lapse, thereby losing the rights to publish the series.  It's amazing that a modern publishing company was so careless.

One of the authors of the original CYOA series, R. A. Montgomery, gained the rights to the series and founded the Chooseco company, which has since issued multiple reprint sets and sets consisting of new titles.  The Chooseco sets are also quite desirable and sought by fans of the franchise.

I figured out that the books I purchased were a mixture of original Bantam books and books from two different Chooseco sets.  I separated the books by type, then checked eBay sold listings.  I could not list the books for as high as other listings, because mine were in rough shape.  I went with bulk lots and priced accordingly.  Here are some photos that show the rough condition and the library stickers.

All sets sold quickly within a few days of being listed.  I kept wondering if I had priced the books too low.  I don't think so.  Condition is important, and I couldn't ask as much for the books as if they had been in nice shape.  I assume that the people who purchased my books wanted to read them, and rough condition library discards read just as well as more expensive nice copies.  My bulk lots served that purpose fine and saved the buyers some money.

I am also not very knowledgeable of past Ken Holt prices.  Each time I have extra Ken Holt books, I check eBay sold listings and come up with prices.  Auction prices tend to be below value.  Fixed-price listings that have not yet sold tend to be above value.  Fixed-price listings that have sold indicate what someone was willing to pay but are not necessarily indicative of the actual value.

I look at both sold and unsold listings and come up with a price that is usually above the auction results but below the fixed-price listings that have not yet sold.  My price is also heavily influenced by the condition of the book.  Condition is important, and when books have certain flaws, they must be priced lower than books that do not have those flaws.  Most of the Ken Holt books that I listed in early May had sticker scars on the front panels and/or spines of the dust jackets.  Sticker scars reduce value.  The books also smelled of cigarette smoke, which does fade in time but is a significant flaw.

Most of my Ken Holt books sold rather fast, which is what always happens when I list Ken Holt books.  Here are the listings that have sold.

Here is another picture of The Mystery of the Sultan's Scimitar which shows the faded spine.

I would have priced the book higher if not for the faded spine.  The book sold almost immediately after being listed, and I am pretty confident that the book was purchased to resell.  I guess that means that I could have gotten more for the book, but I did not feel that a higher price was justified.

I was asked to reduce the price of The Mystery of the Plumed Serpent shortly after I listed it.  I ignored the request since my book was in a tie for the lowest price online.  The prospective buyer later purchased the book at my original price.

Two books did not sell in the first listing cycle but have sold in the second listing cycle.

During the first listing cycle I was asked to reduce The Mystery of the Invisible Enemy to just $20.  Considering how fast the other books sold, I was not about to do that.  I did end up getting my original listing price of $34.99. 

Two books, seen below, are the only ones that have not yet sold.

Even though all of the Choose Your Own Adventure and many of the Ken Holt books sold fast, I don't regret how I priced the books.

Series Book Collecting and Prices

Back in June, I mentioned the problems that occurred online in the late 1990s between several collectors. I believe those conflicts started years before at least in part due to a disagreement over the pricing of series books.

This controversy goes back at least as far as 1980. One group of collectors believed that series books should never be sold for more than $10. Others felt that scarce titles should command high prices due to the great demand. Keep in mind that in the 1980s, books were much harder to find than now. Collectors had to travel to book stores, call dealers on the phone, or send requests by mail. Collecting was very different in those days.

The topic of price gouging was covered in the very first issue of the series book publication, The Mystery and Adventure Series Review, to which I will refer as MASR in this writing. In MASR #1 from 1980 in the column "Hunting for Hidden Books," Kent Winslow wrote, "For the person who collects items because of their personal interest or nostalgia value, paying high prices that pave the way for even higher prices, is in the long run disastrous. Eventually the real collectors for whom the items are meaningful or beautiful abandon their collecting hobby to the professional collectors—speculators who may not have the faintest interest in the items for their own sake, but who see them as abstract investments." Winslow went on to state that this had already happened with comic books, in which the Overstreet price guide had dictated future prices.

In MASR #24 from 1991, one reader complained about the last Ken Holt title being priced at $300 to $400. Another reader complained about a Rick Brant book selling for $950.

MASR #26 from 1993 is full of rants from various readers about "series book profiteers" in the letters column.

In MASR #28 from 1996, Fred Woodworth expressed a belief that certain dealers had hoarded away stacks of scarce titles, selling them one at a time at outrageous prices. He went on to warn readers never to pay high prices for books, because "you're not only being cheated, you're participating in a nasty abuse that will inevitably result in the destruction of series-book fandom, leaving in its place a sad spectacle of profit-driven non-reading speculators."

In the letters to the editor in MASR #28, one reader was annoyed that a dealer priced the first printing of Hardy Boys #1 in dust jacket at $2,000. This reader also reported other high prices, such as Tom Swift Jr. Cosmotron Express at $85 and a Rick Brant (title not identified) at $125. These prices were considered exorbitant.

MASR #29 from 1996 includes many complaints from various readers about "money-hungry dealers" and "profiteering swine." A reader lamented that he would never be able to read the last five Judy Bolton books or the last Ken Holt book. People felt that the end of collecting was near.

I've only mentioned a small sample of what these issues contain, in part because much of the content is too hostile and marked with inappropriate language to reprint here. Even though some collectors were a bit too upset about the situation, they had a genuine concern about the inability to afford certain titles. Each of us has been in that position with regards to one book or another.

People felt that collectors should avoid pricing scarce books at high prices in order to combat profiteering. For instance, let's say that a collector found the last Tom Swift, Jr., Galaxy Ghosts, which in 2011 sells for $150 and up. The feeling was that the collector should sell the book at a low price in order to keep the price down. Some people felt that the book should not be priced at more than $10, while others could see a collector pricing the book at $50 in order to partially share the good find but to still profit at the same time. All agreed that to price such a book at a couple hundred dollars would be greedy and unacceptable.

The readers were not only upset with the people who charged high prices, but also the people who were willing to pay high prices. Both parties were considered equally guilty.

Here are my thoughts. We cannot control the prices of scarce books. It is honorable for someone to sell scarce books at low prices, but the seller cannot control what the buyer does with the book. What happened to some of these collectors who wrote to MASR is that they sold scarce books at low prices and then were upset when the buyers marked the books up higher and resold them. This is what happens in a free market.

What strikes me the most from reading the letters in MASR is that collectors were certain that the hobby would be destroyed by profiteers. No one would ever be able to read the scarce books that they want to read so badly. Have prices continued to rise, never to go back down? No.

While even today, some books are out of reach for most people, many of the books that collectors felt were too high during the 1990s have come down considerably. Some collectors may have since passed on and were never able to purchase these books. However, the collectors who are still around have seen the prices fall dramatically.

We now have the internet, and this has made most prices go down. Back in the early 1990s, the last Judy Bolton book tended to sell for at least $300 to $500 due to the small supply. When eBay came around, the supply increased, although the demand was still far greater. In the late 1990s, Sand Castle sold on eBay for around $200 or so. Now, Sand Castle can sell for under $50 in an eBay auction. Some sellers continue to ask higher prices, but the book can be acquired for far less.

When 500 people want a book that perhaps comes up for sale only once or twice per year, the price will not stay low. The free market does not work that way. Some books remain expensive today, but some people are able to get bargains. Sometimes those people keep the books, and sometimes they resell them at a large profit. That has not changed.

Even today, collectors sometimes get angry when certain other collectors "hog all the books." If collectors who are not buying to resell are not willing to bid higher in eBay auctions, then that is exactly what will happen. In fact, if some collectors were not buying to resell, the prices would be even lower than they are now.

The tweed Nancy Drew books with jackets kept some of their value for a long time due to people buying them to resell. We have finally reached a point where the tweed Nancy Drew books in dust jacket have saturated the market to the point that the books appear to be worthless. Even buying to resell did not keep the value of the tweeds up high.

A certain saying states that the more things change, the more they stay the same. This saying applies to collecting series books. The same concerns that collectors had years ago still apply today. Some books can be found inexpensively, while others will be sold at high prices. Collectors wonder if they will ever be able to read that certain book. With the advent of electronic texts, many old books going into the public domain, and reprints, collectors have a much greater chance of getting to read the scarce books than they did years ago.

The Hoarding of the Applewood Editions

An article by Kent Winslow in the first issue of The Mystery and Adventure Series Review from the summer of 1980 mentions the rise of comic book prices as well as the hoarding of comic books and how the same could happen to series books:

Allowing prices to rise too high, I firmly believe, will cause the books to disappear entirely from the ordinary market, the same way old comic books have already, as speculators seize whole lots and pack them away in warehouses to await eventual monster profits . . . The now well-known Comic Book Price Guide ended up having a PRESCRIPTIVE rather than DESCRIPTIVE effect when, as part of this process, people started consulting it for advice on how much to charge instead of seeing its figures as averages of prices real people were setting . . . However, book dealers are beginning to realize that . . . series books can become a strongly profitable source, too . . . most series books were printed in hard-cover editions that stand the ravages of time and present a sturdy appearance long after the average comic would have been destroyed. For this reason, the old books are more likely to have survived . . . Nevertheless, they can be made a scarce commodity (scarcer than they are, that is), artificially. The local book dealer I mentioned earlier—who claims to have one of the largest stocks of books in the southwestern United States—is at this time in the process of hoarding salable items for just this reason. In reply to a query of mine about whether he had any Tom Quest books or anything else by Fran Striker, not long ago, he actually laughed out loud and pointed at a stack of cardboard boxes nearby that reached all the way up to the ceiling. "See those apple boxes over there?" he asked . . . "Well, down in the warehouse we have 700 boxes just like that, and that's where we keep all the Fran Striker books we get in—Lone Ranger . . . all that stuff. If somebody brings them in for trade, they go right into the warehouse."

The situation as described above is what I believe has happened with the Applewood edition Nancy Drew books.  The books have been made artificially scarce and now command high prices.  The books were still selling for low prices in the first few months after Applewood's contract expired.  After it became common knowledge that there would be no more books printed by Applewood, sellers began stating in their auctions that the books were out of print and sure to become scarce (actually, they probably said that the books were to become RARE) and hard to find. 

At this point, we began to see the prices spike from $10.00-$25.00 up to $30.00-$50.00.  During this time, all of the books were still readily available.  As the months passed, the number of books available gradually dwindled in number from online sites such as Amazon.com.  By this point, the resellers were stating that the books were RARE and valuable.   The prices climbed slowly upward.

I have no doubt that the people selling the books were buying up the available copies and placing them on eBay.  In the summer of 2008, the only Applewood editions that are still available for reasonable prices are the first five or six titles, #20, and #21.  For some reason, #20 and #21 are already commanding high prices on eBay, even though they can still be purchased for under $20.00 from online sites. 

This scenario is what happened with the rest of the titles around a year ago.  Those titles were still available when the prices spiked on eBay.   As people are now paying high prices for #20 and #21, we can expect the stock to gradually disappear from Amazon.com and others, thus causing the prices to rise even more sharply.

The reason why the stock is dwindling is because the resellers are buying up the books.  It is because the resellers have bought up all available copies of #7-19 that were priced at under around $50.00-$75.00 that the books are now only listed for very high prices on the fixed-price sites.  Since the sellers know that they can get around $100.00 or so per book, it is worth it for them to pay as much as $75.00 per book and then sell the book. 

By the way, people can enter want criteria on the different fixed-price sites, so when the Applewood editions come up for sale at reasonable prices, the books are probably sold within an hour or so of when the book is listed.  This is why the average buyer will never see any books available other than the expensive ones. 

The Applewood situation has been caused by book hoarding.   It doesn't have to be just one person doing it; an entire group of people can collectively be responsible.  I believe that the books will retain their artificial value for a number of years, but ultimately, the value will fall again to normal levels.  Many parents bought the books for their children, and after the children grow up and move away from home, many of the books will be sold.  This is when more examples will surface, and the books will fall again in value.

eBay Prices Hit Record Levels

Rare ODDITY Applewood #11 Nancy Drew 1st Edition Item #350070727088

This book closed at $305.00. It is an Applewood edition bound upside down. The text block was placed in the binding upside down so that the title on the outside of the book is upside down in relation to the text.

This is a binding error, and what some people don't seem to understand is that in the book collecting world, binding errors greatly reduce the value of the book. It is only when collecting things like coins that ones with errors are more valuable. This is because flawed coins are usually destroyed, and the ones that escape become quite valuable. This is not the case with books.

If the book is readable, it will usually be sold. The only time that a binding error does not reduce the value is when it is one of the points that determine a first edition, but that is seldom true. Assuming that I were going to pay $305.00 for an Applewood edition (which I wouldn't), I would want my book to be bound correctly. I wouldn't want to have to open it upside down. How annoying! I don't have binding errors like this in my collection as they don't interest me. I have had a few from time to time, but I always get rid of them when I find an unflawed copy.

Some errors do interest me, however. I still regret not winning an auction for a nice Nancy Drew book with dust jacket from the 1940s that had the Bobbsey Twins endpapers. That sort of error makes a book unique and takes nothing away from its aesthetic appeal, in my opinion. ................................................................ Nancy Drew Clue of the Velvet Mask HBDJ CAMEO Book Club Item #330244708038 This is also insane. This book closed at $222.51 and is one of the easiest to find of the Cameo editions. If you actually want to pay over two hundred dollars for a Cameo edition (and two people did in this case), pick Hidden Staircase or Old Clock. They are, at least, quite a bit harder to find than this one. ................................................................ Judy Bolton 30 /30 Phantom Friend Margaret Sutton HB/DJ Item #320263992459 This book closed at $200.01. It also went rather high, though not so much as some other recent Judy Bolton books. It is one of the harder to find Judy Bolton books; however, I have sold several of this title for around $35.00 to $50.00. It normally does not sell for anywhere close to $200.00. ................................................................   Due to all of this competitive bidding by people with deep pockets, the prices for all series books are quite inflated at the moment. Take Nancy Drew, for instance. Doing a completed items search for Nancy Drew and sorting by highest price first, the top fifty results all ended at $199.00 or higher. This is incredible. In normal times, the lowest-priced of the top fifty highest-priced completed Nancy Drew books will be as low as $50.00 or sometimes even lower.

Going to the second page of completed Nancy Drew books, still sorted by highest price first, the last item on the second page is priced at $104.49. Going to the third page of results, the lowest one is $76.00. At least 150 Nancy Drew auctions closed at $76.00 or higher.

If you are new to collecting and are wondering how you are ever going to be able to collect series books, the prices will come back down. It may be a few weeks or a few months, but the big spenders will eventually complete their collections or else move on to something else. It would be better to be patient than to spend $200.00 to $300.00 on an Applewood edition.

Recently when I read some of the back issues of The Mystery and Adventure Series Review, there were various articles about series book hoarding. This is when certain people buy up all available copies of certain books so that they can sell them at a high price. I am not into conspiracy theories, but I have noticed certain buying and selling patterns. I quietly file away what I notice in my mind.

Series book hoarding does occur to a certain extent, and it is occurring on the internet. Applewood editions are selling for grossly inflated prices. Go to a used book database such as the Advanced Book Exchange and enter a search for Applewood editions. Click on my link to see the results.

Several months ago, there were available copies of the higher-numbered Applewood editions, some of them at high prices. Currently, the only ones there are the first six titles. The rest have been purchased, probably by the people who are selling them on eBay. Even the most expensive of the higher numbered Applewoods have now sold. People are certainly going to buy them up on ABE for $75.00 or so apiece when bidders are eager to pay $200.00 to $300.00 on eBay.

I also checked the listings on Amazon.com for the Applewood editions. For volumes 10 through 15, the only available copies are priced at around $100.00 and up. This doesn't mean that the books are actually worth that much. It means that all of the lower-priced books have been purchased, probably to resell on eBay, leaving only the expensive ones.

At the level that the Applewood editions have now reached, some people may begin to purchase the $100.00 copies on Amazon and put them on eBay, hoping to get $200.00 or more. My point is that the Applewoods may be artificially hard to find at the moment because people have bought up all of the available copies that were reasonably priced in order to resell them.

This would not be happening if the bidders were not willing to pay such high prices. If more people would step back and wait, the prices for the Applewood editions would fall again. This sort of thing also happens on eBay with the Cameo editions. I frequently sell extra Cameo editions that I have found, and the books nearly always sell to one of a few people who then resell the books at much higher prices.

There is not anything wrong with this. I have made many sales because there are people who can sell the books for a higher price than I can. As long as I can sell the books for the price that I want, I'm not going to worry about what they do with the books.

What I fail to understand is why the buyers do not purchase the listings that sell for reasonable prices and why they choose to pay high prices for the same books offered later by someone else. I believe that some people feel that just because a book is priced higher that it must be better. If you have ever wondered why some people will throw a $100.00 book up on eBay for $500.00 or even $1000.00, it is because they know that some buyers will be influenced by the artificially high price and will buy it thinking that it is better.