Length of Nancy Drew Titles

In the past, I have noticed while listing books on eBay that the titles of the original 56 Nancy Drew books tend to be very close in length. I work from a template and type over the titles when changing from one listing to the next. Some of the titles have the exact same number of characters. I finally decided to make a note of how many characters each title has. The character counts include the spaces between the words.

1. The Secret of the Old Clock - 27
2. The Hidden Staircase - 20
3. The Bungalow Mystery - 20
4. The Mystery at Lilac Inn - 24
5. The Secret at/of Shadow Ranch - 26
6. The Secret of Red Gate Farm -27
7. The Clue in the Diary - 21
8. Nancy's Mysterious Letter - 25
9. The Sign of the Twisted Candles - 24
10. The Password to Larkspur Lane - 29
11. The Clue of the Broken Locket - 29
12. The Message in the Hollow Oak - 29
13. The Mystery of the Ivory Charm - 30
14. The Whispering Statue - 21
15. The Haunted Bridge - 18
16. The Clue of the Tapping Heels - 29
17. The Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk - 36
18. The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion - 39
18. Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion - 35
19. The Quest of the Missing Map - 28
20. The Clue in the Jewel Box - 25
21. The Secret in the Old Attic -27
22. The Clue in the Crumbling Wall - 30
23. The Mystery of the Tolling Bell - 31
24. The Clue in the Old Album - 25
25. The Ghost of Blackwood Hall - 27
26. The Clue of the Leaning Chimney - 31
27. The Secret of the Wooden lady - 29
28. The Clue of the Black Keys - 26
29. The Mystery at the Ski Jump - 27
30. The Clue of the Velvet Mask - 27
31. The Ringmaster's Secret - 23
32. The Scarlet Slipper Mystery - 27
33. The Witch Tree Symbol - 21
34. The Hidden Window Mystery - 25
35. The Haunted Showboat - 20
36. The Secret of the Golden Pavilion - 33
37. The Clue in the Old Stagecoach - 30
38. The Mystery of the Fire Dragon - 30
39. The Clue of the Dancing Puppet - 30
40. The Moonstone Castle Mystery - 28
41. The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes - 34
42. The Phantom of Pine Hill - 24
43. The Mystery of the 99 Steps - 27
44. The Clue in the Crossword Cipher - 32
45. The Spider Sapphire Mystery - 28
46. The Invisible Intruder - 22
47. The Mysterious Mannequin - 24
48. The Crooked Banister - 20
49. The Secret of Mirror Bay - 24
50. The Double Jinx Mystery - 23
51. Mystery of the Glowing Eye - 26
52. The Secret of the Forgotten City - 32
53. The Sky Phantom - 15
54. The Strange Message in the Parchment - 36
55. Mystery of Crocodile Island - 27
56. The Thirteenth Pearl - 20

Grosset and Dunlap definitely preferred for the titles to have between 20 and 30 characters. I have always favored the longer titles over the shorter titles, so I have never liked most of the titles with fewer than 20 characters as much as the rest of the titles.

Some eBay Message Board Funnies

Many people are still complaining about eBay's message boards. I'm getting used to them, but the pages do load slower, especially with Internet Explorer. Fortunately, the load time is okay with Firefox, which is what I use.

Some of the complaints are quite humorous, and some of the users' methods of manipulating eBay's new features is hilarious. The new boards truncate the user names so that longer names are cut off on the boards. This has caused some non-profane user IDs to appear to be profane as displayed. Some people are now registering new seemingly innocuous IDs that will display in a profane fashion. Here is one example in which someone suggested what would happen with a name change:


This is the result:


Additionally, a number of people hate the display of the avatars on the message boards, so they have decided to be creative. After all, eBay provides the opportunity, so why not show their support?

This person posted a message about using the avatar to show contempt:

The image was created by taking a photograph of eBay's CEO John Donohoe, tinting it orange to match the default avatar image, and decorating with an interesting hat. This person's post to the message board appears to have been removed, no doubt because eBay did not appreciate it. I find it rather funny.

Where Is My Book? Part 3

My seller has now been suspended from eBay, and all of his current listings have been removed. He is no longer a registered user, and his completed listings have also been removed. This means that the old listings are no longer in eBay's database at all. I have never understood why eBay erases the listings completely. They have stated that erasing the listings makes the process easier.

I received a series of messages today stating that the listing had been removed along with the usual suggestions about what to do. When I first saw the messages, I thought for a moment that they were scam messages trying to get me to click on a link that would give me a virus. I did open the first message after considering for a moment and knew that the message was real when I saw the seller's name.

Since I did not receive the book today, I filed a PayPal claim and escalated it. I know it will be found in my favor as is standard when the seller is kicked off eBay. This does not necessarily mean that my $8.00 is recoverable. I will not know until PayPal closes the claim.

I am still holding out a very small amount of hope that the book might show up in the next day or so. The chances are quite slim, though. At least eBay acted pretty quickly in kicking this seller off the site. The seller probably had far more complaints than what were apparent by his feedback. Feedback should never be the first resort, so quite a few of his buyers had likely already filed claims but had not left feedback.

Where Is My Book? Part 2

I decided that I might as well keep a log of this train wreck. My seller's feedback is getting worse, and he is gaining negatives rapidly.



His shipping time DSR has now fallen to 4.1, which is the value that will get him blocked from selling. He still has 453 listings. I would expect that eBay will block him from listing additional items even if the current ones are permitted to run.

He has received some positives in the last couple of days from people whose purchases occurred from about the same time as mine, so I am hoping that I receive the book within the next couple of days. If I do not receive the book by around Wednesday, I feel that I can consider this one to be hopeless. At least I only have $8.00 invested in this one.

Where Is My Book?

I bought a book on January 23, and I have not received it yet. The amount of time that has passed is a big concern, but the weather has been bad in many parts of the country. When sellers are honest, books that are delayed usually turn up.

This book is a very hard to find book that I want for my collection and is not just some random book that is of little importance to me. The book's cost was less than $10 but is worth much more than that to me.

I checked the seller's feedback a few minutes ago. It is not good. The seller has acquired many negatives in the last couple of weeks. The negatives state that the items have not been received and that the seller is not communicating. I bet my book has not even been mailed yet.

I sent the seller a message asking for shipment information. I am not confident of receiving a response. I just hope he decides to mail the book. I wish I could slap him. I despise nothing more than someone not mailing my purchase when it is something that I greatly desire and have looked forward to receiving.

I have at least one purchase go missing per year in cases in which I feel confident that the sellers were honest and did actually mail the packages. In those cases, the packages go missing because of inferior packing methods.

I have seldom been outright defrauded. Unless I have forgotten one of them, I have been defrauded twice and nearly defrauded two other times. In the latter cases, the sellers finally mailed the items after I filed complaints.

I have also had a handful of other types of problems with sellers. In one case, the books had undisclosed past severe water damage and arrived in a package that had something spilled on it that seeped inside and wet the books. It was an odd combination of past and present water damage. The seller claimed that her pictures showed the water damage, which was false. The seller also claimed that she was not responsible for the contents of the package arriving wet. Ultimately, that seller did allow me to return the books for a full refund but only after I made a big deal about it.

It is very frustrating. I have bought thousands of books over the years, and I seldom have problems. Nearly every time that I have had problems with a seller, there were warning signs. My current problem seller did already have three negatives from the previous month. I decided to take the risk. I don't regret it, because I wouldn't have had a chance at the book otherwise.

If the downturn that has occurred in the seller's feedback was already present when my book was up for sale, I would have thought twice about bidding. From the information I had at that time, I knew the seller was not the very best but thought that I would almost certainly receive my book. As the seller's feedback looks now, I am most likely not going to receive the book.

EBay began the Detailed Seller Rating system in order to restrict marginal sellers and to help protect buyers. I can't see where it is working. I am dumbfounded that my seller still has hundreds of open listings, considering that one of his DSRs is 4.2.

I checked the current policy, and eBay now reduces search standing for a DSR of 4.3 (odd since they lowered my search standing during the time that I had a DSR of 4.6) and restricts a seller who has a DSR of 4.1. This seller is continuing to sell despite numerous negatives, PayPal complaints (these are mentioned in the negatives), and terrible DSRs. Even though the seller's DSRs are above the minimum, all the negatives and complaints should be enough to force a restriction or removal of his listings. Why does eBay pick on people who have higher ratings yet allows people like this to continue to sell?

Despite My Best Efforts . . .

No matter how hard I try to educate people about books, some people read my website and come away just as uninformed as they were before they read it. A reader of this blog informed me about a seller misquoting my website in an auction right after he contacted the seller of the mistake.

This is the auction:

The Secret of the Old Clock - Carolyn Keene-Nancy Drew

The auction was for an early 1940s thick blue Nancy Drew book with a white spine dust jacket with the spine symbol. I took a screen cap of the auction since I knew the seller would probably change it. This is how the auction description originally ended:
The seller went to my website, read my commentary, and somehow came away with the idea that Nancy Drew books from the early 1940s are rare. To the seller's credit, the description was changed and that last sentence was removed. I can only do so much. People read my comments and misinterpret them.

eBay's Disruptive Innovation at Its Finest

A couple years ago, eBay created its "disruptive innovation" program, which ultimately resulted in John Donahoe becoming the CEO of the company and heading the company further along a disruptive path of innovation, or as I like to call it, destructive innovation. An AuctionBytes article from December 4, 2008 is quite prophetic. The article, eBay Replaces Community with Commodity, closes with the following statement:

In April, top eBay executives speaking at conferences said eBay was moving towards a more retail-like experience, and that "you will not recognize eBay this time next year." Truer words could not have been spoken, and once the holiday shopping season is over, we're likely to see more change.

EBay has been very busy during early 2009 in continuing its destructive innovation. On January 2o, eBay launched the new and improved My eBay, which loads slower, crashes many browsers, and is a bit difficult to customize and use.

A few weeks ago, I first heard that eBay planned to upgrade its message boards on February 3. I, along with many other users, suspected that the changes to the message boards would make them worse instead of better. EBay upgraded, or rather, destructively innovated, the message boards a little more than 24 hours ago. Yes, the message boards do have some new features which are improvements. The problem is that some of the other new features make the boards far less usable than they were before. Sound familiar? We just went through this a few weeks ago with My eBay.

All message comments now have the avatars of the users who post the messages. This is fine within each message thread, but it is problematic on the main page of each message board. The avatars cause the titles of the threads to be far apart and difficult to quickly scan. Add that to the fact that the pages now load slower and hang slightly, and it takes more time and effort to view the available topics.

EBay has defaulted each page of each message board to just fifteen posts. Each board has an advanced options tab in which the user can increase the number of posts to as many as 50. I did this earlier today, but later, the boards had defaulted back to 15 posts per page. It is not helpful when settings need to be changed repeatedly.

So far I am not impressed with the new message boards. The message boards were great because they were so easy to read. I am not certain whether I will be reading the message boards as much. Perhaps eBay wishes to destroy the message boards so that users will not have the ability to complain so much.

Now that eBay has begun to destroy its message boards, what will be changed next? No, wait; I already know. I'm sure we will all be defaulted into that horrible new eBay search called the "Playground" in which users are unable to find anything.

Change for the sake of change is never good.

Early Kay Tracey Dust Jackets

I recently bought an auction lot that contained the first four Kay Tracey books with dust jackets. The dust jackets are very early dust jackets; in fact, all four dust jackets may be the first printing dust jackets.

I have a complete set of the early thick yellow Kay Tracey books with dust jackets, and it was very difficult just to get the thick books with dust jackets that have unfaded spines. Due to the difficulty of getting a thick book with a nice dust jacket, I never tried to get any first printing dust jackets. I probably do have a few of the first printings of the last several titles, but I do not have any for the early books.

I used to have a first printing dust jacket of one of the early Kay Tracey books, but the spine was faded so I sold it when I acquired a slightly later printing with an unfaded spine. The condition of the dust jacket spines is very important to me since that part of the dust jacket is the part that I see on the shelf. I cannot stand faded spines and only have faded spines for the series books that are very scarce.

When I spotted the lot of four books and realized that the spines were unfaded and that the jackets were very early or first printings, I decided to buy them. The jackets are in varying stages of deterioration. All of them are brittle, but The Strange Echo is the worst of the four. This is what I had after I removed the dust jacket from the book:


The dust jacket was in many pieces, and additional pieces came loose as I repaired it. I had to use archival tape on it as there was no other way to get the dust jacket reassembled. Anyone who has tried to repair a dust jacket knows how hard it is to get the different pieces lined up properly. This is what I had after around 15 minutes of work:

I still had a couple of pieces that I could not match up with it or any of the other jackets. Since they must belong to Strange Echo, I put them in the mylar cover behind the jacket.

I do believe that at least three of the four dust jackets are the first printing dust jackets. Here is the dust jacket for The Secret of the Red Scarf, which is the first title in the series:


The dust jacket lists just the first two titles in the series. Since it was standard practice for publishers to release the first two to four books of a series simultaneously as a breeder set, the first two Kay Tracey books were probably released at the same time. For this reason, I believe that the above dust jacket is the first printing dust jacket.

Here is the dust jacket for The Strange Echo, the second title in the series:


The front flap lists just the first two titles in the series, just like the dust jacket for The Secret of the Red Scarf. Most likely, the above dust jacket is the first printing dust jacket.

Here is the dust jacket for The Mystery of the Swaying Curtains, the third title in the series:


It lists to the fourth title in the series. For that reason, it may not be the first printing dust jacket, unless volumes three and four were released simultaneously. I notice that the copyright pages for the first two books list just the first two books with "other volumes in preparation." The copyright pages for the third and fourth books list the first four books with "other volumes in preparation." For this reason, it seems likely that the third and fourth books were released simultaneously, so my third book does likely have the first printing dust jacket.

Here is the dust jacket for The Shadow on the Door, the fourth title in the series:


This dust jacket lists to the fourth title, so it is probably the first printing dust jacket.

One last thing—I paid under $8.00 per book, so these books were a bargain.