Book Sale Report Part II

Since I was just 21st in line, I was through the doors within 30 seconds of the start of the sale. The books I seek are in two locations. Some of them are on three tables in the children's book section in the front. The rest are in three bookcases in the very back of the building in the rare books section. I have no way of knowing for sure where the best books are located, as the sorting is not always consistent, but the bookcases on the back wall are where I always head first. If I'm going to find anything spectacular, it will be in those bookcases.

Once I went through the doors, I had a clear path to those bookcases in the back, since the 20 people in line in front of me all went in different directions. This is what is so great about these sales; we are all after different books and get first pick in whatever we seek. It is never necessary to be the very first person in line. So long as I am around the 20th to 30th person in line, everyone ahead of me wants different books. As I went through the doors, I began to speed up, just as everyone else did, and jogged to the back wall, pulling my luggage on wheels after me.

There were a number of Cherry Ames and Hardy Boys PCs. At first I ignored the Hardy Boys to get the Cherry Ames and to begin looking around for dust-jacketed books. I am always very nervous when I do this, because I know that I may have just seconds if there is something very good. I have had very good books taken from right in front of me in the past. I got a Nancy Drew in dust jacket listing to #18. I picked up some Thornton W. Burgess books and other miscellaneous. I finally looked at the Hardy Boys and pulled out the $1 box editions from the set and left the rest. I had to look over the bookcases several times because everything was mixed up.

I then jogged back to the tables in the front. I found so much in the back that I thought there would not be much in the front. I was wrong. They had Nancy Drew $1 box PCs and early PCs listing to Pine Hill. They had Whistling Bagpipes with the tri-fold ad; I didn't know about the tri-fold ad until later because I didn't have time to check. Books were getting grabbed fast!

I found a bunch of Happy Hollisters and a bunch of the Landmark Books. I have no personal interest in the Landmark Books, but I know that homeschoolers love them, so I took all of them. Most of them had dust jackets. I picked up a few Tom Swift, Jr., a few Judy Bolton, and some miscellaneous.

I then paid for my purchases in the Collector's Choice section. It was quite a feat of strength to get that piece of luggage shoved into my car. I think it must have weighed around 100 pounds. I then went back inside to the general section. The general section has far more books than the Collector's Choice side, and the books are mostly of no interest to me. I have to check, though. I found very little in the general section this year, less than usual. This was actually good, because by the time I reached the general section, it was so packed with people that I really could not look through the books well.

—to be continued

Book Sale Report Part I

I went to a big library book sale on Friday. This is an annual event and is one of the two largest weekend book sales in the United States. This sale had at least 500,000 books, so it is a very big deal. I always wonder how they manage to consistently have that many books, year after year. I am very fortunate to live near one of the largest book sales.

I do not venture out to antique shops very often anymore, because it is not worth it. I do check the thrift stores every few weeks, but I no longer find much there, either. I think the thrift stores must now sell their books directly to dealers. There is a chance that some of them could be disposing their books due to the lead law, but I could find no clear evidence of that when I checked my stores last week. Goodwill is the only one that may have removed older books, but then Goodwill never really had any good older books in the first place.

Since I do not purchase often from local stores, this book sale is the one event I have left. I have been quite nervous about it for the past month because of the lead law. I reasoned that they surely would use common sense because guidelines have been issued about it being okay to sell older books. Even so, I have had a nagging unsettled feeling about the lead law and whether it would affect the sale. I was not about to send an email to inquire, as I didn't want to give them any ideas. With the lead law, "don't ask, don't tell" seems to be the best course of action.

I always take the day off work to go to the sale. I got in line 6 hours and five minutes before the sale began. I always wait in line for the Collector's Choice portion of the sale. The better books are placed in the Collector's Choice section, which is in a different room from the general section. The books in Collector's Choice are individually priced, usually under $5.00.

I was 21st in line for the Collector's Choice portion of the sale. The line had well over 1,000 people in it by the time the doors opened. It is hard to estimate exactly how many people are in a line like that, and I did not bother to try to count.

Anticipation is most of the fun. I actually enjoy waiting in line, wondering what I will find. I never find anything truly spectacular, but I always keep that dream alive. This year I daydreamed about finding the first printing Old Clock with an intact first printing dust jacket or that one Linda Carlton book I need. Since I own so many books, my dreams are always for very rare books that never come up for sale.

I didn't find either one, but I will continue to keep that hope alive. The first printing of Old Clock with the first printing dust jacket is the number one book on my wish list, and the Linda Carlton book is the number one book on my wish list for books that I can realistically expect to eventually own. I have some doubt as to whether I will ever own that first printing dust jacket of Old Clock.

My favorite part of waiting in line for the sale is the final 15 minutes. The excitement reaches its peak as the announcer counts down the final ten sections. I also get increasingly nervous during the final 10 minutes of my wait, since I know that the mad frenzy is about to begin.

—to be continued

Auctiva Malware Warning

The eBay third-party developer Auctiva is infected with a trojan. The site has had problems since Thursday. Auctiva claimed that all servers were clean over the weekend, but on Monday, they discovered that the site was still infected. The site was taken offline on Monday night.

One does not have to be an Auctiva user to be infected with the trojan. It is possible to become infected while visiting an eBay listing that uses Auctiva. Some people state that eBay users will be fine so long as they do not attempt to use Auctiva checkout to pay for their items and as long as they do not click on the Auctiva gallery to enlarge images. Any eBay user that clicks on the Auctiva gallery, tries to enlarge pictures, or uses Auctiva checkout stands a high likelihood of becoming infected.

The consensus is that Firefox and Google Chrome are giving better warning messages about the trojan than Internet Explorer is. While using Google Chrome to run my searches, I clicked on a listing. The screen turned red with a warning about possible malware on the page. I was not infected since Google Chrome prevented the page from loading. Even so, the experience caused me to abandon my search immediately. This situation may cause sales on eBay to slump even more this week.

Be very careful while using eBay in the coming days. Additionally, do not use Auctiva at all for any reason.

For more information, visit these pages:

First AuctionBytes Article

Second AuctionBytes Article

eBay Message Thread

Chatter about eBay

EBay's message boards have far fewer posts than before eBay "disruptively innovated" them weeks ago. There is a tangible difference. Either eBay is completely clueless, or they want to destroy the message boards, which have mainly been used in recent months to bash eBay. Since eBay has disruptively innovated My eBay and will soon finish disruptively innovating search, I suspect that eBay is just clueless more than anything. Each successive change makes the site harder to use. Why do this?

Even though the boards have far fewer posts and far fewer complaints, one does not have to look far to find the complaints. In this message thread, the question is asked whether anyone likes any of the changes one year after the first round.

One person gave an example of one change that they thought was positive and then wrote, "Other than that, almost every change that eBay has made has reduced the value of the product that they are trying to sell to me." Several people chimed in to agree with that statement.

A few people stated that they liked the changes because the changes forced them to learn HTML and create websites, meaning that the changes were bad but forced them into proactive measures to improve their businesses.

Someone observed, "In the past three weeks, I've been to two collectibles shows plus a health-care industry convention of 10,000+ here in Las Vegas. It surprised even me to hear so many say how ebay is 'useless' now and 'has gone completely down the tubes.' "

Another person commented, "I've talked with people who've never been on Ebay, yet know the company is in trouble. The news has spread to the mainstream public."

Last, someone wrote, "I heard they moved the shareholder's meeting up to April from June. I predict heads will roll. And rightfully so.... And yes, they have a PR disaster on their hands. Everyone you talk to is mad at them."

I am now searching eBay even less that I was a month ago. I predict that my efforts in searching eBay for purchases will decrease even more dramatically when the new search is forced upon me. EBay is slowly driving me off the site. I have spent many thousands of dollars on eBay over the years, and I have sold many thousands of dollars worth of books over the years. In the big picture, eBay will not miss me, but I am only one of many who is choosing to go elsewhere.

Ebay's "New and Improved" Search Is Coming

I have been opting out of eBay's new search for at least one year, primarily because I have heard horror stories about it for the past year. They used to call it the "Playground," but that name appears to have been retired. Regardless, I have heard very little good about the playground or whatever it is.

From eBay's Announcement Board:

Until now, buyers and sellers have been able to choose not to use the new search engine. With more than 90% of you now on board, we’ll be retiring the older technology in April of 2009. If you are one of the few who’s opted out, you’ll see some reminder messages during your searches.

Great . . . at least I know I have a little over one month before eBay finishes destroying what is left of my ability to find items. I did predict this on February 5th in my blog post, "eBay's Disruptive Innovation at Its Finest." I closed that post with this statement:

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.

Gee, how did I know?

EBay is claiming that 90% are already using what I will now refer to as the "new and improved" search. Just like with My eBay, I bet eBay is counting all of the inactive IDs that were defaulted into the new search months ago. Are 90% of us really using the new search? Are any of you using it?

This is how you can tell. On your search results pages, you will see one of two messages in the top right just above the results. You will either see "Opt out of the new search experience" or "This search experience is available until April 2009. Try our new search." The first message means that you are using the new search, and the second message means that you are using the old search.

I will continue to use the old search until eBay pulls me kicking and screaming out of it. After my recent experiences with the "new and improved" My eBay and the "new and improved" message boards (which still load slower than they once did), I expect the "new and improved" search to be worse than the old one.

I ran my Nancy Drew search for the books category and with all of my seller restrictions on both the old and the new search. The old search returned 2,188 items. The new search returned 2,844 items. It could be good that the new search returned more items, but my gut feeling tells me that it is bad. Are my blocked sellers actually getting blocked? I wonder.

After writing the above comments, I investigated. As far as I can tell, my blocked sellers are still blocked. Here are the results broken down by category in the left sidebar for the old search:


Here are the results for the new search:



Since the number of results were low for "Textbook, Education," I used that subcategory to compare the results. In the old search, four results were returned and only one of them was a result that had little to do with Nancy Drew, How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen. The other three results all contained Nancy Drew books.

In the new search, nine results were returned: the three results from the old search that contained Nancy Drew books and six results that did not contain Nancy Drew books. The six results were three listings for How Reading Changed My Life plus two listings for As We Remember Her: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and one listing for First-Aid Kit for Mothers. So the new search returned the three relevant items from the old search plus five additional irrelevant items that the old search did not return. How is this better? My gut instinct is correct: the new search is bad, and eBay will become even harder to use in April.

So, when is John Donohoe going to be fired?

Fewer RARE Books . . .

It may not mean anything, but I have noticed that suddenly several sellers are not using the word "rare" as much to describe their books. Most of their current listings do not use the word, and most of their recent listings do not use the word. I wonder why?

I have criticized the overuse of the word for months. When at least one-third or more of a seller's books are described as rare and in capital letters so that the seller is shouting at buyers ( remember that all caps is considered SHOUTING on the internet), I devalue the meaning of the word and devalue all of the seller's descriptions. The word has been overused by several people to the point that it no longer means anything at all.

Why have they suddenly decided to use it sparingly or not at all? It could be coincidental and temporary. Perhaps they will begin using it again in the coming weeks. We all change our minds on how we wish to market our items. On the other hand, it is also possible that these people have become aware of my and others' comments about overusing the word. I have no way of knowing what it is, but I do feel that it is likely that people who regularly sell series books will eventually stumble across this blog.

Back last year, I am fairly certain that in at least one instance, a seller changed his descriptions because of my comments. I refer you to this post:

More on the Applewood Editions

The seller had included this statement in his descriptions about the Applewood editions:

Although these books profess to be only reprints of the originals, their charm and craftsmanship continue to win the hearts of Nancy Drew fans, sometimes to the chagrin of Nancy purists.

I wrote this response in my blog:

Huh? First of all, I am about as serious of a Nancy Drew collector as one can be, but I am most certainly not a Nancy Drew purist. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I have always thought that a Nancy Drew purist was someone who only likes the original text books, #1-34. Aren't the Applewood editions the original text? Why would a purist have a problem with them?

I noted that within two weeks of that post, the seller had changed his descriptions to avoid using the word "purist." Interesting . . . I am very aware that when I write about auctions that the sellers may eventually end up reading my comments. This is why everything I write is filtered, and I try not to be too harsh. For some situations, I avoid mentioning auctions until they are closed so as not to interfere with the selling process.

So I have railed against the overuse of "rare," and I wonder why fewer books are currently described as "rare." I have mentioned on at least two recent occasions that I do boycott the listings of people who overuse the word. I have also mentioned in the past that while these people do lure in the newbie buyers, they turn off people like me. I once posed the question of whether it is worth it to alienate one group of collectors while taking advantage of another group. Have some of these people read my comments?

By the way, even though I do boycott some sellers' listings, if one of them should ever come up with that one Linda Carlton book that I need, I would quickly overcome my aversion and would place a bid. While I will not purchase books from them that I feel that I can find from others, I will purchase truly rare books should one ever surface. I am not going to go without a book just as a matter of principle.

In closing, I wish to make clear that I really do not have a problem with sellers describing some books as rare. Using the word for some books is fine; using it for a high percentage of books just to grab attention is what I dislike.

More on eBay's Folly

I found an article from InternetRetailer.com about eBay which is worth reading. This article contains statistics provided by eBay, so it partially explains away some of what people like me have noticed.

Transforming eBay

The article quotes Stephanie Tilenius, senior vice president and general manager of eBay North America. "Change is hard for everyone, but we are committed to making sure there are no bad experiences for buyers.” That is not possible! I just had a bad experience. I still do not have that book that I very much want that I purchased on January 23. Yes, eBay was quick about suspending the seller's account, and I am certain that the claim will be found in my favor. Even if my $8.00 is ultimately refunded to me, I will not be happy. All that I want is my book. EBay needs to figure out a way to force the seller to mail the book to me. Perhaps eBay should hire some bounty hunters to hunt down wayward sellers and strong-arm them into forking over the goods.

Internet Retailer mentions how eBay has lost ground to Amazon:

Sales at eBay are taking a hit, too. Merchandise sold on eBay declined for the first time in history in the third quarter, falling 1% to $14.28 billion from $14.40 billion a year earlier. And in the fourth quarter of 2008, sales of merchandise, excluding vehicles, fell 12% year-over-year from $13.10 billion to $11.47 billion. Amazon’s third-quarter sales increased 31%.

Isn't it odd that eBay wants to emulate Amazon, yet as eBay puts this plan into motion, eBay's sales decrease while Amazon's increase? EBay seems not to know that one should never try to transform into one's top competitor. It usually never ends good.

Internet Retailer also states, " 'One of the key themes emerging in the e-commerce industry over the past two years is the shift of marketplace momentum to Amazon from eBay,' says Colin Sebastian, an equity analyst at Lazard Capital Markets." EBay little understands that the shift from eBay to Amazon is because eBay has destroyed what it once was.

Internet Retailer mentions that eBay's strategy is to entice sellers to list at fixed-prices since eBay believes that is what shoppers want. The article concludes that eBay's plan seems to be working because at "the end of the third quarter of 2008, fixed price listings accounted for 46% of total listings, up from 41% a year earlier. What’s more, the new fees appear to have encouraged merchants to list more items: new listings were up 26% in the third quarter of 2008 from a year earlier."

I can answer why the fixed-price listings increased so much. EBay signed deals with the new diamond powersellers who dumped hundreds of thousands of fixed-price items onto the site. It does not necessarily mean that people like me have switched to fixed-price listings. Instead, people like me have decided to flee.

Did you know that one of my Bonanzle items shows up near the top of a Nancy Drew search on Google? Bonanzle's items are given a higher ranking than eBay's items on Google. EBay is past its glory. Okay, back to the main point of this post.

Check out Medved's 2008 item counts for eBay:

I drew a line through the graph at the level the listings were at in September when the diamond powersellers began to come onboard. Notice the huge jump that occured in the number of listings. That jump is not because people like me decided to list a bunch of stuff. It is because eBay signed sweet deals with retailers to list their items for free. They do list for free, you know, and pay eBay only when their items sell. This is even mentioned in the Internet Retailer article, and the article also suggests that the fees paid when items sell are probably lower for the diamond powersellers.

Internet Retailer states that Buy.com CEO Neel Grover believes that Buy.com should receive higher exposure than it does on eBay:

Grover would like to see diamond merchants like Buy.com given more prominence on eBay. Today, Buy.com is listed as an eBay store called Buy and easily lost in the shuffle of the thousands of other shops. “The overall benefit of what shoppers get with the diamond tier and the advantages of such merchants could have some branding around it,” Grover says.

How horrifying that would be! Buy.com is already hogging the books category, and Grover does not think that Buy.com is getting enough exposure? Please! The day that eBay allows Buy.com to receive even higher exposure than it currently does is the day that eBay will become completely unusable. Thank goodness we can block sellers. I hope eBay does not take that away from us.

Here is one last quote from Internet Retailer:

EBay’s own statistics do not suggest a big exodus of sellers. The number of eBay stores at the end of September 2008 was 534,000, up 3% from 520,000 a year earlier, eBay says.

This is kind of like those statistics in which eBay claimed that 90% of us were already happily using the "new and improved" My eBay. I'm not buying it. So the number of stores has increased. What does that prove? That 3% increase is probably from the stores of the new diamond powersellers along with various people who do not know that other venues exist. I never had a store in the first place, and I know of others who are no longer selling on eBay who never had a store. The number of eBay stores is unimportant. It is a fact that fewer good series books are listed on eBay. They have disappeared.

eBay's Big Announcement

According to the AuctionBytes blog, eBay has a big announcement:

Jim "Griff" Griffith gave listeners some tantalizing hints on his radio show this week about some upcoming eBay announcements and the direction of the marketplace. He said, "This is a big month at eBay. We're working on some interesting things, and a lot of them will be revealed in the next 30 days."

Mmm, do we really want to know? Why do I have this impending feeling of dread about this announcement? After everything eBay has done, which has supposedly been for the general good of people like me, why should I think that this big announcement will be good?

People are speculating about it. AuctionBytes quotes Griff as stating, "Advertising is a way of monetizing the site. Everyone knows that that's a way,..free services usually have some form of advertising... I'll let you draw some conclusions or maybe let that take your thought process. " An AuctionBytes reader suggests that eBay may be changing to free listings.

I'm not so sure that free listings would be a good idea. Wouldn't that increase the amount of junk on the site? Do we really need more junk on eBay? Also, I bet if the listings do become free, eBay will have strings attached to it, like how we have to be a new seller or have to have sold in the last month. You know...something that would prevent people like me from getting free listings.