The Heartbreak Cafe Series

The Heartbreak Cafe series consists of six books written by Janet Quin-Harkin.  The first three books were published in March 1990.  The last three books were published in April through June 1990, one per month.

1.  No Experience Required
2.  The Main Attraction
3.  At Your Service
4.  Catch of the Day
5.  Love to Go
6.  Just Desserts

The series is widely available in modern paperback editions and in digital format.  The original editions of the first five books can be found in softcover without too much trouble.  #6 is readily available in the hardcover Especially for Girls edition, but the original softcover edition of #6 is difficult to find and pricey.

In the Heartbreak Cafe series, Debbie Lesley's parents have recently divorced, and Debbie now lives with her mom.  Debbie's mom informs her that they don't have enough money to pay for the insurance for Debbie's car, so Debbie is forced to find a job.

By chance, Debbie ends up at the Heartbreak Cafe and applies for a job as a waitress.  She's hired, but the owner's grandson, Joe, is extremely arrogant.  Joe and Debbie do not get along at all.  And yet... at times Debbie feels like Joe could become more than just a coworker.  

The overarching story of the series is whether Debbie and Joe will ever have a romance.  They gradually become friendlier and share a few kisses here and there.  At the same time, they argue and insult each other constantly, which keeps them from beginning a real relationship.

The Heartbreak Cafe has a group of regular customers who appear in all six books.  During the first book, I felt like there were too many characters, but at the books continued, I became more familiar with them and was able to appreciate them.

I really enjoy teen series in which the protagonist has a real problem.  Debbie has a good share of real problems.  She must work, and she's lost her membership in the country club, which has caused some conflict.  Debbie's father is in some kind of mid-life crisis, and Debbie does not approve of his behavior.  Debbie's boyfriend, Grant, seems to be more interested in how Debbie can make him look good than in her as a person.  There is a lot going on.

Debbie also makes some really bad decisions at times, but considering the turn her life has taken, it is understandable.

These books are interesting and engaging.  They are loosely similar to Sweet Valley High in that the stories continue from book to book, and the same characters interact throughout the series.  Additionally, the plot elements are similar to Sweet Valley High as well.

Overall, this is an excellent series, and I greatly enjoyed reading through the set.

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 Nancy Drew Cookbook FLB Library Edition

In June, an FLB library edition of the Nancy Drew Cookbook came up for auction on eBay.  I was very interested to see how high the auction would go.  To my knowledge, it was only the second one ever to come up for sale.  The FLB Cookbook binding is very scarce.

I purchased the FLB edition Cookbook seen above on eBay in November 2005.  The book was offered in an auction.  During that time, I usually was able to purchase any library edition I wanted, whether through Buy It Now or auction, with very little competition.  Sometimes though, a newbie buyer (a new account with no feedback) would show up on eBay and decide to go after a library edition at all cost.  That was what happened when I failed to bid high enough on the 1940s Style Library Binding of the Nancy Drew book, The Haunted Bridge.  

There has always something about newbies to eBay and how they react to certain listings.  It can be library editions or anything else.  It was always frustrating to me when a newbie chose to go after a library edition.

A newbie to eBay decided to bid aggressively on the FLB Cookbook that I purchased in 2005.  There was also another bidder involved, someone who was not a newbie.  I waited until the end to bid, as I have always done.  I bid something like $125 on it, which should have been more than sufficient to win the auction.  I lost the auction.

Shortly after the auction ended, I received a second-chance offer, because the winning bidder had backed out.  Certainly, I could not rule out shill bidding by the seller, but I am confident that the seller was not the winning bidder based on the messages I exchanged with her.  

Consider that just about nobody wanted library editions in those days.  Would a seller really have bid on her own auction for a library edition?  I just don't think so.  Also, nobody had any idea what kind of prices I might have been willing to pay.  I usually purchased library editions at low Buy It Now prices, in bulk lots, or as the only bidder in an auction started at a reasonable price.  It would be more logical for a seller to shill bid now than in those days of low interest.

After I received the second-chance offer, I declined it.  I told the seller that I didn't feel that it was fair for me to have to pay one bid increment below the winning bid since that person was not a serious bidder.

I don't recall whether my suggestion or the seller's was mentioned first.  In any case, the seller offered to relist the book at the same low starting bid.  I offered to pay the seller a price somewhere in the middle.  I believe my offer was about at what the third highest bidder was willing to pay.  I do recall the seller not wanting to take my offer.  Some people might say that she was going to shill the auction agin, but I really don't think she was bidding on the auction herself.  

Besides, I rather badly wanted the book.  I just didn't want to have to pay one increment below what the winning bid was.  I didn't want to have to wait through another auction, not knowing who else might get involved.  I had a chance to purchase the book outright, and I told the seller that I did want to purchase it for what I offered.  

I had offered the seller $75.  At that time, it was an exorbitant amount to pay for a library edition.  I didn't tell anyone what I paid.  Well, I didn't have a blog at that time, and I certainly didn't go into discussion groups and tell people about my spending habits.  They would have thought I was insane.  

It's apparent that I got a really good deal, now that the Nancy Drew library editions have become much more desirable.

The recent auction closed at $330.  For this auction, the third highest bid was $30.  Usually, the third highest bid is used to assess the actual value.  Based on the scarcity of this book, I would place the value at above $30.  Let's say at least $75 to $100, but it could very well be worth more than that.  While the pink/salmon FLB binding is not too hard to acquire for the Nancy Drew titles from the main set, the Nancy Drew Cookbook is in a different league.

The FLB editions date from the 1970s, but I don't know the exact range of years.  The highest numbered title of which I am aware is Forgotten City, which was published in 1975.  If Forgotten City was the final book done by FLB, then FLB quit rebinding the Nancy Drew books in around 1975.

My FLB Cookbook has a handwritten date inside of when it was acquired by the library:  12/15/73.  My copy does have the red endpapers of the first printing, so it is a rebound copy of the first printing from 1973.  Therefore, the Cookbook would have been rebound by FLB from 1973 to 1975.  The regular edition Cookbook is quite scarce compared to the average Nancy Drew book.  While the Cookbook can be found by most people who want one, there really aren't that many copies out there.  Very few of the Cookbooks would have been sent to FLB for rebinding.  That's why the FLB Cookbook is so hard to find.  

I also like the FLB cover better than the original cover.  The style is great and really stands out.  This is a special collectible Nancy Drew item.

In an auction with competitive bidding, books often close at well above the perceived value.  It might take years for this book to come up for sale, so the winning bid was well worth it. 

These notes are for me to document my struggles with uploading photos via the sorry new Blogger interface.  On the first attempt, the first two photos landed in the correct part of the post but in reverse order.  On the second attempt, the photos were in reverse order again even though I reversed the order in which I selected them.  The photos were also in the wrong part of the post.  I had to move the text to get the photos in the right position.  For once, I was able to drag the second photo to above the first photo.  That typically no longer works.  However, it did cause HTML problems, so dragging the photo is still a bad idea.

Removing Smoke Odor from Books

This post consists of some of my past Facebook posts on what I did to remove or reduce smoke odors from books.  Each date links to the original Facebook post, where comments can be read.

August 18, 2018

These Hardy Boys books arrived in the mail today.  They were priced very cheap, in fact way too cheap.  When I saw the listing, I assumed that there was a catch, because the price was illogical.  The seller mentioned no flaws, but I knew that there had to be something wrong with the books.  Since the books were so cheap, they were worth purchasing if even flawed.  The books were actually cheaper than if I had found them in a local thrift store.  I couldn't lose.

Now I know what was wrong.  The books smell strongly of smoke, the kind of smoke that comes from a burning structure.  They have been in a fire.  I was mystified to smell such a strong odor yet not see soot on the books.  Finally, I discovered that Crooked Arrow has a charred area at the top.  

As I sit here with the books four feet away, I can smell a faint odor of smoke.  I am going to find somewhere to place these books fanned open.

August 19, 2018

I placed the smoky Hardy Boys books (see post from yesterday for details) on shelves in the garage along with household items.  They will be okay there for now, and I don't want them near other books.  I had the garage door open for a while today to air it out.

Last night, the smoke odor had spread to over half of the garage.  I could smell the books from at least six feet away.  Now, I have to get within 12 to 15 inches of the books to smell the odor.  This means that the smoke odor has already lessened, but the books do still smell just as bad up close.  The odor should continue to lessen, especially if I continue to expose the books to fresh air periodically.

August 20, 2018

Smelly Book Update:  I had the garage door open for an hour today with a fan pulling in fresh air.  I previously reported that I could smell the smoke from six feet away on Saturday.  Yesterday I could smell the smoke from 12 to 15 inches away.  Today I have to get within two inches of a book to smell the smoke.  The books still smell bad, but the intensity of the odor has reduced greatly in just two days.

September 30, 2018

Smelly Book Update #2:  You might recall some smelly books that came into my possession in August.  The books had been in a fire.  They are still in the garage, still fanned open on shelves.  Some of the books no longer have any odor.  Others still have an odor, but the odor has decreased by 90%.

..........................................................................

These last two posts are about another set of books that smelled of cigarettes.  

June 26, 2019

I purchased a bulk lot of Nancy Drew books in order to acquire some extra Wanderer books.  I have an international buyer who is seeking them.  The books are in really nice shape, but they smell strongly of cigarettes. 😩 Why do sellers not disclose odors in books? 😡 Over time, cigarette odor does fade, but I need to expedite the process.  

I have heard of wrapping each book in newspaper.  Supposedly, the odor goes away in a few days.  We shall see.  I am quite skeptical, but I am willing to give it a try.  I have wrapped the books.  There are some flashlight editions that came with these books that I did not show in my picture. I am not trying to get rid of the odor in those, so I will be able to compare their odor to the wrapped books in a few days and see if anything has changed.

June 30, 2019

Cigarette Odor Update: Four days ago, I posted about some books that smelled of cigarette smoke. I wanted to get the odor reduced quickly so I wrapped the books in newspaper. Someone who used this method said that the odor goes away in four days. It's been four days, so I checked one book.

Flying Saucer Mystery is one of the books I wrapped in newspaper.  Red Gate Farm was not wrapped in newspaper, which means that I can compare the odor.  The odor in Flying Saucer Mystery has reduced by around 75%.  Flying Saucer Mystery smells overall okay, although it needs to go back in the newspaper a bit longer.  Red Gate Farm smells strongly of cigarette smoke since I did nothing to it. Yuck.

Conclusion: Wrapping books in newspaper does reduce cigarette odor quickly.

Recent Book Purchases Late July 2021

I really want to avoid purchasing bulk lots of books right now.  I don't want to end up with boxes and boxes of books by the time that I reopen my stores.  In case you missed my recent posts, I will be closing both of my stores tomorrow for a few months.  Last year I closed for seven months and ended up with around 20 boxes of books in addition to overflowing bookcases.  While this year's closure should be shorter, I could still end up with boxes of books.  I hope to avoid accumulating too many extra books.

This month I have been good about resisting the temptation to purchase most bulk lots that I would normally purchase.  I have given in on a few.  I couldn't resist this lot of hardcover Hardy Boys Digest books.

Astonishing... The photos landed where I wanted them and in the order I wanted them.

The books are library discards but they don't have any stickers on the outside.  For that reason, I had to have the books.  Library stickers can typically be removed from the outside of books, but I've had a lot of trouble with many of them in the last few years.  I love that these books don't have the stickers.  The books are also in my favorite format.  I am keeping every single one of them and will eventually sell the ones I already had, most of which still have the library stickers on them.

I have been staying out of local stores for the most part.  For the first time in a month, I decided to check a few stores.  I am currently very strict about what I purchase in order to avoid acquiring too many extras.  These books came home with me.

This time the photos landed in reverse order on two attempts.  On the third attempt, I uploaded one photo only.  I opened the uploader again and selected the rest.  They landed in the correct order.  That's what I did with the first group unintentionally.  I'll try it again next time, just in case I've found a way to get the new Blogger interface to work.  

I purchased most of the Nancy Drew Twin Thriller books.  I left behind a few that had some flaws.  The Drina books are a ballet series from the UK.  I also purchased Becky Bryan's Secret and a high-numbered Nancy Drew flashlight edition.  I always think of an infamous local woman named Becky Bryan whenever I see the Becky Bryan book.

The R. L. Stine books were a real find, although not cheap.  I prefer not to reveal the exact price of the books since I will be selling them.  I had to look up the Seniors books on eBay to make sure, since I didn't want to pay too much for the books.  When I saw that a few of them sold for $25 each, I knew that purchasing the books would not be a loss.

R. L. Stine book prices are crazy right now.  The books are in high demand due to the Netflix movie trilogy.  The books aren't easy to find, and I'm lucky to have found any.  The store only put them out the day before I purchased them.  

I hope that I can avoid finding too many other "must have" books so that my extra books don't pile up too much in the next few months.  

Store Hiatus Begins Sunday + Thoughts on What I Have Accomplished

Reminder:  The 10% off sale ends tomorrow (Saturday) night.  On Sunday by the end of the day, I will make all of my listings inactive.  My listings will remain down for some time, probably several months.  One plan is to open back up during fall break, which is in October.  The other plan is to wait until Thanksgiving break.  

Jennifer's Series Books on eBay

Jennifer's Series Books on Etsy

Unlike last year, the reason for closing has nothing to do with the pandemic.  I anticipate that I will have a strong autoimmune flare and that I will not be myself for up to two months.  I am closing since it is best for my body and mind.

My concern about the pandemic and the upcoming school year has increased in the last week.  Our governor signed a bill into law in May that forbids school districts from mandating masks.  The only way that districts can mandate masks if he declares a state of emergency.  He has declared that he will not do so.  So he's got us.  Fortunately, vaccinations are increasing again in Oklahoma, and I hope this situation doesn't get too much worse before it gets better. 

I am not worried about severe illness or death since I am vaccinated.  I am worried about having to self-quarantine.  The district policy is that vaccinated staff must self-quarantine for 10 days if they show symptoms.  Even catching a cold will be a problem and will require a Covid-19 test.  I am quite prone to catching colds. 

We will be returning to school without masks for five days of in-person learning per week.  With the spread of the Delta variant, I feel like we are about to throw ourselves into another debacle.  

So I'm a bit concerned about what I might catch once we all return to the incubator.  I am definitely much less anxious than I was a year ago at this time, but I do have some worries.  I'm also dreading the tooth extraction on Tuesday but will also be relieved to get it over with.  

I accomplished most of my goals for this summer.  I sold off a ton of books.  I still don't have everything quite back after painting in June, but I'm close.  I'm close enough that I can see how much space I have cleared.  I had around 20 boxes of books that I sold.  I also sold off enough books to clear the equivalent of 2 1/2 bookcases.  

Since March, I have sold 975 listings on Etsy, nearly all of them for individual books.  On eBay, I have sold 708 listings.  I tend to put bulk lots on eBay, but most listings were individual books.  Going by listings, I sold 1,683 of them on the two sites combined.  I do not know how many books were in the bulk lots, but I surely sold a least a few hundred books in bulk lots.  All told, I must have sold at least 2,000 books since March.  I can see how I ended up clearing off at least 2 1/2 bookcases besides emptying all of those boxes of books.

In a moment of clarity a couple weeks ago, I realized how much my collection is actually worth.  My thought was, "I sold $_____ in books since March.  That's a fraction of what I still have.  So I can probably multiply that amount by __, which means that my collection is worth around $_____."  I knew that my collection was worth more than a certain amount, but I hadn't considered that it was worth a good bit more than that.

A goal that I didn't accomplish this summer was getting draft blog reviews published.  I have already mentioned that the photo problem with Blogger has taken away my motivation.  Earlier today I finally tried to add photos to some draft reviews.  I was shocked when each photo actually landed in the right place.  This means that I actually do have some reviews ready.  I will likely set them to publish sometime in the next few weeks. 

I hope that after I close my stores that I can catch up on the blog and get some other draft posts ready as well. 

July Closeout on eBay and Etsy This Week + Store Hiatus

I will be closing both of my stores on Sunday, August 1.  I will have oral surgery next week to remove two teeth, which I mentioned in my previous post.  A few days after that, I will go back to work for the fall semester.

Jennifer's Series Books on eBay

Jennifer's Series Books on Etsy

I expect to be closed for two to three months.

Both stores currently have a 10% discount on all purchases.  The sale was supposed to end today, but I decided to extend it until the day before I close the stores.  The sale will end on Saturday evening, July 31.

I want to get my inventory down just a bit so that I can reduce the shelf space taken up by those books.  This will help me to continue to organize my different collections. 

I am also being very careful about what I purchase, as I don't want to end up with boxes and boxes of extra books by the time I reopen.  During the last week, I decided not to purchase four bulk lots that I would normally have purchased.  Any bulk lots will have to be especially enticing before I will consider purchasing them.  And yes, I have already purchased two small bulk lots, but they have important books in them (like hardcover Hardy Boys Digest books).

Sales have been brisk since March and mostly without any trouble.  The postal service has caused me a few problems with some delayed outgoing and incoming packages.  Two outgoing international packages were held up in customs for a month.  One incoming international package took two weeks to be processed through customs.  

Currently, I have one incoming package going in a circle in the northeast United States.  Hopefully, it will escape soon.  A few of my outgoing packages have also gone in circles.  This doesn't seem very efficient.

A few years ago, I wrote about the high cost of international shipping.

Chinese sellers are able to list items on Amazon, eBay, and other sites for as little as U.S. $0.99, shipping included.  The Chinese receive subsidized postage rates, and the rest of the world is paying their postage for them.  Read the following article for more information.

As U.S. Postage Rates Continue To Rise, The USPS Gives The Chinese A 'Free Ride'

I still offer to ship books internationally, but most of my prospective international buyers think I am ripping them off.  They think I am choosing to use the most expensive shipping method instead of using a less expensive method.  The United States Postal Service no longer offers surface mail.  It does not exist.  We are only allowed to use the expensive method.

This came up again last week, leaving me with the familiar but unpleasant feeling that the buyer thinks I am trying to rip them off.  A buyer wanted me to find a cheaper method to mail five books.  I looked into the cost, and it would cost me $80 to mail the five books together in a box to the destination country.  Yes, I agree that the cost is outrageous and not worth it for cheap books.  

I was then told that another seller sent seven books to the buyer via international mail for around $30.  It was suggested that I might be able to find a cheaper method.  I decided not to respond, just because I didn't wish to give a detailed explanation of the situation.

I don't have access to that cheap of a method through the regular shipping channel.  It is true that a cheaper, seldom-used method does exist.  However, I'm not going to go to the trouble of using M-bag, if that is how the seller ended up shipping the books for $30.  I used M-bag a few times many years ago, so I am quite aware of the service and the hassle involved on my end.  I don't care to go to that trouble, for personal reasons.

Years ago, the postal clerks were bemused when I asked for M-bag.  They didn't know what it was and had to find a supervisor.  A canvas bag had to be found.  The package had to be placed inside the bag, and then the bag had to be tagged with the mailing label.  I drop off my packages with preprinted labels, and I refuse to wait in line and go through all of that again.  I am sorry.

In past years when I have mentioned M-bag, some readers would tell me that it is a defunct service, while other readers would say that the service is still offered.  USPS updated its site, and the service still existed as of January 24, 2021.  That's pretty recent, so I'm confident that the service continues to be offered.

What Is M-bag Service?

I will close with a word of advice.  If you really want a book and the book is at all scarce, purchase it instead of asking the seller questions.  A prospective buyer asked me about whether a certain book had a mylar cover (the edge of the white paper backing could be seen in a chipped area in the photo) and whether the shipping cost would include insurance.  

I spent a few minutes typing an answer.  I stated that the book had a mylar cover.  I explained that the shipping didn't include insurance, and eBay does not allow sellers to charge for insurance.  However, I would gladly insure the book.  As soon as I sent my reply, I saw that the book had just sold to somebody else.  The person who asked the questions missed out by just minutes.  The book hadn't been listed that long.  

If a book is scarce and hasn't been listed for very long, purchase it if you think you want it.

Late July Selling Update and Forthcoming Store Hiatus

This is a continuation of these two posts.

June 2021 Update on My Activities

July 2021 Update on My Activities

In my last post, I mentioned that my goal is to clear out enough books so that I can get my Bee Gees stuff displayed out in the open.  I had one bookshelf partially emptied, so I cleared off two more shelves.  I began pulling my Bee Gees stuff together. 

The image seen below is not how it looks currently.  I have actually removed the books from the top shelf since I took the photo.  I have to put photos in my posts before I write any text since Blogger places the photos randomly instead of where my cursor is located.  I expect in a year or so Blogger will shut down due to greatly decreased usage.  They'll have no clue that it will be their fault for ruining the interface.  If I didn't have over a decade's worth of posts, I'd already be long gone.  As it is, I'm barely posting anything.

Target has some nifty wooden boxes.  45 rpm records with picture sleeves fit into them, and those are on the second shelf from the top. 

I'm really excited that my songbooks fit into the boxes as well. 

For months, I have been at a loss as to what to do with the songbooks.  They are oversized and heavy and won't fit in most of my bookcases.  Finally, I have a place for them.

I also have some magazines, and I've purchased sleeves and backing boards for them.  I plan to put the magazines in the wooden boxes as well.

Last week, quite a few of my Etsy listings expired from when I reopened on March 12.  I renewed them, but I lowered some of the prices.  I lowered the prices of all of the Three Investigators paperback books.

I also listed a large number of Nancy Drew Files paperback books on Etsy.  I chose books where I could use the same description on most of them, saving me time.  The vast majority of the Files books have very light wear, no creasing at all, and are in excellent condition. 

I also listed quite a few Nancy Drew Digest paperback books.

Jennifer's Series Books on eBay

Jennifer's Series Books on Etsy

My oral surgery for the removal of two teeth is scheduled for August 3 (read the above linked posts for the backstory).  I go back to work on August 6.  At the beginning of any school year, I have a moderate autoimmune flare.  There is nothing I can do to avoid it.  The change in schedule and stress of getting back to work causes my thyroid to shut down temporarily, and this results in me not feeling that great for up to two months.  I repeat this process every year.  

The biggest problem is actually the brain fog and not anything else.  I can say and do some dumb things at times.  I hate it when I say something really stupid due to confusion, and then a couple minutes later I am chagrined after I realize what I said.  This is why I am quite open about my condition, since it causes me to look like a fool at times.

With the oral surgery just three days before I go back, I am certain that I will have a strong autoimmune flare this year.  That will result in a lot of brain fog and my two-month recovery time being a very difficult and dysfunctional experience.  

For that reason, I must close my eBay and Etsy stores again for the beginning of this school year.  I will close them on August 1 so that my last trip to the post office will be on August 2.  Since I can expect to have two months of not feeling well, I plan to keep both stores closed for at least two months.  I think fall break would be the time to reopen them, which will set the closure at 2 1/2 months.  

If you want something I have for sale, you have until August 1.  After that date, you will have to wait until I reopen.  

I believe I am now finished listing new items for this summer.  I just have two weeks before I close, so there isn't much point in listing anything else.

I am very pleased with the progress I have made this summer in freeing up some shelf space.  I am not going into local stores, and I am avoiding purchasing most bulk lots online.  I don't want my extra books to begin building up too much.  In spite of my strong resolve, I couldn't resist purchasing a bulk lot of Hardy Boys Digest hardcover library editions.  I didn't have some of them, and others could be upgrades.  Those books will take up some space, and if I can avoid buying too much else, then I will remain in great shape.