...eBay seriously (Leslie Cohen 1965-)
I’ve just reignited my long held love affair with eBay, one that blossomed over a collection of The Hardy Boys books, circumnavigated numerous cheap and obscure DVDs before recently parking itself at the altar of one of football’s greatest figures.
Isn’t it just the business though, the source of thousands, nay millions of opportunities to waste a fortune, reunite yourself with memories of your childhood or just indulge your bizarre fetishes. I have a terrible thing for signed or vintage books. I don’t buy many of the former online because in too many cases they’re fake. The latter though are plentiful and relatively easy to come by, books of a sporting or history interest are the ones that inflict the most damage upon my credit card.
I’m particularly chuffed with myself this evening. On Friday I came really close to buying the autobiography of a football legend, a first edition dating from 1976 if you will, extremely hard to get anywhere due to it been published by a small North of England publisher. The only other copy I’ve seen was priced at £450. This copy was only £95, problem was the seller wanted payment within two days, you can imagine my horror when I realised that my credit card had expired at the end of Feb with the replacement still winging it’s plastic way somewhere from BOI ‘s administrative heartland. I missed the bidding only to see another copy appear online today, some seller in the States who probably doesn’t know how rare the book is has just sold it to me for $4.50. What’s better is he spelt the author’s name wrong (sticking in an extra “e”) meaning anyone else searching for the name wouldn’t have had a chance.
If you could see me now folks you’d be looking at a man who’s as happy as a dog licking his own balls.
Yours in smugness
Tiberius of the Gracchi
I’ve just reignited my long held love affair with eBay, one that blossomed over a collection of The Hardy Boys books, circumnavigated numerous cheap and obscure DVDs before recently parking itself at the altar of one of football’s greatest figures.
Isn’t it just the business though, the source of thousands, nay millions of opportunities to waste a fortune, reunite yourself with memories of your childhood or just indulge your bizarre fetishes. I have a terrible thing for signed or vintage books. I don’t buy many of the former online because in too many cases they’re fake. The latter though are plentiful and relatively easy to come by, books of a sporting or history interest are the ones that inflict the most damage upon my credit card.
I’m particularly chuffed with myself this evening. On Friday I came really close to buying the autobiography of a football legend, a first edition dating from 1976 if you will, extremely hard to get anywhere due to it been published by a small North of England publisher. The only other copy I’ve seen was priced at £450. This copy was only £95, problem was the seller wanted payment within two days, you can imagine my horror when I realised that my credit card had expired at the end of Feb with the replacement still winging it’s plastic way somewhere from BOI ‘s administrative heartland. I missed the bidding only to see another copy appear online today, some seller in the States who probably doesn’t know how rare the book is has just sold it to me for $4.50. What’s better is he spelt the author’s name wrong (sticking in an extra “e”) meaning anyone else searching for the name wouldn’t have had a chance.
If you could see me now folks you’d be looking at a man who’s as happy as a dog licking his own balls.
Yours in smugness
Tiberius of the Gracchi
Shit, nice work, Tib!
ReplyDeleteI've been replacing books and toys lost from my youth. I've let a couple first edition children's books slip away over the years, wish I could find them for $4.50!
Fair play Tib. Did I tell yiz about the Innsbruck Tour Guide that arrived last year from Iraq (that's eye-rack). It was the best thing ever. I don't even remember filling in my details on the Innsbruck site but I must have and must have scrolled to Iraq instead of Ireland and the package went there and back to me. It had the country scribbled out with Arabic written on it and "mis-sent to Iraq". I never opened it cause the plastic covering was the coolest part (cause I've always wanted to go to Iraq see).
ReplyDeleteHad a similar experience a few years ago before I was asked to snap out of it. Bought rare toys, memorabelia from a person I was reading, a few others. You could spend your life in there.
ReplyDelete