OMG What Was I Thinking? I Bought 2,500 Books This Weekend!
MooseDog
Posts: 1,948 ✭✭✭
Since I troll various auctions in my area, I got a mailer for an auction being held very close to me and the blurb mentioned baseball cards so I thought I'd check it out. Turns out the building was an Estate Auction company that was going out of business and everything was final sale with $5.00 minimum on everything. At the preview I found a nice lot of vintage 1970s speakers I was interested in, as well as a few things for the house if the price was right. There were lots of LARGE lots of books - several of them. Some contained sports books so I marked my catalog accordingly.
There were two lots of sports cards. One was small and just a bunch of late 1980s junk. The other lot was about 50,000 1984-1991 looked to me like mostly commons. Nice shape though. I would have probably gone $25 for the lot just for a few days entertainment value and the possibility of a few PSA 10s, but I'm a mostly vintage guy so that's about all it was worth to me.
My SigOther looked the stuff over and decided there wasn't really anything she wanted so n the day of the auction I show up a little early for the lots I wanted, and wasn't paying too much attention until I started hearing $5.00 ONCE, TWICE, SOLD!!! $10.000 ONCE TWICE SOLD!!! over and over and I knew they were selling furniture. There weren't a whole lot of bidders in the room, and they pretty much all looked like dealers (antique dealers often look a lot like card/comic dealers!) and stuff was going cheap.
When they got to an antique Singer sewing machine she was looking at, they started at $5.00 and then no one bid...I thought to myself, I better get in on this and bid $10.00 at "TWICE" and surprisingly won it with that bid...COOL! Called her and asked if she thought the machine was worth $100 and she said, "Sure!". I said, "OK, well I got it for $10.00" so she was very excited about that.
After a while they got to the speakers. Vintage 1970s stereo equipment is becoming very popular these days as the quality of the Japanese stereo equipment back then was second to none. I thought this lot of 10 speakers would be worth $150-200 so anything around that number would be a good deal. $5.00 - $10.00 - $15.00 - $20.00 - going ONCE - I went $25.00... SOLD!
SCORE!
(Turns out one of the pairs is worth $300 alone!)
Then they started getting too the book...the auctioneer said on any of the book lots, if you won the lot you could take what you wanted and leave the rest...that was significant as there were of course a lot of junk books - poor condition, out of date, etc. But the bottom line is I still managed to get myself in trouble. I ended up buying 5 lots of books and after a day and a half of sorting out what I wanted to take still ended up with over 2,500 books! I basically kept the sports, cooking, nice coffee table books, very old, classic, and anything interesting to me.
I ended up having to rent a 10x10 storage unit to house all the stuff I bought.
So, I gotta move some books. I thought maybe there would be some on this board who would be interested in some sports books. I have started a thread in the BUY/SELL/TRADE forum in which I have listed the sports books I have available. I'll sell cheap or trade for cards.
PS. The small card lot (along with some other bric a brac junk) went for $35.00 - and the larger lot incredibly went for $110 - plus a 17% buyers premium.
There were two lots of sports cards. One was small and just a bunch of late 1980s junk. The other lot was about 50,000 1984-1991 looked to me like mostly commons. Nice shape though. I would have probably gone $25 for the lot just for a few days entertainment value and the possibility of a few PSA 10s, but I'm a mostly vintage guy so that's about all it was worth to me.
My SigOther looked the stuff over and decided there wasn't really anything she wanted so n the day of the auction I show up a little early for the lots I wanted, and wasn't paying too much attention until I started hearing $5.00 ONCE, TWICE, SOLD!!! $10.000 ONCE TWICE SOLD!!! over and over and I knew they were selling furniture. There weren't a whole lot of bidders in the room, and they pretty much all looked like dealers (antique dealers often look a lot like card/comic dealers!) and stuff was going cheap.
When they got to an antique Singer sewing machine she was looking at, they started at $5.00 and then no one bid...I thought to myself, I better get in on this and bid $10.00 at "TWICE" and surprisingly won it with that bid...COOL! Called her and asked if she thought the machine was worth $100 and she said, "Sure!". I said, "OK, well I got it for $10.00" so she was very excited about that.
After a while they got to the speakers. Vintage 1970s stereo equipment is becoming very popular these days as the quality of the Japanese stereo equipment back then was second to none. I thought this lot of 10 speakers would be worth $150-200 so anything around that number would be a good deal. $5.00 - $10.00 - $15.00 - $20.00 - going ONCE - I went $25.00... SOLD!
SCORE!
(Turns out one of the pairs is worth $300 alone!)
Then they started getting too the book...the auctioneer said on any of the book lots, if you won the lot you could take what you wanted and leave the rest...that was significant as there were of course a lot of junk books - poor condition, out of date, etc. But the bottom line is I still managed to get myself in trouble. I ended up buying 5 lots of books and after a day and a half of sorting out what I wanted to take still ended up with over 2,500 books! I basically kept the sports, cooking, nice coffee table books, very old, classic, and anything interesting to me.
I ended up having to rent a 10x10 storage unit to house all the stuff I bought.
So, I gotta move some books. I thought maybe there would be some on this board who would be interested in some sports books. I have started a thread in the BUY/SELL/TRADE forum in which I have listed the sports books I have available. I'll sell cheap or trade for cards.
PS. The small card lot (along with some other bric a brac junk) went for $35.00 - and the larger lot incredibly went for $110 - plus a 17% buyers premium.
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Comments
That's a lot of books!
Good luck on ebay and stuff.
You now are no longer a commoner - you deal in "books."
In fact, ya wanna impress people.
Take out a page in microsoft word - Give it a Title...
File it.
Then when people ask what you do? Tell them - "I deal in books and am working on a novel."
Will you invite us to the opening of the "MooseDog Memorial Library?"
Good luck. Probably have a few finds in the lots to make it worth while.
-- Yogi Berra
MONEY!
Seriously, nice job.
Nick
Reap the whirlwind.
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