Because the bookstore caters to students and the Starkvegas Intelligentsia, the used book selection is vastly different than the selection at my personal
The bookstore has an abundance of such |
Can you believe it? |
I don't have a clue what the real criteria are that categorize a book as an "antique" book, |
but if I had to guess, I'd guess it criterion was absolute crappiness. |
Encyclopædia Britannica 14th Edition |
Still, I though $300 was a bit steep for the set. |
Pricing at the bookstore seems rather arbitrary to me. A book is worth $15 because it's 70 years old? There's nothing remarkable about A Brief Course in Analytics other than it's managed to survive 70 years. If one were just beginning to embark on a project to preserve Western Culture one
On the other hand, The Constitution of the United States: Its Sources and Applications is also 70 years old and seems to me be of much greater value than a run-of-the- mill math text. But it was priced at $7. Go figure.
The Philosophy of Civilization by Albert Scheitzer is 64 years old. (This
I was puzzled by the arbitrary pricing, but I gathered up my two little crappy old books-- leaving Madame Currie: A Biography by Eve Curie (1939; on sale for $29) and The Ultimate T-Shirt Book: Creating Your Own Unique Designs (1998; $14.95) on the shelf and headed downstairs to the cash register.
"That will be $7.49, ma'am," the well-mannered young man informed me.
My articulate response was, "Huh?"
"The prices on these old used books don't mean anything. We discount them."
I asked what system-- what percentage-- was taken off because a 2/3 discount seemed rather odd, I was told there was none. He just looks at the book and how old it is and how yellow the pages are and decides on a price. This is a change since I'd last been in the bookstore.
"Hang on a minute," I said as I ran back upstairs.
I'm all for free-wheeling capitalism, but this pricing system strikes me as a bit arbitrary.
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