Arbitrary

Downtown Starkvegas is odd for a Southern town because it does not have a square. But it does have a Main Street and on that Main Street is a very nice independent bookstore with a large selection of Dawg merchandise and a little café in the back. (Once I happened upon a gaggle of blue-haired little ladies playing bridge in the café. Sweet.) The second floor has used books and easy chairs and tables. Very cozy.

Because the bookstore caters to students and the Starkvegas Intelligentsia, the used book selection is vastly different than the selection at my personal crappy old book store. And for the same reason, the books are more than one United States Dollar. My efforts to preserve Western Culture one crappy old book at a time are-- despite what you may think-- not restricted by cost. I don't mind spending two, three or even five (!) dollars on a book if I think it's worth it. So it's worth my while to wander around the second floor of the bookstore every now & again. It's worth it just for the laughs.

The bookstore has an abundance of such crappy old books.

Can you believe it?

There's a special section that tickles me to no end.

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.

The antique encyclopedia section is a hoot, too.

Encyclopædia Britannica 14th Edition

To be fair, this was not a Revised 14th Edition but an original, published between 1929 and 1933. 

Still, I though $300 was a bit steep for the set.

The other encyclopedia sets were priced more reasonably-- between $100 and $150 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 crappy old book at a time, were independently wealthy and didn't know any better, I suppose this might be a book to have in one's library. But I'd counsel against it. 

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 crappy old book was first published in 1923, but the edition at the bookstore was printed in 1949.) It was priced at $14 although I'd value as worth more than the math text.

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.