FINALLY sold the last of a very profitable text book haul

[wyldwolf]

So about 6 years ago as I was leaving a yard sale, the woman holding it asked if I wanted to learn Spanish. She told me she was a Spanish teacher a a local high school and had some sample textbooks. At first I declined then reconsidered when she said a $1 a piece. So walked over to look at them. They were brand new teachers editions and scanning each one revealed price ranges of $75 - $200 on Amazon. So I bought all of them - about 9 total. And they all sold withing a week, netting me over $800 - except one. That one lone text book sat in my inventory for over half a decade, and it's worth steadily dropped over time. Then Amazon put in new rules about text books and I had to remove it from my listings.

About 3 months ago I decided to list it on ebay at the the competitive price of $20 and it finally sold this morning. Yay!

[DonaldsRump]

1. Good for you!

With my luck, the opposite would happen.

You done REAL good!

[spooky3]

2. I don't mean to be Debbie Downer, but instead to point out something

you may not know.

Publishers provide these very expensive books free to teachers and professors in the hope that they will adopt the book for a class, generating sales from students. Ethically, you are supposed to return the book (many provide a free shipping label) or simply keep it for your own use if you don’t adopt it. Book “buyers” make the rounds to faculty offices from time to time and offer to pay faculty for these review copies, which when re-sold, undercut the publisher’s and the author’s income. It is considered unethical to sell to these book “buyers” for that reason and most faculty I know do not do it.

[wyldwolf]

3. to each there own...

"ethically," according to some... I'm not supposed to resell Cinderella DVDs and Stephen King novels because, technically, it undercuts the publisher’s and the author’s income.

In terms of texbooks, they're usually way overpriced for students and then the buy-back prices are a joke.

Don't worry - you weren't a debbie downer.

[spooky3]

4. The difference is that you paid for Cinderella etc.

Faculty get these books for free.

[wyldwolf]

5. not really

If I buy Cinderella, etc. at a yard sale for $.50 People resell items all the time that they don't originally pay for, or originally pay very little for. That's kinda the point of this forum

Faculty get these books for free.

And they then own them.

I would say it's odd to see finger wagging in an arbitrage forum, but this IS DU

[TeamPooka]

6. I sell stuff I get for free all the time. Because it's mine now.

[Vinca]

7. Great buy! Sometimes you just need patience.