Some People Like To Throw Money Away

[EntityX]

I was on amazon.com today looking at a list of sources and prices for a certain used book. The used booksellers list for a certain book was arranged from lowest price to highest price. At the end of the list I see a price of $ 688.88. There are two entries at that price by the same used book seller. The price just above that is $ 35.80 which is at the 28th spot on the list with the first spot being $ 6.25. The book is titled, Emerson : The Mind on Fire by Robert D. Richardson.

Here's what it says for the used book being sold for $ 688.88. The Seller Rating is 5 solid stars.

Seller Rating:99% positive over the past 12 months. (1,414 total ratings)
In Stock. Ships from IL, United States.
Domestic shipping rates and return policy.
A standard used book. Highlighting/writing throughout the pages (more than 100 pages).? Many pages are bent, and about 15 of them has small tears on the corners. Shelfwears on the corners of the book. Binding slightly loose. Book still very usable and readable, though. No water damages in the pages. No loose or missing pages.

I've seen this before on amazon. Is it just that there are some people that like to throw their money away or they have so much that they feel they have to use it up? Or maybe the seller is conducting an experiment to see if anyone purchases at that price? I've heard of experiments being done where they give a money back guarantee for a book or course or something and then purposefully ship blank pages of paper to see what percentage of people will ask for their money back.

[techgnome]

or they think that their notations and highlights are worth something... *shrug* it's one of hte reasons I don't like buying used text books...
Or some one got overzealous and accidentally typed an extra "8" when it was supposed to be 68.88 .... or they're not serious about selling it.

-tg

[baja_yu]

I've heard there was a German, well, you could say developer, who made an iPhone app the merely displays an image and some text, and priced it $999, the point being you buy it and you can show of how much money you have because you bought a thousand dollar app. He sold about ten of them before Apple pulled it

[Lord_Rat]

Actually the prices on Amazon are constantly adjusted by a program and sometimes, it gets out of control.

[EntityX]

When I was posting I just looked at the first of the two books priced at $ 688.88. Here's the description for the second one at that price sold by the same book seller.

This book was used MANY, MANY times. Corners HEAVILY WORN!!!? Cover is dirty and dusty. Also, water damages in more than half of the pages insdie, so those pages are wrinkle pretty badly.? Colorful highlightings in ALMOST ALL pages!!! 3 pages fall off from the binding, but they are still included in the book. No pages missing, though.

After reading that I'm thinking it is a joke or maybe what Lord Rat suggests a mistake on the price.

As a joke you could email the seller and tell them, "Man, I really want that book but I'm not sure I can aford it. Do you think you could come down on the price a couple hundred dollars? I know I can get a new one for $ 22.18 but I can't stand reading books that are in good condition."

[Shaggy Hiker]

Looks like a typo in the price, to me.

[honeybee]

Typo, more likely. I have seen cars being listed at Rs. 10000, when there should have been another zero at the end.

.

[akhileshbc]

Some People Like To Throw Money Away

I will catch that

Let me see, if I could find my old textbook from LKG and sell it for atleast 100$
I think my book's description exactly matches this:

This book was used MANY, MANY times. Corners HEAVILY WORN!!!? Cover is dirty and dusty. Also, water damages in more than half of the pages insdie, so those pages are wrinkle pretty badly.? Colorful highlightings in ALMOST ALL pages!!! 3 pages fall off from the binding, but they are still included in the book. No pages missing, though.

[honeybee]

That reminds me, I have a book too. It's at least 50 years old, has most of the pages missing. But I have its front and back covers intact, save for some wrinkles along the corners and the back cover has a corner cut. Both need to be stuck together though. I am willing to part with it for a meagre US$9999.99.

.

[Nightwalker83]

That reminds me, I have a book too. It's at least 50 years old, has most of the pages missing. But I have its front and back covers intact, save for some wrinkles along the corners and the back cover has a corner cut. Both need to be stuck together though. I am willing to part with it for a meagre US$9999.99.

.

I will pay you $9,134.60 AU for the book that is worth $10, 000 US.

[honeybee]

Yes, but the price doesn't include shipping. So add another $100 AU and I shall ship the book over.


















Now, I have about five hundred loose pages from a book which is about 50 years old. The pages are worn, torn and stuck together with scotch tape. Most have been dogeared, smudged and stained with innumerable substances. However the text is still fairly readable if you use a magnifying glass (sold separately). The pages are for sale for a price of $650, without shipping charges included.

.

[EntityX]

Looks like a typo in the price, to me.

If it is then typos are very common on amazon. I see this time and again. The highest price usually isn't as bad as the above example but I just did a search for The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna just to look at another example so I wasn't doing a lot of searching to come up with this. This time I was looking at new instead of used and the amazon price is $ 23.85 with the first couple other sources close to that and if you go to the bottom of the list you have $ 61.85, $ 73.80 and then $ 177.79 for the last entry. This isn't as bad but again a ridiculously high price given that you can get it for less than 1/7 of that.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...&condition=new

Ok so I tried another example. I looked at a bestseller the bible, the New American Bible and there all the prices were reasonable so it doens't always happen but I remember encountering super high prices a number of times before when you look at the end of the list. Most people probably choose from the first page list when there are multiple pages displayed so they don't see what's at the end.

Here's another one a text book, Physics for Scientists and Engineers. The new book list starts with the first 3 prices $ 150 or below and at the end of the 2nd page you see $ 352, $ 360 and $ 579.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...&condition=new

Here's another extreme example. 5 pages of prices for a book at $ 7.88 or less and then the last 2 entries at $ 555.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...condition=used

So who cares right? I'm just in my restless mode right now so I'm posting unnecessary trivia. Of course most of Chit Chat is unnecessary trivia.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Actually the prices on Amazon are constantly adjusted by a program and sometimes, it gets out of control.

Considering all the evidence you have compiled, I think His Lordship might expound further on this subject.

[Lord_Rat]

As you wish.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/04/...thm/index.html

[JuggaloBrotha]

Actually the prices on Amazon are constantly adjusted by a program and sometimes, it gets out of control.

Not on the seller accounts, which is thread is obviously talking about a seller account listing.

[EntityX]

If nothing else, Eisen writes, the situation earned the fly-book's author some bragging rights: "Peter Lawrence can now comfortably boast that one of the biggest and most respected companies on Earth valued his great book at $23,698,655.93 (plus $3.99 shipping)."

If you're going to pay over $ 23 million for a book you'd think they'd at least throw in the shipping for free.

[Lord_Rat]

Not on the seller accounts, which is thread is obviously talking about a seller account listing.

A very good point.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Really? It sounds like the same mechanism could be accounting for these prices.

[Lord_Rat]

I still think it is. I just think it's the seller doing it in this case. =)

[dilettante]

The seller could just be trying to spam Amazon, listing lots of things they don't actually have or want to sell at high prices to get some sort of higher ranking in searches. Who knows?