They have a scanning accessory that communicates with their iphone to place resale values on books. They hang around in thrift stores and hog anything that fits their anti-literate algorithm. Trying to make a killing it seems. They don’t even read. They don’t know how the fuck to read. Who are these stupid assholes?
I have never seen one open a book. I saw a couple doing it as a team today. Just loitering with no literate intent. Fuck them.
Here is one of them. As if a book had no value unless it was worth grabbing without reading it.
I’ll extend the pit to all types of scalpers of all events and collectable items. If you don’t want it for yourself, leave it for someone else, you worthless parasite.
Having worked in a thrift store, I totally support this, especially for the reseller piranhas who grab stuff from other customers or push people (customers and employees) aside. Also the asses who grab up any decent toys to profit from instead of letting some kid have something decent to play with.
He caught me with a little wardrobe problem and was ordering at me thru the mask like he worked there. He wanted me to get out of the way. I straightened up and said “OK Cool” He says "Welcome to (Name of City).
I knew he was sharking but it was only then that I realized he had a partner who he went back to while I shopped “his” area. It really pissed me off for a long time. I said “Welcome to English you fucking assholes”
With masks on you can say a lot of stuff that you couldn’t before.
Say I’m a book seller, and I priced a book for $10. Someone comes in, buys it, and resells it at $80.
I supposed it would irk me a bit. But I would only be upset with myself for not knowing the market price for the book. I wouldn’t be upset with the reseller.
These are thrift stores. It’s not thrifty to have entrepreneurs grab stuff using tech and not taste or their own eyes, and resell it to me through ebay or amazon. It adds an unnecessary middleman who is basically the tech giantism of our era. They are agents of societal inequality.
Why shouldn’t the readers be the ones who buy books at goodwill? Why not folks who open the book before they buy it?
Why does Jeff Bezos deserve any compensation at all? Why should I appreciate sharks using tech to skim the good stuff from thrift stores?
Hm. I’m getting worked up enough to say something IRL.
I get the annoyance. I like to paint little toy soldiers from a company who doesn’t always make enough to meet demand. What happens is that scalpers purchase a number of these models to turn around and sell at a significant markup on eBay or other venues. They don’t offer anything of value they just make things more expensive for people. I won’t buy anything from those people.
When I shop I can stay 3 or 4 feet from the shelves, and away from other shoppers by that distance. Mostly it’s eye work. I handle maybe 4 books more than I end up purchasing, if that.
These people need to handle a lot of books, probably hundreds, and at least be up close with the whole mass of books on sale in the section. Every book they scan they handle, obviously.
In a pandemic this is not cool.
Thrift shops are the one place where you might find a little bit of treasure in the modern urban world, if it’s only personal. They are trying to arbitrage that away. It feeds the tech impingement on people, and really just benefits the billionaires.
I’m not sure I do either. Thrift store or garage sale, it’s common to have people who buy cheap in order to try to sell dear. It’s seen all the time on Pawn Stars, where the sellers are often disappointed to find that that miraculous buy they found at a garage sale isn’t worth what they thought.
I collect rare books, and while I have occasionally found a diamond in the rough at a used book store or thrift shop, more often than not, I don’t. Certainly, not enough to make money at it, and especially not at the levels the guy mentioned in his video: “Look, at retail, it’s $8.95 new, but somebody wants $12.50 for it used!”
For the record, I just collect; I don’t resell. Mostly, I deal with a reputable bookseller, who has an army of knowledgeable buyers, authenticators, and appraisers (who also “grade” the book, like is done with comic books) behind her. It’s an expensive hobby, but one I enjoy, and especially because my collection has been authenticated and appraised correctly. I doubt that the guy in the video can say the same, and I would be very wary of anything purchased through him, or others like him.
Besides, most of my books in my collection are too old to have bar codes.
As a library volunteer, we’re always happy to see them at the self-service bookstore, because it means that person is going to haul a lot of stuff out. However, the library in the adjoining town, when they have (had?) their big sales, allow them only on the first night (Friends of the Library only) and charge $20 for a wristband. Let’s just say they haven’t had to call the police since they started this.
As a bookseller, I don’t use it and have no desire to start, but I’m OK with other people who do. And as an estate sale customer, I’ve seen people with antique apps for toys, china, figurines, and other potentially valuable items. Again, I’m OK with that as long as people aren’t butts about it.
I only have a problem with it if I’m trying to buy that particular item. Hey man, I actually want to use that thing!
If some dude is walking around and buying stuff without you know, pushing other people in the store who actually want to use the thing, more power to them. They are the agents of capitalism, here to take advantage of arbitrage between the local market and the internet.
Church thrift stores though, the kind people donate to, that’s a different story.
These are speculators. They’re not interested in art forms or entertainment. Just a return on investment. They’ve been over running the retro video game market recently. And yes they are cancers who price hobbyists out of the market. Used books I think are unlikely to get to get this bad but the principal is the same. Anyone who may be interested in this just google “Heritage Auctions” and WATA. Its a carefully orchestrated bubble
The video game situation is a little different, as there’s actual fraud going on there. The people who evaluate the video games are in league with the auction house, and have no problem doing selling to themselves to increase prices. The evaluation company deliberately overvalues the items. Karl Jobst did a great expose about this:
That said, I still agree these book guys are assholes. They’re intruding into the hobby of people who do something for the love of it, in order to make a quick buck. They’re more likely selling to other “investors” than they are to people who were just really searching for that one book. It creates a bubble that they’re hoping to exploit.
If it was something like a store buying them up to sell to actual bibliophiles who wouldn’t have access to those markets, I’d have less of a problem with it. They’d be getting money for their legwork, which is at least defensible, though I’d prefer them to wait a bit to see if any local buy it up. But the second it becomes speculation, then it’s just creating value out of nothing and fucking up the hobby for those who are actually interested in the books.
Capitalism can be a good thing, like @Max_S implies. It can help people acquire things they previously couldn’t, while compensating everyone who helps out along the way. But it also is what allows these bubbles to happen.
Personally, I also say it undermines the reason we have thrift stores: they’re supposed to be about helping people buy stuff they couldn’t otherwise afford, not being a place to help those who already have make more money. (Garage sales are different, in that they are sometimes just about getting shit out of your house. But, still, the people who really go to them often really need the cheap stuff, and so it’s shitty to take that from them to make a buck.)
Collectors always tend to price hobbyists out of the market for collectable items, no matter what the field. Collectable means precisely that some people are willing to pay a premium to own it, more than a hobbyist will be willing to pay to own it and use it. There’s no principle that gives any hobbyist any expectation that they should be able to get something because their heart is pure and their appreciation personal rather than monetary. Collectors tend to have money, and people who have money will drive up the prices of anything they want. Big-money collectors are also apt to buy from other people, who have done the hard work of combing thrift stores and flea markets for the items they know they can re-sell for a profit.
My hobby is fountain pens. The ones I own, I use (although not very often for each one, because I have too many, but I buy for use not for resale or gloating display). It’s a fairly esoteric hobby as such things go, but it has the same phenomenon. So I have a certain amount of sympathy for this rant, and I hope you feel better for having made it. But really you don’t have justice on your side, only disappointment.
This is a function and advantage of a capitalist system in efficiency and ruthlessness of distributing goods. There are products for sale, and people wanting to buy them, but there is also a need to connect these 2 together.
I usually see these people at very large book sales, and have always wondered how this works. I used to see people opening the books and scanning the title page. In the past few years they seem to scan only books that have barcodes.
I even see two or more people doing this - following one another as they scan through the stacks, rows, boxes of books. (Plowing up the plowed field…)
Sorry, forgot the original source, but I read: “I see this happening again and again in collectable fields ranging from baseball cards to antique cars. A group of speculators moves in and drives up prices. People get excited about the huge profits and start collecting the items, further driving up prices. The speculators then sell out and move on. The losers are the people left holding the bag after the prices crash - and the people who truly loved whatever item was the speculators’ target.”
I’m fully in support of book resellers. Used book stores are great for one thing: When I have no clear idea of what I want and I discover an interesting book in a moment of serendipity. Used book stores are absolutely terrible when I have a particular used book in mind that I would like to acquire, for that I turn to the internet. Book resellers transform the first type of demand into the second. When I click buy on a $2.99 book from the 1970s, I’m hiring a virtual army of resellers to scour an entire nation of used book stores to find that book for me and I’m paying pennies for their labor.
The resellers are good for the bookstores because it accelerates their inventory turn and opens up an entire new market of demand. And it doesn’t affect consumers of used book stores because the chances of any reseller snatching up a book they wanted is infinitesimal, especially since definitionally most people who go into a used book store don’t even know they want a book until they see it in the store.
OP strikes me as someone who had an emotional reaction and is trying to use flimsy logic to justify their hatred of what is objectively a innocuous and positive activity.
