Ex library books, in addition to getting read and abused more, will have card pockets and library stamps, so it’s a valid concern. Even if the pocket is removed, it will leave a stain on the book. This generally doesn’t stop me from buying a book, it’s just something that both buyers and sellers have to note.
I have to question the assertion that a very high outlier price is seen on virtually all used books at Amazon. I’ve looked up hundreds of books and in my experience they are fairly uncommon.
Two clues that I consider important. One is that these prices have been around since the beginning. The other is that there are no more of them today than there were years ago.
That makes it seem more likely that they are leftovers from the days when finding a particular used book was so hit or miss that collectors could go lifetimes without ever stumbling into one. (I know there are books that I never saw in a bookstore in my forty years of searching that I can now get multiple copies of with a click.) Early listers had real incentive to price their copies ridiculously high just because the people who had been searching forever would pay almost any price.
The question that needs to be answered is how Amazon treats sellers who have given up their listings on Amazon. Do you have to reconfirm your availability regularly or is a book once listed there forever?
If listings stay around then that’s the answer. It’s too bad that no date of listing is required. That would help buyers a lot.
Well that’s odd because I looked up around ten today and there were several examples of oddly high prices for each one. And I just picked the titles at random.
I suspect that Amazon will require listings to be, at the very least, confirmed, regularly because otherwise people would be ordering books from defunct sellers and getting very pissed off with Amazon when nothing happened.
Thisis one of the books I picked at random.
Note the cheaspest ‘as new’ price is £3.99 and there are 3 copies for over £18 - one of which is only ‘good’.
And this book was only released on the 4th of February this year!
We’re using different definitions, I think.
That page has three categories, New, Used, and Collectible.
New books range from 8.80 to 31.11. (All prices in pounds.) That’s not a huge range, and all the higher priced-books ship from outside the UK.
Used books range from 3.99 to 18.69 with one outlier at 49.99 from The Book House, which appears to be in the U.S.
Collectible books range from 20.00 to 39.99. Again, not a huge range.
Books from stores not in your country almost aways cost more, and often much more, than books from your country. I don’t consider them to be outliers. That’s an understandable variable.
The biggest factor left unsaid is that a book by a popular author like Martin Amis will go through many printings. A first printing is worth vastly more than a later printing. There’s no way to tell with Amazon. So you’re not comparing like to like all the way through here. There are almost certainly good reasons why some of these are worth more than others.
That was my suspicion, as well.
I was specifically talking about the used books on the linked page. The Book House cannot be in the US since they are offering delivery by the 24th August, one day after the first business day after today.
Except that only one of the three books over £18 if from a foreign source. In general I’ve not noticed books from abroad - unless large and heavy - being more expensive than locally sourced ones. The p&p is sufficiently generous that books can be shipped from abroad within the allowance.
Of course, that does mean that you probably won’t get foreign sellers at the very lowest prices.
That would make some sense if there was any indication that the more expensive books are different. But there isn’t. It seems - to me at least - unlikely that a seller would list a book for way more than the ‘going rate’ and not mention the reason (they have the ability to add some explanatory text). Would they expect people to see the overpriced item and contact them on the off chance that it’s a first edition? Also, most paperbacks seem to have these super-expensive copies available and there’s considerably less chance of their being special.
The point about money laundering is that you have to do something that gives you a credible excuse for possessing the money you have.
No one really needs to worry unless the authorities take an interest but if they do take an interest making profits of several thousand percent per book selling popular fiction is not going to fool them for an instant.
You’re apparently not a collector. Amazon is totally worthless for real collecting because nobody ever lists the important info, even for books that only have collectible copies remaining. Amazon is for reading copies only, IMO.
Money launderers need to move hundreds of thousands of dollars. That means that thousands of books in the $700 range would have to appear and disappear every time that happens. There isn’t a particle of evidence that this occurs. It’s a non-starter.
Yes, that’s basically what I said.
Again, that’s basically what I said.
I would be more than willing to bet something mildly nefarious or covert is going on.
Something else not entirely legal is included but those “in the know” know what to order to get their product since no sane person is gonna order the $700 paperback. and since its listed as a book, its media mail!
And also, I trade in a good number of my books at the used bookstore, and there ex-library books are not wanted, they have no value.
Although the guess of Typo is a good try, since there are other listings of $186.67, $155.55, $102.02, it does seem like some edition or other of this book has some collector value.
I am ACAMS certified and I can tell you it’s almost certainly not money laundering.
Exapno Mapcase has guessed it could be an ex-seller with old listings, but that seller is currently selling items, a whole page of feedback on items sold just this month.
Like I said, I found copies of Ngiao Marshs books on Abe books for over $2000. It just seems like a collector value- too high, yes, but it does seem like $100 is plausible.
Amazon is not useless for collectors, if you are interested in a collectors edition, you just
contact the seller and they give you full info on the condition.
I just looked up a bunch of books. 3 were history books that I own, but one of them turned out to actually be rare, many available, none under $100. The other two:
- 11 copies ranging from $8.40 to $25, remaining 3 ranging from $52.31 to $69.95
- 32 copies all $25 or less, 1 copy $132.56
Then I looked up a book I just bought used 2 days ago for $0.50. It’s part of a series, so I looked at all the books in the series.
Except for the one that apparently is a collectible first ed. hardcover, the rest all have most listings under $25, but all 4 of the non-collectibles have 1 or more outrageously priced listing.
These weren’t chosen at random, of course, since I looked up books I own (plus the others in the series I just bought 1 of), but every one (that was not actually collectible) I looked at had this pattern. I didn’t find even 1 that didn’t have multiple reasonable listings and 1 or more excessively priced listing. I don’t think this is at all uncommon.
Somebody on Amazon is asking $39.99 for a “new” copy of a CD I released in 1995. Which is about 20 times what it’s worth. 
Since, unlike eBay, Amazon doesn’t charge for marketplace listings–they only take a cut when the item sells–it doesn’t hurt to ask an outrageous price just to see if there’s a fish out there who’ll bite.
I heard someone suggest that the seller is using some kind of computer algorithm for determining the price, and when there isn’t enough data, the algorithm just spits out something ludicrously high.
Sort of like laundering money. I want $700 and I have a credit card with a $5,000 limit and a $500 cash limit. I put the book on eBay or Amazon for $700, I pay for it myself and get the money, minus Amazon’s cut.
I buy many copies of the book. Looks legit at least to automated systems like Amazon and PayPal that look out for things like this.
I now can max out my $5,000 credit limit in cash (minus Amazon’s cut). It’s a very expensive way to get a cash advance on a credit card.
No, it’s not money laundering. Trust me, I am an expert.
It’s not Placement- there no cash. It’s not Layering- the amounts are too small and the cost is too high. And it’s not **Integration. **
If the PtB on the SDMB like, I’d be happy to do an article about this .
Could it simply be a scam? Someone hoping that someone will one-click it by accident then refuse to refund them the money?
Unlikely, too many listings like that.
I’ve occasionally encountered this as well. I once E-mailed the vendor to ask whether there was anything special about the high-priced copy, but I just got some vague reply about market rates.
Here’s an ordinary pop music CD – http://www.amazon.com/Angel-Ohio-Players/dp/B000001G0B/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1282672111&sr=1-17
It’s not even an LP, but it’s listed at a strangely high price.
I thought I’d bump this thread to link to “Money Laundering Via Author Impersonation on Amazon?”, a new article by cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs. It discusses the theory (raised upthread) that Amazon’s absurdly overpriced books are money-laundering schemes. The idea is that if you need to launder dirty money, you use a computer to generate a book full of gibberish text, self-publish it via Amazon’s own print-on-demand service, and then list it on the Amazon store with a cover price of several hundred dollars. You do all this under your legitimate identity. You then buy several copies of the book with a fake identity using your dirty money. Amazon keeps a 40% cut and pays your legitimate identity 60% in royalties.
Apparently legitimate authors who happen to have the same names as the fictitious authors of these books are getting caught in the crossfire—Amazon is issuing them with 1099 forms for tens of thousands of dollars in royalties that they didn’t get for books they didn’t write.