willysmb44 Posted March 8, 2009 Share #1 Posted March 8, 2009 I just noticed this after reading the current banner about it on this sute: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/187200457...ASIN=1872004571 Heck, I have a copy of this and haven't read it in years as USMC stuff isn'ta collecting focus for me. I had no idea it was worth that much! Then I started wondering about a few other books I have that might be worth something. Imagine my shock to see this: http://www.amazon.com/Narrow-gauge-mans-la...3416&sr=1-1 I paid $40 for mine! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
37thguy Posted March 8, 2009 Share #2 Posted March 8, 2009 Remember that you can ASK anything you want. But you gotta find a sucker to actually BUY it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigredone Posted March 8, 2009 Share #3 Posted March 8, 2009 Anything popular and out of print can go for a decent price. Used to happen all the time on half.com with videos. The criterion dvd edition of This is Spinal Tap is a great example. I had a 1870s edition of a collection of presidential addresses and found out that the signature inside was from a famous abolitionist best known for saving an inaugural address after the president had thrown out his handwritten copy. Not worth a whole lot but historically interesting. I called the Dusable Museum and they never called me back, so I sold it on Ebay. John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwb123 Posted March 9, 2009 Share #4 Posted March 9, 2009 Just for fun, take a list of some of your older reference books on your shelf and look them up on Amazon.com and see what the upper end of the prices are. Some of the books printed in the 1970's and 1980's are listed pretty high, and some are even called "collector's grade". It's almost as bad as baseball cards! I had my shock when about 5 years ago when someone paid $45 for my copy of "Disney Dons Dogtags"! I had bought it off a bargain rack for $12 just a couple years earlier. The funny thing is how many times have we all walked past these items at a military show or a used book store? One thing to keep in mind that the cost of printing full color books is rising. It used to be European publishers sent their books to be printed in the Easstern bloc or Italy. US publishers would sent their items to China or Japan. Now they get printed in China or Thailand, and they still tend to cost more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
camopara Posted March 9, 2009 Share #5 Posted March 9, 2009 Actually, the Moran USMC book has come down in value. At one time it was bringing $150 to $200, for it was out of print and the only USMC reference book around until Grunt Gear came out. Books can be a great investment! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disneydave Posted March 9, 2009 Share #6 Posted March 9, 2009 I had my shock when about 5 years ago when someone paid $45 for my copy of "Disney Dons Dogtags"! I had bought it off a bargain rack for $12 just a couple years earlier. I may have to drastically up the cost of my book Cartoon Crests of WW II ! Just kidding of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgawne Posted March 9, 2009 Share #7 Posted March 9, 2009 You can;t go by the upper prices on any of the INTERNET sites- what happens is book dealers upload a spreadsheet of their stuff- generally to multiple sale locations. Then to offset sales fees, or fixed rate shipping, or packing costs( there are places you can send your books that take the orders, pack and ship for you) they use various formulas to up the price to cover this costs. some just add "X" dollars, some can use a weird multiplication figure that can skyrocket the piece. If you actually hunt around you can sometimes find the actual dealer that has the expensive book and get it a lot cheaper. But there are also dealers who just add "X" to the current highest price figuring eventually they will become the lowest, and this can keep ramping a cheap up staggeringly high. The idea is that someday, someone will want that book so bad they will pay the price (plus when you have 20,000 books for sale you hardly ever have time to change prices). One INTERNET book place I used to work for always had us price everything about a buck lower than anyone else, as they relied on bulk and fast turnover. Used book selling is an art and science- and the INTERNET has added many wild cards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted March 9, 2009 Share #8 Posted March 9, 2009 In the last few years I have sold two militaria related books for over $300 each, both of them found by my brother at garage sales for maybe a buck each. I think one of them went for over $400 (and it was not in especially good condition) and neither of them was all that old. I was shocked in both instances but it has taught me to look at books a bit differently when I got to estate sales: the real treasures often aren't in the old stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Robinson Posted March 9, 2009 Share #9 Posted March 9, 2009 Actually, the Moran USMC book has come down in value. At one time it was bringing $150 to $200, for it was out of print and the only USMC reference book around until Grunt Gear came out. Books can be a great investment! Yep....my copy of Moran's first book cost me fifty bucks from a Canadien dealer years ago when they were impossible to find. You have to be careful buying "out of print" books since all too often they get reprinted when the author and publisher decide there's enough pent up demand. Then you find yourself the proud owner of a $100++ book that's sold all over the place for under $50.....it's happened to be a couple times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobrahistorian Posted March 10, 2009 Share #10 Posted March 10, 2009 I've seen a couple dealers on Amazon selling "Detail & Scale" and "Colors & Markings" (70 page, softbound books) for over $100 each recently. Kicker is, there were several others available for perfectly normal prices. Meanwhile, I was able to get a signed, 1st edition copy (1944) of "Anything a Horse Can Do" by Colonel Frank Gregory (the father of the US military helicopter program) for $25. It is bizarre. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwb123 Posted March 10, 2009 Share #11 Posted March 10, 2009 Yep....my copy of Moran's first book cost me fifty bucks from a Canadien dealer years ago when they were impossible to find. You have to be careful buying "out of print" books since all too often they get reprinted when the author and publisher decide there's enough pent up demand. Then you find yourself the proud owner of a $100++ book that's sold all over the place for under $50.....it's happened to be a couple times. This just happened with Shelby Stanton's photo history "Special Forces at War", with first editions fetching $350. The reprint is going for $40, with a discounted price of $26.40 currently on Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/Special-Forces-War-I...0899&sr=1-1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disneydave Posted March 10, 2009 Share #12 Posted March 10, 2009 Here's my secret - if I see something for sale on eBay, I go to mxbf.com In my opinion it's the absolute best site for searching for hard to find books. On several occasions I have been able to find books at the mxbf site for less than what the opening bid has been on eBay. My best book find and subsequent sale was one from the early 1950s that contained great detail and photos about Mercedes Benz and their participation in the European auto racing circuit. Not my field of knowledge and I had no interest in the topic, but the asking price was too good. I paid 25 cents for it and sold it shortly thereafter for $140 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willysmb44 Posted March 11, 2009 Author Share #13 Posted March 11, 2009 I guess it's like anything collectible. Just because someone's asking an amount doesn't mean people are paying it. Still, I might take the Moran book to a show I'm going to this weekend to see if anyone would be willing to give me, say, around $75 for my copy. I can't recall the last time I even opened it up for anything. USMC stuff just isn't my thing. If you think folks into military stuff have an odd sense of entitlement, you should hang around RR preservationists for a while. When I mentioned the book Narrow gauge to no man's land by Richard Dunn on a RR preservation forum on book values, I was contacted by three different RR museums stating that they'd "allow" me to donate the book to their library! Well Gee whiz, thanks heaps, guys! You want me to deliver it by hand while I'm at it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Armed 2 tha Teeth Posted March 11, 2009 Share #14 Posted March 11, 2009 When I went looking for this book in the fall I couldn't believe how much people wanted for them. I ended up getting it new on Ebay for $50, it came with a UK price tag. In my opinion the book was over valued at $50, it is a decent book but nothing spectacular and has been outclassed by basically every book on USMC uniforms published since. If I had to do it again I wouldn't have paid more than $30 for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pconrad02 Posted March 11, 2009 Share #15 Posted March 11, 2009 Here's an example: Russ Huff's Wings of World War Two listed between 173.00 to 200.00 http://www.amazon.com/Wings-World-War-Two-...5582&sr=1-5 OR you can go here: http://www.thewingding.com/ and get one directly from the author, signed of $55.00 shipped! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arclight Posted March 25, 2009 Share #16 Posted March 25, 2009 I just noticed this after reading the current banner about it on this sute:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/187200457...ASIN=1872004571 Heck, I have a copy of this and haven't read it in years as USMC stuff isn'ta collecting focus for me. I had no idea it was worth that much! Then I started wondering about a few other books I have that might be worth something. Imagine my shock to see this: http://www.amazon.com/Narrow-gauge-mans-la...3416&sr=1-1 I paid $40 for mine! Holy crap! I've got Moran's book! It's still a great piece, but Schiffer's got an even better one out now. Anyway, I had picked that one up on a trip to London when I turned 21. I thought I had paid too much for it, but that it was as the suggested retail price at the time, and it was in British pounds, which also threw me off, but I knew I had to have it. I wanted it to show my grandpa, and see if we could pinpoint what he had worn and used in WWII in the Pacific. I guess that really was good buy! Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I also looked up a couple of others. The other book I got in London was Gary Howard's America's Finest, which was the best Airborne collector's guide until Bill Rentz came out with the ultimate one. Another book I was shocked to see the value of was Bernard Peterson's Short Straw, and his other Briney to the Blue, which I bought at The Citadel gift shop as a cadet for just thirty bux! Thanks fo starting this thread, G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popo367 Posted March 26, 2009 Share #17 Posted March 26, 2009 A lot of the older books, especially WWI books can be found in Google Books and you can download them for free. I have downloaded about 30 rare books and I have also been able to look through the book online and decide if I really want to spend a lot of money for them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MAW Posted March 27, 2009 Share #18 Posted March 27, 2009 You have to be patient and careful when buying books online. It's common to see outragous prices asked by some dealers who either don't know what to ask for it or put a high price on it and figure "if it sells for that, good, if not, oh well." Reasonable prices can be found if you keep looking. Reasonable is not the same as "cheap" or "almost free"....reasonable means at or slightly below retail. It's really annoying to see a book listed on ebay that makes a claim like "Only one other copy is currently for sale online, and they are asking $1500." That doesn't mean the book is worth $1500....it means the dealer needs to do more research or take a drug test. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corpsmancollector Posted March 28, 2009 Share #19 Posted March 28, 2009 I agree with you can ask however much you want, but someone has to pay it theory! Ive picked up 2 copies of Jim Moran's book in the last 3 months, for a total of 60 pounds sterling. Not too bad in my opinion. Although there are mistakes in it and it is somewhat limited in comparison to Tulkoffs Grunt Gear, its still a great book. Plus, Jim is a friends of mine I managed to pick up a copy of Michel De Trez's 'First Airborne Task Force' a few years back, earlier this year I saw a copy on amazon for over $300! Great thread guys Will Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RustyCanteen Posted January 24, 2014 Share #20 Posted January 24, 2014 Old topic I know, but still very much relevant. Just being out of print (OOP) doesn't necessarily mean the book will greatly increase in value. I think some of the more expensive OOP books which are used sell for what they do because there is a heavy demand for them. Once the demand cools the prices go down. I looked up a few collecting books on Amazon just for fun, to see what it would cost me to replace them. Book 1 is listed used for about $115.00 and about $180 new. Book 2 is listed used for about $400.00 used. Book 3 runs from about $400-$450 used. Book 4 is available for about $600.00 used. Book 5 is available for about $500.00 used. That means that it would cost me over $2,000 to replace five books! When all of the books were still in print they could be purchased new for under $200.00. Supply and demand, they are no longer available and the limited number of them on the market bring big bucks. RC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulyp99 Posted January 25, 2014 Share #21 Posted January 25, 2014 I about fell off my chair when I saw what used copies of Gen. Albin Irzyk book is listed for at amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Warriors-Quilt-Personal-Military-History/dp/1571975055/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390608562&sr=1-3&keywords=albin+irzyk The general sent my a signed copy, so mines gotta be worth more! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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