RARA-AVIS: Ah, the joys of book sales

Bill Hagen (billha@ionet.net)
Mon, 3 Aug 1998 17:39:25 -0500 (CDT) I've enjoyed the memories of book sale finds, but Kevin's note about
competing buyers reminds me that one of the best ways to see hard-boiled in
real life is to attend the first night of a big library book sale, when the
tables of minimally sorted books are first opened to the public. In my
part of the world, the used bookstore folks are among the first through the
door. While you may be trying to quick-scan the spines in a given row,
they move in, quick-scan the table and sweep whole rows off the tables into
their boxes. After they fill several boxes this way, they pay for them,
right?

Naw...they go to their respective corners, sort through the boxes to pick
out the few single books that they can now select without competition, pull
those out, and then leave the boxes where they sit.

Luckily our library sale committee has at least one moral strongman who
will confront these folks, and ban them from future sales if they don't
quit. But they still manage to come in...which is why I always volunteer
for the sales committee, so I can help sort the books to be put out.

Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>

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