Monday, June 29, 2009

What I did not buy this weekend



Well, I did not buy a book that might be interesting but has an outrageous price tag.

I like quilts and making quilts. I especially like antique quilts and learning more about the history behind them. I may have most of the State quilt history books - Kentucky quilts (one of the first quilt documentation projects), Indiana quilts, Arizona quilts, Massachusetts quilts (amazing!)... and others, about quilts on the Oregon trail, Amish quilts, Mennonite quilts....


So, when visiting Amazon.com recently, I searched for quilt history books. I actually did buy Massachusetts Quilts - an oversized book with amazing quilts, excellent photos and insightful and historically accurate commentary. And I searched for similar books, and found this one:


A similar book published in 2000 on historical quilts in Rhode Island. "Down by the Old Mill Stream: Quilts in Rhode Island". But the price! $1500!!!! This is for a gently used copy. I suppose not many copies were printed, and someone thinks they can get away with this price. Maybe they can, as there is one copy at Alibris, different seller, for the same price. I wish I had bought this book back in 2000, when I first noticed it listed on Amazon.
viridian

3 comments:

Margo said...

thank you so much for playing... I thought my subscribers were at new address to stay, but turns out I was wrong! I'm about to call this blogging business quits. Or shut down for a few weeks and be back :) So far I'm just kidding. kinda. That's so weird what happens with the price of books. My brother buys and sells old books as a hobby and one day you can find something for a nickel at a yardsale and the next it's 100 dollars on ebay!

Marie Reed said...

1500 bucks! Holy Moly! That price gives me a heart attack!

Unknown said...

It was expensive, but still less a couple of years ago. There's one for $400 on AmazonCA, and some others less than $1,500. I'd warrent that in actuality that the Alibris AND the Amazon ones were the same seller...sellers often have two shops (slightly different names).

However, the printing business is changing dramatically and with the advent of "print on demand" or down-loadable books which you can have printed at your local copy shop or from your own computer, the used book biz has gotten really volatile.

I missed out on this one a few years ago on Amazon for $200..but I felt even that was a little steep given the number of quilt history books in my collect.

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