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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Buying secondhand maritime books.
From: Gordon Talge
Date: 2004 Feb 2, 08:46 PST
From: Gordon Talge
Date: 2004 Feb 2, 08:46 PST
Sometimes you have to be a little careful dealing with used book stores. Two experiences come to mind. First, a used bookstore back east "offered" to do a search for some books I had been looking for. I said ok, and sent them a list. About a month later they responded that they really couldn't find what I was looking for, and the books they did find, the prices were way out of line, but they had some alternative books. I "failed" to respond to them and they got really angry and sent me a hot e-mail back , that after they had done all this search work for me, I should have bought something from them. The moal of this story is, if you request a search for a particular title and the store happens to come up with it, they EXPCET you to buy it at whatever price they quote, no matter how outragous. Second, I was looking for about an 1890 or so edition of Nories. I found one over abe.com in the U.K. I e-mailed them about it and they assured me it was ( I think 1891 edition), so I orderd it from them. It took 6 weeks by sea mail to get to California and when I opened it up, it was an 1917 edition!. Needless to say I e-mailed them back and they failed to respond to any and all e-mails from me about anything! Oh, yeah it did have 1891 printed in it. Something like "Copyright 1841, 1885, 1891, 1901, 1917". ( Not exactly what it had as I don't have the book in front of me, but like that ). Moral of the story is "Be prepared to get burned once and a while". -- Gordon