Knowing what you’re buying helps

IMG_0780When buying stuff from eBay, it often helps to know exactly what you’re buying… because the seller often doesn’t.

Take, for example, this item, which I recently obtained. The auction listing says that it was three books in one! What a great deal! And it’s possible that the seller really believed that. After all, the covers of the individual books were reproduced inside this 64 page staple-bound booklet.

What this is, however, is not these three 200-some page books somehow squished into 64 pages. Instead, this is a preview book; this has short samples from those longer books. A thing like this is usually used to sell bookstores on ordering these books.

I knew it wasn’t three full books in one, wasn’t what the auction claimed it was, but I was fine with that. I’m a collecting completist. I knew what it was, and I wanted it. But goodness knows, I see a ton of eBay listings that are selling first printings that aren’t, Schulz originals that aren’t, toys from 1958 that are really from 1985, and so forth. Don’t trust the sellers to know what they’re talking about… or to be honest about it when the do know.

Classic finds
A needle-ssly fine present

Being a) an adult and b) not a Christmasian, it makes sense that I’m not given much in the way of Christmas presents. This year’s haul was just two items, both given by Dr. Mrs. The AAUGH Blogger: a Terry’s Chocolate Orange (yum!), and this Peanuts embroidery book from Japan. …

New releases
Double Love

Simon Spotlight has dropped two books for the Valentine’s Day Shopping Season, and they’re pretty similar. Love is Everywhere, Snoopy! is a board book that is supposed to be Charlie Brown explaining love to Snoopy (who is said to have asked, which raises the usual how-does-Snoopy-communicate-to-Charlie-Brown question.) Charlie Brown answers …

New releases
“Books”

My grocery shopping today landed me two new Peanuts “books”. The more bookish of the two is the latest edition of The Great Big Book of Peanuts Word Seeks, volume 5 to be precise, which as I’ve mentioned before I’ll allow to qualify as a book… particularly because it not …