A Means to an End Run

While doing one of my semi-regular used book crawls, I decided to lug in 'End Run', mainly to see if the (quite insane) level of pricing you guys described on the auction websites existed elsewhere as well.

Bottom line: if it was a spectacularly mint copy, $85 likely isn't terribly much overpriced, but never the less still rather high.

If one goes to http://www.bookfinder.com and enters 'End Run' as the title (no authors, some list the book as written by Forstchen only, others by Stasheff only), the general price range for what amounts to some less-than-mint books is between $20 and $35.

One is for $2.50, but don't ask me what a 'readers copy' is. Might be all f'd up, might be in superb condition (in which case reader = moron).

Half.com, which also can have some nice used stuff up at any given time has what sounds like a very clean copy for $32 (straight up, no auction nonsense) at:

http://www.half.com/products/books/detail.cfm?item=2693085

Based on these somewhat lesser grade books going in the $20-35 range, I suspect a truly immaculate copy (no yellowing, no creasing, no wear, pages still very crisp, etc) is worth roughly $65-70 or so, with most any other near-mint book probably around $45-55.

Which really is an amazing yield for what amounts to a media-based book and as well as a mass market trade paper back. The fact that the market *HAS* escalated upwards like this shows that there is a pretty sizeable following of WC out there that has continuously sought after these books, thereby stimulating the market and driving the prices up. It may all sound kind of silly, but y'know...that's kind of how folks kept star trek going way back when. Once you convince the boffins in the suits that there are people out there shelling out some serious bucks to get some of this stuff, they usually have some sort of marketing epiphany eventually...

Figured i'd share.