Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Another Duplicate Copy by Andy Scheer

The trouble is, I love hardcovers … and I struggle to resist a bargain. So whenever I visit a good thrift store, I usually come home with a few new copies.

But by the time I get home, someone has placed another copy of that same hardcover onto my shelves.

Or so it seems.

Early in my days of accumulating titles by favorite authors, I kept lists. Being a low-tech person, I used index cards. They worked great, as long as I updated them and carried them along. Somehow that practice fell by the wayside. And I began looking for books by other authors.

I'm safe if I do my shopping online at home. When a fellow collector alerted me this past week to a listing on E-bay, I could say thanks and assure him I already had a nice copy, with dust jacket.

But garage sales and thrift stores are another story – especially when I visit on half-off discount day.

My son tells me there's a smart phone app that lets you scan a book's ISBN and check the title against your personal database. Great idea – if I carried a smart phone. Buying one would likely cost more than I'd save on duplicate copies.

Meanwhile, if you could use a nice hardcover first printing of Black Order by James Rollins or The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King, let me know. Somehow I got spare copies.

No comments: