Overpriced Stamp Catalog?

I know this probably falls under the heading of "Too good to be true", but I thought I would ask the experts anyway.

I have a Scott 1989 U.S. Pocket Stamp Catalogue and Checklist (photo below). I looked it up online, and saw it on sale at Thrift Books for $1,000 and Amazon for $1,999.99. Yet another site had it on sale for about $8. I'm guessing this particular publication isn't especially rare, so I'm left wondering if someone is just playing a practical joke.

Does anyone have any insight?

Thanks!

There are several bookselling strategies for used books. One is to price the book high and continually to lower the price until you reach a buyer. Both sites is probably the same seller.

It's an annoying little tactic booksellers use when they list a book in an area they know nothing about. I have seen this stuff on Alibris, AbeBooks and other vendors. Old stamp magazines- some only ten years old- listed at hundreds.

Thanks for the replies! I thought it sounded a bit fishy. By the way, if anyone here wants it, I'll let it go for $500.

I've seen used Scott catalogues listed for outrageous sums on Amazon like this as well.

$2700 for the U.S. FDC catalog - https://www.amazon.com/Scott-First-...tamp+catalog There's a second offering for over $4000

1997 Scott's Volume 5 - Who thought the $1,999 copy would be the bargain price - https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-lis...ndition=used

This is just nuts if they think anyone in their right mind would pay thousands for an out-of-date catalog. A brand new full set is far cheaper.

I got my copy free from a generous member

I believe it's ignorance of specialist books that are out of print. You'll see this for other areas as well, railroad books in my case. The thinking goes: "this catalog is out of print so it must be worth a lot". Well, not if you know a new edition comes out every year. And they probably "researched" the price, saw one also offered (but not sold) at the ridiculous price, and they go for it.

There's some truly rare books out there, philatelic or not, but so are the collectors that may want it. One is the Penny Black plating book of photographs by Nissen. But an excellent resource for that is online and free. So, the Nissen book would be wanted by a book collector only, though I think that would be someone who wanted only the highest quality to pay the $1200 usually asked for the book nowadays.

I have The Pocket Book Edition of the Scott 1980 Stamp Catalogue: United States, U.N. and Canada, which I bought new for $2.50 back in the day. Maybe I can get a 40,000% profit on it! Oh, but it has a lot of pencil marks from where I've used it as a checklist, so maybe I'll have to settle for 20,000%....

@ erilaz - you can say that it was marked by Harry Houdini, when he used to travel in the future, late XX century particularly... so, you will have 40,000.000.000.000.000 profit in that case :0)

About the selling tactics... some sellers, on ebay for example, use to list a cheap stamp for e.g 1.000.000 usd. So, in the large world, many folks will try to see which is actually the most expensive stamp on ebay... and they will go into stamps category, and check the "highest first". Mostly of them will know that it is a funny price, and they will, for curiousity, go to see what that seller still have on his "crazy" stocks, how many positive feedbacks, what buyers say about him, where is he from etc. etc. So, he will get a very good commercial for free... members on Stampcommunity form will talk about him, also in philatelic clubs worldwide etc. etc. So, this is an extreme example, but reflects the idea of extremely overpricing the items for free-commercial purposes... fame... number of clicks... also number of watchers on that listing will rapidly growing up, because many people, including me, will be curious to see if any fool in the world actually bought at the end... never knows :0)

Hi

I sell used books for a living, Stamps are just a hobby.

A couple of things happen on Amazon used listings.

The first one is what people describe above. Someone sees no copies available, and assume they can buy a new car with the proceeds.

The second is a computer pricing the book. Note the description of the seller of this book:




This is not someone with a warehouse full of books. This is someone with a program that looks for a copy of a book for sale on-line, and re-lists it somewhere else at a higher price. To see these computers battle it out to an absurd level, check out:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011..._853762.html

I think sellers have upper limit cut offs not, as this was a bit embarrassing. But my guess is that neither of these sellers actually has a copy of the book. And nobody is going to buy them either.