New or used?

[Geoffrey de Ste. Croix]

I'm in a quandary. Advice appreciated

[Lucia Lanigan]

New or used?

My advice? Put the used one in your basket and check back in a week to see if the price has dropped by a pound. Often happens.

[Benjm]

New or used?

An alternative view? Put the new one in your basket and check back in a week to see if the price has dropped by four thousand, three hundred and twenty four pounds. Let them chase you.

I've never sold anything on Amazon but presumably their fees are commission only rather than sellers paying a listing fee?

[Amor de Cosmos]

New or used?

It's odd. The same seller has a used copy listed for the same astronomical price. Either he knows something the others don't, or there's a listing error of some sort.

[Toro Toro]

New or used?

Most old books on online sellers are effectively never actually seen by a human being.

They're bought in bulk. The bare bibliographical details are entered into the system. If others are selling the same thing, it sets it at the market rate. If nobody else is, the price is assigned by an algorithm based on what rare books usually sell for which, given that sample sizes are by definition tiny, and most of the legit sample genuinely antiquarian, is basically hopeless.

You see these kinds of disparities all the time for out-of-print academic texts.

[ursus arctos]

New or used?

The question I have is why that model persists.

Are there other algorithms that actually purchase such texts for 4000 quid?

[enzee199]

New or used?

That's interesting, I always wondered why you'd see a book on Amazon for something like £1500 alongside a copy for 20p.

[Amor de Cosmos]

New or used?

A copy of an item selling for four figures will surely have a track record, via auctions and other sales, which selling prices are based on. That's the way it works for other collectables and, this type of estimate definitely makes it a collectable, not just a text.

[Lucia Lanigan]

New or used?

I've never worked it out, but you're supposed to get the particular edition listed (year, pp, publisher etc) so they probably have just listed their collectable edition in the wrong place. I'd be shocked if anyone would pay crazy money for a 'new' version of the same edition they can get 'used' for pence, but you see this all the time. With used copies too - I've got one I bought for a fiver which was 'worth' £3,000 used a couple of years later, except of course no one's heard of it or would pay daft money like that.

If they don't send the correct edition, by the way, many sellers are quick to refund you if you ask. God knows how anyone except Amazon makes money out of this venture.

[Sam]

New or used?

Is anyone else getting, 'Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed: Louis van Gaal Biographie & Vision by Louis van Gaal'?

EDIT: Scrap that. I've just realised it'll be because absolutely no-one apart from us has viewed that item, and some OTFers have also looked at LVG book after the thread about it before the World Cup.

[Felicity, I guess so]

New or used?

What Toro said, which also means you buy an old art book and the human that tracks it down in the giant warehouse has to admit it wouldn't survive the postage journey.