I had a good surprise when I got home today, a notice that Amazon.com had sold a book I had listed with them for sale. When the tv show The Real Housewives of New Jersey came on, at the center of controversy with the character Danielle Staub was a book called Cop Without a Badge: The Extraordinary Undercover Life of Kevin Maher by Charles Kipps. When I saw the book cover, I knew I had the book here. On 6-6-09, I wrote on Facebook: “I just realized I have an out of print book here that is suddenly in the news, so I listed it to sell at a ridiculous price at amazon.com. Let’s see what happens.”
Then on 6-8-09, I wrote on Facebook: “OMG the book I listed on amazon.com the other day is now the only one available. Too funny. I listed it on a whim.”
I knew the book was in excellent condition and didn’t even remember reading it. I quickly read the part about Danielle Staub, called Beverly Merrill in the book, and it depicted her as a party girl who hung out with shady characters 24 years ago. But I knew that people would be websurfing for the book after the show. When new, the book sold for $23.95 and I bought it for half that, untouched.
A few days later I saw them flash the book cover across the screen again and it prompted me to look online at amazon.com to see how many other people had listed their copies for sale. There were a few, and they all had lower prices than mine. So I simply made mine the lowest price, down to $180, and forgot about it until the show aired last Thursday. After the show, I went online to check the status, and there were only 3 for sale, including mine. I dropped my price down to $140 and forgot about it.
This afternoon I got an email from amazon.com telling me the book has sold. Yay! They gave me until June 30 to ship it, but I simply wrapped it up and took it to the post office right then and sent it to her priority mail with delivery confirmation. Then I came back and emailed her to expect it Monday. I like surprising people with little stuff like that. Plus she’s paid me good money and deserves some consideration for that. Plus I’ll bet she can hold on to it and make twice that before the reruns begin.
And today at amazon.com are 5 copies of the book, ranging from $142 to $620.
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