One of the comments to a recent "This Week's Acquisitions" post asks about the "circumstances" of the acquisitions in question. The circumstances, I must say, are usually quite uninteresting, since I would guesstimate that, at a minimum, I buy about 70-75% of my books online. This is not because I have some deepseated hostility to secondhand bookstores; it's because the nearest significant stores that cater to my particular interests are in a) Buffalo or b) Ithaca. As you might expect, it's not exactly feasible to drive 100+ miles for books--at least, not feasible more than two or three times per year. (It certainly isn't feasible during the winter.) In Rochester, I do enjoy patronizing Brown Bag Bookshop for its excellent (and very affordable) selection of contemporary fiction, but the only antiquarian shop that ever stocked anything of much interest to me has gone out of business.
Ergo, eBay is my friend. (Or, since I keep spending money there, I suppose it's my friendly enemy. Something like that.) While I also buy antiquarian books via Addall, eBay always lends a frisson of the unexpected to the bookbuying experience. It's rather akin to shelf-walking your way through a good secondhand shop; obviously, I go to eBay looking for specific things, but keyword searches turn up all sorts of unusual items, all in a process of steady turnover. (And, more to the point, frequently undervalued turnover.)
We did also kill a silverfish that came out of one of our 19th century eBay purchases today. So be warned of that.
Posted by: Bill Tozier | August 21, 2006 at 07:28 PM