New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, edited by Helen Hardacre, with Adam L. Kern

New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, edited by Helen Hardacre, with Adam L. Kern (Brill's Japanese Studies Library).  Hardcover book published by Brill 1997.

The cheapest copy of this title on the interwebs right now is… $250.  A bargain.  There are a few other copies at a similar price and then it climbs to a massive $459.  $250 and available from… Huc & Gabet (that’s me).  Mmmmm it may be a bargain, but it’s only a bargain when someone actually buys it and it’s at that point in time, that that someone saves the difference between this copy and all the other copies.  For the past 12 months this book has been available on line (the interwebs) at this cheap price and there has been no “someone”.  In other words, it ain’t sold. 

I have a whole book case packed full of these sort of books (ie unsold $$$ books) and as I mentioned about a year ago, these are books that I have parked on line awaiting a sale.  Recently I have started referring to this book case as the Book Case of Death in a reference to dead titles that are sitting on the shelf, lifeless and slowly decaying.  I’m happy to sell them at a reasonable price (meaning cheapest price) as is the case with this book, but I am reluctant to have a fire sale and just get rid of them at any old price.  I had a very rare book a few years ago, that had an online starting value of $500.  I ended up fire saleing it for $20… that’s a big difference.  At the time I figured that at least I now have $20 for it… but you know what, this sale has reluctantly stuck in my mind and now I am very wary and skeptical of these so called “rare” books.  Give me a $20 book that I can sell easily as apposed to the $250 book that will sit on my shelf whilst I get old. 

There is of course the whole question of whether on line values are realistic and whether I should just take what I can get and ignore what the interwebs tells me, which I guess is a bigger question than I can reasonably handle here and now in this blog entry.  So I wont go there.  But let me just say this, I do need to make money.

Anyway, New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan has been available for sale from Huc & Gabet for quite a while and after a whole year I have decided to give it another go on ebay.  So far still no action and I gotta tell ya, I reckon its gonna be sitting in the Book Case of Death for a while longer.  In this instance, I’d like to be wrong.