No posts since July, but there has been a ton of book hunting, just at a lot of the same spots. Even at some of the far away places I've been, there has been recent returns to those places to find books to sell and collect. Recently the wife and I purchased a small camper that fits 3 adults and their dogs, so we can go to different places and explore a little further. My wife has recently taken up reading again and switched over to a category known as Romantasy.. or romantic fantasy for the uninitiated.
I've picked up more than we have sold on the eBay store, and we are currently sitting at 243 books listed on the ebay store. The average sale is around $14, which is the price of a $10 book plus shipping. We average about $600 a month in sales, and of course some months are better than others. We will go two weeks without a sale, then have some much we can't keep up. Picking up new inventory has been easy as there is a ton of thrift stores that have books that need to be gone through before they are trashed (gasp) and we save anything that could net us $7 and over on profit. It's been a struggle to stay motivated to out on Saturdays for some garage sales, but we have been doing it recently to get fresh inventory on the site. I lost motivation to update the Instagram, but I did today with some fresh books we found over the weekend.
I find myself less attached to the books that I want, and If I already have a servicable copy, I'm okay selling something in classic condition. A good example of this is when we sold a first edition "Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep", but I have a later printing that I'm okay with hanging on to that has little value. Some books are coming up far less often than they were: Dune. We could find Dune books everywhere for 10 cents, now there is zero inventory anything. We made a small killing on my existing Dune inventory, but I still retain copies that I can read that I don't really want to sell. The feeling of value overall has changed for me as a collector. Conan books are still hot, and I can find them readily enough, so I just cycle those through.
I plan on expanding the blog some with horror and movie adaptation reviews in the near future, as I've taken a liking to them and find them pretty often- sometimes with surprising values attached to them. Graphic novels have been an interest, as well as story and poem books that are linked to fantasy series of note. What does 2025 have to bring? I think with the blog it comes to motivation to post my travels more, get thoughts and feelings out, and overall I think I just need to read more. Reading in general is tough and there is so only so many hours in the day; just now my wife asked me to build her something for the orchids, and I plan on washing the cars before this afternoon. Tasks pile up, and we become trees in our old age, the branches are our hands.. reaching for the only thing that could stop us- Time.
See you next year.
