Friday, September 18, 2009

Venting A Little, Venting A Lot

The Explosive cork-The sound of thy explosive cork, Champagne, has, by some strange witchery, of a sudden taught men the sweet music of speech. A murmur asof a rising storm runs round the table: badinage commences, flirtions flourish...We might tell of breakfasts, and of suppers, suddenly converted from Saharas of intolerable dullness into oases of smiles and laughter by the appearance of Champagne.-Wit, Wisdom and Morals-Distilled from Bacchus,Charles Towey.
Let me vent for a minute. As I have said before I love cookbooks and I enjoy selling them to others on EBay. Yes, to make some money, but it's not alot of money. I buy some of my books at yard sales, but mostly at thrift stores-my maximum purchase price is $1.00 per book. When I sell them on EBay, the starting price is $.99. Look under cookbooks, as a general category or Valerie2901, where my books are listed. I have a single book shipping price, media mail of $3.99 regardless of weight. For multiple purchases I charge $1.99 per each additional book shipping. My local post office sees me once or twice a week, and though I am not Chinese, they refer to me as their Chinese shipper. Why? The Chinese historically sell things for a little bit, but they sell alot and that's how they make their money. Most of my books sell on EBay for $.99, some for more-I'm happy that people want to buy them and to find that unique recipe. On a single book, I make $1.00-1.50 profit. Sometimes with multiple shippings, I make a little more. But people forget about the gas to drive to the thrift stores, yard sales and post office runs every week. Or the supplies I need to purchase to package these. Or the re-listing of some books, week after week and the amount of time, I spend in listing and relisting. Or the fees I pay Paypal, when the book is sold. So its not a big profit, but I'm doing something I enjoy doing, with a product I enjoy selling. So when you ask for big discounts on my books, I think I'm already being fair and after reading this, I hope you will think so too. End of venting.
I really love the quest I have for searching for cookbooks. Today, I bought a Times Life Library series for me. At least for now. Most of these are International cooking books and I look forward to reading them. It was quite a find for me at $1.00 a book for 8 books. Actually, if I had bought the set last week, I would have had all 12, but alas, since it was a purchase for me, I had to think about it for awhile.
So those gems, I told you about before-those spiral cookbooks, used for fundraisers. I think these are the best deals going. Who knows what you're going to find. Here a few more to look for on my EBay site:
"Homemade is Bestmade" for the Sunset Ward in Henderson, NV
Treasured Recipes from Charlotte Hill Elementary School in Las Vegas, NV
Deseret Recipes from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, UT
Cooks in Print, Taft Branch Library's 10th Anniversary, Orange, CA
More to come!
I didn't make it to the Lets Make A Deal Show. It is so hard for me to get up early, after coming back from 4 days on the road. I really wanted too, but the energy wasn't there. Maybe next week. The show seems to have the tickets available, so I will see what my energy level is next week.
More to come. Cookbook Val

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