A Good Deed

15th April 2014

GoodDeedBeing a collector is never easy, especially when it comes to horse novels. Most of them – at least the ones I wanted – were long out of print when I started collecting these books. Therefore, I had to rely on second hand traders. Second hand shops and flea markets are great and I got a considerable number of books at these places. The plus side: if one does not approve of the condition, one does not have to buy the book. However, they tend to have a very limited range, so I turned to eBay for most of my collector career and I really truly love that place. I’ve got hundreds of books there – and that’s no exaggeration!

Although about 95% of transactions worked just fine, I also had a couple of bad experiences, most of them involved people not being honest about the condition of the books. Broken spines, stains, bend marks on the cover – I’ve seen it all. In the worst cases, I couldn’t even do something because the seller had changed the description afterwards from as good as new to not so great at all and I had no proof. What I tended to do was to get better looking replacements. But what to do with those poor abused and mistreated books?

Until now, I kept most of them. I just couldn’t bring myself to throw them away, especially since some of them are old and already rare. I don’t want them to disappear. Besides, throwing away books is like burning them – absolutely unacceptable. However, I’m running out of space to stock them, so they have to go – and I found a nice place for them.

A couple of days ago, I posted some of these poor things in two Facebook groups, trading places for horse novels: I would give them away if someone was willing to pay the shipping costs. As much as I want to get rid of them, I really don’t want to pay extra. About an hour after I posted the pictures, I already got a message. Someone was interested to take all the books that are for free. At first, I was a little surprised and wary, but then I learned that they are for a stable that is specialised in therapeutic riding. I decided to throw in all the novels that I won’t be able to sell and a couple of PonyClub extras that were lying around unused anyway. For me, it’s a win-win situation: I get rid of the books and a couple of children will be delighted to have new reading material. For me, that’s the perfect solution.

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4 responses

  • Manchmal muss man auch einfach aussortieren 🙂 Finde immer gut, wenn man sich dann entscheidet, das jemandem zu geben, der es auch besser brauchen kann als man selbst. Ist aber bei mir auch immer so ne Sache zu der ich mich erst durchringen muss, man könnte die Sachen ja doch irgendwann mal noch brauchen…

    • Jaaa, es fällt total schwer. Bei den Büchern hatte ich die meisten sowieso doppelt, aber eben nicht alle. Jetzt frage ich mich eben schon, ob es nicht doch ein Fehler war, die herzugeben. Voll schlimm mit mir xD ! Bei dem anderen Krimskrams ists mir jetzt nicht so schwer gefallen. Die Sachen liegen schon seit fast 3 Jahren in einer Kiste, in die ich vielleicht einmal pro Jahr reinschaue. Besser, wenn sich da noch jemand drüber freuen kann.

  • A very good decision indeed!
    I really suck at selling my books and whenever I ask a library, they don’t want my books. (For what reason ever.) Throwing away is not an option, so what to do? Most of the times I just give them away in the end. Some friends always need new book (they just don’t know), or one time I gave them to my mother while she was working at a hospital. One day, she even had a little bazaar-thingy. Her collegues could take all the books they wanted and apparently, they really loved that. 😀

    • I totally understand you (but so not your library – I mean, free books, hello?!). Of course I could give all of them away, but I can’t, if you know what I mean. I just want to get at least something back. After all, I paid for them. This was incredibly easy because most of them were books I had twice and I got them very cheap secondhand, often in bundles.

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