At 10:29 PM 7/27/03 -0400, Don Wallace wrote: Nothing beats making a complete list of what you have, and giving your general location in hopes of a local sale.

Hi, This message follows up my original posting. I appreciate the interest shown in the subject. I was honestly trying to brainstorm the best way to get the most money (if possible) out of this pile of white elephants w/o sacrificing them to a reseller. And perhaps learn a bit more about online sales in the process. I think what I may do is the following: do a digital image inventory of the lot; combine like topics (like end user application software, development software, C++ on DOS books, Windows 3.1 dev books, etc) together and offer each type of category as a bundle. Try to construct each bundle so that each has at least one "flagship" (high quality by recognizable author) title or product. I would describe each bundle with an image gallery of the covers and a list of titles in each bundle. Last, offer one bundle on Ebay and see how it goes, plus set up a web site with the same info in case the Ebay auction expires with no takers. I checked out Ebay a bit and did notice some patterns. Recent but obsolete tech books (IE, 2-5 years old) are almost a dime a dozen. A few people have had bundles of tech books up there but their strategy is terrible - IE, one guy has a big box of books with the spines facing upward and he posted an image of the box with no list of titles - and no bids to match, and the image is too blurry to make out the titles. Surprisingly to me, some rather dated topics (like a bundle of three DOS development books) sold with multiple bids. There ARE luddites out there. :-) So I think it's worth the effort to do it right. Last - to everyone who expressed interest in buying - thanks - I'll post a link to a web site with the material described above when it's worked out. But I do want to defer private sales until I try Ebay first. - Don PS: To address "TeoZ" <teoz(a)neo.rr.com> who posed the question whether I was harvesting email addresses - Teo, first of all you can address me directly rather than third person esp. if you're going to accuse. Secondly NO, if I were meaning to havest email addresses it would be far more efficient to simply parse the .mbox file of this list that is available for downloading and strip every email of anyone who has ever asked about old books or software.