The whole idea of collectibles is one that I’ve never really understood.  Why people pay huge sums of money for essentially useless artifacts is beyond me.  I get particularly annoyed when I want something, but not so badly that I’ll pay the inflated collectible price for it.  On the flip side, I’m very amused when I find that something I own is perceived as having collectible value.

For example, I mentioned a while back that I’m selling some of my old books through Amazon Marketplace.  One of the books I was going to list is Michael Abrash’s Zen of Assembly Language, for which I paid $30 in 1991 or so.  I’ll keep that one because Michael autographed it for me.  In any case, I’m somewhat amused that there are four copies of the book listed for sale at $42.00 each.  When I first saw the book on Marketplace, people were trying to get upwards of $70.00 for it.  What’s especially funny is that I sold a copy of Abrash’s Zen of Code Optimization, which is an updated Zen of Assembly Language, for $15.00.  Do people actually pay more for the book that has less information?

I’m also about to start thinning out my CD collection.  So I picked the first CD on the shelf, Abba Greatest Hits.  There are five Marketplace listings for the CD, with prices ranging from $40.00 to $70.00.  Huh?  The same songs are available on the Greatest Hits: 30th Anniversary CD, which is selling new for $15.00.  Granted, the song order is somewhat different and the 30th anniversay CD has one extra song (Hasta Mañana), but otherwise the content is identical.  Whatever.

I haven’t quite decided what to do with this one.  I’m tempted to list it for $39.98 and see what happens.  I think at least one of the sellers will drop his price so that it’s below mine.  Or, I could undercut the lowest price by 50% and hope for a quick sale.  I suspect, though, that there isn’t a whole lot of demand for this particular album.  I just thought I’d get a few bucks and make some shelf space.  I didn’t expect to be selling collectibles.  Maybe I’ll list it for $3.00 just like the normal used CDs are going for and let somebody else hold out for the big bucks.

I wonder what other “collectible” CDs I’ll find in my collection.