It was a typical February day in North Dakota when I left home this morning to make the rounds of the thrift stores. Snowing, windy, and -4 degrees with a wind chill factor of -25 to -35 degrees. At least it finding a place to park in any of the parking lots wasn’t a problem.
The day’s only purchase came from St. Vincent De Paul where I paid $1 for “Jochen Peiper Battlecommander SS Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler”. I ran the ISBN through ScoutPal to find a total of 50 listings. The lowest price was $4.62 and 26 copies were priced under $9.45.
Certainly not a book with much potential at first glance. But the more I looked at it, the more my gut told me it had possibilities. In the end I paid $1 for it and walked out the door telling myself I’d probably be kicking myself for the purchase.
My gut’s thinking was:
- World War II
- German Army
- A controversial commander
- Massacre of US troops
- Relatively obscure publisher
When I got home I checked used Terapeak to check closed sales of the book for the last ninety days. I found only three. One was in the auction format and sold for an opening bid of $4.99. One was a fixed price listing that sold for the asking price of $4.62. The last was a store listing that sold for the asking price of $30.00.
I also discovered there is another book about Jochen Peiper that regularly sells for between $45 and $100, so there is definitely interest in him.
Since someone was willing to pay $30 for this book and all of them listed in the last ninety days sold, I chose to list it in the fixed price format for $29.99 with free shipping within the US. I’ll have to wait and see if it sells and my gut was right, or if it ends up in my next garage sale and I was right.
If you want to see what happens the listing number is 380107148640.
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