My pots were delivered yesterday and today my clover seed should arrive. Tomorrow I can run to town to pick up some potting soil and hopefully get my peppers transplanted into their new homes for overwintering indoors. I also realized I need to order some smaller to medium sized pots to plant some tomato cuttings that I’m going to try overwintering to see if I get a better jump start next season.
I also had 700 small pots delivered for my plant giveaway project next season. This time around I’m going to focus on a few specifics – lots of San Marzano (paste/sauce tomatoes), Brandywine and Ace 55 (slicers), and Sun Gold (cherry). I’m giving up on my favorite (Cherokee Purple) until I have the greenhouse built – it’s too depressing nurturing and babying them all season to have them die before I get any fruit, and I want to give away plants that will be producers.
The clover seed arriving today is another project – I need to reseed the field and I’m switching to a more native clover (Purple Prairie) that will hopefully handle the climate a bit better. Supposedly this variety, once established, will handle the high temps and lack of rain better than the Crimson I currently have planted.
But enough property stuff, back to books…
Dealing in books has its ups and downs, but there are a few risks to watch out for. When I first got into the business, I’d go to storage auctions, estate sales, and post on Craigslist that I bought books. And that’s how I learned a valuable lesson.
I received a response to one of my Craigslist posts from a guy who said he acquired several boxes of books when he bought an auctioned storage unit. Made sense to me, as I would often get books at storage auctions) sometimes by winning the auction, other times by offering the auction winner some cash for the books in the unit). We met up and he had a goldmine – a pristine collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs first editions among many other books that held a lot of value. The guy was asking $250 for the lot and seeing the collection – I knew that was a bargain.
It seemed win-win – the guy gets all the other stuff from the storage unit which is covered by selling the books to me. He even indicated that he knew the books were worth more, but he just wanted to cash to cover the auction so everything else was pure profit. Of course I bought the books – I was looking at about $5000 worth of books for only $250.
Well I started going through them all and brought a few in to research to the bookstore I worked at. The owner recommended I contact a dealer who specialized in Burroughs, that I had met while selling at a few local book shows. I was excited about the prospect, and even considering selling the Burroughs collection to him for a profit but still at a discount so I could have more operating capital for building my business (my specialty was another genre and I really wasn’t interested in expanding into Burroughs).
I gave him a call, but then the bad news…
It turned out that his car had been broken into when he stopped for a bite after a book expo and his entire show inventory had been stolen. I told him the details of how I came into the collection and ended up providing the contact information I had for the guy when the police interviewed me.
The dealer offered to reimburse me for what I paid, but I declined because it wasn’t his mistake, it was mine. He was pretty insistent that I kept a particular book (the one out of the inventory I wanted for my own collection, a beautiful early edition of the Masonic tome Morals and Dogma) and one of the Burroughs bibliographies he had multiple copies of. He later caught me at a local show and gave me a thank you card with $125 enclosed, and said he understood my reluctance to take money back, but figured we could split the cost of the lesson – me, taking a deal that indeed was “too good to be true,” and him, stopping for food in a bad area after a show before unloading his inventory.
It’s my understanding that he was able to get most everything back, but I don’t think they caught the guy. I still have the books he gave me in my collection, and I certainly learned my lesson.
Interesting Tidbits
Song of the day: Descending by TOOL
Jane Goodall, famed primatologist and conservationist, dies at 91 – “Jane Goodall, the famed primatologist, anthropologist and conservationist, has died, according to the institute she founded. She was 91 years old.”
Hunter S Thompson’s death to be reviewed 20 years on – “Colorado officials are reviewing the death of journalist Hunter S Thompson, 20 years after it was ruled a suicide, at the request of his widow.”
Judge rules USPS ban on guns is unconstitutional – “The U.S. Postal Service policy banning people from bringing firearms into post offices violates the Constitution, a federal judge in Texas ruled Tuesday.”
On This Day in 1994, “Megadeth, Arizona” Becomes the First-Ever Official Artist Website – “On this day (October 1) in 1994, Megadeath became the first band or artist to launch an official website. The site, called “Megadeth, Arizona,” was a virtual city in which fans could gather, get all of the latest news, and express their excitement for the band’s forthcoming album, Youthanasia.“
Magic: The Gathering Pays Tribute to Iron Maiden in New Secret Lair Drop – “Magic: The Gathering is paying tribute to the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden in an upcoming Secret Lair Drop.” I haven’t been much of a MtG fan or player for many years (even when I worked at WotC) but I will definitely be collecting these…
The MTG Secret Lair X Iron Maiden Collab Might Be The Laziest Thing Magic Has Ever Done – This guy isn’t a fan of this “Secret Lair Drop” but the article shows all the Iron Maiden cards…
Steve Harris on Nicko McBrain’s departure from Iron Maiden – “Iron Maiden leader Steve Harris has revealed that the band had to decide whether or not they had a future after longtime drummer Nicko McBrain suffered a stroke in early 2023.”
CIA ‘Hijacked’ Wikipedia – “Wikipedia co-creator Larry Sanger reveals how the CIA secretly hijacked entries to re-write history”
Federal Court Rules Speech-Based Deportations of Non-Citizen Students and Academics Violate the First Amendment – “Today, in AAUP v. Rubio, federal district Judge William G. Young (appointed by Ronald Reagan) ruled that speech-based deportations of foreign students and academics violate the First Amendment.”
Privacy watchdog slams AI firm for selling shady “reputation reports” – “An EU privacy watchdog has filed a complaint against an AI company for selling creepy “reputation reports” that scrape anyone’s sensitive information online”
Google wants to ‘break free app distribution,’ says top open source library – “At issue is Google’s recent announcement of developer verification, which will require every Android developer worldwide to verify their identity with government-issued ID, pay a registration fee, and disclose the package identifiers for all their apps even if they’re not distributed via Google Play. The move is framed as a security measure to curb malware, but F-Droid argues it’s really about centralizing control.”
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