Excerpt from (St. Paul Pioneer Press) Bulletin Board, May 2, 2003
Back to: Grab Bag
Plus the Highfalutin Pleasures
Writes Poet X of PDX: "Simple pleasure: six hours or so Saturday spent visiting yard sales, garage sales, neighborhood sales (several within walking distance), estate sales, spring sales, family sales ('I'd like to buy a family, please'), looking only at books — old books, hardcover, paperback, new, vintage, antique, mint-condition, badly abused, never-before-heard-of, remembered-from-childhood, cheap, expensive, mostly cheap. I got 15 books for just under $10. Most were hardcover and First Editions.
"(I paid the most, $2, for what would seem the least valuable, a rather thin paperback of poetry. Seven of the books, all hardcover, were bought for 25 cents each.)
"Highfalutin pleasure: logging onto eBay after we got home, books scattered around me, and finding them available there. A book for which I paid a dollar or 50 cents had five bids (it sold for $31). I paid 50 cents for a mint-condition copy of 'The Monkees: Who's Got the Button?' It's offered on eBay for $19. I found two of the books I'd paid a quarter for on eBay, also: $3-$10 for one of them, $9-$15 for the other.
"Now, if I could only do that once a week or more, I'd consider myself employed again — self-employed!"
