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-   -   What does "unclipped price" mean ? (http://www.collectingbanter.com/showthread.php?t=118455)

[email protected] February 27th 05 06:22 AM

What does "unclipped price" mean ?
 
hi,

i see a lot of "unclipped price" phrase in 2nd hand book descriptions
on ebay & abebooks. what does it mean?


Jonathan Grobe February 27th 05 08:01 AM

On 2005-02-27, wrote:
hi,

i see a lot of "unclipped price" phrase in 2nd hand book descriptions
on ebay & abebooks. what does it mean?

I suppose it means the price has not been clipped off the dust jacket. Used
book stores often clip prices on older books: suppose the book was
originally published at $7.95 and the book store wants $10 for it--
so the customer complains--"you want to charge me more than the book
cost new" So the bookstore clips off the $7.95 price--and there are
no more of these kinds of complaints.
But naturally collectors are purists and object to this kind of
defacing of the dustjacket.

--
Jonathan Grobe Books
Browse our inventory of thousands of used books at:
http://www.grobebooks.com


gmenchen February 28th 05 02:00 PM

wrote:
hi,

i see a lot of "unclipped price" phrase in 2nd hand book descriptions
on ebay & abebooks. what does it mean?

It is often meant as an indicator that it is not a book club edition;
there are exceptions, but most often book club editions, even when
physically identical to the trade edition, did not have prices on the
jackets.

Bob February 28th 05 02:47 PM

wrote
i see a lot of "unclipped price" phrase in 2nd hand book descriptions
on ebay & abebooks. what does it mean?


It means the price you pay if you haven't been circumcised.
Personally I find this practice to be anti-Semitic!



Alfred Armstrong February 28th 05 02:57 PM

Wildwood wrote:

At one time, a book's price was only located on the front inner flap
of the jacket.

It was extremely common for people buying books for gifts to do like
most people do for any gift... remove the price tag. Since at the
time the price was usually only located in a front corner of the
jacket, they just cut that corner out, and unless the recipient
compared prices at a new book store, they never knew the purchase
price.


Also, since most book club edition jackets don't carry a price,
unscrupulous dealers sometimes clip a jacket to hide the fact that there
_wasn't_ a price present, in an attempt to pass a BCE as the real thing.

--
Alfred

[email protected] March 1st 05 04:20 AM

Alfred,

Thanks for the reply.
From what you say I gather that a Book Club Edition is not the same as

a "normal" edition based on collectability?
I would like to ask the reason for this.

Thanks again for the info.


Betty Hall March 2nd 05 09:04 PM

Well, Actually I thought the reason for clipping a book's dustjacket was
when the book has not been selling and the book seller wants to send
a part of the book back to the publisher to get some sort of percentage
rebate.......the publisher gives a percentage rebate for the book not
selling.

And then the book seller still has the clipped book to sell at his
discretion..
if he can.

Maybe I'm wrong but that;'s what I always thought.

Betty


wrote in message
oups.com...
hi,

i see a lot of "unclipped price" phrase in 2nd hand book descriptions
on ebay & abebooks. what does it mean?




Gnome De Plume March 2nd 05 11:09 PM

Betty Hall wrote:

Well, Actually I thought the reason for clipping a book's dustjacket was
when the book has not been selling and the book seller wants to send
a part of the book back to the publisher to get some sort of percentage
rebate.......the publisher gives a percentage rebate for the book not
selling.

And then the book seller still has the clipped book to sell at his
discretion..
if he can.

Maybe I'm wrong but that;'s what I always thought.

Betty

wrote in message
oups.com...
hi,

i see a lot of "unclipped price" phrase in 2nd hand book descriptions
on ebay & abebooks. what does it mean?


Perhaps, long ago...but I've never heard of it being done that way. When
returning books to publishers for refunds you send the torn-off front
cover in the case of paperbacks, and the entire book ( dust jacket
included ) in the case of hardbacks.

Price clipping is usually done for one of three reasons:

(1) To hide the cost of a book when it is given as a gift ( probably the
most common and innocuous reason ).

(2) To hide the original price of a book when it is being resold as a
rarity ( i.e. for a higher price than that at which it originally sold
). You will occasionally come across used paperbacks with the prices
inked out...this is the collectible PB version of this phenomena.

(3) To hide the dust cover's 'edition' origins...to make a book club
dust jacket look like that found on a more desirable edition, or to make
a later ( higher original priced ) dust jacket look like it belongs on
an earlier ( lower original priced ), more desirable, edition.



--

Swimming in the rivers of light.

gmenchen March 3rd 05 02:05 PM

Betty Hall wrote:
Well, Actually I thought the reason for clipping a book's dustjacket was
when the book has not been selling and the book seller wants to send
a part of the book back to the publisher to get some sort of percentage
rebate.......the publisher gives a percentage rebate for the book not
selling.

And then the book seller still has the clipped book to sell at his
discretion..
if he can.

Maybe I'm wrong but that;'s what I always thought.

Betty



I don't believe so. I worked in a bookstore from 1975 to 1985 -
publishers then certainly would not give credit for a clipping from a
jacket, and I don't believe things have changed since then. Think of the
possibilities for fraud. Mass market paperbacks, however, are a bit
different; there the common practice was to return the entire front
cover for credit. The remaining book could not be (legally) sold, it was
supposed to be destroyed.

[email protected] March 4th 05 06:56 PM

In article .com,
() wrote:

*From:*

*Date:* 28 Feb 2005 19:20:49 -0800

Alfred,

Thanks for the reply.
From what you say I gather that a Book Club Edition is not the same as

a "normal" edition based on collectability?
I would like to ask the reason for this.


Basically, a book club edition isn't collectible in the way a first
edition is simply because it /isn't/ the true first edition, even though
it may look very similar to the first. Also, there may have been a lot
more copies of the book club edn. printed.

For reading copies (ie non-collectibles) I don't see any reason why a book
club copy should be less desirable than a mainstream publisher's reprint,
although for some reason a lot of booksellers are still prejudiced against
them.


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