It is interesting looking at the prices Oxfam charge. In some cases they
obviously have computer literate people checking their stock, in others it
is based on prejudice.

In the first instance, we had a friend in the second hand music business who
found a rare Beatles record in an Oxfam shop. They were charging the top
price for a record of that title but the condition of the LP meant it was
worth a lot less, he informed them of this and they said they had had it
checked by an expert. We had a similar experience in the same shop where
first edition books carried a fine/fine price tag even if they were
ex-library! They obviously had someone who could use the internet to check
prices but didn't know anything about what they were seeing!

In the same shop (and others), however, we have found children's books and
westerns with a very cheap price tag which are very collectable. Clearly in
this instance it is based on prejudice. Of course we don't care because we
can buy them cheap and sell them for a profit.

Normally, the "expert" valuer is just a volunteer with some book pricing
knowledge and in many instances the valuer only gets to see the ooks which have
been selected by the other volunteers as beig potentially valuable so many
scarce titles can still easily slip through the net.

Then of course you get the smart-alec volunteers who decide they can do the
pricing job themselves simply by looking up the values on the internet. As with
the rare Beatles record mentioned no account is taken of condition and so
often a First Edition is priced up based upon the highest price shown on ABE or
Addall where the condition would only merit maybe a quarter of the price. Of
course we all know that there are also some vastly inflated prices shown on ABE
by some dealers and so when an uninformed volunteer charity shop worker see the
top price and values accordingly this leads to farce.

At the Oxfam where I used to do valuations they had a special locked cabinet
for the more collectable items. When I stopped valuing they started to put
silly prices on things and put them in the cabinet and amazingly alot were
selling. It seemed Joe Public thought because they were told the books were
collectable and valuableand put in a locked cabinet they believed it and
bought.

Stan