Book Pricing

[stormdog]

I've asked a couple of general questions about book prices before, but here's a specific one. How do I begin to understand/figure out why this book is selling for hundreds of dollars while others in the same series are much less expensive?

I know that sometimes high-priced books are just serving as a placeholder for a seller's inventory while they are out of stock. But this book has, on Amazon for instance, over twenty listings, all of which are $275 and up.

I want to understand book pricing a little better.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Academic books tend to be hellishly expensive because they are limited editions.

That said, some publishers just take the piss!

[stormdog]

That makes sense for new prices, and of course high new prices filter down to high used prices. Depending on the material; there have been tons of books we've weeded that were way expensive when new and now are selling for a few bucks, if that.

This one confuses me though. All the books in this series have high prices when new, but most of them are posted used on Amazon or Abe for $20 or less. But there are a few of them, like this one and a few others, that lots of people are asking a lot more for. I feel like there must be a reason or system to it, but I don't know what it is.

[cmcmck]

First editions and that sort of thing perchance?

[stormdog]

I dunno; they aren't listed in the collectible category. And I'm not sure there would have been multiple printings; it's just one volume of a 60-something volume set.