What Kind of Business Model is That?

By 1980 I’d been a book dealer for 4 years. I worked hard but was still forced to supplement my income by painting houses and driving cabs. On and off Welfare, Food Stamps a constant. Truth is, I had little idea how the trade proceeded because teachers were few and far between. I’d already moved into my second shop, a former fish market in an ancient marina in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and was trying to figure things out as I went along. I knew it had something to do with buying cheap and selling less cheaply, if not dear, but there seemed to be a strategic element as well, one I couldn’t quite grasp. Instead, throughout those years of house painting, cab driving, welfare, and food stamps, I reckoned I had two assets as far as my bookselling career was concerned:

1. I had all the time in the world.
2. If push came to shove, my family and I would be able to exist on fewer grains of rice than my competitors could.

Today, 43 years later, I’m not sure what that potent dual threat meant. Probably something to the effect that I could work longer and survive on less money than other people who were doing what I was doing. But what kind of business model is that?

In search of answers, I began looking through journals I’d kept back then. I’ll be posting some of those entries over the next few months…

7/31/1980

Camden, Maine visiting friends. On the way to Lillian Berliawski’s ABCDE bookshop (snotty, dismissive name, I thought) bought the usual $200 worth of sure bets. Chapelle’s BOAT BUILDING $10, a book called EARTH NOT A GLOBE, 1878, proving the earth was flat afterall. Then another $200 on “good” books at Lillian’s. 3 vols. Of HUNT’S MERCHANT MAGAZINE from the 30s and 40s for $15 each, and 10 vols. Of the SEAMAN’S JOURNAL, 30s and 40s, $115. Everything in her shop is tourist priced. She hates selling things to dealers, so I buy stuff just to piss her off. Wait a minute…

8/1

There may be a way to do this. Sold vol. I of Goode’s FISHERIES for a measly $28 then bought some books of Mrs. Meyerowitz, little old lady painter AKA Theresa Bernstein over in East Gloucester, with her little old painter husband William in their little old house. She pointed to a chair for me beside a pile of books in her living room. I sat as ordered and went through the pile, book by book, while she helped by saying things like, “This is a RARE one!” To which I’d reply, “No it isn’t.” She was as charming as Old New York can be and I made a small pile and said $10, to which she replied $12. If I’d said $30, she’d have said $36. Did she really need the money? The action, more likely. One of her “New York Dealers” came in as I was signing the check. A middle-aged family man with family waiting in the car. Probably on the way to ice cream cones for the kids.

8/2

Sold Ronnberg the HUNTS at $25 ea. AM STATE PAPERS $45, with 10 SEAMAN’S FRIENDSHIP magazine on approval for $150. Bought for $10 of a little old Rockport lady Verplank Colvin’s REPORT OF THE ADIRONDAC COMMISSION… one of the vols. With maps and chromolithos. Put $65 on it. As a dealer told me yesterday, the antiques dealers want to hold on to their good things (by asking outrageous prices) and move the mediocre – on the theory that the good stuff they’re holding (“If they can afford it,” he laughed), will only get scarcer and more valuable. Is such a dealer supposed to save all these treasures to sell in his old age? He didn’t say.

8/3

Bid on a job to paint the trim on a fair sized house on Rocky Neck for $1600.

8/4

Bought of Eddie Lopes down the street for $60 – GLOUCESTER, with the panorama foldout. MacIntyre’s PICTURESQUE GLOUCESTER, A 1917 GLOUCESTER MASTER MARINERS yearbook, a 1936 CITY DIRECTORY, and a pamphlet for Edson’s patented steering gear. Sal Testaverde came in and wanted a bargain price on all 14 of the Fisheries REPORTS and BULLETINS. I told him they were bargain priced already. He left saying he’d think about it, but that he was “serious.” Marine biologist for the local govt fisheries agency… maybe he’s just the kind of customer I’d like to land. Or maybe he’s just a yo yo. The paint job fell through. Musta bid too high. Fine, fine.

8/6

Sold Testaverde the fisheries books. Big rush for the day. Got to finish Morison’s MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS to get it off my desk & sell it. Or hell, I read it once already. Can hear Carrie across the street yelling at her kids to go to bed.

8/11

Finally got a date with Mrs. Miller, the dame who stood me up last week. Spinster type, real sweet. And how is it spinsters behave? Well… “Here we have a set of Dickens,” she says, pointing to the beat up Dickens set. “And these Thackerays,” she continued opening one of the Thackerey volumes to the limitation page… “Are limited to… 1000 of which this is…” squinting to read the red ink “…number 677!” And on and on. Standard Victorian furniture leather – heavy on the English. I bought Swift, Smollett, Wilde, and a nice atlas. Will barely double it with luck. She wore me down with her persistence. Turned out the library was the remains of the collection of the scion of the B&M Railroad. The spinster’s mother had inherited it and had recently died… Dad and son wandering around the house. They all got a fair price. I got some fair books. But people always suspect they’re being had, particularly when they’re selling something they got for free.