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Out of curiosity....

Is the buying and selling of second hand magic books generally frowned upon in the magic world, or it is just a rule we have here to avoid any complications? What about DVDs?

Been wondering for a while, but looking for a few books now and wondering if there is a second hand market for magic books, or if it's a bit naughty to even consider it...

Cheers

Hi Andrew,

Here on TM, the general rule of thumb is that members are not permitted to sell anything which is 'propless'; ie - anything which can be learned, and performed by the seller AFTER they've sold it.

Hence - no books and no DVD's to be sold, UNLESS they are accompanied by props, without which the effect can no longer be perfomed by the seller.

magicrob wrote:Hi Andrew,

Here on TM, the general rule of thumb is that members are not permitted to sell anything which is 'propless'; ie - anything which can be learned, and performed by the seller AFTER they've sold it.

Hence - no books and no DVD's to be sold, UNLESS they are accompanied by props, without which the effect can no longer be perfomed by the seller.

I get that. I was just wondering if it's a TM thing (for whatever reasons, I'm not arguing, I can totally see the logic) or if selling books and DVDs is generally considered bad.

It's considered bad all over, when buying magic your buying the knowledge which is something you can't sell on. There are Facebook groups and eBay that allow it though.

Main reason it's not permitted on TM is that, some time ago, we had problems with some people who just registered to sell their stuff and it was counterfeit - copied Vids and DVDs, photocopied books and sections of books, CDs of scans of books etc. We subsequently changed the Trading Area rules so that only posts by approved members can be put in there and, as mentioned above, anything traded has to be prop based. As usual a case of the selfish and sneaky few making life difficult for all the good folks.

One or two other forums used to allow sales of books and vids but eBay seems to be the best market place these days.

I've never sold any magic books but most of the ones in my collection were bought second hand (several came from the Magic Circle library). If you're after an out of print book you have to buy it second hand.

Barry

Amazon can be a good source for some books as well. But it has to be said that some new & secondhand books are priced totally unrealistically. For example if you look on both Amazon & ebay at Thirteen steps to mentalism you will see a book thats available for under £20 at MagicNevin are being sold for considerably more than that & I do mean considerably more.
Last week someone had a copy of The dance by Brad Henderson on sale on ebay at way over £100. But it is still available new & for a fraction of that.

Also I have seen used copies of the Card College series being offered for £50 when you can find it at half that price brand new!

I've been trying to pick up a copy of Mind Myth and Magick second hand, I've replied to two ads on magicweek's for sale section, and been offered electronic copies that they 'made as backups'.

I can see why it's a bit contentious, maybe more for the practicalities than the principle...

It's getting really annoying!

The eagle-eyed amongst you will note that some editing has had to take place - nuff sed.

kartoffelngeist wrote:I've been trying to pick up a copy of Mind Myth and Magick second hand, I've replied to two ads on magicweek's for sale section, and been offered electronic copies that they 'made as backups'.

You might want to mention that to Duncan Trillo, I doubt he'd be happy about copies being sold via his site.

Mancunian Lee wrote:It's considered bad all over, when buying magic your buying the knowledge which is something you can't sell on. There are Facebook groups and eBay that allow it though.

How can it be frowned on? If it were, we would all have pretty pisspoor libraries. The bulk of mine is mad up of old publications, no longer available anywhere else.

you confuse me Lee.

Perhaps we're confusing different aspects. On TM the situation is as described above but there are probaby thousands of second hand bookshops in the UK, sheldloads more overseas, who will have a few books about magic in stock. When I'm out and about somewhere new I usually check out the bookshops just to see what they have, mostly the books are old and out of print, occasionally there will be early editions of books still in print and there might be a selection of magic club magazines, Magigrams, Abras etc. There's no suggestion of any problems with buying and selling these, that's normal commerce and, occasionally, there are bargains to be discovered to expand the personal or society magic libraries. One word of warning, try and check elsewhere the value of any books on sale - smart phones and Google are very helpful - some of these poor, impoverished second hand book dealers will charge arms and legs if they can get away with it!

Mandrake wrote:One word of warning, try and check elsewhere the value of any books on sale - smart phones and Google are very helpful - some of these poor, impoverished second hand book dealers will charge arms and legs if they can get away with it!

This relates back to a post I made not too long ago about books being for sale without a price tag, only listed with "serious offers please"

I'm still at a loss for how to value books which are often listed as Offers only, would anybody interested in second hands books care to share their thoughts on getting a value on these books?

Simply offer what you feel they are worth to you.